Trump family trips cost taxpayers $11.3m in one month – almost as much as Obama’s cost in a year

originally posted by: gemdog
a reply to: JesusXst

So because Trump said it, it must be true? Lmao, This narcissistic delusional idiot you people elected blatantly lies to the public almost EVERY DAY. He doubled the membership at MaraLago then goes there and has foreign leaders and political figures meet with him there. He's costing the taxpayers unnecessary millions while he makes millions in profit because he can, and because half the country blindly supports every insane idiotic destructive thing he does. The mob mentality is very empowering and enticing. Must be very liberating to let go of all that annoying thinking and common sense and reason, and just let the buffoon be in charge of everything.

I think it's worth pointing out tht we've avoided this problem with previous Presidents by not only having places like Martha's Vineyard available, but other official government facilities to meet with foreign heads of state as well. There's no reason we should be using Trumps private resort for this stuff.

a reply to: Aazadan

That's not true at all. Bush went to Crawford, often. A ranch that he owned. Clinton went to his place in East Hampton quite often, as well (they recently sold it for 30 million).

a reply to: Aazadan

This is actually a glaring example of the ridiculous standard that Trump is held to vs. previous presidents.

originally posted by: Dfairlite
a reply to: Aazadan

That's not true at all. Bush went to Crawford, often. A ranch that he owned. Clinton went to his place in East Hampton quite often, as well (they recently sold it for 30 million).

Bush wasn't charging his entoruage of government officials to stay at his ranch.

Bush also wasn't selling people access to his ranch (and thereby access to him) when he went to his ranch. Neither did Clinton.

a reply to: Aazadan

You're right, but there's nothing saying he couldn't. Joe Biden did charge them.

a reply to: Aazadan

All presidents have sold access in some form or another

ETA:
I'm not a fan of selling access like this, just pointing out that it's nothing new.

originally posted by: Dfairlite
a reply to: Aazadan

You're right, but there's nothing saying he couldn't. Joe Biden did charge them.

I wasn't aware of this, but it's not something I agree with either. The article raises the point that it would be unfair to Biden to say he can't rent out his property due to security concerns. In my opinion, I think that's totally fair. The Secret Service has the right to decide if they can properly secure a residence or not. If they can only secure that residence by renting rooms from the office holder, they should be able to veto staying there due to security concerns.

originally posted by: Dfairlite
a reply to: Aazadan

All presidents have sold access in some form or another

ETA:
I'm not a fan of selling access like this, just pointing out that it's nothing new.

I'm not a fan of it either, but at the same time I'm not going to call it the same. Obama was fundraising, the money he got from selling access went either to his campaign fund (and ultimately, to whatever campaigns he chooses to support) or to the Democrat party. Trump isn't just selling campaign access. He is personally profiting and pocketing the money from what he's selling. What Obama did is bad, but sadly really uncommon as your article points out. What Trump is doing here is orders of magnitude worse.

a reply to: Aazadan

Well, he did already file his forms to run in 2020 and he did use a bunch of his own money to fund his campaign in 2016 (who else in that list did that?). Trump is not a typical politician and as such he's probably not going to do things the same way. To me it seems like pretty much the same thing given all of the context.

a reply to: Dfairlite

If the intention is to use it as campaign funds, then he should have no problem segregating the money so that it can only be used on campaign funds. It's not even like that locks him out of the money, due to the loophole with repaying loans with interest from your campaign.

It would however be much more ethical, no office holder should be allowed to personally profit from selling access.

In the digital age money is just a digital number generated by the federal government out of thin air. No harm to anyone.

I don't think Secret Service is paid using tax money. I think the federal government makes their funding out of thin air.

The sheer amount of 'well other people did it so I'm suddenly ok with it' on this thread is hilarious. Should be called abovetotalhypocrisy.com

a reply to: JesusXst

Because Trump doesn't lie? You have to be joking.

so a guy who declared bankruptcy a bunch of times says this;

"First of all, you never have to default because you print the money, I hate to tell you, OK?"

and basically all of his ideas involve spending like you can just print the money...

where are my fiscally conservative friends here ? doesn't this make your skin crawl?