…morning, y’all…wasn’t expecting this…but I seem to be having trouble…I can’t stop laughing
…but there are so many things about the man that cry out to be mocked it can be hard to know where to start
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/it-s-now-or-never-ex-trump-aides-weighing-speaking-out
…but…it turns out the NYT has our back on this one…because…they have his fucking taxes…nigh on two decades of the sorry ass mess of filings, no less…& he is pissed about it…& I am laughing my entire ass off over here
…so…what do we have here?
A team of New York Times reporters has pored over this information to assemble the most comprehensive picture of the president’s finances and business dealings to date, and we will continue our reporting and publish additional articles about our findings in the weeks ahead. We are not making the records themselves public because we do not want to jeopardize our sources, who have taken enormous personal risks to help inform the public.
An Editor’s Note on the Trump Tax Investigation
[…]
Mr. Trump, one of the wealthiest presidents in the nation’s history, has broken with that practice. As a candidate and as president, Mr. Trump has said he wanted to make his tax returns public, but he has never done so. In fact, he has fought relentlessly to hide them from public view and has falsely asserted that he could not release them because he was being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. More recently, Mr. Trump and the Justice Department have fought subpoenas from congressional and New York State investigators seeking his taxes and other financial records.
[…]
Our latest findings build on our previous reporting about the president’s finances. The records show a significant gap between what Mr. Trump has said to the public and what he has disclosed to federal tax authorities over many years. They also underscore why citizens would want to know about their president’s finances: Mr. Trump’s businesses appear to have benefited from his position, and his far-flung holdings have created potential conflicts between his own financial interests and the nation’s diplomatic interests.
…& you’ll never guess…the picture they paint is…unflattering
Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.
Trump’s Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Income Tax Avoidance
[…]
He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.
[…]
The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.
[…]
As the legal and political battles over access to his tax returns have intensified, Mr. Trump has often wondered aloud why anyone would even want to see them. “There’s nothing to learn from them,” he told The Associated Press in 2016. There is far more useful information, he has said, in the annual financial disclosures required of him as president — which he has pointed to as evidence of his mastery of a flourishing, and immensely profitable, business universe.
In fact, those public filings offer a distorted picture of his financial state, since they simply report revenue, not profit. In 2018, for example, Mr. Trump announced in his disclosure that he had made at least $434.9 million. The tax records deliver a very different portrait of his bottom line: $47.4 million in losses.
[…]
Most of Mr. Trump’s core enterprises — from his constellation of golf courses to his conservative-magnet hotel in Washington — report losing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars year after year.
[…]
Against that backdrop, the records go much further toward revealing the actual and potential conflicts of interest created by Mr. Trump’s refusal to divest himself of his business interests while in the White House. His properties have become bazaars for collecting money directly from lobbyists, foreign officials and others seeking face time, access or favor; the records for the first time put precise dollar figures on those transactions.
[…]
The Times was also able to take the fullest measure to date of the president’s income from overseas, where he holds ultimate sway over American diplomacy. When he took office, Mr. Trump said he would pursue no new foreign deals as president. Even so, in his first two years in the White House, his revenue from abroad totaled $73 million. And while much of that money was from his golf properties in Scotland and Ireland, some came from licensing deals in countries with authoritarian-leaning leaders or thorny geopolitics — for example, $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India and $1 million from Turkey.
[…]
Mr. Trump’s avoidance of income taxes is one of the most striking discoveries in his tax returns, especially given the vast wash of income itemized elsewhere in those filings.
So how did he escape nearly all taxes on that fortune? Even the effective tax rate paid by the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans could have caused him to pay more than $100 million.
The answer rests in a third category of Mr. Trump’s endeavors: businesses that he owns and runs himself. The collective and persistent losses he reported from them largely absolved him from paying federal income taxes on the $600 million from “The Apprentice,” branding deals and investments.
[…]
Throughout his career, Mr. Trump’s business losses have often accumulated in sums larger than could be used to reduce taxes on other income in a single year. But the tax code offers a workaround: With some restrictions, business owners can carry forward leftover losses to reduce taxes in future years.
[…]
The newer tax returns show that Mr. Trump burned through the last of the tax-reducing power of that $1 billion [in losses reported in the 1990s] in 2005, just as a torrent of entertainment riches began coming his way following the debut of “The Apprentice” the year before.
For 2005 through 2007, cash from licensing deals and endorsements filled Mr. Trump’s bank accounts with $120 million in pure profit. With no prior-year losses left to reduce his taxable income, he paid substantial federal income taxes for the first time in his life: a total of $70.1 million.[*]
[…]
Over all, since 2000, Mr. Trump has reported losses of $315.6 million at the golf courses that are his prized possessions.
For all of its Trumpworld allure, his Washington hotel, opened in 2016, has not fared much better. Its tax records show losses through 2018 of $55.5 million.
And Trump Corporation, a real estate services company, has reported losing $134 million since 2000. Mr. Trump personally bankrolled the losses year after year, marking his cash infusions as a loan with an ever-increasing balance, his tax records show. In 2016, he gave up on getting paid back and turned the loan into a cash contribution.
[…]
tax records for Mr. Trump’s businesses show[…]that he has lost chunks of his fortune even before depreciation is figured in. The three European golf courses, the Washington hotel, Doral and Trump Corporation reported losing a total of $150.3 million from 2010 through 2018, without including depreciation as an expense.
[…]
Mr. Trump has an established track record of stiffing his lenders. But the tax returns reveal that he has failed to pay back far more money than previously known: a total of $287 million since 2010.
The I.R.S. considers forgiven debt to be income, but Mr. Trump was able to avoid taxes on much of that money by reducing his ability to declare future business losses. For the rest, he took advantage of a provision of the Great Recession bailout that allowed income from canceled debt to be completely deferred for five years, then spread out evenly over the next five. He declared the first $28.2 million in 2014.
[…]
Testifying before Congress in February 2019, the president’s estranged personal lawyer, Mr. Cohen, recalled Mr. Trump’s showing him a huge check from the U.S. Treasury some years earlier and musing “that he could not believe how stupid the government was for giving someone like him that much money back.”
In fact, confidential records show that starting in 2010 he claimed, and received, an income tax refund totaling $72.9 million — all the federal income tax he had paid for 2005 through 2008, plus interest.
[*…what do you know…that’s a little more than the taxes he paid back around 2007…that doesn’t seem shady at all…right?]
The legitimacy of that refund is at the center of the audit battle that he has long been waging, out of public view, with the I.R.S.
[…]
Mr. Trump harvested that refund bonanza by declaring huge business losses — a total of $1.4 billion from his core businesses for 2008 and 2009 — that tax laws had prevented him from using in prior years.
[…]
Refunds require the approval of I.R.S. auditors and an opinion of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, a bipartisan panel better known for reviewing the impact of tax legislation. Tax law requires the committee to weigh in on all refunds larger than $2 million to individuals.
Records show that the results of an audit of Mr. Trump’s refund were sent to the joint committee in the spring of 2011. An agreement was reached in late 2014, the documents indicate, but the audit resumed and grew to include Mr. Trump’s returns for 2010 through 2013. In the spring of 2016, with Mr. Trump closing in on the Republican nomination, the case was sent back to the committee. It has remained there, unresolved, with the statute of limitations repeatedly pushed forward.
[…]
The dispute may center on a single claim that jumps off the page of Mr. Trump’s 2009 tax return: a declaration of more than $700 million in business losses that he had not been allowed to use in prior years. Unleashing that giant tax-avoidance coupon enabled him to receive some or all of his refund.
[…]
A partner who walks away from a business with nothing — what tax laws refer to as abandonment — can suddenly declare all the losses on the business that could not be used in prior years. But there are a few catches, including this: Abandonment is essentially an all-or-nothing proposition. If the I.R.S. learns that the owner received anything of value, the allowable losses are reduced to just $3,000 a year.
And Mr. Trump does appear to have received something. When the casino bankruptcy concluded, he got 5 percent of the stock in the new company. The materials reviewed by The Times do not make clear whether Mr. Trump’s refund application reflected his public declaration of abandonment. If it did, that 5 percent could place his entire refund in question.
If the auditors ultimately disallow Mr. Trump’s $72.9 million federal refund, he will be forced to return that money with interest, and possibly penalties, a total that could exceed $100 million. He could also be ordered to return the state and local refunds based on the same claims.
[…]
It is possible that the case has been paused because Mr. Trump is president, which would raise the personal stakes of re-election. If the recent Fox interview is any indication, Mr. Trump seems increasingly agitated about the matter.
[…]
Examining the Trump Organization’s tax records, a curious pattern emerges: Between 2010 and 2018, Mr. Trump wrote off some $26 million in unexplained “consulting fees” as a business expense across nearly all of his projects.
[…]
Mr. Trump reduced his taxable income by treating a family member as a consultant, and then deducting the fee as a cost of doing business.
The “consultants” are not identified in the tax records. But evidence of this arrangement was gleaned by comparing the confidential tax records to the financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she joined the White House staff in 2017. Ms. Trump reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.
[…]
On Ms. Trump’s now-defunct website, which explains her role at the Trump Organization, she was not identified as a consultant. Rather, she has been described as a senior executive who “actively participates in all aspects of both Trump and Trump branded projects, including deal evaluation, predevelopment planning, financing, design, construction, sales and marketing, and ensuring that Trump’s world-renowned physical and operational standards are met.
“She is involved in all decisions — large and small.”
[…]
Mr. Trump has written off as business expenses costs — including fuel and meals — associated with his aircraft, used to shuttle him among his various homes and properties. Likewise the cost of haircuts, including the more than $70,000 paid to style his hair during “The Apprentice.” Together, nine Trump entities have written off at least $95,464 paid to a favorite hair and makeup artist of Ivanka Trump.
[…]
Perhaps Mr. Trump’s most generous interpretation of the business expense write-off is his treatment of the Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, N.Y.
[…]
The tax records reveal another way Seven Springs has generated substantial tax savings. In 2014, Mr. Trump classified the estate as an investment property, as distinct from a personal residence. Since then, he has written off $2.2 million in property taxes as a business expense — even as his 2017 tax law allowed individuals to write off only $10,000 in property taxes a year.
[…]
Whether or not Seven Springs fits those criteria, the Trumps have described the property somewhat differently.
In 2014, Eric Trump told Forbes that “this is really our compound.” Growing up, he and his brother Donald Jr. spent many summers there, riding all-terrain vehicles and fishing on a nearby lake. At one point, the brothers took up residence in a carriage house on the property. “It was home base for us for a long, long time,” Eric told Forbes.
And the Trump Organization website still describes Seven Springs as a “retreat for the Trump family.”
[…]
Another common deductible expense for all businesses is legal fees. The I.R.S. requires that these fees be “directly related to operating your business,” and businesses cannot deduct “legal fees paid to defend charges that arise from participation in a political campaign.”
Yet the tax records show that the Trump Corporation wrote off as business expenses fees paid to a criminal defense lawyer, Alan S. Futerfas, who was hired to represent Donald Trump Jr. during the Russia inquiry. Investigators were examining Donald Jr.’s role in the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians who had promised damaging information on Mrs. Clinton. When he testified before Congress in 2017, Mr. Futerfas was by his side.
[…]
The tax records for Mr. Trump and his hundreds of companies show precisely how much money he has received over the years, and how heavily he has come to rely on leveraging his brand in ways that pose potential or direct conflicts of interest while he is president. The records also provide the first reliable window onto his finances before 2014, the earliest year covered by his required annual disclosures, showing that his total profits from some projects outside the United States were larger than indicated by those limited public filings.
It did not take long for conflicts to emerge when Mr. Trump ran for president and won. The Philippines’ strongman leader, Rodrigo Duterte, chose as a special trade envoy to Washington the businessman behind the Trump tower in Manila. In Argentina, a key person who had been involved in a Uruguayan licensing deal that earned Mr. Trump $2.3 million was appointed to a cabinet post.
The president’s conflicts have been most evident with Turkey, where the business community and the authoritarian government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have not hesitated to leverage various Trump enterprises to their advantage. When Turkish-American relations were at a low point, a Turkish business group canceled a conference at Mr. Trump’s Washington hotel; six months later, when the two countries were on better terms, the rescheduled event was attended by Turkish government officials. Turkish Airlines also chose the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Virginia to host an event.
[…]
One Trump enterprise that has been regularly profitable, and is a persistent source of concern about ethical conflicts and national security lapses, is the Mar-a-Lago club. Profits there rose sharply after Mr. Trump declared his candidacy, as courtiers eagerly joining up brought a tenfold rise in cash from initiation fees — from $664,000 in 2014 to just under $6 million in 2016, even before Mr. Trump doubled the cost of initiation in January 2017. The membership rush allowed the president to take $26 million out of the business from 2015 through 2018, nearly triple the rate at which he had paid himself in the prior two years.
Some of the largest payments from business groups for events or conferences at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties have come since Mr. Trump became president, the tax records show.
[…]
When Mr. Trump glided down a gilded Trump Tower escalator to kick off his presidential campaign in June 2015, his finances needed a jolt.
[…]
If Mr. Trump hoped his unlikely candidacy might, at least, revitalize his brand, his barrage of derogatory remarks about immigrants quickly cost him two of his biggest and easiest sources of cash — licensing deals with clothing and mattress manufacturers that had netted him more than $30 million. NBC, his partner in Miss Universe — source of nearly $20 million in profits — announced that it would no longer broadcast the pageant; he sold it soon after.
Now his tax records make clear that he is facing a battery of threats to his business and his own financial well-being.
Over the past decade, he appears to have filled the cash-flow gaps with a series of one-shots that may not be available again.
[…]
What’s more, the tax records show that Mr. Trump has once again done what he says he regrets, looking back on his early 1990s meltdown: personally guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, a decision that led his lenders to threaten to force him into personal bankruptcy.
This time around, he is personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $421 million, with most of it coming due within four years. Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.
…& courtesy of @emmerdoesNOTrepresent me here’s a thread that has someone better qualified than I to walk you through it
Charting an Empire: A Timeline of Trump’s Finances
…that last one is kinda fun…there are graphs…but the bottom line is the man is a colossal loser…$2Billion & more in losses claimed in the last 25 years or so…& with about $500Million in money he is liable to repay in the next 4-5years…no wonder the fucker is so desperate to steal the election that he doesn’t care how obvious he is about the fact that outside of outright theft he basically doesn’t have a rat’s chance of winning the thing
…& another link emmerdoesNOTrepresentme was kind enough to remind us about last night
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-myths-of-the-genius-behind-trumps-reelection-campaign
…& let’s be clear about this
…he is a fucking rat…true vermin
But with the MAGAts you just can’t win. A string of bankruptcies. Business failure after business failure, leaving behind many hundreds of millions in unpaid debt over the course of decades. Let’s try to predict their response:
This only proves what a genius Trump is! Why should the government take all our money and waste it? He was smart enough to find ways to keep his. I wish my accountant were as smart as his are.
In New York Trump has been known to be a financial fraud since the early 80s. It’s why the only bank that will loan to him is Deutsche, and presumably they are being “incented” somehow to do so.
…yeah…I do get that…I just thought for sheer novelty value trying to start the week on a sorta-kinda positive note for once might be a nice change of pace
…given Deutsche Bank themselves arguably would have gone out of business by now if they weren’t happy to underwrite their business with deep-pocketed clients whose gains are of the ill-gotten variety the marriage of DJT’s empire of debt & their cadre of high-end “investors” is a sort of naturally-unnatural one…& I imagine a thorough accounting of his finances would show that many of those business write-offs & losses involve him funnelling money back into his family’s pockets one way or another, too
…but having gone to the trouble of getting his ass elected & then suborning the AG to help obfuscate this stuff by being as obstructively partisan as possible…just knowing how unhappy he must be to have even this much of a window into it all out there in the public domain genuinely did put a smile on my face
…& for all that it may not last long…I’ll take it…it’s important to take pleasure in the little things these days, I reckon?
Oh the New York Times’s reporting is extremely newsworthy and to overlook it would be a tragedy. My Grinch-like heart grew three sizes, certainly!
I just want to point out that the NY Times DC and politics desks had nothing to do with this, and their usual gang of idiots will be tripping over themselves trying to negate it. They simply can’t accept real life intruding on their cosplay world.
YES, THIS!!!!!!!
Bunch of incompetent, stooges, suckers, and ass-kissers!!!😠😡🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
Let’s not forget the glaring opening that Trump has to deny it all: the NYT isn’t publishing the actual returns to protect their sources. So, really, all he has to do is scream “FAKE!” and all of his sycophants will dutifully fall in line.
…also true…although my attempted flirtation with the dizzy novelty of optimism had me interpreting that as part journalistic integrity & part a hint that the sources were themselves significant when viewed as an asset to the public interest?
…given that said sycophants have been happy to swallow hook, line & sinker literally thousands of demonstrable falsehoods over the course of the cruel & unusual punishment we’ve all been sentenced to these last few years I suspect that releasing the returns in full & identifying the source(s) still wouldn’t be enough to get those folks to admit they’ve been shoving their heads up their asses all this time
…but you’re right of course…& I’m pretty sure he hit up twitter for exactly that purpose before most people had picked up the papers for this morning
I agree. The MAGAts are almost unredeemable at this point.
What is sad from the few times I’ve visited the various chud sites is they say the same thing about liebruls. In fact they sound almost reasonable until you realize they were defending all the awful shit Trump has done including that whole corruption/treason thing.
…it’s long been one of their favorite false-equivalencies…& there is a degree of no-smoke-without-fire when it comes to the other side of the aisle getting up to a bunch of the same sort of shennanigans…which is undeniably frustrating in part because it’s true & in part because unlike their opposite numbers pro-Dem folks are generally willing to concede there’s something to the argument
…but then those tend to be folks who like to think that the fact that “one of these things is not like the others” still counts for something…& generally don’t confuse blind conviction in falsehoods to construe a foundation for an argument that holds water
…to take a different example Ms shouldn’t-be-getting-a-Supreme-Court-seat claims her religious convictions about abortion shouldn’t disqualify her from sitting in judgement on the issue…despite herself arguing that members of the same faith ought properly to recuse themselves from death penalty cases on the grounds that their religious convictions might make them unable to properly rule upon the secular legal position
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/amy-coney-barrett-extremist/
…cognitive dissonance is a way of life for these people
…but I have to believe that over time making sure we do a better job of educating people before they get old enough to vote is our best bet for squeezing that kind of bullshit out of the debate & dragging the Overton window round to a view that passes for sane?
In the immortal words of St. Carlin:
“When these people talk about ‘Right to Life’, they’re really talking about their right to decide which people should live or die.
…amen to that…& to add a coda from St Hicks
https://youtu.be/92GXv5gAmUU
Sister Joan Chittister, a Roman Catholic Benedictine nun –
“I do not believe that just because you are opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, a child educated, a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”
I love quoting this statement to conservative Catholics.
…it’s a great quote…& the lady has a righteous point
…but then when you get down to it that Benedict was a pretty righteous motherfucker himself
Rule of St Benedict
She is, of course, anti abortion. But even she recognizes that the medical necessity for abortion sometimes exists.
“We nuance that men can kill for all sorts of reasons. Men can kill to defend themselves. They can kill to defend the state. They can punish by killing in the name of the state,” she said. “But women, never — not even to save their own pregnant life. It seems to me to be morally confused. Certainly, it’s morally inconsistent.”
https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/sr-joan-chittisters-2004-quote-pro-life-versus-pro-birth-goes-viral
I first learned about the Benedictines from the Diana Rigg movie,and later reading the book by Rumer Godden In This House of Brede.
It’s not an easy life, and while I remain a devoted pagan I respect anyone who can commit like they do.
I had a Baptist neighbor during the G-Dub corrupt regime. He used to tell me about how he was pro-life and then go straight into we should bomb Islamic countries into oblivion. I pointed out that you can’t be pro-life if you want to kill entire countries of children/people. I also pointed out that fact in your quote that you can’t force people to have kids when they can’t afford to take care of them and you won’t. I actually had him questioning his faith. Eventually he decided arguing sports was a much safer topic for him.
I LOVE her, and I adore that quote, and (OBVIOUSLY!) agree with the sentiment behind it, pro-choice though I fully am😉😁🤗
Yes, I’m pro choice. But at least she seems to honestly believe in the sanctity of human life and is not just looking to control women or shame them for their sexuality.
i had a good friend who was a Catholic nun, Sisters of St Joseph, not a Benedictine, but she was one of the best people I’ve ever known, and was completely nonjudgmental. She introduced me to Joan Chittister who I admire greatly.
If Trump loses, they will dump him like they dump their dogs by the side of the road every time they go on vacation. This is not a group that is known for long term commitments when things go sour.
I don’t know, they’ve been hanging on to misogyny, racism, ethnocentrism, homophobia, transphobia, and their weird devotion to the Confederacy for some time.
…damn skippy
I hope there is a way to spin this into simple “the guy’s a crook” language.
Here’s my concern: his base, or the portion comprised of less-educated anti-big government individuals, are anti-tax. I suspect that they will look at his tax-avoidance and his working of the system as a positive, and consider it tacit permission to do the same (akin to his leadership in uncivil words and actions).
I envision the Trumpian side spinning it as
The Dems had best work out out way to say that the crooked tax cheat ripped off the country while you (law-abiding citizen) paid your fair share.
…I’m not saying it’s been done…but one M. Harriot had a pretty decent first pass at something along those lines?
I like all of those, perhaps prefaced with: He scammed the systems, so “If you make less than $200,000 per year, YOU paid Trump’s taxes”.
…he also pointed out that thanks to his “creative” approach to his tax filings the self-proclaimed billionaire tycoon qualifies for that Obamacare thing they like that they get but hate the idea of other people getting…so without taking too many liberties with the facts you could argue that his current Mrs not only used him to enable a spot of “chain migration” for her folks along with producing one of these “anchor babies” they have such a problem with…but on a net basis pretty much ticks all the boxes for being a “welfare queen”
…it’s nice to think we can avoid stooping to their level…but I think maybe that’s where this sort of thing comes in?
He should…but he won’t.
It looks like he is at least trying to make the argument.
The problem is that these morons have been saying this shit for decades already. My criminal father was one of them. He idolized Trump, yet died alone and broke because he refused to accept the reality that only rich people get to break the rules. So, instead, he chose to alienate and step on literally everyone in pursuit of money above all. I shed no tears for the man when I heard he died because he didn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy.
…sorry for your loss & all…particularly as it sounds like your old man was lost to you somewhat in advance of his date with the reaper
…& not to speak ill of the dead when I didn’t know them from Adam…but that whole temporarily-embarrassed-millionaire (should that be billionaire, these days?) schtick has always been some misplaced, mean-spirited bullshit & I wish we could kill it with fire
…there’s a principle I’m told that is employed in mountaineering & the like which is that you have to move at the pace of the slowest/weakest member of your party because to do otherwise is basically to condemn them…& I’d almost be inclined to suggest it would be a good one to employ in matters of politics
…except you just know those exact same people would suddenly be dragging their feet even worse than they do about things like climate change while bitching about how unreasonable it was to blame them for being a brake on everyone else’s progress
…call me heartless but I think we might well be within our rights to cut bait on those folks to free up our hands to pick up & carry the less hateful stragglers over the line?
I think the sketchiness of what he’s done may turn out to be good for the Dems, not a problem.
Nobody could ever explain what was really the problem with Clinton’s emails. They damaged her because they led to a relentless drumbeat of tiny revelations in the press, which led to undecided voters breaking for Trump by something like 4-1. The NY Times has promised more stories, and Trump cannot respond except with evasions. He has serious financial issues that need to stay cloaked.
The press tends to hate scandals with well established facts and a bad guy who admits things without regret. What they like is lots of “unanswered questions” and “new doubts” and “possible concerns” and an evasive antagonist. Trump’s only play here is to win in November and use the full force of his machinery to crush this story. That could haopen. But I don’t think his usual playbook works.
Apparently taking its toll on everyone.
Brad Parscale, former Trump campaign manager, hospitalised after self-harm threat
…I tried to find a way to squeeze a reference to that into my cackling about the taxes but it kind of made the glee seem inappropriate, so thank you for overcoming that obstacle for me & getting it in the thread…much appreciated
Yes, agreed, glee isn’t right for this case. Hopefully the guy gets help, and hopefully that help gives him the realization that he’s been, and works for, a douchebag. I’m hoping for a lot, but there it is.
I’m not shocked. Parscale might be a delusional grifter, but he’s not entirely stupid.
When you deal with the dangerous people that Trump has dealt with, you get twitchy. We know these are people you don’t fuck with. If the stories are true, Parscale either knows too much (doubtful) or just found out that money he “billed” from the campaign is blood money that comes with a horrible price.
OR, he was ALSO freaking the hell out, about this story dropping today!😈😈😈😈
I VERY MUCH hope he’s OK, and I’m *hoping* quite frankly, that either it was all a play/scam, OR if it wasn’t, that he really DOES get the help he needs, *and* truly, that he stays safely away from any possible Oligarchical machinations–AND away from 3rd floor and higher windows (since folks with Russian ties and even mildly negative press seem to have exceptional numbers of “accidents” and falls!)…
But I wouldn’t be AT ALL surprised to later learn that Parscale’s episode yesterday, was because he SEES where this is headed….
The voter suppression stuff ALONE is going to lead to investigations…
Those may well bring felonies.
Annnnnd THEN…
There WILL be more investigations–into the Business Parscale *originally* ran, annnnnnd the ones he started up afterward, to slip** money through, to avoid detection for various possible reasons…
And then there’ll be the investigations into RICO crimes–Racketeering, Money Laundering, Fraud, Embezzlement, Securities Fraud (Check out that ProPublica story–and please note the Penny-Stock angle!😉🤣😈😈😈😈😈🤗)
And THEN there’s the Granddaddy-Charge possibility/likelihood…
That on top of multiple assorted RICO & FinCEN charges, which may-or-may-not have varying levels of teeth, there’s PROBABLY been Mail Fraud going on…
Because you KNOW these stupid motherfuckers sent payments by MAIL at least a few times…
They ALWAYS DO.😉😈😈😈🤣
This is HUGE, there is *exactly* enough time for it to get traction before Election Day, and i will FREELY admit–the Scadenfreude is exquisitely delicious!😃😁🤗
Mostly, because i’ve been EXPECTING RICO, FinCEN, Mail Fraud, and other assorted High Crimes & Misdemeanors, siiiiince at least July of 2016–when the platform planks of the RNC were changed to remove sanctions against Russia, and to *not* offer full support to Ukraine.
(**LAUNDER, it’s LAUNDERING!😉😁😈)
We can only hope Delaware’s most famous person has a Nixon to China event, because this underlines we need to blow up Delaware’s incorporation laws.
Let them raise their tolls on I-95 to $20 an axle in exchange for revoking the corporate status of every shell company in the state. It will be worth it.
Pretty amazing for the group that preaches so much fiscal and personal responsibility…
Actually, fiscal and personal responsibility is just for the poors.
This is an awesome tweet!!!
That is a truly excellent tweet.
The link to the Dan Alexander explainer up above is excellent. He is an extremely thorough reporter who digs up a ton of facts.
This is a good interview on Fresh Air with him which came out last week, obviously before the Times story. It gives a good overall outline of how Trump’s business operates.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/22/915609582/white-house-inc-author-trump-s-businesses-offer-a-million-potential-conflicts
RIP!!!!
Did you SEE THIS YET?!?!????😃😆😆😆😆😆😆😆🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗
https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-trump-campaign-strategy-to-deter-millions-of-black-americans-from-voting-in-2016
I’ve basically been doing the Kermit-flail, ever since I read it!🥳🥳🥳
From ☝️that story (emphasis mine😉😈);
“Trump’s digital campaign, called ‘Project Alamo’ and based in San Antonio, Texas, involved a team from the now defunct British company Cambridge Analytica, working with a team from the Republican National Committee. Two senior members of the Cambridge Analytica team are working on the Trump 2020 campaign.”
And *for the folks who read the ProPublica Article, we KNOW who was running “the Facebook Campaign” in San Antonio!!!!😆😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😈😈😈😈😈😈😈
THIS is SO EXCITING!🥳🥳🥳
It’s honestly the stuff I was EXPECTING we would eventually discover, yeaaaaaaars from now–and grumble about in disgust.
The fact that it’s breaking out, NOW???
THAT IS SOOOOOO GOOD!!😀😃🤗
It has a chance to be explosive enough, that *maybe* some in-the-know folks at Facebook, inside the Administration, at Deutsche, or at one of the firms surrounding Trump will step up as a whistle-blower, OR will simply offer an anonymous info-drop, with yet *more* details of TrumpCo’s nefarious dealings!😉😈
And THAT would be a really good thing, because we KNOW Trumpty-dumpty is going to be EXTREMELY dangerous over the next few weeks!😬😬🤒
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-couch/201608/why-its-so-hard-end-relationship-narcissist
…I did…although I think in the guardian rather than the channel 4 thing…lemme see if I have the link handy
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/28/trump-2016-campaign-targeted-35m-black-americans-to-deter-them-from-voting
…but sincerely…fuck cambridge analytica…or emerdata…or auspex international…or whatever-the-fuck the assholes are calling themselves now
…people like them & that koch-funded praegerU bunch of mental contortionists can fuck all the way off…& when they get there they can go on ahead & fuck off some more
…or as the saying goes…take a long walk off a short cliff