Crickets

With impeachment threatening to end the Donald Trump gravy train, the white supremacist con man in chief is retreating to what he does best: holding fact-free campaign rallies. The problem with Trump’s rallies is that they cost a ton, and, as with everything Trump, the bill for them is never paid. Some cities, such as Orlando, have asked that the costs for the rallies be covered upfront. Minneapolis, Minnesota, is expecting a Trump Nazi rally on Thursday. It has reportedly sent a $500,000 bill to the campaign to cover security costs and the use of the Target Center. Early Tuesday morning, Trump began his usual childish Twitter attacks, this time against the “lightweight mayor” of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey. Retweeting his campaign manager Brad Parscale, Trump moaned about Frey trying to stop his rally. Of course, Frey isn’t stopping the rally; he’s merely being proactive and fiscally responsible in trying to get his constituents reimbursed ahead of time, due to the Trump campaign’s history of stiffing or shorting cities on huge security bills.

Trump’s people say these costs are far too high to be real, and that Mayor Frey has been openly antagonistic to our embarrassment in chief. They say it is a political attack on the famous “billionaire” president.

But is this an example of overbilling? In June, the Center for Public Integrity, NBC News, and CNBC released their accounting of Trump’s campaign rallies and the costs not paid back to local municipalities. That included an outstanding debt of around $800,000. And while many of those unpaid bills were from small municipalities and amounted to $10,000-$18,000, El Paso, Texas, is waiting to receive payment from the Trump campaign of over $470,000 for his February border wall rally.

The Star Tribune reports that the Trump campaign has threatened to sue the city for breach of contract, something the Trump campaign echoed in a press release. Mark Ruff, the acting city coordinator for Minneapolis, says there is no contract between Trump’s campaign and the city of Minneapolis. Campaigns are not required to pay by law, but they also do not have any say in how local municipalities decide on how they will cover costs.

In the end it is just one more way taxpayers are picking up the bill for Donald Trump’s grift of a campaign. What are the odds the Trump campaign doesn’t make good on bills it receives from the Trump Organization? After all, Trump’s campaign headquarters are conveniently located right inside Trump Tower in New York City.