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Trump's campaign is ridiculously, embarrasingly, and humiliatingly broke. This much has been well-covered. Trump cannot raise money, the RNC cannot raise it on his behalf, and accordingly he has a paltry $1.2M cash on hand heading into the general. This is due largely to the fact that he was only able to raise an embarrassing $3.1M in the whole month of May...barely more than Ted Cruz raised in the first three days of May.

In spite of the fact that the campaign has no money and is not raising any money, it is giving away hefty sums of money to Trump's companies, his kids, and himself. The Wall Street Journal added it up and found that Trump spent over a million on his kids and his own companies:

Stark Gap in Fundraising Between Presumptive Nominees

Donald Trump raised $3.1 million in the month after he became the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, giving him a staggering cash disadvantage heading into the general election against Hillary...

If you look at Trump's expenditure reports, it's astounding and galling how much money he directed to companies owned or controlled by him:

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Recipients of payments from Trump campaign with “Trump” in name, through May 31. Doesn’t include Mar-a-Lago/planes.

Then there is the fact that, for some reason, Trump has been paying himself a substantial amount in payroll - in spite of the fact that he claims to be one of the wealthiest men on earth and does not need for his campaign to pay him a living salary, they have been doing it anyway. From the FEC report:

This goes on and on, but clearly Trump is regularly taking money out of his campaign and paying it to himself as payroll.

If you're a potential Trump donor and the RNC comes to you asking for a donation, because the campaign is in bad shape, you'd have to ask yourself at this point why you would donate to a campaign that spends about half as much as it takes in enriching Trump and his companies. If Trump is as rich as he brags about being, why can't he just fund all this himself?

From the 95 Comments

This was known during the primaries and should have gotten a lot more focus, but at the time the media was more than happy to leave Trump unexamined until he could eliminate the serious candidates.
What's now become apparent is that the Trump campaign is as much of a shell and a sham as his financial "empire" and his "university." He has no actual liquidity, he has no successful business record and he has, based on the fundraising figures, put together the worst campaign and campaign staff in the history of Presidential politics. It's not a campaign; it's a con, and Republican voters are the pigeons.

Open your wallet and vote for Don the Con..!

When bacon is sold in Mecca!

I said I'd like to use that line, and now I have.

Gee now I 'm hungry for a BLT..thanks

So let me understand this. Trump says he's self funding, or at least was self funding. He's collecting campaign contributions and paying himself salary. He's also patronizing his own hotels and restaurants and is reimbursed for that cost from his campaign. All his travel expenses, private jet and limousines, are also paid for by the campaign. So basically his donors are paying him for his lavish lifestyle and those of his staff for as long as his campaign lasts. And this is what he calls self funding. Interesting.

Perhaps many misunderstood what he meant by "self funding". It now seems clear that what was meant was that he is funding himself via his campaign.

and to think I was skeptical when the Trumpers insisted that the Orange Toad was the bestest, most awesomest businessman ever.

And this is different than the RNC consultant cronies paying themselves and busting the campaign like Scott Walker. This does not seem any worse than normal. We have few people who appear to have character any more. I'm beginning to wish for a fault line to make Manhattan float away.

The one difference is that Walker wasn't lining his own pockets.

Correct but the RNC Crony consultants lined their pockets and help break the campaign. That's what I was trying to compare to. There is the start to good conspiracy theory there.

There are campaign consultants who do their job and are paid quite well for it. Then there are campaign consultatns who couldn't care less if they do their job, they are seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of the candidate and his donors.

The former are engaged in a business which can not guarantee a successful outcome. The latter, and Trump, are running cons.

And then Rick went to work for Trump hmmmm?

This fact should--literally--humiliate Trump. It should also show his minions that he has, from the very outset of this masquerade, been lying.

Should, but won't. How do you humiliate a lying buffoon?

Or show the truth to people who refuse to be shown anything they don't wish to hear or see.

Since when do candidates running for office get to be paid a salary from their campaign coffers? Don't his companies pay his salary? I remember seeing a quote from Trump that he bragged he would be the first candidate to run for President that would make money by doing it. What a complete con artist...he should be in jail.

Where are all his enthusiastic supporters? Why aren't they donating to the campaign? If they want him that bad, they should be sacrificing their paychecks, no? After all, that's what cultists usually do.

Well, IMHO, that was what Trump was counting on, however, it backfired, because they believed he was rich, "really rich."

At least the Clintons had the self-awareness to wait until after the campaign to rent out the White House and set up personal slush funds disgusted as charities.

Trump is turning out to be a charlatan, a conman and a rip-off artist. Hummmm, who would have seen that coming?

He's not "turning out" to be those things. He always was those things. It's just coming to light to a larger segment of the population now than had previously been known

Yeah I know. It was sarcasm masquerading as a stupid question. Most who plow this site are well aware of Trump's lengthy record of lies and shady business dealings.

Beat me to it.

I put this in a response, but might be a good read.

Slate Explainer (back when they had good Explainers) did an article over the legality and commonality of paying the candidate a salary: http://www.slate.com/articles/...

What surprised me: Keyes is pointed out to have been criticized for over $8,000 a month. A web search came up with the present day value of $13,721.53. Adding up just numbers in that list going straight into Trump's name, May had $11,727.72. But many of the others probably are companies that have him on salary (as their CEO) also. (I also notice those go to exactly the same address, too!)

Lest we forget, his Secret Service protection costs taxpayers $40k/day! Why isn't Trump hiring his own protection? Or, the very least reimbursing the American public for preventing his assassination.

I've been saying it since day one: His entire campaign was a money laundering scheme 1st, narcissistic power trip second and campaign 3rd. A lot of people made a lot of money off this campaign.

Trump is the same scum who ripped off the 9/11 Recovery Fund. The GOP should spend absolutely $0 on this loser. Accept it Republicans you're going to lose with Donald Trump if you nominate this piece of pig feces wrapped in equine fecal matter.

Hey that's our guy! ...Woohoo

It is as though Trump sees Bankruptcy as a concept to be embraced and applied to all aspects of life.

The more I think about it, I don't think I'm kidding. He seems to view emptiness as a form of leverage, and this is evident in more than one area of his life. Trophy wives, pyramid schemes, attaching his name to whatever useless product he figures might either make a dollar or be successfully written off as a
loss. . .The man embodies the darkest aspects of the greatest system ever created, in terms of moving people forward. He is as amoral as a Public figure could be without imploding, and sees the simplest, dumbest, utterly bereft Pragmatism as the closest thing he knows to Wisdom. There are those who Do, and there are those who live off those who Do. . .And then there is whatever middle ground it is he occupies, somehow seeming to Do while accomplishing little to nothing, and finding his footing just between what just barely works, and the illegal.

So there's no way we should worry that he would think that perhaps defaulting on the US national debt a little bit might be the way forward?

which might just keep the GoP out of power for a generation or so.

When you're a failure in life like Trump bankruptcies equal success.

That's why he calls himself "The King of debt."

Nailed it - all he does is find a way to take advantage of others for his own personal gain. You are spot on when you say: "The man embodies the darkest aspects of the greatest system ever created". Current U.S. History books describe some of our greatest industrialists as "robber barons" a term they do not deserve as they were great believers in philanthropy and putting their money to good use. Trump is a real robber baron, making money on the backs of the uninformed and undereducated and he doesn't give to anyone or anything that will not benefit him, He has no interest in doing something to better this country or the lives of its citizens.

" He has no interest in doing something to better this country or the lives of its citizens."

That's not completely true. He's interested if he can turn a buck, without actual effort, from being interested in those things,

The phrase "robber baron" occurred to me when I read that Trump's former spokesman, John Barron, was actually Trump ... he gave himself an appropriate false name.

The overall demonization of the period of the Industrial Revolution is one of the bigger lies necessary to maintain the Left's fantasy view of History. But you are spot on: Trump actually is what they pretend the Builders of that period -- who changed the entire world for the better to an incredible degree -- were in their revisionism. He is a leech who has learned to walk among those off whom he feeds.

This information by itself should be enough to cause the delegates to unbind themselves - not only is Trump unfit to hold office, he is unfit to run his own campaign. He is as corrupt as any in the Democrat Party (where his heart still is anyway). He might explain away SOME of those as payment of expenses due to the campaign where he used his own hotels and venues and had to pay for those services, but will not be able to explain those large expenditures & his own salary!! He is not much of a deal-maker if he can't even convince the big money donors to pitch in and that is supposed to be his strength!!!!

He is literally robbing the GOP.

In March Trump rescinded his pledge to support the GOP nominee if it was him without reservation. Delegates are unbound and need to vote their consciences. DUMP Trump!!

Trump's failure to raise money demonstrates that his campaign is so incompetent as to be futile. That, however, isn't even the most damaging thing about this story. Trump's whole pitch is that he is a fabulously successful businessman who can take charge and solve all our problems. His latest FEC filing is powerful evidence that this pitch is entirely fraudulent.

If Trump were the man he pretends to be, financing a presidential election would pose no problem for him. He isn't, so it does. Trump's campaign is broke because Trump is broke. We are finding out by slow degrees that, far from being a billionaire, Trump is a cash strapped grifter who has to loot his campaign to keep his Potemkin lifestyle going. Running a national campaign without money is hard. Running a national campaign when your candidate is exposed as a humbug is impossible.

Will the GOP have the courage to jettison the grifter before it's too late? It would be out of character, but hope springs eternal.

The con isn't working for Trump. He should have run as a Democrat where leftist oligarchs are popular.

I always told people steer clear of doing business with him. Looking at that ledger just makes me feel warm inside about that bit of advice.

Next we will hear about Trump's family opening a travel agency?..

Although it's been done....his will be yuge.

This comes under the heading, "he can't lose", a profitable scam ad no surprise. I wonder what he'll walk away with?

The delegates could hand him ass in his hand to walk away with? :p

We can hope.

In a just world, this would finish his campaign.

In a just world, he wouldn't have a campaign to finish.

In a just world his declaration of candidacy would have finished off his campaign.