'Ultimate grifter': Watchdog outraged as Trump bumps Mar-a-Lago fee to $1M
Donald Trump outraged watchdogs Monday as he bumped the membership fee of his Florida social club Mar-a-Lago to a cool $1 million, according to a new report.
Ethics experts are deeply alarmed that the Republican presidential nominee should put a price tag on access just months before an election that could see him regain the White House in 2025, the Guardian reported Monday.
"Trump is the ultimate grifter,” Robert Weissman, president of the pro-transparency group Public Citizen, told the Guardian. "It’s possible some people just want to hobnob with a president and be around him, but it was explicit in his first presidency that it was an opportunity to tell him what you thought, and also to seek favor."
Four new memberships will reportedly cost $1 million — dubbed by the Guardian "an eye-popping increase given the former president has railed against Joe Biden for what he sees as out of control inflation" — and applications open in October.
“Of course the people who are most interested in this are going to look at it as a really sound investment," Weissman added. "Why not pay a million dollars and talk to the president?”
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Weissman then listed off the Mar-a-Lago members who received "plum" diplomatic appointments in Trump's administration, among them a handbag designer, golfing buddy and jewelry magnate sent to woo Hungary's authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
The ethics expert noted Mar-a-Lago's fee in 2017 was estimated to be $200,000.
“Are people really, suddenly interested in this spectacular club in Florida in a way they just weren’t in 2016, because the word got out?" Weissman asked. "Or another theory is it’s worth five times what it was because you might get a chance to give Trump some advice, or apparently get an ambassadorship."
Weissman professed himself staggered by what he described as a blatant cash-grab with questionable ethical implications.
“There are profound and systemic issues regarding ethics, and big money, and access for the rich, but Trump is in a category by himself," he said. "To call this an ethics issues sort of underplays it. There’s Trump, and then there’s everything else.”
Dave Aronberg, state attorney for Palm Beach county, identified to the Guardian another reason Trump might have sought to bump the fee: he'll need the cash in case he loses the election to Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This is money for Trump," Aronberg said. "It’s his best and most lucrative property, and I can’t imagine he’s going to send money he’s allowed to keep in his pocket over to his campaign."
Added Aronberg, “ I do think that if he loses the election again the price may stay the same, but the demand will fall.”
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