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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Evan McMullin's publicists are on to something
.
Why, yes, of course there is affinity fraud going on with Trump's campaign
.
The Oct. 15 Federal Election Commission filing for Trump Make America Great Again Committee does not specify which books in particular were purchased, but the committee’s own website suggests it was Trump’s 1987 business bestseller.
“I’ve signed an out-of-print, hardcover copy of ‘The Art of the Deal’ just for you, because I want you on board with Team Trump!” Trump wrote in an Aug. 2 fundraising email, which went on to offer the book for a minimum donation of $184.
Trump’s statement calling the book “out-of-print,” repeated on the committee’s website, however, is false. The Art of the Deal had a new paperback edition printed last October, and the hardcover is currently in print and available from Random House and retail booksellers. Barnes and Noble, for example, sells it for $22.35.
The Trump Make America Great Again Committee is a joint fundraising operation between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. An RNC spokeswoman referred a question about the books to the Trump campaign, which did not return phone calls and emails requesting comment over a period of days. Random House representatives also did not respond to Huffington Post queries.
While a second joint Trump-RNC committee concentrates on large contributions, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee focuses on small-dollar donations using online and direct-mail fundraising. As of Sept. 30, 77 percent of all the money it raised came from donors who have given less than $200.
According to the committee’s Oct. 15 FEC filing, it paid Penguin/Random House $91,866 on Aug. 30, $98,975 on Sept. 1, and another $98,975 on Sept. 22. The purpose for all three was listed as: “Collateral: Books.”
The publishing house has printed five titles by Trump, including How to Get Rich and Think Like a Billionaire. The biggest seller, though, was The Art of the Deal, which was published in 1987 but has remained in print ever since. Trump frequently boasts about it in his campaign speeches, and it is the only one mentioned on the Trump fundraising website.
At the standard bulk discount offered by publishers, Trump’s fundraising committee could have purchased some 17,000 copies of the hardcover edition. Under a typical publishing contract, that quantity would generate over $70,000 in royalties, which Trump would have to split with his co-author.
According to Trump’s financial disclosure statement filed in May, Trump received between $50,000 and $100,000 in royalties for that title over the previous year.
The Daily Beast previously reported that Trump spent $55,000 in money from his own campaign to buy copies of his latest book, Crippled America, which was published by Simon and Schuster. Copies were distributed to GOP delegates attending the summer convention in Cleveland.
The purchase of books is just the latest example of Trump using donors’ money to purchase goods and services from his own businesses and generating personal profit for himself.
Trump houses his campaign headquarters in Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, where the campaign pays $169,758 a month for office space at about $100 per square foot. (The Clinton campaign, in contrast, rents two floors in a Brooklyn Heights office building for about $32 per square foot.)
Trump paid his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach $423,373 on the same day in May that his campaign finalized a deal with the RNC that began bringing him hundreds of millions of dollars of outside donations ― even though the only events he’d held there were two victory parties and an afternoon news conference two months earlier. He could have held those three events at nearby hotels for a total of about $40,000.
In July, Trump’s campaign sent $48,240 to his Westchester County golf course. The only event it had hosted for him was a June 7 victory party. Trump could have used a ballroom at a nearby Marriott hotel for less than half that much.
And Trump’s insistence on using his own personal Boeing 757 jet is now costing taxpayers millions of dollars extra. Because Trump’s Secret Service detail is making up a large percentage ― and on some days even a majority ― of the flying passengers, the agency must pay a proportionate share of the $10,000-an-hour flying costs.
Had Trump chosen to charter a more suitable airliner that would accommodate his staff, his security detail and his traveling press corps, as both Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and previous GOP nominees have done, he could have driven down the costs for everyone.
Trump’s staff has defended his decisions to spend more at his own businesses rather than use less-expensive alternatives by pointing out that he is contributing $2 million a month to his own campaign.
That $2 million figure, however, is dwarfed by the many tens of millions of dollars per month coming to Trump’s campaign from both large and small donors.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
To whomever posted a few pages ago their annoyances of CNN's round-the-clock coverage of Clinton's new emails, they've always been like that. Remember when that Malaysian airplane disappeared and they went months covering that, going so far as to recreate a visually stunning (for a cable news budget) 3D model of what they think happened to the plane an where it went down?
Two former atteroty generals, one R and one D, went off on Comey's handling of the investigation
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/james-comey-is-damaging-our-democracy/2016/10/29/894d0f5e-9e49-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html?utm_term=.118d5af9a3d7
"Events as they have played out point to the value of the department’s traditions. Having taken the extraordinary steps of briefing the public, testifying before Congress about a decision not to prosecute and sharing investigative material, Comey now finds himself wanting to update the public and Congress on each new development in the investigation, even before he and others have had a chance to assess its significance. He may well have been criticized after the fact had he not advised Congress of the investigative steps that he was taking. But it was his job — consistent with the best traditions of the Department of Justice — to make the right decision and take that criticism if it came. Department officials owe the public an explanation of how events have unfolded the way they have. There must be some recognition that it is important not to allow an investigation to become hijacked by the red-hot passions of a political contest.
As it stands, we now have real-time, raw-take transparency taken to its illogical limit, a kind of reality TV of federal criminal investigation. Perhaps worst of all, it is happening on the eve of a presidential election. It is antithetical to the interests of justice, putting a thumb on the scale of this election and damaging our democracy"
Our democracy was damaged well before even Trump showed up. I refer to Joseph Mc Carthy. This guy was the equivalent of Donald Trump back then, but he was successful for a good while. His tactics of accussing people of being communist if they so much as questioned him aren't that different from how Trump has acted today, if you examine both at their core. They are both wild and uncontrollable men that have followings thanks to their unbelievably tough stances on certain issues, and they both have done real damage. And don't get me started on Nixon.
edited 30th Oct '16 6:57:41 AM by Vampireandthen
Please allow me to introduce myself, I am a man of wealth and taste. Nice to meet you, hope you can guess my name.Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News host and fervent supporter of Donald Trump, defended Hillary and blasted Comey for how badly he handled this. Not surprising because something similar happened to her too.
There is also the Indian Removal Act. The Supreme Court even said they couldn't do it, because the Native Americans were sovereign nations (and therefore the US had no authority over them). It was passed by Congress, and Jackson noted the Court couldn't enforce its ruling.
It is important to note how fragile our democracy can be, and has been, by acknowledging times when it has failed. The idea that Trump's strongman attitude is unenforceable because we're a democracy is a dangerously complacent one. And one that is rather common, in my experience.
edited 30th Oct '16 8:02:22 AM by SilentColossus

Eh, I'm not so sure it'll move the numbers much. If I'm still an undecided at this point I don't see even more emails being the tipping point. At least not more then a 1 point move.
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?