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If you think pittance bribes from oil companies is enough to sway Trump, you're likely mistaken. Realistic valuations put him at around $2-3 billion, and a larg

If you think pittance bribes from oil companies is enough to sway Trump, you're likely mistaken. Realistic valuations put him at around $2-3 billion, and a large majority of his campaign was self-funded or from small individual donors. No petrol donor will be able to discreetly donate more than he can make just having a portion of his wealth track the market. There's a lot of things to be said about Trump and economic protectionism, but saying it's entirely fueled by donor pressure is oversimplifying the situation.

civilitty 9y ago
> and a large majority of his campaign was self-funded or from small individual donors. Source, please? Given the absurd amount of corruption going on in the administration (i.e. the missing inaugural funds and Mar-a-lago vacations, to name just a tiny fraction) and Trump's own charities, I find the idea that he spent even a penny of his own money on his campaign laughable based on first principles. I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary, other than his own patently unreliable rhetoric.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Maybe the idea is that the oil companies have to get in line behind all the other awful people paying exorbitant prices to have their entire delegations stay at Trump hotels and resorts? "I'm making so much money from this new classy phenomenal corruption that everyone is talking about, that I can't even be arsed to worry about that other corruption that the Washington insiders like!"
- PKop 9y ago
  https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-shatters-gop-records-with-small-donors-228338 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-shatters-gop-re... http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/nov/13/kayleigh-mcenany/trump-raised-more-dollars-small-donations/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/nov/... "Trump received about $239 million from donors who gave less than $200 in total. That amounts to 69 percent of the Trump campaign’s individual contributions; Hillary Clinton received about $137 million from $200-or-under donors. That made up 22 percent of the campaign’s individual contributions;" https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/12/08/donald-trumps-campaign-investment-hit-66-million/95178392/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016... "President-elect Donald Trump didn't need $100 million of his money to win the White House in the end. Trump contributed another $10 million to his presidential campaign in the closing days of the election, bringing his total investment in the race to $66.1 million, new filings confirm."
  - ogre_magi 9y ago
    Excellent and informative sources, thanks.
  - civilitty 9y ago
    According to [1], Donald Trump did not make a single contribution to his own campaign except in the form of loans (based on my limited understanding of how the FEC reports this stuff, cross referenced against a candidates' filings who I know for certain loaned their own money to their campaign). Given that his campaign machinery started fundraising for 2020 the day after his inauguration, I feel that it is highly disingenuous to claim that those loans were in any way true political contributions. [1] https://www.fec.gov/files/bulk-downloads/index.html?prefix=bulk-downloads/2016/ https://www.fec.gov/files/bulk-downloads/index.html?prefix=b... (I wasn't able to load indiv16.zip and analyze it but the total loan amount from the other data is a only few million shy of the $66 million total).

civilitty 9y ago

> and a large majority of his campaign was self-funded or from small individual donors. Source, please? Given the absurd amount of corruption going on in the administration (i.e. the missing inaugural funds and Mar-a-lago vacations, to name just a tiny fraction) and Trump's own charities, I find the idea that he spent even a penny of his own money on his campaign laughable based on first principles. I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary, other than his own patently unreliable rhetoric.

jessaustin 9y ago
Maybe the idea is that the oil companies have to get in line behind all the other awful people paying exorbitant prices to have their entire delegations stay at Trump hotels and resorts? "I'm making so much money from this new classy phenomenal corruption that everyone is talking about, that I can't even be arsed to worry about that other corruption that the Washington insiders like!"
PKop 9y ago
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-shatters-gop-records-with-small-donors-228338 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-shatters-gop-re... http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/nov/13/kayleigh-mcenany/trump-raised-more-dollars-small-donations/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/nov/... "Trump received about $239 million from donors who gave less than $200 in total. That amounts to 69 percent of the Trump campaign’s individual contributions; Hillary Clinton received about $137 million from $200-or-under donors. That made up 22 percent of the campaign’s individual contributions;" https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/12/08/donald-trumps-campaign-investment-hit-66-million/95178392/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016... "President-elect Donald Trump didn't need $100 million of his money to win the White House in the end. Trump contributed another $10 million to his presidential campaign in the closing days of the election, bringing his total investment in the race to $66.1 million, new filings confirm."
- ogre_magi 9y ago
  Excellent and informative sources, thanks.
- civilitty 9y ago
  According to [1], Donald Trump did not make a single contribution to his own campaign except in the form of loans (based on my limited understanding of how the FEC reports this stuff, cross referenced against a candidates' filings who I know for certain loaned their own money to their campaign). Given that his campaign machinery started fundraising for 2020 the day after his inauguration, I feel that it is highly disingenuous to claim that those loans were in any way true political contributions. [1] https://www.fec.gov/files/bulk-downloads/index.html?prefix=bulk-downloads/2016/ https://www.fec.gov/files/bulk-downloads/index.html?prefix=b... (I wasn't able to load indiv16.zip and analyze it but the total loan amount from the other data is a only few million shy of the $66 million total).