Taxpayers have been on the hook for nearly $1 million in payments to Donald Trump’s private company since he took office in 2017, according to a new report from The Washington Post.
The Post reported, “The U.S. government has paid at least $970,000 to President Trump’s company since Trump took office — including payments for more than 1,600 nightly room rentals at Trump’s hotels and clubs, according to federal records obtained by The Washington Post.”
The report confirms that Trump has literally been profiting from the presidency since the first month he set foot inside the White House.
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Since March, The Post has catalogued an additional $340,000 in such payments. They were almost all related to trips taken by Trump, his family and his top officials. The government is not known to have paid for the rooms for Trump and his family members at his properties but it has paid for staffers and Secret Service agents to accompany the president.
The payments create an unprecedented business relationship between the president’s private company and his government — which began in the first month of Trump’s presidency, and continued into this year, records show.
The records show that taxpayers have now paid for the equivalent of more than four years’ worth of nightly rentals at Trump properties, including 950 nights at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., and 530 nights at the president’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, according to a Post analysis.
Trump still owns his business, though he says he has given day-to-day control to his eldest sons. Last year, Eric Trump said that when government officials visit Trump properties with the president, they are charged “like 50 bucks.â€
But in the 1,600 room rentals examined by The Post, there were no examples of a rate that low.
Trump hasn’t drained the swamp; he is the swamp
This isn’t the first piece of jaw-dropping reporting to show that Donald Trump is grifting his way through the presidency, and it almost certainly won’t be the last.
Earlier this year, in fact, I noted that Trump has spent the equivalent of 334 years of presidential salary on weekend trips to his golf club. In a February, The Washington Post reported that Trump has been charging the U.S. Secret Service $650 per night while they protect him during visits to his properties.
This, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg for a president who has been openly using his office to enrich himself and his corrupt family.
Trump likes to tout the fact that he forgoes a White House salary, but what he doesn’t mention is that his massive grift job on taxpayers makes any presidential salary look like peanuts.
Despite his promises, Donald Trump hasn’t drained the swamp of D.C. corruption since he took office in 2017. He is the swamp.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
