"... there’s boosting one’s businesses through free publicity ... and then there’s the results of a new Politico report, which found that Trump has used his campaign’s money to pay his own businesses $8.2 million."

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DONALD TRUMP REPORTEDLY USED CAMPAIGN DONATIONS TO PAY HIMSELF $8.2 MILLION
A new report reveals that the self-proclaimed “King of Debt” has been drawing from his campaign funds to pay his businesses.
By Tina Nguyen, September 22, 2016

As befitting a man who laughs in the face of impropriety, Donald Trump does not particularly care about the optics of using his campaign to boost his own businesses. In 2000, he told an interviewer that he “could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it,” a prediction he would fulfill 15 years later as he promoted, at various times, steaks, bottled water, golf courses, and, famously, in a media bait-and-switch, his new hotel in Washington, D.C. (Those rumors that his presidential run was a promotional stunt for the D.C. hotel came full circle that day.) But there’s boosting one’s businesses through free publicity (and Trump has reportedly received more than $3 billion in free media since he launched his campaign), and then there’s the results of a new Politico report, which found that Trump has used his campaign’s money to pay his own businesses $8.2 million.

According to the report, the money has gone toward paying his office’s rent in his own building ($1.3 million), paying for food and facilities at his own properties ($544,000), and even his own corporate staffers ($333,000) who perform campaign-related functions, such as his personal head of security. According to Politico, F.E.C. filings also revealed a $1,300 expense for his bottled-water company, Trump Ice; $432,000 for catering, facilities, and putting up the campaign at his resort Mar-a-Lago; and $6 million for the use of Trump’s plane, the largest expense in their filings.

Though it’s unclear exactly how Trump is getting away with this, given that he refuses to release his tax returns, this practice might well be legal, depending on how Trump’s businesses are structured. G.O.P. election lawyer Jason Torchinsky told Politico that prior to this political Gilded Age, wealthy candidates would refrain from tapping their own resources, either because their companies were publicly held or owned by multiple people, or they didn’t want to give off the sense that they were profiteering from the campaign.

When it comes to keeping up appearances, Trump is a man who openly bragged at a rally that, “There’s nothing like doing things with other people's money,” a practice that he abbreviated, happily, as “O.P.M.” While the practice may be legal, the timing of this report could not be worse for Trump, who recently faced allegations that he used funds from his charity, the Trump Foundation, to pay legal fees for his for-profit businesses, showing that at the very least, he purportedly has a repeated inclination for using other people’s money for his own purposes. In a related note, the U.S. federal government generates $3.8 trillion a year in tax revenue.
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