Trump’s Unpaid Rally Bills Add Colossal Sum to Already Staggering Debt

Amid his already staggering legal tab and the financial strain of running a campaign in a competitive election, Donald Trump has yet more bills to worry about.

According to NBC News, several cities are seeking more than $750,000 in unpaid fees from the Trump campaign for rallies held over the past several years. Four cities and a county say the former president owes them reimbursements for the costs of local law enforcement and first responder support at his campaign events.

The city of El Paso, Texas, makes up the bulk of that amount. The city is billing Trump for $569,200 in expenses from a 2019 event, according to an invoice provided to NBC News. The amount owed is so egregious that its City Council lawyered up to “advocate in the City’s interest in the collection of the outstanding invoices.” Yet the Trump campaign still hasn’t paid.

In classic MAGA fashion, Trump’s team has decided to blame someone else for the bill.

When NBC News reached out, a Trump campaign official said via text message that “questions related to local law enforcement and first responder costs should be directed to secret service.”

Though the Secret Service said through a spokesperson that it is true that the agency is typically the one that requests local safety reinforcements for campaigns, the agency “lacks a mechanism to reimburse local governments for their support during protective events.”

While some officials have acknowledged that Trump may not be legally responsible for the costs, they still believe that the Republican candidate should pay up due to the burden his rallies place. “We believe the Trump 2020 campaign should reimburse our City for those taxpayer dollars, and we have invoiced the campaign accordingly,” said a spokesperson for the city of Mesa, Arizona, which has billed the Trump campaign around $65,000 to cover additional law enforcement costs.

Trump could easily do the right thing and pay back these cities, even with the money he has earned from selling NFT trading cards—but with outstanding legal fees in the hundreds of millions, perhaps he isn’t looking to be charitable anytime soon.

Donald Trump appears convinced that his lead over Vice President Kamala Harris is so impressive, even his old archnemesis will vote for him.

In a Truth Social post Friday, the Republican presidential nominee suggested that former President Barack Obama was in his camp.

“Obama admits a total lack of enthusiasm for Kamala, especially with Black Men,” Trump wrote. “I think Obama will be voting for me because he doesn’t like the fact that Kamala is an extremely Low IQ Person!”

That is despite the fact that Trump has attacked Obama for the better part of the last two decades, spending his time launching personal barbs at the former president and dogging the legitimacy of Obamacare.

In 2010, Trump stoked the flames of a right-wing rumor that Obama wasn’t born in the United States, participating in calls for the former president to publish his birth certificate (which, once distributed by the White House, revealed that Obama was born in Hawaii). Obama did not respond to Trump by name in the document’s announcement but alluded to the real estate developer’s request as one of “sideshows and carnival barkers.”

Days after unveiling his birth certificate, Obama addressed Trump directly at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner over the political stunt, mocking him for supercharging the conspiracy while the former reality TV star sat unamused in the crowd.

“I know that he’s taken some flak lately,” Obama said at the time. “But no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate issue to rest, and that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”

During his first bid for the Oval Office, Trump repeatedly derided his predecessor, decrying Obama as “the worst president maybe in the history of our country.” At a campaign rally during that election season, Trump flagrantly described the former president as a “founder of ISIS.”

Obama has since consistently endorsed Trump’s opponents. In 2016, Obama endorsed and campaigned for Hillary Clinton in her race for president. In 2020, he heralded Joe Biden, and this year, he has made several appearances since the Democratic National Convention in campaign ads and interviews rooting for Harris.

Right-wing figures are latching on to an outlandish claim that Kamala Harris used a teleprompter to answer audience questions during a Univision town hall Thursday.

Fox News’s Sean Hannity, pro-Israel violence-funding billionaire Bill Ackman, and allegedly unwitting Russian propagandist Benny Johnson are among several MAGA pundits and influencers who have begun to claim that Harris must have been using a teleprompter to respond to audience questions, because one was visible on the set of her town hall.

Both Hannity and Ackman have since deleted their posts criticizing Harris—probably because a little digging quickly revealed the claim to be an obvious lie.

Enrique Acevedo, the town hall’s moderator, offered a helpful fact-check of the right-wing claims, given that he was the one actually using the teleprompter.

“The prompter displayed my introduction (in Spanish) and then it switched to a timer,” Acevedo wrote late Thursday on X. “Any claim to the contrary is simply untrue.”

Daniel Coronell, the president of Univision News, was also quick to shut down the right-wing chatter Thursday evening, resharing one of the conspiratorial posts on X with some crucial context.

“That’s not true. The teleprompter that displays a text written in Spanish was a support element for the town hall moderator. I can tell you this with first-hand knowledge because I was in charge of the television program,” Coronell wrote.

It makes sense that MAGAites are a little touchy about the whole teleprompter situation. Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he doesn’t use one—even when one is sitting right in front of him. In reality, Trump regularly uses a teleprompter, before veering wildly off-script into incoherent rambling he calls “the weave.”

Israel has released American journalist Jeremy Loffredo four days after arresting and detaining him for reporting on Iranian missile strikes in the country.

Still, the judge who ordered Loffredo’s release said that the journalist must remain in the country until October 20 to give investigators more time to bring forth additional charges or for further interrogation, his attorney Lea Tsemel told The Intercept. An Israeli news outlet also reported that police took Loffredo’s phone, jailbroke the device, and are searching it for more evidence.

Loffredo, an independent journalist working for The Grayzone, reported on where Iran’s missiles landed in Israel, including the Israel Defense Force’s Nevatim Air Base as well as an intelligence base, according to Israeli news site Ynetnews.

Loffredo’s charges included aiding the enemy during wartime and providing information to the enemy. He reported that Israel’s attacks on Gaza were launched from the Nevatim base and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private jet was located there.

Much of the information Loffredo reported on was similar to reports from Israeli media, as well as footage of where a missile landed feet away from Mossad headquarters. The arrest drew the attention of the U.S. government, and representatives from the U.S. Embassy in Israel attended a hearing at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court where police requested to extend his detention.

According to Tsemel, the charges against Loffredo carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment or death. Israeli authorities argue that Loffredo’s reporting aids Iran in studying future targets. The IDF censor barred Israeli media from publishing the exact locations where Iran’s missiles landed.

“He published the information openly and fully, without attempting to hide anything. If this information constitutes aiding the enemy, many other journalists in Israel, including Israeli reporters, should also be arrested,” said Tsemel. “A spy would not have acted so publicly and transparently.”

Police in Israel argued for Loffredo to be detained for seven days, only to be overruled by a judge who ordered a one-day detention. On Thursday, a different judge ordered Loffredo’s release, and an Israeli journalist testified that Loffredo’s reporting did not violate the government censor, saying that Israel’s outlets had produced similar work. However, police filed a last-minute appeal late Thursday to keep Loffredo in custody.

On Friday morning, a district court judge finally ordered Loffredo’s release, citing a lack of evidence and stating that he doesn’t pose a threat, Tsemel said.

Israel’s year-long war in Gaza has killed at least 128 journalists and media workers, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Israel has refused to allow international journalists into the territory to report on the war. It seems the country might be afraid of what independent journalists might discover.

Finally, the mainstream media is willing to say it: Elon Musk is meddling in November’s election.

As The New York Times reported Friday in a sweeping roundup of Musk’s campaign to elect Donald Trump, “the richest man in the world has involved himself in the U.S. election in a manner unparalleled in modern history.”

As the owner of X (formerly known as Twitter), Musk has been able to propagate conspiracy theories about the election, immigrants, and Democrats freely without pushback to his 201 million followers and the platform’s 500 million monthly active users. As the Times pointed out, since he endorsed Trump in July, Musk has posted at least 109 times about the Republican candidate and the election.

But the Times also confirmed something not previously known: Musk is coordinating with the Trump campaign to suppress negative stories about Trump.

Last month, X deactivated a reporter’s account after he shared leaked information from the Trump campaign about JD Vance. X blocked links to the findings and the journalist remains banned from the platform. The Times reported that X did so after the Trump campaign “connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events.”

Musk has used X to help Trump in other ways as well. Most recently, Musk took over the @America handle on the website to promote his America PAC, which now aims to mobilize nearly one million voters to cast ballots for Trump in November.

They are doing so by building out a ground game with 2,500 organizers in the field but also through digital efforts such as paying individuals $47 to get information on swing-state voters. As the Times highlights, Trump’s team seems to be leaning on Musk’s PAC and other outside groups to carry out these operations. This is, in part, because of new federal guidelines that allow this kind of campaign outsourcing.

It appears that Musk is trying his best to become the “unofficial president” and take over the Trump campaign, like he’s taken over all his other failed projects.

A nine-minute, unedited, undercover interview with Roger Stone revealed some of the MAGA ally’s more disturbing goals for a second Trump administration.

The covert recording of a discussion between Stone and an undercover journalist at a meet and greet in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 4, published by documentarian Lauren Windsor, caught Stone admitting live on camera that he already intends to send “armed guards to dispute the election in Detroit” and to imprison “former Attorney General Bill Barr if Trump returns to power.”

Under the guise of discussing a far-right program to get more like-minded people back into the federal government, Stone shared his disdain for Barr, deriding him as a “traitorous piece of human garbage.” He also lamented that, while president, “Donald Trump never controlled the Justice Department.”

“He’s a CIA general counsel,” Stone said. “He’s a piece of shit. Trump read a law review article, never checked his background, and made him attorney general. Once we get back in, he has to go to prison! He has to go to prison. He’s a criminal.”

On the topic of retaking the government, Stone specified that it’s a “state question, not a federal question.”

“So it’s not who controls the federal government, it’s who controls the state government,” Stone continued. “They use the election system to harass you when you’re in office, but this is about an election. We gotta fight it out on a state-to-state basis.”

At the same event, Stone was witnessed insisting that millions of voters were being purged from voter rolls in battleground states, including North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Nevada, as well as Republican strongholds like Florida.

It’s not even the first time this year that Windsor has caught Stone on a hot mic.

During a Catholics for Catholics event at Mar-a-Lago in March, the liberal filmmaker got Stone to spill the beans on the right’s preemptive effort to undermine the 2024 election results.

“We’re working on this,” Stone said at the time, noting that “overconfidence” in voter turnout was one of the biggest issues for Republicans. He then said that Trump’s side would be armed with “lawyers, judges, [and] technology” to challenge the official results if necessary.

“At least this time when they do it, you have a lawyer and a judge—his home phone number standing by—so you can stop it,” Stone said. “We made no preparations last time, none.… There are technical, legal steps that we have to take to try and have a more honest election. We’re not there yet, but there’s things that can be done.”

Another voting bloc advertised as pro–Donald Trump has turned out to be a bust.

The Republican presidential nominee’s rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday featured a crowd of people holding signage that read, “Scranton Firefighters for Trump.” But by Friday, it became clear that the Scranton Fire Department firefighters’ union had absolutely nothing to do with the initiative, and the people waving the signs at Trump’s campaign event were not, in fact, firefighters.

The International Association of Fire Fighters union has not yet endorsed a candidate in the 2024 presidential election, nor has its Scranton chapter, Local 60, reported The Scranton Times-Tribune.

“Local 60 would like to address the rally held earlier today in Scranton for former President Trump and the Office of President of the United States,” the chapter wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday. “This is not a political post, rather a clarification post for anyone who sees or may see the event. Multiple CITIZENS were seen with ‘Scranton Firefighters for Trump’ signs at today’s rally. It is noted that no member of Local 60 were carrying those signs as the IAFF has chosen not to endorse a candidate this election.

“We honor and respect each and every person’s political opinions as well as our members own opinions on what they believe is the right choice for them,” the post continued. “We just want to clarify that Local 60 has not endorsed a candidate for the Office of President following the path of the IAFF. The signs seen were not a representation of SFD Local 60 nor an endorsement of any candidate.”

The Trump campaign also attempted to distance itself from the charade. In an interview with the Times-Tribune, campaign spokesperson Kush Desai claimed that the “Firefighters for Trump” signs “were not something that the campaign made or handed out.”

But that doesn’t mean that Trump didn’t try to reap the rewards of the signage’s confusing appearance there. Just shy of an hour into the rally, Trump called out to the supposed firefighters, claiming that he got their union’s endorsement.

“We got the firefighters endorsed us, you probably heard,” Trump said.

It turns out, there isn’t a single thing JD Vance isn’t willing to politicize.

During a town hall in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Thursday, Vance made a weirdly hostile joke after a woman in the audience fell down, letting out a shriek of terror.

Vance stood up and walked over to see what had happened, while security rushed to her. “We OK?” Vance asked. There was a moment of silence and awkward laughter from the crowd.

“Kamala Harris built this platform behind us, that’s what happened,” Vance joked, and the audience started to laugh and clap.

“We doing OK, ma’am, we good?” Vance asked again, before returning to his seat on stage.

While awkwardly joking about bleachers was just one weird moment of divisiveness, Vance also politicized the federal response to Hurricane Helene, claiming that Donald Trump would not abandon the people of western North Carolina.

When speaking about his favorite topic, illegal immigration, Vance tried to connect it back to what was happening in North Carolina by falsely claiming that programs for immigrants come at the expense of North Carolina residents.

“And if the message that our country sends after 25 million illegal aliens coming into this country is you get to stay here, you get to collect housing benefits, you get to collect welfare benefits, while folks in western North Carolina are struggling to survive, we will never have a border in this country again,” Vance said, according to The Independent.

Vance’s appearance in North Carolina comes as the Republican ticket pushes the lie that the federal government has been using money meant for FEMA to assist immigrants. Similar versions of this claim have been repeated by Trump, Elon Musk, and other Republican lawmakers. Both FEMA and a White House spokesperson have said the claim is false.

Vance also repeated his racist attacks against immigrant children. While he pretended to soften his hard-line message, he still managed to baselessly claim that immigrant children were somehow decreasing the quality of American education.

“It’s nothing against those kids,” Vance said. “It’s saying something against Kamala Harris who let those kids come in and deprive Americans of good education.”

Earlier this week, Vance falsely claimed that second-generation immigrant students, who by definition were born in the U.S., were creating a strain for schools.

At one point, moderator Danica Patrick referred to “globalists” who want Americans to own nothing. Vance agreed with Patrick, noting that “they want you to live in a pod, eat bugs, and own nothing.”

While Vance may have put on the sheen of civility during his vice presidential debate performance, his appearance in North Carolina shows that he is anything but civil, and his talking points rely on the most base of misinformation and fearmongering.

While promoting her new book, Melania, on Fox News Tuesday, Melania Trump mentioned two websites, MelaniaTrump.com, and USMemorabilia.com, that she said supported “fostering children” and “fostering community.”

But neither website contains much information about specific charity efforts, Juliet Jeske of Decoding Fox News posted on X Thursday evening. Her research into USMemorabilia found that the website doesn’t mention any charities, or whether any proceeds from the website go to any charities. Instead, the website was focused on selling United States merchandise and NFT collectibles.

Likewise, MelaniaTrump.com seemed focused on selling products and not on charitable efforts. Jeske found that there was a section on Trump’s “Be Best” anti-bullying program that she spearheaded as first lady, but it didn’t have any links to a charity. She went to a section on the website titled “Fostering the Future,” but again, there was no information about a charity there either, only a link to send emails about scholarships or corporate sponsorships.

So, was the former first lady taking a page out of her husband’s book, and talking a big game about charity while doing very little? For years, Donald Trump had the Donald J. Trump Foundation, only for it to be exposed as a money-laundering grift, with Trump having to shut it down. His son, Eric, was even involved in the particularly egregious transgression of taking away money meant to fight against cancer in children. And this isn’t the first time Melania was caught in a fake charity scandal of her own.

On the surface, Melania Trump doesn’t appear to have committed any fraud or crimes, but, considering her own past and her family’s, maybe she ought to be more careful speaking. After all, the last thing the Republican presidential nominee needs is another scandal or extensive criminal investigation.

Donald Trump’s claim about being Man of the Year just got debunked… again.

During a speech at the Detroit Economic Club Thursday, Trump took aim at The New York Times’s Peter Baker, whom he dubbed an “Obama disciple,” for asserting that the former president had never won any such award.

Trump claimed that Baker “said that uhhh, I would go around saying that ‘I was honored here, years ago as the Man of the Year’ or whatever.”

“And he made the statement that that never took place. That honor never took place. I was never honored here,” Trump said. “Which was quite insulting, actually.”

Last month, when asked about his plan to keep jobs in the U.S., Trump launched into a rant about being “honored as the Man of the Year” by “a group,” and complained that the news media had said it “never happened.” Baker, and others, have noted Trump’s insistence that he won the non-existent award as evidence of his cognitive decline.

“I didn’t remember the specifics of it, it was 18 or 20 years ago, but he said it never took place. Very much like Kamala she said she worked at McDonalds, and she didn’t,” Trump noted.

In an attempt to clear up uncertainty, Trump had his team search for proof of the award. “I asked my people, ‘you gotta find it,’” Trump said. Why not? It’s not like they have anything better to do, like work on fleshing out his “concepts of a plan” health care proposal.

“And guess what? They found it,” Trump said, holding up a printed-out copy of a 2023 article from The Oakland Press. The article, titled “Oakland County GOP to Honor Donald Trump,” was not an original article about the Republican nominee being named Man of the Year, but mentioned the fact that he had previously been awarded the honor by the local Republican party in 2013—not 18 or 20 years ago.

“And it says down here, ‘The county party gave Trump the Man of the Year Award at the dinner’…and he was honored. So here’s your article, right here,” Trump said.

But shortly after Trump’s speech concluded, an editor’s note appeared at the top of the Oakland Press article online.

“A story published in May 2023 online and print editions of the Oakland Press reported that former President Donald Trump was honored with a Man of the Year award at the 2013 county GOP Lincoln Day dinner,” the note read. “A reference in the 2023 story, headlined ‘Oakland County GOP to honor Donald Trump,’ about the 2013 award was incorrect.”

“Trump was the keynote speaker at the 2013 dinner in Novi, which drew a record crowd. He was not honored as Man of the Year. During the 2023 dinner, Trump was honored as the Man of the Decade which was reported in the 2023 story,” the note continued.

“We’re setting the record straight after the former president incorrectly cited the 2013 Man of the Year award during a recent speech to the Detroit Economic Club,” the note added.

So, it appears that Trump’s inane brag was based on a reporting error.