Is Trump Running the First For-Profit Presidential Campaign?

Whether he wins or loses in November, Donald Trump, the U.S. Republican presidential nominee, is making bank off his own campaign as he uses donations to pay rent at his own towers and give salaries to senior Trump Holding officials, including his own family members.

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All in all, nearly US$7.7 million has been paid out to Trump companies or Trump family members to cover campaign expenditures, financial campaign filings show.

The Washington Post reported this week that the Trump campaign is expanding its headquarters to two additional floors of Trump Tower in Manhattan.

“The campaign reported spending nearly US$170,000 in rent at the 58-story skyscraper in July, up from US$111,000 in June and US$73,000 in May,” the newspaper reported, adding that the additional floors were needed due to new staff joining the campaign.

"The campaign expanded from part of a single floor by adding the entirety of two separate floors," the campaign said in a statement.

In July, Trump’s campaign paid more than US$770,000 to various Trump-owned companies for services. The majority of that money went to Trump’s TAG Air, the company that owns Trump's private jets, the newspaper said.

Some have also suggested that Trump’s end game after losing the elections in November is to launch a conservative news organization that would target his own supporters.

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In June, Vanity Fair argued that the breakout media star of 2016 would be Trump, according to several people around him who were “looking for a way to leverage his supporters into a new media platform and cable channel.”

This argument became even more likely after Steve Bannon, the head of conservative media outlet Breitbart News Network, was hired by Trump as his campaign’s CEO last week.

While some would argue that Trump does not need to make more money as he claims he is worth more than US$10 billion, the fact is Trump has debt amounting to at least US$650 million, according to a report by The New York Times.