Remember how Republicans used to spend lavishly at the Trump Hotel when he owned it while he was in office. For some reason they aren’t doing that anymore now that the hotel isn’t owned by Trump anymore: [S]ince becoming a Waldorf Astoria in 2022, GOP spending at the largely unchanged luxury hotel in the Old Post Office building has all but disappeared. This directly conflicts with how Republicans explained their choice of venue at the time. When questions arose about their patronage of the then-president’s business, Republicans brushed off concerns of corruption saying that Trump’s DC hotel was simply a convenient location near Capitol Hill for lawmakers and political operatives to socialize, that they would be there regardless of who owned it. As such, it would be reasonable to expect that Republicans would continue to frequent the hotel after Trump sold it and it rebranded as a Waldorf Astoria in June 2022, leaving many of the building’s luxury public spaces largely unchanged from its time as a Trump property. Yet political spending by GOP groups at the new hotel is virtually nonexistent, clocking in at a measly $37,878, according to the FEC’s most recent data covering the 17 months from June 2022 to the end of November 2023. For comparison, GOP groups spent $1,570,239, or 40 times that, in the interval between June 2018 and November 2019—the last comparable period when the building was still under Trump ownership. In fact, the amount spent since it opened is just a quarter…