Trump campaign spent $55,000 of donor funds to buy thousands of copies of his own book

 

Donald Trump used $55,000 of campaign funds to buy thousands of copies of his own book from a retail store, a purchase that could be illegal, the Daily Beast reported Wednesday.

 

The funds went toward buying his book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, from Barnes & Noble — copies of which were handed out as gifts at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, according to the Daily Beast.

 

The site reported that the $55,000 purchase would amount to 3,500 copies of the hard copy version of the book, or 5,000 copies of the paperback version, which was renamed Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America.

 

If Trump accepts royalties from the publisher on the book, purchasing that many copies would amount to shifting donor funds back into his own bank account, an illegal practice, campaign finance experts told the Daily Beast.

 

"It's fine for a candidate's book to be purchased by his committee, but it's impermissible to receive royalties from the publisher," Paul Ryan, deputy executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, told the site. "That amounts to an illegal conversion of campaign funds to personal use."

 

The book purchasing news came two days after the Huffington Post reportedthat Trump hiked up the rent on the office space his campaign is utilizing for its headquarters at Trump Tower in New York — which Trump himself owns.

 

The  Huffington Post  reported that Trump raised the rent  almost  five-fold to  to $169,758 a month  â€” an increase that came as Trump shifted to raising money from donors, rather than self-financing his campaign. 

 

According to his July fundraising report filed to the Federal Elections Commission, Trump has spent at least $7.7 million of his campaign funds toward Trump-owned companies, as well as to his children, who have been a staple on the campaign, Vice reported. 

 

Trailing Hillary Clinton badly in the polls, it's possible that Trump's campaign will now find itself on the receiving end of attacks from the Democratic nominee over his campaign expenses.

 

"If I was a donor, I'd want answers," an RNC member told the Huffington Post. "If they don't have any more staff, and they're paying five times more? That's the kind of stuff I'd read and try to make an (attack) ad out of it."

 

http://www.businessi...own-book-2016-8

 

Obviously to boost it on the top seller list. I think the donors would be happy.

Too young to remember Carter, but I can't possibly see how he had a worse record than Hillary. She already did a Nixon with those emails.

He's going to lose YUGE. SAD!!!

Hillary is slightly in the lead against Hitler. All he needs to do is convince people he's in fact not the ultimate evil.

Should be doable, even for Donald Trump. They've set the bar pretty low.

I'm certainly open to the possibility that he's a unique enough candidate from outside the establishment that turnout of various groups could be unpredictable.  What I have trouble believing is that any such unpredictable bump would overcome all those negatives plus the massive trouble he's in with women and minorities.  He would need quite the surge of angry white guys to overcome the hole he finds himself in.  But there's still two months...

You're forgetting that unpredictability applies to every level. There's no way of knowing for sure how big these bumps actually are. With a controversial candidate like Trump they might be significant. Lots of people don't like to admit they're going for him, and you can hardly blame them with how the media are doing their best to portray him as a literal love child of Adolf Hitler and Bozo the Clown.

It becomes especially relevant when you consider the fact that the experts completely failed to predict his nomination as candidate just months ago.

Trump could use some acting skills. 

His lack of slick is part of the appeal I think.

We'll see in a few months. I don't think any polling formula can predict unexpected events. Not being able to see a choice you don't understand and all that.

Trump isn't Reagan...and polling is much better than it used to be.

True that. Reagan was just an actor.

Fox is msm, why would they when the others aren't?

Know absolutely nothing about Tim Kaine, but it would feel like a cop out if he somehow ended up in the chair.

Ending up with Tim Kaine as Prez could be a very real possibility.

In panic, for a Star Wars movie! If the prequels showed us anything it was that the SW brand can make boatloads of cash even if your movie is hated.

Demanding a high standard? After TFA? Surely they're having a laugh.

A deconstructive society will deconstruct. People think you can just remove cornerstones in society and there won't be any negative effects. They are wrong. 

This is all going to end very badly.

Trump's name incites anger apparently.

 

I've told protesters they were morons outside of Obama speeches, but that's where it starts/ends. I don't want to fight anybody or throw my gluten free, decaf latte on them before I head out to Whole Foods. 

Some of these politicians make me very angry, but I'll never attack one of their supporters for it.

I'd rather say it incites people willing to do violence for disagreement of opinion.

All of that is interesting but may not be a thing. If it is Trump vs. Hillary (not very much liked herself), he just needs to convince 51% of voters he is one iota more likable than her.

So far Trump has been best when he's facing an opponent. If it gets down to him and Hillary opinions can change fast. To do that though he needs the nomination, and it looks like he'll need a majority to get it. He must steady the ship quickly. No doubt this day of silence from him is being used to prepare strategies.

All the more reason for a skills based immigration policy.  Bring them in to go to your schools, keep the smart ones to start businesses.  Why bring in a bunch of people to just be unemployed? 

Because business want unskilled labor and politicians want cheap votes. The media too for some reason seem to want it, though that one is harder to explain. They are the ones deciding policy. Not logic, not the people.

Supreme campaigned in the New Hampshire Republican primary in 2008. He received 41 votes (0.02%) in the New Hampshire primary. According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), he also received 43 votes, nationally, in the general election.

 

^ You're going to "love" this:

https://www.facebook...08579485847636/

They threw the kitchen sink at him on that Fox debate 2 days ago. It's very revealing, shows there isn't really a republican or democratic side, but an establishment one. Fox has been raging on about immigration and obamacare for years and years, and when a candidate with the support to do something finally arrives, they flay him.

While I won't discount that as meaningless, turnout in primaries is so much lower than general elections and driven my the ideological extremes.  This year is somewhat different in that regard, but that broad base of support in a primary is dwarfed by those who don't vote in primaries.

Half the country doesn't vote. A candidate like Trump has the potential to reach out to a lot of sitters. The turnout in the primaries is an indication more people who don't bother ordinarily now go out to vote. If they do in the general, a lot of them could be for Trump. More than enough to beat a lukewarm Hillary.

The deciding factor imo will be if he manages to neutralize the haters who will vote Hillary in spite. He needs to make them unscared so they will concede to his presidency because Hillary is certainly not better than Trump, but currently she represents the least risk. If he can do that he will win a landslide.

I don't understand why he feigned ignorance here? We all know who David Duke is. Just say "Yea, I don't advocate that position," and that's it. 

 

It's bold. He disawowed David Duke the day before, so they can't claim he's backtracking. Riding on the back of that, suddenly his phony ear piece story can be presented as credible.

All the while he is getting all the attention, relying on his oral skills to get out unscathed, as he's done before. I heard he's jumped in the polls since.

They really haven't.  I never see this sort of stuff on campus.  It's easy to blow something out of proportion when we see it and to ignore the vastly more common norm that goes unreported.  Fifty students having a safe space circle jerk and  cry fest are offset by the 29,950 who aren't.  People rarely yell about maintaining the status quo...

To be fair neither did I, but I went to engineering school.

Well, as with anything it's the extremes that get noticed. I guess my point was that what you see coming out of some Uni's these days is on the level of what was previously labeled crackpot ct and mental health issues. It's not necessarily what they say either, but how they say it which makes it appear crazy. There might very well be validity in the claim that musical lyrics can help promote "sexism" or whatever, but the proper arena for that would be some nerdy forum and the talk would be general. This makes it out like Adele is a raging sexist that needs to apologize for her actions, and it gets attention in a fairly big outlet.

Universities have turned into crackpot factories. I swear you will hear more nuttery coming from those places than you do an Alex Jones fan site.

How important is social media presence in the big scheme of things?

 

That's a somewhat serious question. 

Increasingly important I suspect. Most people seem to get their news from smart phones these days, and in that regard it will be central to have a presence in the types of media dominating those. Even old school media outlets largely lift their news from twitter et al.

Yes, but the question is: What happens when an unstoppable asshat meets an immovable harpy?

Time Magazine online poll on who won the debate....

 

Rubio 20%

Cruz 4%

Kasich 5%

trump 69%

Carson 2%

 

--------------

The media is acting like Rubio crushed Trump because he got in a few jabs. No doubt they are replaying a few select clips over and over to reinforce that view.

I watched the whole debate and Trump was deflecting attacks left and right. Cruz in particular got demolished. Him and Rubio both came off as lesser men trying to gang up on the frontrunner. Those poll numbers show I'm not the only one who thought so. Trump actually managed to look like the more serious candidate among them.

I'd say any effort to circumvent and/or replace secular law with something like Sharia would automatically be a major problem in any Western state.

Only for as long as there are westerners living in that state. Who is going to stop them when they reach 30-40% and beyond? It's a democracy after all.

With the current demographic trend there will be no "western countries" in 2100.