Two stories broke yesterday, both vintage Trump. One is that the City of Albuquerque is tired of waiting for its money, $200,000 owed since 2019, to be precise, for security services. They have sent numerous letters to the Trump campaign and those have gone unresponded to, so the city has turned the matter over to a collection agency and they’ll begin all those pesky calls — except of course, conveniently, the Trump circus is leaving hot muggy Florida and flocking north to New Jersey. And Albuquerque doesn’t expect to get paid anyway. But guess what? They’re fighting fire with fire. Mayor Tim Keller went on television to talk about getting stiffed. KOB:

Most of America found out about the debt when Keller appeared on the Daily Show to talk about the bill.

Despite the newfound attention to the bill, Keller doesn’t expect the collection agency to get money out of Trump.

“Given what else has happened, I mean in terms of, even his own campaign owing money to donors and lots of shady stuff there, so unfortunately I don’t really expect us to get paid,” he said. “But it’s important that we do, and you know, we would do it for anyone else, so he’s no different.”

KOB 4 reached out to the Trump campaign to find out if it plans on repaying the City of Albuquerque. The campaign replied with an email that stated the campaign is “reviewing your request.”

Now what is interesting here, is that Albuquerque is far and away not alone in being stiffed by Donald Trump. It may well be that some of the other 14 cities to whom he owes a collective $1.82 million will take to the airwaves and put him in collections, too and that should be a real howler. Newsweek:

The 14 cities are Spokane, Washington; Billings, Montana; Mesa and Tucson, Arizona; Albuquerque, New Mexico; El Paso, Texas; Minneapolis and Eau Claire, Minnesota; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Battle Creek, Michigan; Lebanon, Ohio; Erie, Pennsylvania; Burlington, Vermont; and Wildwood, New Jersey.

The Trump campaign’s largest unpaid bills were from El Paso and Minneapolis, with $569,204 and $542,733, respectively, according to CPI. Both of these cities are awaiting payment for campaign rallies in 2019.

Other cities, such as Spokane, Tucson, Burlington, Eau Claire and Green Bay, are still waiting to be reimbursed for rallies in 2016.

“Without this money, we cannot help our most vulnerable, and I guarantee we do not have enough money to prevent lives lost and homes lost,” Kate Burke, a City Council member in Spokane, told CPI.

That’s what Trump doesn’t get and is incapable of understanding. If you don’t pay people money for one thing, it means that they don’t have it to pay for something else that’s needed. That is where his irresponsible and dishonest behavior actually becomes cruel.

So now the circus moves north to New Jersey and the grift goes on. An aide told Business Insider that Trump was going to jumpstart fundraising efforts for 2024. More likely than not, he’s going to try to raise money to pay his legal bills. Bedminster is the place where in summer of 2019, after Trump sent his operatives to pressure Ukraine into launching an investigation of Hunter Biden, Trump kicked back and waited for a response and debated whether to kick Mike Pence off the 2020 ticket and replace him with Nikki Haley, Kristi Noem, some generic GOP female.

Now all the RNC money he’s been raking in for high-ticket dinners at Mar-a-Lago will be spent at Bedminster. Meanwhile, as Trump wheels and deals for the next big grift, and that may be the 2024 GOP nomination, the underdog, in the form of the 14 cities Trump owes lots of money to, is demanding to be fed. And vox populii frequently sounds in favor of the underdog.

This is going to be an interesting summer.

 

 

 

 

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10 COMMENTS

  1. Fun part of this is that if/when a collection agency gets involved, they’ve got definite legal avenues to get that money–and I can just picture a “campaign war chest” becoming a top target for getting that money.

    You don’t know the meaning of “harassment” until you’ve been on the receiving end of a bill collection agency. And it can’t happen to a nicer schmuck.

  2. Sounds like a great idea – having bill collectors after him. (I got calls for years for someone who’d had the same phone number some time before I got it.)

    • I got calls from a furniture store that sold to somebody with my name. They never bothered to check whether I was the right person, they were just looking for someone with that name. I finally stopped it when I called the store manager and said I would turn over the taped messages to the City Attorney’s office. I never got a single one after that.

  3. I haven’t seen much about Trump moving from FL. Didn’t watch much in the way of news last night or earlier today and I found little mention of it online. If he really is going to shift his base of operations to NJ I have all kinds of questions. FL had two big things that were appealing to Trump (aside from Mar A Lago) which were no state income tax and with the GOP control of that state, a Trumpy Gov. and so many other Trumpy elected officials about as much of a welcoming environment as he could hope for. Texas would have the same things but there’s no big Trump owned place there that’s “classy.” (Mar A Lago once was, but then Trump got his hands on the place)

    I can see how with hurricane season coming (and it’s predicted to be another significant one) I can see him wanting to be in a place where he wouldn’t have to get out of dodge multiple times – he knows his base and running away from hurricanes instead of doing the “spit in the wind” dumbass bravado thing might make him look like a wimp to them. He’s got to be careful though because to get that tax break he’s got to spend a certain amount of time in FL.

    For me a more fun possibility is the issue of his having decided to live at Mar A Lago in the first place. Doing so is a violation of his agreement with the local jurisdiction, although one might argue there’s a bit of wriggle room written into the language. That, and the fact he’s violated the terms so many times in the past including and especially during the four years he was also squatting in our WH. Maybe he got word that he was going to lose his legal fight to get to live permanently at Mar A Lago. His Doral Resort is nearby but if it hasn’t exactly gone to seed it’s clearly declined in quality over the years. About the only thing that’s improved is the number of bed bugs in residence! When he wanted to host the G-7 there and got word that IF that was going to happen the other countries and their delegations wanted nothing to do with staying there and would be finding other places to stay I think it really stunned him. He might have actually paid attention and realized all those uber rich folks sucking up to him by frequenting Mar A Lago weren’t doing the same over at Doral. Not even to play golf! (A once famed course he had an architect screw with it and ruined it. The pros once looked forward to the tour stop there and were DELIGHTED when it got the axe from the PGA tour!) Shifting his home from Mar A Lago to Doral was, once he thought about it a non-starter.

    Bedminster is by accounts I’m aware of a nice place, and I guess without diverting too much of the money donated for legal expenses he could expand the living arrangements there. It could get interesting if he tries to do so however. NJ is a blue state now and unless I’m mistaken the county isn’t hard core Trump country. I got the sense they put up with him because his golf course there brought in some good revenue and he wasn’t there all that often and disrupting the rather quiet lifestyle there. So they might not be all that keen on him being there full time. Even if some of the political types at the county are down with it I have a feeling that they would start getting an earful from residents, and that could make things interesting when it comes to thing like granting permits for expanding living quarters! Or road improvements that might be needed or other projects. Given Trump is in the news again for sticking local government with unpaid tabs for his campaign stops does anyone think the local honchos around Bedminster are going to risk fronting Trump any money in the form of projects with a promise of him paying them back? That includes increased security costs by the way!

    One other delicious possibility that is probably fantasy (but I’ll mention it anyway) is that Trump has gotten word that a number of Republican VIPs in FL (besides Gaetz) are in deep shit for one reason or another and that the state if facing a reckoning. One that will break the GOP’s stranglehold on the state as early as 2022. In other words, Trump might fear that in the near future FL will no longer be a safe haven for him. That may or may not be the case, but I hardly think he’s going to enjoy NJ.

    Am I a lousy person for wishing Bush 43 would offer his “ranch” out there in the middle of nowhere in TX for a song and that Trump would set up shop there? And, Trump being Trump not only would HE not get out there and do brush clearing but not pay anyone else to do it either. And a big ole prairie fire with rolling clumps of uncleared brush would scrub Team Trump from the face of this earth. That’s too much to hope for but as I’ve admitted many times before I sometimes have weird fantasies!

    • Bedminster Twp. is run by Republicans, and is one of the wealthiest parts of NJ. I grew up living one county over in the 1960s and not much has changed there. Somerset County leans Republican and the LD that includes Somerset Co. elected Republicans to both the NJ state Senate and NJ Assembly. However, Benedict Donald is so hated in the NYC metro area from decades of pulling the same racist grifting locally he introduced the nation to, that Biden won easily by 20% in Somerset County and Cory Booker also won Somerset Co. as Senator too.

      Don the Con claims he’s not moving there – only plans on staying in NJ over the summer to avoid the Florida heat (could also be to avoid getting caught in a hurricane as mentioned). Escaping the heat might actually be one of the real reasons, because of his poor health. He takes numerous drugs for his heart condition & his lungs, heart, brain, kidneys and liver are all in bad shape from the side effects of the cholesterol lowering heart medicines along with decades of closet alcohol and cocaine binges, being grossly overweight and still being on a steady diet junk food – it’s a miracle he’s still alive at all.

  4. What could possibly go wrong in N.J.? His buddy, the former Governor, would welcome all his support as HE decides to run for president? Chris as a commentator on ABC, in spite of talking up Trump earlier, has backed away from Trump’s failures and continued rhetoric .. could turn into a small concentrated fiasco for both of them …

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