Donald Trump had several different reactions to questions about money on Monday, after a five-judge appeals court panel slashed the amount he needs to post bond.
Asked if he if has ever accepted foreign money for legal fines of bills, Trump meandered, saying he thinks he is allowed to, before insisting that he doesn’t need to and never did.
“Did you ever accept money from a foreign government to pay the bond, or your fines, or any of your legal bills?” CNN’s Kate Sullivan asked the indicted ex-president.
“No, I don’t do that. I mean, I think you’d be allowed to, possibly, I don’t know,” said Trump, a former U.S. president who has done business for decades around the world.
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He shot off a hypothetical: “If you go borrow from a big bank, many of the banks are outside of this – as you know, the biggest banks are outside of our country. So you could do that but I don’t need to borrow money. I have a lot of money.”
According to Forbes, the two biggest banks in the world are American banks.
Earlier in the day, asked by a reporter if he would accept foreign money to pay his bond, Trump appeared to ignore the question and walk away, a response the Biden campaign was quick to post to social media.
At one point on Monday Trump was asked if he would finance his presidential campaign with his own money – which he initially vowed to do when he first entered presidential politics in 2015. That pledge did not last long. As Trump began to gain momentum he quickly began accepting donations.
Trump had a terse response for the reporter who asked if he would be spending his own money on his presidential campaign.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, before chastising the reporter.
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“Well first of all it’s none of your business.”
“I might do that, I have the option.”
A reporter asking a candidate for president how they are financing or plan to finance their campaign is a valid question.
Over the weekend former FBI Special Agent Clint Watts, now a senior fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, warned of the national security threat of a president being in debt to foreign powers.
“One of the things that is always a key question is, is this person financially vulnerable in such a way that they could be compromised? And in fact, probably most spies that you see even recent arrests related to China, the reason those Americans were compromised was due to money. It was due to finances. So we’re talking about the person that would be in charge of all national security potentially and who was in charge of all national security, being in a position that could be highly vulnerable, and not just a vulnerable position, but one that could have dramatic effects on policy.”
“The question about [TikTok owner] Bytedance. Just four years ago, it was discussed as we have to get rid of the whole thing, a complete reversal here just recently from former President Trump, so just magnify that out over a four year term.”
Watch the videos above or at this link.
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