Convicted felon Donald Trump claimed to leave his business in the hands of his two adult sons before being sworn into office as president in January 2017. But the truth was, Trump has profited millions of dollars in shady, and sometimes outright illegal trading with the US government and foreign agencies.
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One of the major reelection campaign promises Donald Trump has made is to lower taxes and offer new tax breaks for millions of Americans including senior citizens, tipped workers, people earning overtime, and homeowners. Many Trump fans will point out that in 2017 and while in office, Trump did pass a tax plan that lowered taxes by $60,000 per year for billionaires and $500 per year for the average American family. This plan is estimated to cost the U.S. government over $1.9 trillion over the next ten years. It was a drop in the bucket compared to the almost $7.8 trillion that was added to the national debt during Trump's time in office even before the pandemic started with much thanks to Trump's policies.
But as any economist will tell you, it's impossible to lower taxes by trillions and increase spending by trillions of dollars and end up with a net positive. To be fair, that's the kind of math some of us expected from a man who plays the role of a business tycoon and yet has filed for bank ruptcy six times and is the only man in history to have a casino go bankrupt.
That brings up a good point though, his businesses used to do so poorly that he needed to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Nowadays, his businesses are more profitable than ever and haven't filed for bankruptcy since he began running for office in 2015. While historically, every presidential candidate since the 1970's has publicly released their tax returns to show the American voters that they have paid their taxes and not received money or gifts from foreign governments, Trump's businesses are doing quite well all of a sudden but Trump has yet to release his tax returns to show how that's happening.
It begs the question, why the sudden change? Well, you should know that almost everything he does, he finds a way to bill the American taxpayers at extremely high rates and has pocketed millions of taxpayer dollars. When he first became president, it was estimated that a trip to his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida would cost the taxpayers about $1 million per trip. But after his first four trips to that property just after taking office, the taxpayers were billed over $13.6 million meaning each trip cost us over $3.4 million each.
Rather than staying in the White House like many presidents have historically done, just during his time in office alone, Trump took 547 trips to his own properties, staying over 669 nights, mainly at Mar-a-Lago. He brought with him over 300 secret service agents and 75 assistants and subordinates each time. All of those people had to have a place to sleep and Trump was more than happy to offer his hotel to them.
The secret service is only allowed to pay up to $201 per room, per night but Trump made them pay his company up to $1,185 per room, per night, nearly six times the government rate. This means, even if agents doubled up in a room, Trump was pocketing $222,780 each and every night he stayed at his own properties and he stayed 669 nights at his properties in just 4 years. Even at the lowest estimate, this means he pocketed nearly $150 million from the rooms alone.
You should also know, Mar-a-Lago is centered on the Palm Beach island which means the Coast Guard needs to police the waters on both sides of the island day and night and air travel on route to Miami needs to be diverted around it whenever he stays there.
You might have seen Trump playing golf during one of his 261 rounds while in office - or one every 5.6 days during his time as president. To protect him, the secret service was forced to rent and upgrade 84 golf carts from the Trump companies. This cost taxpayers about $516,000 each round of golf for an estimated total of nearly $135 million by the end of his 4-year term.
But all of those agents and staff members need to eat too so the federal government allots $68 per day, per person for meals and incidental expenses. This is estimated to have brought in another $17 million for Trump's 669 nights to his own properties, even at the lowest per diem rates.
In response to all of this, Eric Trump, the Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization and son of Donald Trump, falsely claimed their business was required by law to charge the federal government for these services and that government employees such as the secret service were only charged "like 50 bucks" per night for hotel rooms even though the invoices sent to the secret service, paid for by the American taxpayers, and released through the congressional budget office say it was $1,185 per night which is nearly 24 times more than what Eric Trump claimed.
Since the 1800's, one of the surprising facts about the presidency is that the president has to, by law, pay for their own groceries and pays for the meals for themselves, their family, and any personal guests. They also have to pay out of pocket for any household expenses like toothpaste or clothing, even if that clothing gets expensive to dress in tuxedos or designer dresses.
But Donald Trump broke the rules here too. While he might have paid for some groceries, he also charged the American taxpayers $2,600 per night to rent his own house out to himself at his Mar-a-Lago property, $50 per palm for decorative palm tress, $7,700 for a catered dinner for 30 of his personal guests, and more than $1,000 in liquor for a single White House staff meeting. All of which should have been paid for by Donald Trump out-of-pocket but came out of our taxes instead.
During his four years in office, at least 150 foreign government officials from countries like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, have spent millions buying products and services from Trump companies to influence his decisions. One diplomat said, "Why wouldn't I stay at [Trump's] hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, 'I love your new hotel!' Isn't it rude to come to his city and say 'I'm staying at your competitor?'"
Number one, Washington DC is the capital of the U.S., not "[Trump's] city". Second, it's illegal to do this. Title 32 of the U.S. constitution says "That no person ought to hold, at the same time, more shall one office of profit...to receive any present from any foreign prince or state..."
But in the first two years of his presidency alone, Trump lined his pockets with over $7.8 million from foreign governments. And just nine months after that diplomat said the before-mentioned quote, the president of Romania was spotted having breakfast at the Trump hotel in Washington the morning before he met with the president at the White House. Many people feel this is illegal because it's obviously a secret meeting but at best, this is highly unethical - a word Trump doesn't even know how to spell, let alone knows the definition to.
Just during his four years in office, there were more than 3,500 conflicts of interest - that's more than 2 conflicts per day - where foreign government officials would stay at Trump hotels in Washington, New York, or Florida for extremely high nightly rates - sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars per night just to line his pockets with cash so they could influence his decisions.
That's not to mention his campaign stops have added to the staggering cost to the American taxpayers. Whenever a presidential candidate has a rally in a small town or city, their campaign has to pay for things like the rental of the property they use for the event and all presidential candidates up to Trump have paid overtime for the police in the area of the rally to cover such a large crowd. They're meant to pay for these expenses in advance and in cash only because political campaigns have a tired history of running out of money at convenient times.
But event locations and stadium owners across the country have never been paid for Trump using their buildings and they've had to go to civil court to attempt at getting their rental fees. As for the police, at least over a dozen cities across the country have never been paid back for Trump coming to town. But the police officers get their paychecks on time so that means, the money has to come out of the local taxes to make the town budget balanced again.
This has resulted in the local town governments having to recoup the nearly $1.3 million from their local taxes for money they paid to police officers and neither Trump or his campaign ever paid them back. So, if you live in any of these cities, your taxes likely went up significantly over the past 8 years because Trump never paid his bill to your city and yet Trump continues to say he supports law enforcement and backs the blue.
Over the years, Trump held hundreds of rallies across the country though so this might seem like such a miniscule number that he still owes. Firstly, you should know that a majority of these past-due bills are from his 2016 campaign, not 2024.
Secondly, you might notice Kamala and Trump choose much different cities to rally in. It's not because they want different demographics, after all Trump has caravans following him across the country and Kamala seems to be more focused on social media events to connect with younger voters. But Kamala always pays her bills in advance. Trump's team specifically chooses cities to rally in that he can get away without paying.
"More than 60 of the cities Trump visited since his inauguration...have policies against billing any politician for police costs." That high of a number means it's not a coincidence, it's purposeful. Dozens of other cities Trump held rallies in have figured out how much it cost them to provide police and other services for his rallies but said they "chose not to bill Trump's campaign." for reimbursement. This means, they have laws telling them to bill campaigns but choose not to bill him, because he's Trump.
So, how much does this cost taxpayers? Well, a rally in Lynden, Washington cost taxpayers over $155,000 and in Phoenix, Arizona, his rally cost the local municipality $450,000. We're not talking small numbers here. These are insanely high costs that local taxpayers have to eventually pay back. Sometimes, it's a large city like Phoenix where every one of the 1.6 million residents would have to pay an extra 27 cents to recoup this cost but other times like in Billings, Missouri, the 1,100 residents there had to pay an extra $37 per person to recoup their nearly $43,000 bill to have Trump visit.
Many residents are paying for it out-of-pocket because their city is refusing to even ask Trump for the money and others are paying for it because their local city officials refuse to follow the laws of their city just because it's Trump. This means, if Kamala went to the same cities, her campaign would be paying for the same location Trump got for free at the expense of the local taxpayers.
Hundreds of cities and small towns across the country have been raising their local taxes to recoup this money that was all caused by Trump coming to town for one afternoon to ramble on stage for a few hours while half his audience left early from boredom.
Just keep in mind, after he left office, this price gouging didn't stop. Trump still has 100 secret service members assigned to him. Even at the lowest estimate of days Trump has spent at his own properties, playing golf at his own courses the same average amount of times he did so while in office, and with only 100 agents, it's still another $178.6 million grossed by his companies from the American taxpayers since leaving office.
As you may recall, one of Trump's campaign promises before entering office was saying "If I'm elected president, I'm accepting no salary." The salary for President of the U.S. is just $400,000 per year and by law, this has to be given to whomever holds that office. So, congress was required to give Trump the salary but to his credit, Trump then donated his profit, after taxes, to the National Park Service, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other government agencies.
But you should also know, donations to the National Park Service and other agencies "are considered tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law." So, while it's true that Trump donated at least a portion of his salary to different agencies, he also got a massive tax deduction for doing so. We had our accounting firm run the numbers and it's likely Trump got at least $148,320 tax deduction for making these donations.
And you should also know, since the day he left office, Trump gets a yearly salary of $226,300 for the rest of his life, no matter if he becomes president again or hopefully not. He has made no announcement of any plan to donate any of this salary to any agency or non-profit even though he said he's accepting no salary. Well, Donald - it seems you have accepted a salary. And at 226 thousand, it's a pretty good one. Good enough for most Americans to live very comfortably for the rest of their lives.
Even still, Trump gave up his $400,000 per year salary for four years, costing him a total of $1.6 million. From that, he got $148,000 back immediately just for filing his donations. But if you add up all the money secret service paid to Trump's companies to help protect him, all the money we know about from foreign governments spent to influence him, and all the other known expenses Trump billed the taxpayers for, you'll come to around the same number we did in our deep investigation into his finances and realize Trump profited over 496 million, 945 thousand dollars. And I don't know about you, but I would certainly donate $1.6 million to get almost $500 million back.
According to Trump's campaign website, on average Trump has been hosting 5 rallies a week across the country since he left office. We looked at cities and small towns alike that Trump has campaigned in and found on average, these rallies cost local governments $125,896 per event. Most of them never ask Trump for reimbursement. Those that are required by law to send him an invoice either choose not to because their city council is run by MAGA supporters who think Trump is above the law or try billing Trump's campaign and never see a penny.
We know for a fact this cost American small towns at least $1.8 million in unreimbursed expenses during his 2016 campaign. But since he began campaigning for this year's election in 2024, on average it likely cost American small towns over $120.8 million.
But he's only spent $172.2 million so far this election cycle and much of that money has gone to mailers, social media ads, TV commercials, and other marketing. So, it's incredibly likely that a majority, if not all of that $120.8 million has never been reimbursed to local towns but someone will have to pay those bills and that someone is the average American taxpayer.
It's important to note, we're not counting any money donated to his campaign because that was money voluntarily donated to him by American citizens, companies, and foreign governments.
I will say, out of the money his audience has donated to his campaign, it appears Trump found a way to launder that money into his family's bank account too through his family members getting paid speaking fees to campaign for him. While allegations are looming of 78-year old Donald having an affair with 31-year old, far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, at least for the moment, his current wife is Melania Trump.
Just a few days ago, it was revealed she gave a short speech at her husband's campaign event held at her husband's property, Mar-a-Lago and she was paid $237,500 for giving the speech. That money goes right into the family's bank accounts so it appears, at least from the outside perspective, they've perfected how to launder money from their campaign into their own pockets.
Now legally, I'm not allowed to say if this $496.9 million went into Trump's companies and helped save those companies from bankruptcy. He doesn't release his tax returns so I guess we'll never know. I'm not even going to include the millions of dollars American citizens have donated to him, his legal fees, or spent purchasing his bibles, shoes, or whatever else he's grifting this week.
Just as we're editing this, Trump announced he's selling $100,000 watches with 10 grams of 18 karat gold and a very small diamonds meaning they cost roughly about $1,000 each to make so I guess 100 times that is a reasonable price to charge. And I cannot wait to see a Trump supporter sell their John Deere tractor before the 200% tariff goes into place just to say they wear the same watch as Donny.
I'm also not legally allowed to say if the $120.8 million that's been spent by local small town governments since 2021 has directly resulted in their local taxes increasing. Maybe the towns had other expenses that caused their cities to rethink their tax rates the following year. It's not for me to decide if that money was spent wisely or to say if Trump coming to town is worth our cities spending $125,000 each time to have him visit and instruct his crowd to try and overthrow the government again in 2025.
But no matter your estimations, even if they're more conservative than our educated and well-researched estimate, it's a lot of money going to one man who keeps telling us that he cares about small towns and lowering your taxes. It's a lot of money for a man who claims to already be a billionaire. So, why does he need so much money all the time? Perhaps it's because he's not as good of a business tycoon as he portrays himself as. And maybe it's time that instead of him being so proud of firing everyone around him, instead we fire him once and for all on November 5th with our votes.
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