My God How the Money Rolls In

Re-upping these lyrics from February 2017, in honor of the new reporting from David Fahrenthold, below the fold:

My prezzie owns several nice golf clubs
With carts you can take for a spin
And when he's there serving as tummler,
My God, how the money rolls in!

Rolls in, rolls in,
My God, how the money rolls in, rolls in,
Rolls in, rolls in,
My God how the money rolls in!

My prezzie is not quite a genius
He's dumber than General Flynn
But at dinnertime at Mar-a-Lago,
My God how the money rolls in!

Rolls in, rolls in,
My God, how the money rolls in, rolls in,
Rolls in, rolls in,
My God how the money rolls in!

My prezzie knows practically nothing
Except how to cheat and to win
But when he's at work on the weekends
My God how the money rolls in!

Rolls in, rolls in,
My God, how the money rolls in, rolls in,
Rolls in, rolls in,
My God how the money rolls in!

If you were wondering about the way Trump broke up his European visit last week between the UK state visit and the D-Day commemoration in Normandy with a three-day stay at his own golf resort in Doonbeg, West County Clare, with an entourage of what the Irish Times expected to be some 600 courtiers and American and Irish politicians, staffers, secret service operatives, State Department workers, and his adult children and their partners, it was what you might refer to as par for the course; Trump really doesn't like going anywhere unless he can work in a way to feed some cash to one of his businesses, and this was a big opportunity for a property that's never turned a profit since he opened it in 2014.

I've been waiting more than two years for some intrepid journalist to start looking at how much money Trump makes out of dragging the hangers-on and parasites and suitors to Florida or New Jersey every weekend and Doonbeg, Balmenie, and Turnberry when he visits Europe, and Trump Waikiki for layovers when he goes to Asia-Pacific, and I'm happy to note that the very best is on it, the dogged David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post. He has some preliminary numbers: $145,000 from taxpayers for the first six months of 2017 (which is as far as the government records go as of yet) for Mar-a-Lago, Bedminster, and Turnberry, and $1.2 million from GOP organizations staging specific events like the fundraiser held at the Doral resort near Miami, where he spent the night after his campaign opening ceremonies in Orlando, which are better recorded by the FEC, including $427,000 spent by the America First Action PAC.

The total amount identified by Fahrenthold's team, $1.6 million, may not sound like much, but the government-funded part, assuming they've kept going at more or less the same rate, must add up to well over $700,000 by now, offsetting most of Trump's "donation" of his salary (which amounts by now to over $1,000,000), and the campaign events produce other kinds of revenue:

The actual amount of money Trump has received as a result of his visits and campaign events is probably much higher than the $1.6 million The Post identified. That’s because most of the records available about government spending date to the first half of 2017 — covering just the first few months of Trump’s presidency so far. And the records of campaign spending don’t account for other revenue that Trump may have made off campaign events, including overnight stays by donors attending the event.

And when you look at the individual itemizations, starting with $12,000 for the Defense Department on Trump's first presidential Mar-a-Lago stay in February 2017 and a minimum of $30,000 for the State Department on Xi Jinping's visit in April 2017, —

Tillerson got the Adam Suite, touted for its “double sized ­Jacuzzi tub.” Then-Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin was assigned to the “Banyan Bungalow,” which includes a private meditation garden, according to a State Department manifest.

“Do you know what they charged for each room?” one State Department official asked Michael Dobbs, a State Department travel coordinator in an email obtained by Property of the People. The Post could not reach Dobbs for comment.

“$546 — I believe which is 300% of the lodging per diem,” Dobbs wrote back — meaning it was three times the standard allowance for federal travelers in that part of Florida. There are some exceptions, but 300 percent is the maximum amount that the government will reimburse any traveler for lodging.

—the griftiness of it all starts to seem like it's outweighing the quantities.

Bar tab for a party of State Department employees in the Mar-a-Lago's Library Bar—they threw out the waitstaff and poured their own—for 13 April 2017, during the Xi visit, which the State Department refused to pay, so the White House covered it, via Pro Publica.

Within the White House, ethics officials sometimes sought to dissuade Trump from making side trips to his courses or holding public presidential events there. But in some cases, Trump did it anyway, former White House aides said.... His ethics officials have also sought to dissuade his subordinates. Stefan Passantino, a former White House lawyer, tried to bar any Cabinet or White House official from appearing at a Trump property in their official capacity, according to former White House officials [but] George Sorial, the Trump Organization’s former compliance counsel who served as the company’s in-house ethics adviser until this year, in an interview rejected the idea that Trump was turning a profit off business with his own government.

No, no, no, he said, they give these people fantastic discounts. Didn't mention that some of these properties, like Doral or Turnberry, are doing so badly they wouldn't be making any money at all without the folk who find that "[v]isiting Trump’s hotel often means hobnobbing with officials in Trump’s government, who treat the lobby as a friendly hangout".

This is political tavernkeeping on a scale we've never seen since since Louis-Philippe d'Orléans opened up the Palais-Royal to le peuple in 1780 and 1792, and far more sinister, since it's devoted to the opposite of democracy.