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[PTTG??]

Trump supporters I've seen are defending it.

[smjjames]

Trump supporters I've seen are defending it.

The Doral resort being the G7 site next year or the treatment of the family from Britain?

[nenjin]

Trump supporters I've seen are defending it.

The Doral resort being the G7 site next year or the treatment of the family from Britain?

Both, probably.

[Egan_BW]

Trump supporters I've seen are defending it.

If they weren't defending it, they would have to stop being supporters.

[nenjin]

I can't wait to see how much Trump pays himself for hosting official government business at his own properties. Surely we already have rules in place to catch this kind of shit?

[smjjames]

It supposedly violates the constitution but as with vague legal stuff, there is no consensus on it (because apparently the founding fathers didn't imagine that a President who has a global business like Trump would come to power) (/s on no consensus because Republicans) and actual enforcement is another thing entirely. How do you enforce it when the DOJ says that the President is effectively above the law for the duration of his admin?

[nenjin]

Doesn't the CBO have any oversight in this?

What really hacks me off is, short of impeachment and/or jail time, Trump will leave office one day richer than when he went in, all paid for by the taxpayers. It's like even if you don't support him, that cocksucker is still robbing us blind.

[smjjames]

As I implied, the law is only as strong as the enforcement.

[Reelya]

It's incredibly blatant too. It even makes Dick Cheney's Haliburton contracts look subtle by comparison, although Cheney was handing out contracts for $25 billion or more. Trump has more of an in-your-face "I'm a corrupt tin-pot dictator" feel about him but he's small fry compared to those who are actually talented at being corrupt like Cheney / Rumsfeld.

Trump making people stay in a Trump hotel and use all Trump products while visiting is peanuts compared to the Iraq War stuff. Nobody is that likely to die because of the choice of hotels, whereas Cheney and Rumsfeld were overseeing scam operations where a Haliburton subsidiary drove empty trucks back and forth around Iraq, while the drivers were being shot at, all so they could defraud the American tax payer - it was a "cost plus" contract and KBR (then a division of Haliburton) got paid per trip regardless of what was in the trucks, and military people under Rumsfeld would "verify" the paperwork. Rumsfeld's job was to make sure no whistleblowers from the military got any traction: there were quartermasters in the US army who reported irregularities with Haliburton's paperwork, and they all got replaced.

[smjjames]

Mulvaney has also said that it's the cheapest that they can find, which I call BS on because I'm sure there are cheaper options, like say, Camp David (not as glamourous obviously). edit: Apparently it's because the resort is doing it 'at cost', whatever that means.

[Max™]

Don't forget all the rooms people have booked at Trump hotels and never even used, which is the sort of money funnel maneuver that probably seems super smooth if you're 5 and a half years old, but is just goddamn embarrassing when you're a seventy fucking something year old president thinking they're getting away with something clever.

[Mephisto]

'at cost'

This generally means you pay enough for the business to recoup their losses. Like, there are certain amounts of money a business has to make to break even.

If I can dip into a gaming example for a moment, I occasionally get an "at cost" code for a given product. That product has a price listed on the storefront. Additionally, there are printing and shipping costs. I pay printing and shipping but not the storefront price.

[PTTG??]

If there's one thing I've learned about Trump over the years, it's that his success is because of a failure of the fourth estate rather than because of any skill he has. He does not intentionally drum up new gaffes to cover old ones -- the media is, generally, terrible at following up on things. It's a coincidence that Trump happens to be successful in this climate. He's still doing terrible things, but it can't cover up and is the wrong strategy for dealing with an impeachment investigation. But he's going to do it anyway because it's not a strategy, it's just what he does.

[smjjames]

'at cost'

This generally means you pay enough for the business to recoup their losses. Like, there are certain amounts of money a business has to make to break even.

If I can dip into a gaming example for a moment, I occasionally get an "at cost" code for a given product. That product has a price listed on the storefront. Additionally, there are printing and shipping costs. I pay printing and shipping but not the storefront price.

I wonder what else is in the agreement that the Doral resort made to host the event, I may be dipping into conspiracy theory here, but there has to be something there. Though I have no idea how often G7 host sites do it 'at cost'. If they REALLY want to dispel accusations of violating the emoluments clause, releasing the agreement text seems like the best way to do that.

[Reelya]

Mulvaney has also said that it's the cheapest that they can find, which I call BS on because I'm sure there are cheaper options, like say, Camp David (not as glamourous obviously). edit: Apparently it's because the resort is doing it 'at cost', whatever that means.

They can still scam and turn a profit relatively by doing something "at cost". Say they fill the resort with people in the off-season "at cost". Now, they're no longer losing money during that period. Hence, it's a profit compared to what you had and you can "legitimately" claim you're doing it "at cost".

EDIT: there are also cleaning and building maintenance, pool maintenance that they'd probably have to do anyway, but because they're being done during the G7 they then can be included in the "at cost" calculations. Additionally the "at cost" calculations probably account for government spending, and not for voluntary spending by the visiting dignitaries, i.e. at the bars and restaurants at said resort.