Trump: 'There’s nothing like doing things with other people’s money'

Donald Trump, in hot water over a report that his charity used donations to cover business-related legal fees, told a campaign rally crowd on Tuesday that “there’s nothing like doing things with other people’s money.”

The comment about “other people’s money” came during a campaign rally in North Carolina, where Trump pledged to keep refugees from the Middle East out of the U.S. and instead put them in “safe zones” that would be built with money from Gulf nations. It is a financial maneuver the real estate mogul said he has performed many times throughout his career.


“It’s called OPM. I do that all the time in business. It’s called other people’s money. There’s nothing like doing things with other people’s money,” Trump said. “Because it takes, the risk, you get a good chunk of it and it takes the risk. We’re going to do this, in this case, from a humanitarian standpoint. OPM: other people’s money.”

Under a Trump administration, the Gulf states would not be the only foreign countries on the hook to pay for the Manhattan billionaire’s proposals. From the very beginning of his campaign, Trump has pledged to build a wall along America’s southern border and force Mexico to pay for it. During Trump’s visit to Mexico last month, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said his nation would not pay for the wall. Trump said the subject of who would pay was not discussed during their meeting.

The former reality TV star made his promise to use “other people’s money” on the same day The Washington Post published a story accusing Trump of spending $258,000 from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits involving his other businesses.