Trump received $52 million as repayment for “certain personal indebtedness” and $35 million in redeemed “Preferred Stock Units.” This would be like a home owner paying himself a salary out of profits from re-financing his home. If occupancy remained at around 82%, why did these casinos expand its hotel rooms numbers from 1,404 in 1995 to 2,884 in 2005? Wouldn’t somebody expand only if a hotel is reaching full occupancy?
If over-spending is Trump’s philosophy in life, it’s odd that he ended up with a $7.6 million cash on hand out of the $351 million he raised for his election run according to the Federal Election Commission’s 2016 Financial Summary. FEC allows for a download of the exact 30,336 itemized expenses, which reveals things like that Trump spent $250 monthly on a Zoho email account. He also paid $8,220 to rent Youngstown State University’s space (I always assumed politicians were paid an honorarium to present). The largest payments were made to the American Media & Advocacy Group (with cramped shared office space in Virginia), totaling $74 million for placed media. This shady group still has no website and all it does is purchase ads on behalf of conservative candidates (it’s unclear why they can’t buy the ad space directly from the networks). He paid $88 million to a marketing firm, Giles-Parscale. And it looks like he actually did pay at least one of his pollsters, Cambridge Analytica, $6 million.
Figure 3: 2005 Corporate Report: Number of Guest Rooms