Here’s How Trump Blew $100 Million on His Inauguration

Remember this delightful scene a month before the election? It came just a few weeks after Trump conned every cable news network into giving him big coverage for a "birther announcement" that turned out to be just Trump announcing the opening of his hotel.Evan Golub/ZUMA

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How did Donald Trump’s inauguration committee manage to blow through $100 million, more than twice as much as any other inauguration in history? Part of the answer, apparently, was that they essentially kicked back big chunks of it to the boss:

A spokesman confirmed that the nonprofit 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee paid the Trump International Hotel a rate of $175,000 per day for event space — in spite of internal objections at the time that the rate was far too high….“Please take into consideration that when this is audited it will become public knowledge,” wrote Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, an experienced New York-based event planner, suggesting a fair rate for the event spaces would be at most $85,000 per day, less than half of what was ultimately paid.

They used the hotel for four days, so that comes to about $360,000 in pure extra profit for Trump’s Hotel. And since Trump owns the hotel outright, that means $360,000 went straight into his pockets. Ka-ching!

But I’m sure there was nothing wrong with this because when the president does it, it’s not illegal. Amirite?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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