President Donald Trump remains intent on securing the presidency for another four years, but in the process of him trying to convince Americans to back his campaign, he’s leaving an increasing number of cities out in the cold. As of this week, his campaign owes some $840,000 to ten cities across the United States that it’s just not paying. Some of these bills — like the one covering a stop Trump made in El Paso, Texas, earlier this year — are months old, and some are years old. Adding insult to injury, the cities are being forced to accommodate without the necessary money while the Trump campaign and Republican Party in general pull in massive amounts of money. In the third quarter of this year, the two interests together raised $125 million.
The Trump campaign responded by blaming the Secret Service, claiming that repaying security costs covering things like local police work is on them — although the Secret Service said that’s nonsense.
The campaign’s chief operating officer Michael Glassner insisted:
‘It is the U.S. Secret Service, not the campaign, which coordinates with local law enforcement. The campaign itself does not contract with local governments for police involvement. All billing inquiries should always go to the Secret Service.’
The Secret Service added separately:
‘The Secret Service is not funded to pay police overtime and we don’t have a mechanism to do so.’
Besides El Paso, who the Trump team owes some $570,000, they owe Lebanon, Ohio, some $16,200 in connection to an October 2018 event, and they owe Tuscon, Arizona, more than $80,000 to cover the cost of an event that took place all the way back in 2016. Four other cities — including Green Bay and Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Burlington, Vermont; and Spokane, Washington — are also owed money for events that took place as part of Trump’s 2016 bid for office. These bills are outlined in a city by the Center for Public Integrity that was released in June and also includes bills left in the wake of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaigns.
POLITICO notes that there may soon be another city added to the Trump list, considering the president himself has been complaining recently about Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who he accused of “overcharging the arena in downtown Minneapolis for services during Trump’s rally, scheduled for Thursday night.”
Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale made the angry Twitter accusation:
‘The radical Mayor of Minneapolis, @Jacob_Frey, is abusing his power in an attempt to block the President’s supporters from seeing him speak on Thursday. We refuse to be bullied by a left-winger resister & won’t let him stifle the speech of @realDonaldTrump or his supporters!’
On Tuesday, Parscale insisted that “the Trump campaign has not agreed to pay any additional funds” after threatening to take local authorities to court over their insistence on the campaign covering documented security costs.
Besides the rally issues, Trump is also facing the specter of impeachment as he tries to convince Americans that he’s actually perfectly stable enough to deserve re-election. The many angry tweets he consistently posts beg to differ.
Featured Image via screenshot
