Trump stole taxpayer money.
My question to Republican voters is, what are you gonna do about it, vote for him again?
I can easily back up that assertion. In 2019, news sources reported that military travelers were being diverted to Trump’s money-losing Scottish golf resort and charged for staying there (see Rolling Stone’s story here; New York Times, New York Post, U.K. publications, and other news outlets also reported this story).
Then there was Trump’s money-losing Washington D.C. hotel, where foreign diplomats paid exorbitant room rates to curry favor with the U.S. president (see, e.g., story here). In that case, foreign governments rather than U.S. taxpayers were being ripped off; but even so, he violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause.
But it’s U.S. taxpayers who pay the Secret Service’s bills, and on Monday, October 17, 2022, CNN reported here,
“The Trump Organization charged the Secret Service ‘exorbitant rates’ – upwards of $1.4 million over four years – to protect the former President and his family at properties they owned, according to documents released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday.
“The committee found that the Trump Organization charged the Secret Service ‘excessive nightly rates on dozens of trips’ as high as $1,185 per night despite claims by the former President’s company that federal employees traveling with him would stay at those properties ‘for free’ or ‘at cost.’
“’The exorbitant rates charged to the Secret Service and agents’ frequent stays at Trump-owned properties raise significant concerns about the former President’s self-dealing and may have resulted in a taxpayer-funded windfall for former President Trump’s struggling businesses,’ the panel’s chairwoman, New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, wrote in a letter to the service’s director on Monday.”
If you’re a Trump partisan, you probably won’t believe what a Democratic congresswoman, or a report by a Democratic-controlled committee, says. But anybody who isn’t in serious denial knows Trump is a money-grubbing crook, and it’s hardly a secret that he tried to profit from his position as president. That’s well supported by irrefutable facts.
If you’ll still vote for him anyway, after being told about this, that’s your right; but I won’t take you seriously as a voter, and I certainly won’t consider you a patriot, or think you’re “saving America.” America and the Republican Party need to be saved from Trump.