I see on Twitter a claim that the Sanders campaign spent $444k on purchases of Sanders's own book, but I have no context for assessing whether this is unethical or perfectly normal and legal. Many commenters on the thread are denouncing this as essentially campaign donations being funneled into the candidate's own pocket. A few explain that there is nothing to see here because this is a common situation of candidates who have written books and that royalties from sales in these cases are donated to charity and therefore do not enrich the candidate.
https://twitter.com/thatgirlfrmOhio/status/1120080843823882240
Has anyone else noticed this? I haven't seen this getting much coverage elsewhere and have adopted a policy of mentally "quarantining" sensational news items so that I can verify before reacting. Thanks.