Looks Like Ted Cruz Used Campaign Funds To Buy $150,000 Worth Of Copies Of His Own Book

According to campaign financial disclosures, Ted Cruz's campaign spent roughly $150,000 at Books-a-Million towards the end of last year, right around the time that he had a new book come out. This type of spending is completely legal, and the receipts don't even tell us what was actually purchased, but the odds of the campaign buying up that much worth of a different book are astronomically slim. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening and why it is so common with politicians.

Become a member today!

Support us by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon, and help keep progressive media alive!

Find our merchandise at Teespring

Spread the word! LIKE and SHARE this video or leave a comment to help direct attention to the stories that matter. And SUBSCRIBE to stay connected with Ring of Fire's video content!

Support Ring of Fire by subscribing to our YouTube channel

Be sociable! Follow us on:

Follow more of our stories at

Subscribe to our podcast

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

According to campaign financial disclosures. It sure looks like Republican Senator Ted Cruz spent roughly $150,000 at Books-A-Million last year. Most likely purchasing copies of his own book, which had just come out last fall called one vote away how a single Supreme court seat can change history in September.

Here's what happened.

The campaign two weeks after the book came out, goes to Books-A-Million and spends $40,000 shortly afterwards, it spent a further 1500 and in December spent another $111,000. All of these at Books-A-Million and on the campaign expense report, it only lists books just as books doesn't tell us what kind of books he could have bought 150,000 copies of Moby Dick. But the campaign refuses to tell us they're not telling us which book they were reached for comment. And they said, no, we bought books. Of course, again, the timing of this makes it incredibly likely that what they did was they purchased a bunch of copies of Ted Cruz's books, which by the way is 100% legal. Okay. Nobody's accusing anyone of breaking campaign finance laws here. It, well, I'll put it this way. It's only legal. As long as the profits that you would make from bulk buying your book with your campaign funds, as long as you donate those and the campaign swears, we haven't received any, any, any, any revenue from these books.

So, okay. Everything appears to be on the level. I'm certainly not implying at all that Ted Cruz broke the law, but what likely happened. And again, we can only speculate because they only listed books on the form is that Ted Cruz's book may not have been selling as well as he wanted it to. You want to get to that number one best seller mark. So they spend 40,000 in two weeks after the books comes out. So, uh, you know, that'll boost it up, but apparently it didn't boost it up enough. So then in December they had to say, all right, screw it $111,000.

And I'm sure that was more than enough. We see this all the time. This actually happens both the left and the right Donald Trump Jr. Uh, when his book came out, they bulk bought a bunch of copies to go ahead and make it to the top of the bestseller list. It's what happens all the time. This is how they always end up at number one, they're buying copies of their own book. And then of course, especially in the case of campaigns, they just, they give it away. You know, you donate a certain amount of money. Hey, we'll give you a reward. Here's a t-shirt and a copy of Ted Cruz's book. It's fairly common. And of course, because they're doing it with their money, they don't have to spend out of pocket. They don't get any of the profits from it, but let's face it. It's never about the profits for this book that Ted Cruz wrote, he got a $320,000 advance.

So

Yeah, he already made his money off it. So he gets to keep the money he made in the advance gets to use campaign money to go buy up all these copies, to make him a number one bestseller. And then of course you get to turn around and offer it as a gift to your supporters with them not realizing they literally already bought the book with the campaign money that whatever politician had happened. We

Spend on the books,