The lease on Donald Trump’s infamous Washington D.C. hotel recently sold for a pretty hefty penny of a profit and a recent report from the New York Times is shedding new light on the truly bizarre period of American history that was ushered in by the self-serving grifter-in-chief, as he used the hotel to regularly line his pockets throughout his presidency. But, what’s more, is one former Trump campaign consultant is also exposing the dirty little secrets and unhinged corruption that Trump’s D.C. hotel served as a breeding ground and hotspot for over his four-year term.
Reporting for the Times, Eric Lipton writes, “Even though it opened only a few weeks before Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, the 263-room hotel quickly achieved a status in Washington that historians agree was unlike that of any other venue owned by an American president. The hotel generated millions of dollars in direct payments to Mr. Trump’s family, starting from even before he was sworn in, as his own inaugural committee paid the venue more than $1 million.”
The lease for the government-owned building was recently, finally sold to CGI Merchant Group of Miami and will soon be rebranded from Trump Hotel to Waldorf Astoria, according to the buying company. The Times reports that the Trump family will be raking in an estimated hefty profit of around $100 million from the sale of the Trump Hotel lease.
“Even before Mr. Trump was sworn in, the hotel became a magnet for foreign officials, including from Saudi Arabia, whose government rented out a block of rooms, spending $190,000 on its room tab and another $78,000 for meals and beverages, lobbying disclosures show,” the report goes on to read. “Soon enough, foreign business and government groups from Bahrain, Kuwait, Turkey and Azerbaijan, among others, followed by hosting events at the hotel, with representatives from at least 33 nations sighted there by Zach Everson, a journalist who created an online newsletter tracking social media posts from the hotel during Mr. Trump’s presidency.”
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But it was this tidbit from the Trump 2016 campaign consultant Healy Baumgardner that really caught our interest: The Washington D.C. Trump Hotel “Was America’s lobby of corruption.”
“It was grifters central,” Baumgardner explained.
I will never understand or get over what this man and his corrupt family were able to get away with, all while shrouded under the protections of the US presidency. And I will never stop worrying about the terrifying and destructive precedent it has set.
Read the full report from the New York Times here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
