Today the president flew to Chicago to attend fundraisers estimated worth $2,000,000 for his campaign.
He took Air Force One at a reported price of $600,000 round trip. By law, he is only required to pay back from his campaign fund the cost of 1st class airline tickets for each person traveling for the campaign. This is apparently only himself. So, for the price of single first class airline trip, he received from the deficit a sum of very close to $600,000 in value.
If you support the President, please insist that the full cost be paid out of the $2,000,000 raised tonight.
You may argue that the extra $598,000 is to cover his security…. a national government priority. I’d point out that he did not HAVE to choose Chicago as his campaign headquarters. That was totally voluntary. If he had chosen to locate his campaign headquarter in DC or the suburbs, the cost of security would have been trivial by comparison. And please don’t say “well other presidents did the same thing”. The only other sitting president to locate his campaign headquarters outside of Washington was Jimmy Carter. …and you know where that got him!
Please be rational in these times of financial crisis and resist the temptation of exploiting political position to foster even greater political power. It is certainly bad form, even if perfectly legal. It is another example of where what is legal is not necessarily what is moral, appropriate, polite or certainly humble.
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