Trump the philanthropist
by digby
Does anyone remember the brouhaha back in 2000 over Democrats “buying votes” by giving people coffee and cigarettes on election day?
A Milwaukee television station, WISN-TV is reporting campaign workers for Vice President Gore supplied homeless voters with packs of cigarettes and then gave them rides so the voters could pick up their absentee ballots in Milwaukee.
The Bush campaign says the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office is investigating the incident and the Wisconsin Republican Party will be filing a complaint with the state elections board.
Gore campaign officials said they didn’t ask for that kind of campaign help and ordered those workers to leave Wisconsin. However, Gore campaign volunteer Connie Milstein told WISN-TV, “we’ve been pretty busy, going to the local shelters.” The station reported that Milstein worked for the Gore campaign in New York and was brought in to “get out the vote.”
WISN showed George Scharf, a homeless voter, explaining why he took advantage of the offer. “They had a couple of vans, and said they’d give us a ride. So I took a ride,” Scharf said. Scharf said in the report that he had been planning to vote for Gore anyway, and that voters weren’t told about the free cigarettes until after they were at the polls.
A Milwaukee Rescue Mission employee said in the television report that he had to ask Democratic campaign volunteers to leave the property after he caught them trying to bribe potential voters with cigarettes.
One voter, however, said he did not feel like he was bribed for his vote. “They just came and asked us to go and vote,” Bob Socha said. He also said he enjoys voting and was already planning to vote for Gore.
Wisconsin State Representative Scott Walker, who heads up the Milwaukee County Bush campaign, said the tactics used by the Gore campaigners raise a few questions.
“Even aside from the law itself, I just think most people on a gut check level would say that’s wrong. One has to question if they were going to be voting anyway. One has to question why would the campaign, the Gore campaign, be giving anything out, other than a ride to vote,” Walker told WISN-TV.
Yes, that was the once and future Great Whitebread Hope. It was quite the scandal at the time with accusations of vote buying and violations of campaign finance laws. It was a more innocent time.
Today it’s about billionaires giving away free movie tickets and it’s completely legal:
Donald Trump has rented space at an Urbandale movie theater and will give Iowans free tickets to a showing of the Benghazi movie that critics of Hillary Clinton have been eagerly awaiting.
“Mr. Trump would like all Americans to know the truth about what happened at Benghazi,” the GOP presidential candidate’s Iowa co-chair Tana Goertz said Thursday night.
Trump will pay for the showing of “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” at 6 p.m. Friday at the Carmike Cobblestone 9 Theatre at 86th Street and Hickman Road, Goertz said.
“The theater is paid for. The tickets are paid for. You just have to RSVP,” she said…
Trump has said he’s willing to spend a billion dollars to win the GOP nomination. “I make $400 million a year so what difference does it make?” he told reporters in Iowa in August.
Tickets for the movie, which opened Thursday, cost about $8 each, the theater’s website shows.
Hey, maybe he should buy out all the theatres in the Super Tuesday states. As a gift to his future subjects.
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