Frankly, when people have said\u00a0that Trump only ran for president to boost his business, I didn’t agree. I think Donald is genuinely an old, angry, rich, white man who\u00a0spends far too much time sitting on the couch watching Fox News and getting misinformed. I think he genuinely felt passionately that the country had gone to crap, Obama was the reason, and Fox had the answers \u2014 idiotic and often\u00a0completely false, but I think that’s a bulk of what Trump’s run was about.<\/p>\n
I also think a chief concern of Trump’s has been terrorism since 9\/11. That could have been Trump Tower, and I think that realization hit Trump very hard. Whereas most of the Americans who fear terrorism attacks are\u00a0fearing them completely illogically, perhaps Trump has some right to be afraid. If terrorists want\u00a0to fly into a tall, rich American building that holds symbolic value, why not Trump Tower? So, I think it was that experience and fear that really drove Trump into politics.<\/p>\n
But let’s not be mistaken \u2014 if\u00a0Donald has an opportunity to add to his wealth, no matter how unethical it is, he’ll probably do so without much care for anything else. Experts from\u00a0Republican and Democratic presidential administrations have come out and said that Trump is violating the Constitution by not putting his business in a blind trust \u2014 by actually still running it, along with his kids<\/em>!<\/p>\n But it goes even beyond that. Trump doubled the membership fee (from $100,000 to $200,000) at Mar-A-Lago after\u00a0being elected president. This is the place he goes every weekend (the “Winter White House” or “Southern White House” as he now calls it), despite saying on the campaign trail that he’d hardly leave the White House if elected (the real White House, of course). This is where he hosts heads of state \u2014 which hugely<\/em> boosts the revenue of his property and business. This is where Secret Service have to stay, and other government staff\u00a0\u2014 which hugely<\/em> boosts the revenue of his property and business. Getting the picture yet?<\/p>\n Meanwhile,\u00a0Donald’s wife Melania happily stays in their penthouse in Trump Tower, again protected by Secret Service as racking up a massive bill for the United States and revenue for Trump’s business.<\/p>\n Over 8 years, it’s reported that Obama’s vacations cost the US $97 million. Trump has cost the United States a quarter of that ($24 million) in just 10 weeks of vacations or weekend getaways to Florida! If the trend continues, that means Trump will cost the United States over $499 million on vacations alone.<\/p>\n Frankly, many of the\u00a0cuts to US services and governance that Trump has proposed could be kept if Trump would just stop taking vacations. But these vacations heavily pad the bank accounts of his company. He could make hundreds of millions of dollars on US taxpayers alone from his vacations. And that’s not even counting the travel of his kids,\u00a0or how much money foreign leaders will spend staying at Mar-A-Lago, Trump Tower, Trump’s new DC hotel, etc.<\/p>\n