During the campaign, Donald Trump said he was “very rich” — a billionaire who was saving the people money by funding his own campaign. That was about the time he was saying he was going to build a wall and “Mexico is going to pay for it!” When (unbelievably) his candidacy became serious, the RNC began funding it with tremendous help from the filthy-rich Mercer and Adelson, but also from regular people who sent money to Trump and to the RNC.

When Trump was funding his own campaign, he charged $35,458 a month for campaign office space in Trump Tower in New York. When the RNC took over funding, he more than quadrupled the rent to $169,758 a month, even though fewer people were employed there after he raised the rent. Trump reopened his re-election campaign the day he was inaugurated, so he could profit off his presidency by continuing to use donor money to continuously rent space in his own building. Obama and Bush Jr. both waited over two years to begin their re-election campaigns, but they weren’t (illegally) profiting from their government position as Trump was and is. In 2017 the RNC spent $774,163 of donor money at Trump businesses. Tax payers pay Secret Service and other expenses to Trump every time he plays golf at one of his properties (he also said he would never leave the White House — never golf). Evangelicals are planning to hold and pay well for an event at the Trump Hotel in Washington. Under any other president, Republicans would be screaming if this was going on! Eric Trump formerly hosted a charity children’s cancer benefit at Trump properties. He did not charge for the use of those properties until his father told him everyone who uses Trump properties pays. This is your “Christian” president.

In 2017, the RNC paid a million dollars in legal fees involving the Russia investigation for Trump and Don Jr. They have paid legal fees for Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, and for Michael Cohen, among others. Trump has always surrounded himself with sleazy people — many of them with ties to Russia — to help him carry out sleazy business deals.

There has been so much scandal in “God’s Party” in the past two years, that the fact that 71-year-old Timothy Nolan — former Campbell County Kentucky district judge and Kentucky’s Trump campaign chair — was sentenced for 21 counts of human trafficking of adults and minor and unlawful (sexual) transactions with minors is largely unknown. “Birds of a feather.”

If you intend to support Trump or other Republicans in the 2018 and 2020 elections, be prepared to open your wallets wide. Your money will not only be paying to elect and re-elect sleaze bags like the governor of Missouri and Trump himself, but you will be paying lawyers to defend them and you will be paying Trump to try to re-elect Trump.

I suppose his supporters think that makes him “smart.”

Or does that make him dishonest and them chumps?

Lonna Gooden Van Horn

Northwood