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the face of the failed american state
dec 6, 2019
Putin's Perfect pResident
NANcegreggs - demo underground
11/28/19
When it came to the US presidential election in 2016, surely Vladimir Putin had a wish list as to who would make the perfect POTUS. It would be the man/woman who would destroy American democracy by doing the following:
Undermine citizens’ trust in our institutions, e.g. CIA, FBI, the judicial system, and attack the credibility of dedicated career civil servants.
Undermine citizens’ trust in legitimate journalism, while encouraging them to accept ‘fake news’ from propaganda outlets.
Promote division among the citizenry by establishing a them v us narrative.
Pit citizens one against the other on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, country of origin.
Instill fear by insisting that immigrants are violent criminals who are 'invading' the country.
Encourage violence at rallies and other public events.
Confuse the citizenry by continually lying about everything, thus causing a constant blurring of the truth.
Tear down the reputations of those the nation reveres as heroes, e.g. John McCain.
Keep citizens from knowing the content of discussions with other world leaders, especially with Putin himself.
Appoint inept, inexperienced people to positions of power and influence, thereby ensuring the deterioration of the departments/agencies they oversee.
Distance the US from its traditional allies, while praising murderous despots, e.g. Putin, Kim Jung-Un, Mohamed Bin Salman.
Overturn laws that protect our country’s environment and natural resources, and refuse to accept scientifically-proven facts like climate change.
Rely on inept, inexperienced, yes-men ‘advisors’ instead of knowledgable professionals.
Abandon the Kurds, damaging our nation’s credibility as a trustworthy ally that keeps its word.
Promote the idea that Putin had no hand in attacking the 2016 election, and therefore sanctions against Russia should be lifted.
Attempt to have Russia re-admitted to the G-7.
Insist that the US military is a hundred percent behind you, and will use their might against the citizenry if ordered to do so.
Refuse to obey our nation’s laws, and flaunt the refusal to follow established precedents.
Promote Russian propaganda and debunked conspiracy theories.
Dismiss proven facts as politically-motivated spin, and legitimate investigations as ‘hoaxes’.
Fire or demand resignations from people who pose a threat to any of the above.
I would like to hear any Republican point out a single thing on Putin’s wish-list that Trump has not fulfilled.
Undermine citizens’ trust in our institutions, e.g. CIA, FBI, the judicial system, and attack the credibility of dedicated career civil servants.
Undermine citizens’ trust in legitimate journalism, while encouraging them to accept ‘fake news’ from propaganda outlets.
Promote division among the citizenry by establishing a them v us narrative.
Pit citizens one against the other on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, country of origin.
Instill fear by insisting that immigrants are violent criminals who are 'invading' the country.
Encourage violence at rallies and other public events.
Confuse the citizenry by continually lying about everything, thus causing a constant blurring of the truth.
Tear down the reputations of those the nation reveres as heroes, e.g. John McCain.
Keep citizens from knowing the content of discussions with other world leaders, especially with Putin himself.
Appoint inept, inexperienced people to positions of power and influence, thereby ensuring the deterioration of the departments/agencies they oversee.
Distance the US from its traditional allies, while praising murderous despots, e.g. Putin, Kim Jung-Un, Mohamed Bin Salman.
Overturn laws that protect our country’s environment and natural resources, and refuse to accept scientifically-proven facts like climate change.
Rely on inept, inexperienced, yes-men ‘advisors’ instead of knowledgable professionals.
Abandon the Kurds, damaging our nation’s credibility as a trustworthy ally that keeps its word.
Promote the idea that Putin had no hand in attacking the 2016 election, and therefore sanctions against Russia should be lifted.
Attempt to have Russia re-admitted to the G-7.
Insist that the US military is a hundred percent behind you, and will use their might against the citizenry if ordered to do so.
Refuse to obey our nation’s laws, and flaunt the refusal to follow established precedents.
Promote Russian propaganda and debunked conspiracy theories.
Dismiss proven facts as politically-motivated spin, and legitimate investigations as ‘hoaxes’.
Fire or demand resignations from people who pose a threat to any of the above.
I would like to hear any Republican point out a single thing on Putin’s wish-list that Trump has not fulfilled.
Alexander Hamilton
*
*DAILY BULLSHIT*
Washington Post tally : 13,000 lies and counting!!!
trump-world
"when he opens his mouth he lies but he thinks you are *too stupid to know that!!"
12/6/2019
*Trump Orders Toilet Rule Review, Saying People Flush 10 Times
Donald Trump’s latest target for deregulation is Americans’ toilets. The president on Friday said he ordered a federal review of water
*Trump’s digestive system the butt of jokes after he argues it takes 10 to 15 times to flush the toilet
*Trump rages at new light bulbs during White House meeting for making him look orange
*Trump files appeal at Supreme Court in financial records fight
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Thursday filed court papers asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block a lower court ruling directing an accounting firm to hand over his financial records to a Democratic-led congressional panel, setting ... (Reuters)
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*LADIES AND THE TRUMP: THE MAKING OF A SEXUAL PREDATOR
USING COMPREHENSIVE FIRSTHAND INTERVIEWS, TRANSCRIPTS AND COURT REPORTS, A DISTURBING NEW BOOK, "ALL THE PRESIDENT’S WOMEN", DISCOVERS AT LEAST 67 SEPARATE ACCUSATIONS OF INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR, INCLUDING 26 INSTANCES OF UNWANTED SEXUAL CONTACT BY US PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP.
*HERE'S CREW'S MASSIVE CONFLICTS-OF-INTEREST REPORT ON TRUMP
(HTTPS://WWW.CITIZENSFORETHICS.ORG/PROFITINGFROMTHEPRESIDENCY/ )
(HTTPS://WWW.CITIZENSFORETHICS.ORG/TRUMP-TIMELINE/ )
*COLLUSION IN PLAIN SIGHT ANALYZING RUSSIAN ATTACKS ON OUR DEMOCRACY – AND TRUMP'S INVOLVEMENT(HTTPS://THEMOSCOWPROJECT.ORG/)
*TRUMP-RUSSIA SCANDAL(ARCHIVES)
Morning Joe drops a Rust Belt bomb on Trump now that impeachment is a reality
December 6, 2019
By Tom Boggioni - raw story
“Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski kicked off Friday morning with bad news for Donald Trump about recent polling in the battleground Rust Belt states showing his re-election prospects crumbling, even if he does survive impeachment.
“You go through new Morning Consult Trump approval ratings, and it really shows how unpopular he is,” host Scarborough began. “And in some of these states they show how impeachment is really either keeping him from gaining momentum with all the money he’s wasting and it’s not moving anything.”
“Ohio, he’s minus five,” he explained. “Pennsylvania, minus seven, underwater. Iowa underwater, minus 13. Minnesota, underwater, minus 13. And the biggest two for last: Wisconsin, minus 14 and Michigan minus 14.”
“That would explain his mood,” co-host Brzezinski offered.
“It explains his mood, first of all” Scarborough concurred. “But secondly, all of these clowns that have been going around saying that impeachment’s backfiring and this is hurting. No — he can gain no momentum. He’s getting absolutely slaughtered in these state polls and, again, everybody always says, you know, don’t look at the national polls, the national polls don’t matter; Trump can win or lose by four or five percentage points in the popular vote but he’ll still win the states. We’re less than a year out from the general election, he’s underwater by double digits in Iowa, in Wisconsin, and in Michigan. and doing really badly in other states.”
The host also noted that the president is floundering in normally reliable states such as Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona.
“You go through new Morning Consult Trump approval ratings, and it really shows how unpopular he is,” host Scarborough began. “And in some of these states they show how impeachment is really either keeping him from gaining momentum with all the money he’s wasting and it’s not moving anything.”
“Ohio, he’s minus five,” he explained. “Pennsylvania, minus seven, underwater. Iowa underwater, minus 13. Minnesota, underwater, minus 13. And the biggest two for last: Wisconsin, minus 14 and Michigan minus 14.”
“That would explain his mood,” co-host Brzezinski offered.
“It explains his mood, first of all” Scarborough concurred. “But secondly, all of these clowns that have been going around saying that impeachment’s backfiring and this is hurting. No — he can gain no momentum. He’s getting absolutely slaughtered in these state polls and, again, everybody always says, you know, don’t look at the national polls, the national polls don’t matter; Trump can win or lose by four or five percentage points in the popular vote but he’ll still win the states. We’re less than a year out from the general election, he’s underwater by double digits in Iowa, in Wisconsin, and in Michigan. and doing really badly in other states.”
The host also noted that the president is floundering in normally reliable states such as Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona.
Macron Uses Toddler Reverse Psychology Trick to Fool Trump Into Supporting NATO
By Jonathan Chait - ny mag
12/3/19
Today is another meeting of NATO, an organization Trump has denounced and undermined for years. The keenest minds in what remains of the free world have set themselves to the task of distracting Trump long enough to get through the NATO summit without dissolving the alliance in a tantrum. The Washington Post detailed the efforts leading up to the summit. The plans include flattering Trump with an elaborate dinner at Buckingham Palace, and presenting a series of trumped-up concessions to make it appear the allies have buckled to Trump’s demands by increasing their spending, thereby allowing him to claim victory rather than storming out in a huff.
The plans include “a largely symbolic concession from Germany to save U.S. cash by spending more to pay to keep NATO’s lights on — which diplomats hope Trump will seize as a victory out of proportion with its size,” and a presentation on defense spending increases cleverly cropped to make it look like they began in 2016. (Diplomats are comfortable just blurting this out to a major newspaper because they know Trump does not read articles.) The whole trick is to choreograph an elaborate ruse in which Trump will believe he forced the allies to submit to his will and won.
Amusingly, what seems to have worked instead is Emmanuel Macron’s completely different ploy. The French president gave an interview last month decrying the “brain death” of NATO, which he said had failed to account for America’s shrinking commitment under Trump.
Trump himself has called NATO “obsolete,” openly questioned whether the U.S. would come to the defense of allies under attack (the very foundation of the alliance), and privately told aides on several occasions last year he wants to withdraw from the alliance. But the notion that somebody else would question NATO, and blame its demise on Trump, has enraged him.
And now Trump is lashing out at Macron. “NATO serves a great purpose,” he declared today. “And I hear that President Macron said NATO is ‘brain dead.’ I think that’s very insulting to a lot of different forces … When you make a statement like that, that is a very, very nasty statement to 28 — including them — 28 countries.”
Manipulating children into doing what you want by pretending to demand they do the opposite thing is a trick most parents learn to use. It usually stops working around the age of 5.
The plans include “a largely symbolic concession from Germany to save U.S. cash by spending more to pay to keep NATO’s lights on — which diplomats hope Trump will seize as a victory out of proportion with its size,” and a presentation on defense spending increases cleverly cropped to make it look like they began in 2016. (Diplomats are comfortable just blurting this out to a major newspaper because they know Trump does not read articles.) The whole trick is to choreograph an elaborate ruse in which Trump will believe he forced the allies to submit to his will and won.
Amusingly, what seems to have worked instead is Emmanuel Macron’s completely different ploy. The French president gave an interview last month decrying the “brain death” of NATO, which he said had failed to account for America’s shrinking commitment under Trump.
Trump himself has called NATO “obsolete,” openly questioned whether the U.S. would come to the defense of allies under attack (the very foundation of the alliance), and privately told aides on several occasions last year he wants to withdraw from the alliance. But the notion that somebody else would question NATO, and blame its demise on Trump, has enraged him.
And now Trump is lashing out at Macron. “NATO serves a great purpose,” he declared today. “And I hear that President Macron said NATO is ‘brain dead.’ I think that’s very insulting to a lot of different forces … When you make a statement like that, that is a very, very nasty statement to 28 — including them — 28 countries.”
Manipulating children into doing what you want by pretending to demand they do the opposite thing is a trick most parents learn to use. It usually stops working around the age of 5.
Trump Tax Records Reveal New Inconsistencies — This Time for Trump Tower
Documents show the president’s company reported different numbers — higher ones to lenders, lower ones to tax officials — for Trump’s signature building. Last month, ProPublica revealed a similar pattern in two other Trump buildings.
by Heather Vogell - pro publica
Nov. 27, 4 a.m. EST
Donald Trump’s business reported conflicting information about a key metric to New York City property tax officials and a lender who arranged financing for his signature building, Trump Tower in Manhattan, according to tax and loan documents obtained by ProPublica. The findings add a third major Trump property to two for which ProPublica revealed similar discrepancies last month.
In the latest case, the occupancy rate of the Trump Tower’s commercial space was listed, over three consecutive years, as 11, 16 and 16 percentage points higher in filings to a lender than in reports to city tax officials, records show.
For example, as of December 2011 and June 2012, respectively, Trump’s business told the lender that 99% and 98.7% of the tower’s commercial space was occupied, according to a prospectus for the loan. The figures were taken from “borrower financials,” the prospectus stated.
In tax filings, however, Trump’s business said the building’s occupancy was 83% in January 2012 and the same a year later. The 16 percentage point gap between the loan and tax filings is a “very significant difference,” said Susan Mancuso, an attorney who specializes in New York property tax.
A spokesperson for the Trump Organization said that “comparing the various reports is comparing apples to oranges” because reporting requirements differ.
Trump had much to gain by showing a high occupancy rate to lenders in 2012: He refinanced his share of Trump Tower that year and obtained a $100 million loan on favorable terms.
The vast majority of the gap between occupancy figures could be explained by diverging reports on how much space the Trump Organization used in Trump Tower. In loan documents, the company said it and its affiliates occupied 74,900 square feet in mid-2012, or 31% of the building. But tax reports from the January before and after listed the company and related parties as occupying 41,600 square feet — or about 18% of the tower.
“I cannot give you an explanation,” said Kevin Riordan, a financing expert, former accountant and real estate professor at Montclair State University who reviewed the tax and loan records for Trump Tower at ProPublica’s request.
More than a dozen tax and finance experts, presented with ProPublica’s earlier findings, also said they could not decipher a reason for the differences. As with Trump Tower, the discrepancies made the two properties — a skyscraper located at 40 Wall Street and the Trump International Hotel and Tower near Columbus Circle — appear more profitable to the lender and less so to property tax officials.
Those discrepancies were “versions of fraud,” according to Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. The penalties for false filings can include fines or criminal charges.
The diverging numbers match a pattern described by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, in congressional testimony this year. Cohen said Trump at times inflated assets’ value in documents submitted to lenders in an effort to secure loans. In reports to tax officials, Cohen testified, Trump would lower the value to reduce what he owed.
The focus on Trump’s business and personal financial records has been particularly intense of late. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has subpoenaed a wide array of Trump financial records to investigate claims that the Trump Organization falsified records of hush-money payments to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who said she and Trump had a sexual encounter. (He has denied the affair.)
Congressional lawmakers are seeking Trump’s personal tax returns, as well as other financial information, as part of their investigation into potential foreign influence on the presidency. Two federal courts have affirmed lawmakers’ right to enforce the subpoenas, and Trump has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
ProPublica used New York’s Freedom of Information Law to obtain property tax filings for four of Trump’s Manhattan buildings, including Trump Tower. The income and expense statements Trump filed when repeatedly appealing the city’s valuation of his property are public under the law. We then compared information in the tax reports to loan data made public when Trump’s debt became part of pools of loans sold publicly as bonds known as commercial mortgage-backed securities.
Information in tax and loan filings can differ for legitimate reasons, experts said. A small portion of the occupancy gap at Trump Tower did appear to have an explanation: About 2.5 percentage points of the discrepancy in 2012 consisted of an instance where the Trump Organization treated newly leased, but still empty, space as full in its loan documents (which Trump’s lender disclosed) but not in tax documents.
The Trump Organization refinanced Trump Tower in 2012, replacing its existing $27 million in debt with a loan for $100 million. That allowed Trump to extract about $68 million in cash. The same institution that handled the refinancing, Ladder Capital, refinanced 40 Wall Street and the Columbus Circle property a few years later.
Occupancy, along with cash flow, is a factor used by lenders and ratings agencies to assess the riskiness of a loan. Trump secured relatively favorable terms: an interest-only loan that allowed him to avoid paying monthly principal. The Trump Tower loan received coveted AAA and Aaa ratings, respectively, from credit agencies Fitch and Moody’s. (The company has continued making payments.)
When it comes to reporting property taxes in New York City, there’s a potential incentive for owners to minimize how much space they’re renting to themselves. The city’s Tax Commission, which handles property tax appeals, tends to treat owner-occupied space as if it’s being rented at full market price, which increases the value the tax commission assigns to the building, and thus increases the tax bill. But the commission often won’t assign such income to vacant space, said Mancuso, the New York property tax expert.
The Trump Tower filings showed smaller discrepancies when it came to income. (New York City assessors consider income when calculating the taxable value of commercial properties, making New York property tax filings resemble those of income taxes more than property tax filings typically do in other parts of the country.)
Trump Tower, however, fell shy of expectations for profit set out by underwriters working for Ladder Capital during the refinancing, tax and loan records show. They had pegged net operating income at roughly $20.4 million a year. In the years after the loan was made, the building hasn’t come close.
New York City real estate observers have suggested that the tight security needed at the tower because of the presidency has cut into Trump’s ability to make money from the building. This year, China’s biggest bank, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, made plans to reduce its space in Trump Tower when its lease ran out, according to Bloomberg News.
The financial institution that arranged the Trump Tower refinancing, Ladder Capital, is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that reports more than $6 billion in assets. It has a close Trump connection: Jack Weisselberg, an executive in loan origination, is the son of the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg. Allen Weisselberg is under investigation by the Manhattan DA for his role in the Daniels payments.
Ladder Capital declined to comment.
In the latest case, the occupancy rate of the Trump Tower’s commercial space was listed, over three consecutive years, as 11, 16 and 16 percentage points higher in filings to a lender than in reports to city tax officials, records show.
For example, as of December 2011 and June 2012, respectively, Trump’s business told the lender that 99% and 98.7% of the tower’s commercial space was occupied, according to a prospectus for the loan. The figures were taken from “borrower financials,” the prospectus stated.
In tax filings, however, Trump’s business said the building’s occupancy was 83% in January 2012 and the same a year later. The 16 percentage point gap between the loan and tax filings is a “very significant difference,” said Susan Mancuso, an attorney who specializes in New York property tax.
A spokesperson for the Trump Organization said that “comparing the various reports is comparing apples to oranges” because reporting requirements differ.
Trump had much to gain by showing a high occupancy rate to lenders in 2012: He refinanced his share of Trump Tower that year and obtained a $100 million loan on favorable terms.
The vast majority of the gap between occupancy figures could be explained by diverging reports on how much space the Trump Organization used in Trump Tower. In loan documents, the company said it and its affiliates occupied 74,900 square feet in mid-2012, or 31% of the building. But tax reports from the January before and after listed the company and related parties as occupying 41,600 square feet — or about 18% of the tower.
“I cannot give you an explanation,” said Kevin Riordan, a financing expert, former accountant and real estate professor at Montclair State University who reviewed the tax and loan records for Trump Tower at ProPublica’s request.
More than a dozen tax and finance experts, presented with ProPublica’s earlier findings, also said they could not decipher a reason for the differences. As with Trump Tower, the discrepancies made the two properties — a skyscraper located at 40 Wall Street and the Trump International Hotel and Tower near Columbus Circle — appear more profitable to the lender and less so to property tax officials.
Those discrepancies were “versions of fraud,” according to Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. The penalties for false filings can include fines or criminal charges.
The diverging numbers match a pattern described by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, in congressional testimony this year. Cohen said Trump at times inflated assets’ value in documents submitted to lenders in an effort to secure loans. In reports to tax officials, Cohen testified, Trump would lower the value to reduce what he owed.
The focus on Trump’s business and personal financial records has been particularly intense of late. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has subpoenaed a wide array of Trump financial records to investigate claims that the Trump Organization falsified records of hush-money payments to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who said she and Trump had a sexual encounter. (He has denied the affair.)
Congressional lawmakers are seeking Trump’s personal tax returns, as well as other financial information, as part of their investigation into potential foreign influence on the presidency. Two federal courts have affirmed lawmakers’ right to enforce the subpoenas, and Trump has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
ProPublica used New York’s Freedom of Information Law to obtain property tax filings for four of Trump’s Manhattan buildings, including Trump Tower. The income and expense statements Trump filed when repeatedly appealing the city’s valuation of his property are public under the law. We then compared information in the tax reports to loan data made public when Trump’s debt became part of pools of loans sold publicly as bonds known as commercial mortgage-backed securities.
Information in tax and loan filings can differ for legitimate reasons, experts said. A small portion of the occupancy gap at Trump Tower did appear to have an explanation: About 2.5 percentage points of the discrepancy in 2012 consisted of an instance where the Trump Organization treated newly leased, but still empty, space as full in its loan documents (which Trump’s lender disclosed) but not in tax documents.
The Trump Organization refinanced Trump Tower in 2012, replacing its existing $27 million in debt with a loan for $100 million. That allowed Trump to extract about $68 million in cash. The same institution that handled the refinancing, Ladder Capital, refinanced 40 Wall Street and the Columbus Circle property a few years later.
Occupancy, along with cash flow, is a factor used by lenders and ratings agencies to assess the riskiness of a loan. Trump secured relatively favorable terms: an interest-only loan that allowed him to avoid paying monthly principal. The Trump Tower loan received coveted AAA and Aaa ratings, respectively, from credit agencies Fitch and Moody’s. (The company has continued making payments.)
When it comes to reporting property taxes in New York City, there’s a potential incentive for owners to minimize how much space they’re renting to themselves. The city’s Tax Commission, which handles property tax appeals, tends to treat owner-occupied space as if it’s being rented at full market price, which increases the value the tax commission assigns to the building, and thus increases the tax bill. But the commission often won’t assign such income to vacant space, said Mancuso, the New York property tax expert.
The Trump Tower filings showed smaller discrepancies when it came to income. (New York City assessors consider income when calculating the taxable value of commercial properties, making New York property tax filings resemble those of income taxes more than property tax filings typically do in other parts of the country.)
Trump Tower, however, fell shy of expectations for profit set out by underwriters working for Ladder Capital during the refinancing, tax and loan records show. They had pegged net operating income at roughly $20.4 million a year. In the years after the loan was made, the building hasn’t come close.
New York City real estate observers have suggested that the tight security needed at the tower because of the presidency has cut into Trump’s ability to make money from the building. This year, China’s biggest bank, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, made plans to reduce its space in Trump Tower when its lease ran out, according to Bloomberg News.
The financial institution that arranged the Trump Tower refinancing, Ladder Capital, is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that reports more than $6 billion in assets. It has a close Trump connection: Jack Weisselberg, an executive in loan origination, is the son of the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg. Allen Weisselberg is under investigation by the Manhattan DA for his role in the Daniels payments.
Ladder Capital declined to comment.
Trump and the ‘imposter syndrome’: Living life in fear of being exposed as a fraud
November 23, 2019
By Salon- Commentary - raw story
Victor Lustig (which fittingly translates as “funny”) was born in Bohemia in 1890. He was a child of unusual charm and imagination and managed to use these talents in unique ways during his life.
Taking advantage of his mastery of several languages, he tricked the passengers of ocean liners steaming between Paris and New York City, making them believe that he had a money-making machine. He sold the machine at the exorbitant price of $30,000. Over 12 hours, he said, the machine would produce two $100 bills.
However, as Lustig’s supply of those bills was limited, once they were finished, the machine ceased producing them. When the buyers realized what had happened, Lustig was long gone.
Scrapping the Eiffel Tower
Lustig’s most remarkable feat, however, was still ahead. After reading in a newspaper an article that dealt with the problems that the city of Paris was having in maintaining the Eiffel Tower, Lustig adopted the persona of a city’s high government official.
In that capacity, he sent a group of six scrap metal dealers an invitation to discuss the possibility of selling the Eiffel Tower for scrap.
One of the dealers bought the tower, and Lustig left for Vienna with a suitcase full of cash. The dealer was so humiliated that he decided not to complain to the police. Thus, Lustig became one of history’s most notable impostors. Until now.
Enter Donald Trump
A few days ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi strongly criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s totally wrong and inappropriate Twitter attack on a long-serving U.S. diplomat during the impeachment procedures. Referring to the President, she said:
He should not frivolously throw out insults. But that’s what he does. I think part of it is his own insecurity as an impostor. I think he knows full well that he’s in that office way over his head, and so he has to diminish everyone else.
Perhaps without realizing it, Pelosi was referring to the “Impostor syndrome,” a psychological pattern of behavior in which individuals doubt their accomplishments and have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as “frauds.”
The impostor syndrome
This phenomenon was first described by Dr. Pauline R. Clance and Dr. Suzanne A. Imes in 1978.
The researchers found that individuals with this behavior often attribute their success to their belief that they are more intelligent than the rest of the people, a fact repeatedly expressed by the President in public or Twitter (his weapon of choice) pronouncements.
Researchers found that some people who experience the impostor phenomenon suffer from low self-confidence. A way to overcome this is to diminish everyone else, often not even respecting diplomatic protocol.
After Metten Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister rejected a proposal floated by the Trump administration to purchase Greenland calling it “absurd” Trump called her “nasty,” his preferred insult for women in politics.
Trump, the hyper-secure impostor
Trump is not shy about talking about his accomplishments, either real or perceived. He covers his actual shyness by making himself look as if he were hyper-secure. Being an impostor gives him great joy, because he believes he can get away with anything.
Discussing the trade war with China he declared, “This is a trade war that should have taken place years ago…somebody had to do it. I am the Chosen One.”
Some people speculated that he learned these words after reading “Ozymandias,” Percy Bysshe Shelley’s classic poem which contains the line: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings!”
Somebody not to be appeased by criticism, following his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria, Trump tweeted:
As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off-limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over…
Several mental health professionals have considered Trump’s grandiosity and disregard of facts as part of “narcissistic personality disorder” that drives the President’s behavior. This can be explained, to a certain extent, by his feelings of insecurity as an impostor.
Conclusion
Until now, Victor Lustig was one of history’s best-known impostors. Now Lustig is taking second place. And Nancy Pelosi should take credit for this.
Taking advantage of his mastery of several languages, he tricked the passengers of ocean liners steaming between Paris and New York City, making them believe that he had a money-making machine. He sold the machine at the exorbitant price of $30,000. Over 12 hours, he said, the machine would produce two $100 bills.
However, as Lustig’s supply of those bills was limited, once they were finished, the machine ceased producing them. When the buyers realized what had happened, Lustig was long gone.
Scrapping the Eiffel Tower
Lustig’s most remarkable feat, however, was still ahead. After reading in a newspaper an article that dealt with the problems that the city of Paris was having in maintaining the Eiffel Tower, Lustig adopted the persona of a city’s high government official.
In that capacity, he sent a group of six scrap metal dealers an invitation to discuss the possibility of selling the Eiffel Tower for scrap.
One of the dealers bought the tower, and Lustig left for Vienna with a suitcase full of cash. The dealer was so humiliated that he decided not to complain to the police. Thus, Lustig became one of history’s most notable impostors. Until now.
Enter Donald Trump
A few days ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi strongly criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s totally wrong and inappropriate Twitter attack on a long-serving U.S. diplomat during the impeachment procedures. Referring to the President, she said:
He should not frivolously throw out insults. But that’s what he does. I think part of it is his own insecurity as an impostor. I think he knows full well that he’s in that office way over his head, and so he has to diminish everyone else.
Perhaps without realizing it, Pelosi was referring to the “Impostor syndrome,” a psychological pattern of behavior in which individuals doubt their accomplishments and have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as “frauds.”
The impostor syndrome
This phenomenon was first described by Dr. Pauline R. Clance and Dr. Suzanne A. Imes in 1978.
The researchers found that individuals with this behavior often attribute their success to their belief that they are more intelligent than the rest of the people, a fact repeatedly expressed by the President in public or Twitter (his weapon of choice) pronouncements.
Researchers found that some people who experience the impostor phenomenon suffer from low self-confidence. A way to overcome this is to diminish everyone else, often not even respecting diplomatic protocol.
After Metten Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister rejected a proposal floated by the Trump administration to purchase Greenland calling it “absurd” Trump called her “nasty,” his preferred insult for women in politics.
Trump, the hyper-secure impostor
Trump is not shy about talking about his accomplishments, either real or perceived. He covers his actual shyness by making himself look as if he were hyper-secure. Being an impostor gives him great joy, because he believes he can get away with anything.
Discussing the trade war with China he declared, “This is a trade war that should have taken place years ago…somebody had to do it. I am the Chosen One.”
Some people speculated that he learned these words after reading “Ozymandias,” Percy Bysshe Shelley’s classic poem which contains the line: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings!”
Somebody not to be appeased by criticism, following his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria, Trump tweeted:
As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off-limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over…
Several mental health professionals have considered Trump’s grandiosity and disregard of facts as part of “narcissistic personality disorder” that drives the President’s behavior. This can be explained, to a certain extent, by his feelings of insecurity as an impostor.
Conclusion
Until now, Victor Lustig was one of history’s best-known impostors. Now Lustig is taking second place. And Nancy Pelosi should take credit for this.
Trump goes off the rails in Fox News interview spewing Obama conspiracy theory
David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement - alternet
November 22, 2019
President Donald Trump went off-the-rails when he called in to “Fox & Friends” Friday morning. For 57 minutes straight with no commercials the fast-talking President spewed conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, tossed around lies and personal attacks against top Democrats, including coming close to saying once again that President Barack Obama spied on him and his campaign.
“They thought I was going to win and said ‘how can we stop him?'” Trump said of Obama and his administration.
“You’re dealing at the highest levels of government. They were spying on my campaign. This is my opinion,” Trump said.
Host Steve Doocy interjected: “How high did it go?”
“Personally, I think it goes all the way,” Trump replied. He then mentioned by name John Brennan, James Clapper, and Susan Rice.
Trump once again tossed out conspiracy theories about the DNC server that was hacked, claiming Democratic Party officials “gave the server to Crowdstrike.”
That’s false.
---
Here’s CNN fact checker Daniel Dale:
Daniel Dale✔
@ddale8
Trump says the Democrats gave their server to "a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian." It is a publicly traded American company co-founded by an American immigrant from *Russia,* not Ukraine.
Fox asks if he's sure about this. Trump: "That's what the word is."
Daniel Dale✔
@ddale8
The FBI says it got the forensic info it needed from CrowdStrike. Cybersecurity firms do not require the physical servers to conduct hack investigations. In summary, Trump is near-comprehensively inaccurate about all of this. But especially about CrowdStrike being Ukrainian.
5:12 AM - Nov 22, 2019
CNN’s Jake Tapper weighs in:
Jake Tapper✔
@jaketapper
Of the Ukraine/DNC server conspiracy theory that POTUS continues to push, remember his former WH homeland security adviser Tom Bossert calls it “completely debunked... it has no validity.”
“They thought I was going to win and said ‘how can we stop him?'” Trump said of Obama and his administration.
“You’re dealing at the highest levels of government. They were spying on my campaign. This is my opinion,” Trump said.
Host Steve Doocy interjected: “How high did it go?”
“Personally, I think it goes all the way,” Trump replied. He then mentioned by name John Brennan, James Clapper, and Susan Rice.
Trump once again tossed out conspiracy theories about the DNC server that was hacked, claiming Democratic Party officials “gave the server to Crowdstrike.”
That’s false.
---
Here’s CNN fact checker Daniel Dale:
Daniel Dale✔
@ddale8
Trump says the Democrats gave their server to "a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian." It is a publicly traded American company co-founded by an American immigrant from *Russia,* not Ukraine.
Fox asks if he's sure about this. Trump: "That's what the word is."
Daniel Dale✔
@ddale8
The FBI says it got the forensic info it needed from CrowdStrike. Cybersecurity firms do not require the physical servers to conduct hack investigations. In summary, Trump is near-comprehensively inaccurate about all of this. But especially about CrowdStrike being Ukrainian.
5:12 AM - Nov 22, 2019
CNN’s Jake Tapper weighs in:
Jake Tapper✔
@jaketapper
Of the Ukraine/DNC server conspiracy theory that POTUS continues to push, remember his former WH homeland security adviser Tom Bossert calls it “completely debunked... it has no validity.”
Trump ordered to pay Scottish government’s legal bills after losing court battle over windfarms near his golf resort
November 12, 2019
By Sky Palma - raw story
After being defeated in a long-running court battle over windfarm development near his Scottish golf resort, the Trump International Golf Club Scotland Limited has been ordered to pay the Scottish Government £225,000 in legal fees, The Scotsman reports.
The ruling comes over four years after the three-year battle to block the plan to build renewable energy stations near the resort ended.
“We can confirm that settlement has now been reached — and this has removed the need for the expenses to be determined by the auditor of the Court of Session,” the Scottish government said in a statement.
According to The Scotsman, Trump’s golf club in Scotland posted annual losses of £1.07m in 2018, making it the seventh year in a row that the company failed to make a profit, making its cumulative losses over £9.4m.
The ruling comes over four years after the three-year battle to block the plan to build renewable energy stations near the resort ended.
“We can confirm that settlement has now been reached — and this has removed the need for the expenses to be determined by the auditor of the Court of Session,” the Scottish government said in a statement.
According to The Scotsman, Trump’s golf club in Scotland posted annual losses of £1.07m in 2018, making it the seventh year in a row that the company failed to make a profit, making its cumulative losses over £9.4m.
GOP groups spent over $8 million at Trump businesses since 2016: Report
November 11, 2019
By Common Dreams - raw story
New reporting out Monday provides refreshed ammunition for anti-corruption advocates who’ve raised concerns about President Donald Trump’s ethical violations while in office.
A forthcoming report from watchdog group Public Citizen, which has kept a close eye on who’s spending at Trump businesses, claims that “nearly 200 campaigns and political groups—virtually all conservative—have spent more than $8 million at President Donald Trump’s resorts and other businesses since his election in 2016,” according to Politico.
The group previously noted that when he entered the White House, “Trump turned over control of businesses to his sons Don Jr. and Eric, but still controls the trust that owns the properties and can withdraw money whenever he likes.”
The post-election number is a marked difference in such spending from before Trump was president—between 2012 and 2014, the report said, campaigns and political groups combined dropped a mere $69,000.
The most money—roughly $2.5 million—was spent by the groups at Trump’s Washington hotel, an entity that’s already drawn the scrutiny of the House oversight committee and triggered multiple lawsuits over possible emoluments violations. The hotel is in Washington’s Old Post Office building, and The Trump Organization has leasing rights from the federal government, which it may want to sell.
The biggest spender on Trump businesses and hotels was the Trump campaign, which accounted for about 45 percent of the money, nearly $3.8 million. Another big spender at the businesses was the Republican National Committee, which spent $1.6 million.
Public Citizen’s report puts the total political spending at the president’s properties since June 2015 when Trump announced his bid for office at roughly $19 million—a figure in line with the Center for Responsive Politics’ tally of Trump’s “influence-buying and presidential profiteering.”
“Some of the initial surge was related to the Trump campaign’s using a Trump company plane during the 2016 election,” Politico reported, “but much of the uptick comes from conservative candidates and groups.” The spending wasn’t limited to the Republican groups. From Politico:
“At least another 179 foreign governments, businesses, trade associations, and religious entities—some with interests before the federal government—have frequented Trump properties, according to Public Citizen, which gathered data from Federal Election Commission records, social media, and news reports.”
A glaring case in point was T-Mobile executives stay at Trump’s Washington hotel “while seeking a green light from the federal government for a merger with Sprint.”
“Donald Trump should’ve completely divested from his businesses before he became president,” said Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management, which has jurisdiction over the Trump’s Washington hotel, last month. “Instead, President Trump has made money from people looking to curry favor by booking hotel rooms and hosting private events. The Founding Fathers put the Emoluments Clauses in the Constitution to prevent presidents from accepting bribes.”
Public Citizen is far from the only group tracking possible conflicts of interests. Another group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), is adding up what it calls Trump’s “unprecedented conflicts of interests.”
“The relentless promotion of Trump businesses from the president and members of his administration has sent a message to those seeking political influence that patronizing his businesses is a way to appeal to the president,” the group says.
“The corrupt relationship between the Trump Organization and the White House calls into question President Trump’s decision-making as president,” it continues. “When his personal financial interests diverge from America’s national ones, which does he prioritize? That’s not a question we should have to ask.”
A forthcoming report from watchdog group Public Citizen, which has kept a close eye on who’s spending at Trump businesses, claims that “nearly 200 campaigns and political groups—virtually all conservative—have spent more than $8 million at President Donald Trump’s resorts and other businesses since his election in 2016,” according to Politico.
The group previously noted that when he entered the White House, “Trump turned over control of businesses to his sons Don Jr. and Eric, but still controls the trust that owns the properties and can withdraw money whenever he likes.”
The post-election number is a marked difference in such spending from before Trump was president—between 2012 and 2014, the report said, campaigns and political groups combined dropped a mere $69,000.
The most money—roughly $2.5 million—was spent by the groups at Trump’s Washington hotel, an entity that’s already drawn the scrutiny of the House oversight committee and triggered multiple lawsuits over possible emoluments violations. The hotel is in Washington’s Old Post Office building, and The Trump Organization has leasing rights from the federal government, which it may want to sell.
The biggest spender on Trump businesses and hotels was the Trump campaign, which accounted for about 45 percent of the money, nearly $3.8 million. Another big spender at the businesses was the Republican National Committee, which spent $1.6 million.
Public Citizen’s report puts the total political spending at the president’s properties since June 2015 when Trump announced his bid for office at roughly $19 million—a figure in line with the Center for Responsive Politics’ tally of Trump’s “influence-buying and presidential profiteering.”
“Some of the initial surge was related to the Trump campaign’s using a Trump company plane during the 2016 election,” Politico reported, “but much of the uptick comes from conservative candidates and groups.” The spending wasn’t limited to the Republican groups. From Politico:
“At least another 179 foreign governments, businesses, trade associations, and religious entities—some with interests before the federal government—have frequented Trump properties, according to Public Citizen, which gathered data from Federal Election Commission records, social media, and news reports.”
A glaring case in point was T-Mobile executives stay at Trump’s Washington hotel “while seeking a green light from the federal government for a merger with Sprint.”
“Donald Trump should’ve completely divested from his businesses before he became president,” said Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management, which has jurisdiction over the Trump’s Washington hotel, last month. “Instead, President Trump has made money from people looking to curry favor by booking hotel rooms and hosting private events. The Founding Fathers put the Emoluments Clauses in the Constitution to prevent presidents from accepting bribes.”
Public Citizen is far from the only group tracking possible conflicts of interests. Another group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), is adding up what it calls Trump’s “unprecedented conflicts of interests.”
“The relentless promotion of Trump businesses from the president and members of his administration has sent a message to those seeking political influence that patronizing his businesses is a way to appeal to the president,” the group says.
“The corrupt relationship between the Trump Organization and the White House calls into question President Trump’s decision-making as president,” it continues. “When his personal financial interests diverge from America’s national ones, which does he prioritize? That’s not a question we should have to ask.”
itmfa!!!
The list continues to grow on Trump
nmgaucho - demo underground
|
He has pressured a foreign leader to interfere in the 2020 American presidential election.
He urged a foreign country to intervene in the 2016 presidential election. He divulged classified information to foreign officials. He publicly undermined American intelligence agents while standing next to a hostile foreign autocrat. He hired a national security adviser whom he knew had secretly worked as a foreign lobbyist. He encourages foreign leaders to enrich him and his family by staying at his hotels. He genuflects to murderous dictators. He has alienated America’s closest allies. He lied to the American people about his company’s business dealings in Russia. He tells new lies virtually every week — about the economy, voter fraud, even the weather. He spends hours on end watching television and days on end staying at resorts. He often declines to read briefing books or perform other basic functions of a president’s job. He has aides, as well as members of his own party in Congress, who mock him behind his back as unfit for office. He has repeatedly denigrated a deceased United States senator who was a war hero. He insulted a Gold Star family — the survivors of American troops killed in action. He described a former first lady, not long after she died, as “nasty.” He described white supremacists as “some very fine people.” He told four women of color, all citizens and members of Congress, to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” He made a joke about Pocahontas during a ceremony honoring Native American World War II veterans. He launched his political career by falsely claiming that the first black president was not really American. He launched his presidential campaign by describing Mexicans as “rapists.” |
He has described women, variously, as “a dog,” “a pig” and “horseface,” as well as “bleeding badly from a facelift” and having “blood coming out of her wherever.”
He has been accused of sexual assault or misconduct by multiple women. He enthusiastically campaigned for a Senate candidate who was accused of molesting multiple teenage girls. He waved around his arms, while giving a speech, to ridicule a physically disabled person. He has encouraged his supporters to commit violence against his political opponents. He has called for his opponents and critics to be investigated and jailed. He uses a phrase popular with dictators — “the enemy of the people” — to describe journalists. He attempts to undermine any independent source of information that he does not like, including judges, scientists, journalists, election officials, the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the Congressional Budget Office and the National Weather Service. He has tried to harass the chairman of the Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates. He said that a judge could not be objective because of his Mexican heritage. He obstructed justice by trying to influence an investigation into his presidential campaign. He violated federal law by directing his lawyer to pay $280,000 in hush money to cover up two apparent extramarital affairs. He made his fortune partly through wide-scale financial fraud. He has refused to release his tax returns. He falsely accused his predecessor of wiretapping him. He claimed that federal law-enforcement agents and prosecutors regularly fabricated evidence, thereby damaging the credibility of criminal investigations across the country. He has ordered children to be physically separated from their parents. He has suggested that America is no different from or better than Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He has called America a “hellhole.” |
His dark materials: Trump's war on truth gets sicker, and more dangerous
No, the Virginia governor didn't "execute a baby." If Trump's legions really believe this stuff, we're in trouble
BOB CESCA - salon
NOVEMBER 5, 2019 1:00PM (UTC)
Given how the year started out, the Virginia Democratic Party didn’t need another bombshell news story to collapse on its head so close to the state and local elections this week. But it appears as though Gov. Ralph Northam executed a baby. Sure, Virginia is a death penalty state, and even though Northam is personally opposed to capital punishment — a baby? How barbaric, how heartless, how ... completely untrue.
No, Northam didn’t really execute a baby. But that didn’t stop Donald Trump from telling his Red Hat cult in Tupelo, Mississippi, over the weekend that the governor had done exactly that.
About 75 minutes into his latest pathologically unspooled campaign rally, the president said, “The governor of Virginia executed a baby, remember that whole thing?”
No, I don’t remember that whole thing. Because it never happened.
Northam didn’t execute a baby, obviously, even though it’s true he once he botched an explanation about hospice and palliative care for babies born with severe birth defects. He was talking about rare and terrible cases when a baby is born and won’t survive for long due to physical deformities or other life-ending complications, and was merely voicing support for parents who choose to let their dying child pass away peacefully without unnecessary pain or suffering. The botched part had to do with the context of a reporter's question about late-term abortions in cases when pregnancy threatens the life of an expecting mothers.
In Donald Trump’s desperately warped brain, and subsequently the warped brains of his fanboys, however, this means that Northam supports allowing parents to gratuitously murder their newborns. Or at least that’s how the lie started, but now it’s “the governor of Virginia executed a baby.”
Back here on Earth One, no rational adult would jump to “Northam supports infanticide” and certainly not that Northam “executed a baby.” Sadly, Trump and his Red Hats aren’t rational adults. I know that’s not a politically acceptable sentiment, but let’s stare the ugly truth in the face here. The Trump base has completely lost touch with reality, and it’s one of the most damaging aspects of the ongoing Trump crisis.
It’s kind of impressive when we look at this phenomenon dispassionately. The conservative entertainment complex, along with Russian disinformation and Trump himself have convinced upwards of 60 million American voters that one of the most notorious bullshit artists since Hearst and Barnum is, in fact, the only trustworthy man in politics. And everyone else is a pack of liars. It’s perhaps the most successful propaganda campaign in recent memory. It’s like convincing half the population that cancer is healthy, or that goblins exist. Of all the Republicans to choose from, the one they chose as their Truth Messiah is … Donald Trump, the man who once stared into a camera and declared that steaks sold in Sharper Image mall stores were “the world’s greatest steaks.”
Sixty million suckers have been successfully tricked into going along with whatever nefariousness Trumpism injects into their tenderized skulls, whether via Fox News, Russian propaganda or the White House,. Adding to the problem, there are countless millions more who might not believe every Trump lie, but who don’t know what to believe, leaving themselves angry and confused, incapable of accepting that anything is real, pro- or anti-Trump. When people don’t know what to believe, the takeaway is the insufferable “both sides are liars” cop-out, which serves to depress voter turnout, thereby favoring the Republicans — low turnout has always been good for GOP candidates. And Trump wins.
When it comes to the true believers, though, the consequences of their total disconnect from reality could be catastrophic.
When “an ignorant mass of propaganda-addled people,” as NeverTrumper Tom Nichols called them the other day, is willing to believe the screeching of a man who lied, stole and flimflammed his way through the New York real estate sector, a man with a four-decade record of one scam after another, everything from Trump University to the Trump Foundation — a man with a growing roster of nearly 14,000 lies since taking office — they’re willing to believe literally anything. It's not unlike Scientology: Once you’re in, you’re all in. Forty percent of American voters have "gone clear" — Full Xenu.
Now, the “forgotten” whoevers enjoy a white-knuckled grip on the levers of power, steering us anywhere their dictators want to go, including the utter destruction of America disguised as making America great. That's damage. A republic, along with its democratic processes, can’t possibly function, much less endure, when half of all voting adults, give or take, are spoiling to act on marching orders from a regime of predatory disinformers.
Trump’s loyalists believe Democrats want to execute newborns. They believe our overseas allies are impressed by Trump’s leadership. They believe the president didn’t commit obstruction of justice in a dozen instances exhaustively described in the Mueller report. They believe Trump’s extortion of Ukraine was a “perfect conversation.” They believe Trump is building the “beautiful” border wall, rather than just replacing existing fences. They believe this is the greatest economy in history. I could do this all day.
If they’re willing to believe all that, they’d easily be willing, with just the right combination of tweets and rally skits, to believe that perhaps the Democrats conspired with Ukraine to frame Russia in the 2016 attack on our election. And if they believe that one, they might be willing to believe that maybe the Democrats will do it again. Once that’s accepted, they might also be willing to allow Trump to defy the results of the 2020 election if he loses. From there, they might additionally accept a move by Trump to become the American Putin by creating a new governing post for himself and then rigging subsequent elections to keep himself there.
They might even be willing to accept that nuclear war is the only way to stop Iran or China from being so unfair to Trump. They might also accept it if Trump ordered Bill Barr to have Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi arrested for an attempted coup.
It doesn’t require much by way of imagination to consider the myriad ways in which Trump could exploit the undeniable power of his cult leadership. Even if he never goes there, it’s unacceptable on its face that he possesses this power in the first place.
Politics has always involved a degree of subterfuge and one-off lies. This crisis, on the other hand, has careened far beyond normalcy into a perfect storm in which an entire universe of falseness is being devoured by a voting bloc of 40-percenters who are way too close to acting as a ruling majority. Indeed, the source code of the nation’s current sickness is less about the specific lies being told and more about the quasi-religiosity of the believers of those lies. We can debunk every falsehood as it ejaculates out of Trump’s yapper — we can share every Snopes and PolitiFact item proving Trump’s mendacity — but if these indoctrinated, conditioned dupes are willing to defiantly embrace the lies anyway, irrespective of the facts, it’s all wasted effort and Trump remains at the helm, interfaced directly with the worldview of his fanboys. Damage.
We’re far beyond partisanship now. The existential debate of our time isn’t about right versus left. We’ve found ourselves locked in a fight to defend the very fabric of reality itself. The endgame for the rest of us Normals is to victoriously bend the national discourse back to a place where a functioning supermajority accepts that reality is reality and lies are fiction. This has to be achieved before the mentally disintegrating Mad King convinces his disciples that he can use his unlimited power to arrest dissidents, to execute “invading” migrants, to arrest for murder parents who allow their dying infant to pass away peacefully — to manifest horror shows we can barely begin to contemplate.
The aforementioned 60 million Americans should never have allowed themselves to be fished in by this troll and his gaggle of Fifth Avenue Clampetts. Sadly, the duty of course-correcting the destructive Trump tangent in our national history now falls to the rest of us. Containing and marginalizing the sickness is more important to the future of the republic than just about anything else, shy of the climate crisis. Whether by impeachment or popular election, all this must end, and the impact craters must be carefully filled in by legislative reforms and amendments so it’s less likely to ever happen again.
Karl Rove was once quoted as saying that he and the Bush administration were in the process of subverting the “reality-based community” by manufacturing their own reality. Ironically, it was a duplicitous reality show host who, more than a decade later, finished the job.
No, Northam didn’t really execute a baby. But that didn’t stop Donald Trump from telling his Red Hat cult in Tupelo, Mississippi, over the weekend that the governor had done exactly that.
About 75 minutes into his latest pathologically unspooled campaign rally, the president said, “The governor of Virginia executed a baby, remember that whole thing?”
No, I don’t remember that whole thing. Because it never happened.
Northam didn’t execute a baby, obviously, even though it’s true he once he botched an explanation about hospice and palliative care for babies born with severe birth defects. He was talking about rare and terrible cases when a baby is born and won’t survive for long due to physical deformities or other life-ending complications, and was merely voicing support for parents who choose to let their dying child pass away peacefully without unnecessary pain or suffering. The botched part had to do with the context of a reporter's question about late-term abortions in cases when pregnancy threatens the life of an expecting mothers.
In Donald Trump’s desperately warped brain, and subsequently the warped brains of his fanboys, however, this means that Northam supports allowing parents to gratuitously murder their newborns. Or at least that’s how the lie started, but now it’s “the governor of Virginia executed a baby.”
Back here on Earth One, no rational adult would jump to “Northam supports infanticide” and certainly not that Northam “executed a baby.” Sadly, Trump and his Red Hats aren’t rational adults. I know that’s not a politically acceptable sentiment, but let’s stare the ugly truth in the face here. The Trump base has completely lost touch with reality, and it’s one of the most damaging aspects of the ongoing Trump crisis.
It’s kind of impressive when we look at this phenomenon dispassionately. The conservative entertainment complex, along with Russian disinformation and Trump himself have convinced upwards of 60 million American voters that one of the most notorious bullshit artists since Hearst and Barnum is, in fact, the only trustworthy man in politics. And everyone else is a pack of liars. It’s perhaps the most successful propaganda campaign in recent memory. It’s like convincing half the population that cancer is healthy, or that goblins exist. Of all the Republicans to choose from, the one they chose as their Truth Messiah is … Donald Trump, the man who once stared into a camera and declared that steaks sold in Sharper Image mall stores were “the world’s greatest steaks.”
Sixty million suckers have been successfully tricked into going along with whatever nefariousness Trumpism injects into their tenderized skulls, whether via Fox News, Russian propaganda or the White House,. Adding to the problem, there are countless millions more who might not believe every Trump lie, but who don’t know what to believe, leaving themselves angry and confused, incapable of accepting that anything is real, pro- or anti-Trump. When people don’t know what to believe, the takeaway is the insufferable “both sides are liars” cop-out, which serves to depress voter turnout, thereby favoring the Republicans — low turnout has always been good for GOP candidates. And Trump wins.
When it comes to the true believers, though, the consequences of their total disconnect from reality could be catastrophic.
When “an ignorant mass of propaganda-addled people,” as NeverTrumper Tom Nichols called them the other day, is willing to believe the screeching of a man who lied, stole and flimflammed his way through the New York real estate sector, a man with a four-decade record of one scam after another, everything from Trump University to the Trump Foundation — a man with a growing roster of nearly 14,000 lies since taking office — they’re willing to believe literally anything. It's not unlike Scientology: Once you’re in, you’re all in. Forty percent of American voters have "gone clear" — Full Xenu.
Now, the “forgotten” whoevers enjoy a white-knuckled grip on the levers of power, steering us anywhere their dictators want to go, including the utter destruction of America disguised as making America great. That's damage. A republic, along with its democratic processes, can’t possibly function, much less endure, when half of all voting adults, give or take, are spoiling to act on marching orders from a regime of predatory disinformers.
Trump’s loyalists believe Democrats want to execute newborns. They believe our overseas allies are impressed by Trump’s leadership. They believe the president didn’t commit obstruction of justice in a dozen instances exhaustively described in the Mueller report. They believe Trump’s extortion of Ukraine was a “perfect conversation.” They believe Trump is building the “beautiful” border wall, rather than just replacing existing fences. They believe this is the greatest economy in history. I could do this all day.
If they’re willing to believe all that, they’d easily be willing, with just the right combination of tweets and rally skits, to believe that perhaps the Democrats conspired with Ukraine to frame Russia in the 2016 attack on our election. And if they believe that one, they might be willing to believe that maybe the Democrats will do it again. Once that’s accepted, they might also be willing to allow Trump to defy the results of the 2020 election if he loses. From there, they might additionally accept a move by Trump to become the American Putin by creating a new governing post for himself and then rigging subsequent elections to keep himself there.
They might even be willing to accept that nuclear war is the only way to stop Iran or China from being so unfair to Trump. They might also accept it if Trump ordered Bill Barr to have Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi arrested for an attempted coup.
It doesn’t require much by way of imagination to consider the myriad ways in which Trump could exploit the undeniable power of his cult leadership. Even if he never goes there, it’s unacceptable on its face that he possesses this power in the first place.
Politics has always involved a degree of subterfuge and one-off lies. This crisis, on the other hand, has careened far beyond normalcy into a perfect storm in which an entire universe of falseness is being devoured by a voting bloc of 40-percenters who are way too close to acting as a ruling majority. Indeed, the source code of the nation’s current sickness is less about the specific lies being told and more about the quasi-religiosity of the believers of those lies. We can debunk every falsehood as it ejaculates out of Trump’s yapper — we can share every Snopes and PolitiFact item proving Trump’s mendacity — but if these indoctrinated, conditioned dupes are willing to defiantly embrace the lies anyway, irrespective of the facts, it’s all wasted effort and Trump remains at the helm, interfaced directly with the worldview of his fanboys. Damage.
We’re far beyond partisanship now. The existential debate of our time isn’t about right versus left. We’ve found ourselves locked in a fight to defend the very fabric of reality itself. The endgame for the rest of us Normals is to victoriously bend the national discourse back to a place where a functioning supermajority accepts that reality is reality and lies are fiction. This has to be achieved before the mentally disintegrating Mad King convinces his disciples that he can use his unlimited power to arrest dissidents, to execute “invading” migrants, to arrest for murder parents who allow their dying infant to pass away peacefully — to manifest horror shows we can barely begin to contemplate.
The aforementioned 60 million Americans should never have allowed themselves to be fished in by this troll and his gaggle of Fifth Avenue Clampetts. Sadly, the duty of course-correcting the destructive Trump tangent in our national history now falls to the rest of us. Containing and marginalizing the sickness is more important to the future of the republic than just about anything else, shy of the climate crisis. Whether by impeachment or popular election, all this must end, and the impact craters must be carefully filled in by legislative reforms and amendments so it’s less likely to ever happen again.
Karl Rove was once quoted as saying that he and the Bush administration were in the process of subverting the “reality-based community” by manufacturing their own reality. Ironically, it was a duplicitous reality show host who, more than a decade later, finished the job.
Records reveal the staggering amount of money Trump-owned businesses have raked in by doing business with Trump’s campaign and Republicans
Alex Henderson - alternet
October 29, 2019
The words “conflict of interest” often come up in connection with President Donald Trump, who hasn’t been shy about encouraging the use of Trump properties for political events. And an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics shows just how profitable that encouragement has been for the president.
HuffPost’s Mary Papenfuss reports that according to the Center’s analysis of federal election spending records, Trump’s political campaigns and associated committees have spent roughly $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 presidential campaign. The analysis was based on spending reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
In the 2020 election cycle alone, the Center for Responsive Politics notes, Republican campaigns and political action committees have spent $1.8 million at Trump properties. That $1.8 million, includes — among other things — $1.3 million spent by Trump’s campaign, $123,000 spent by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and $104,000 spent by the political action committee (PAC) Great America.
The Center for Responsive Politics also points out that 48 Republicans in Congress have spent money at Trump businesses through their campaigns and associated committees. That includes $12,000 spent by Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, $8000 spent by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and $14,000 spent by Indiana Rep. Greg Pence — who is the brother of Vice President Mike Pence.[...]
HuffPost’s Mary Papenfuss reports that according to the Center’s analysis of federal election spending records, Trump’s political campaigns and associated committees have spent roughly $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 presidential campaign. The analysis was based on spending reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
In the 2020 election cycle alone, the Center for Responsive Politics notes, Republican campaigns and political action committees have spent $1.8 million at Trump properties. That $1.8 million, includes — among other things — $1.3 million spent by Trump’s campaign, $123,000 spent by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and $104,000 spent by the political action committee (PAC) Great America.
The Center for Responsive Politics also points out that 48 Republicans in Congress have spent money at Trump businesses through their campaigns and associated committees. That includes $12,000 spent by Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, $8000 spent by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and $14,000 spent by Indiana Rep. Greg Pence — who is the brother of Vice President Mike Pence.[...]
Trump’s census shenanigans continue — even after Supreme Court defeat
Do Republicans want to count the population or not? Trump's doing everything he can to screw up the census
SOPHIA TESFAYE - salon
OCTOBER 15, 2019 11:00AM (UTC)
One of the first changes Donald Trump made after inheriting the White House from Barack Obama was to hang a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office. The president viewed as a vicious racist even by the standards of his time once pushed back at a Supreme Court chief justice following a decision involving Jackson's treatment of the Cherokee nation, saying: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”
Almost 200 years later, Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden hours after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had voted with the "liberal" justices to stop the administration’s attempt to rig the 2020 census — and declared his own intention to go around that ruling. After a two-year-battle to politicize the census by including a question about citizenship status, which experts say would result in an undercount, the Trump administration dropped its pursuit following the Supreme Court’s decision.
The administration had initially argued it needed citizenship data to help prepare for voting rights cases, but because Trump's Department of Justice had never engaged in such litigation, Roberts determined that rationale “seems to have been contrived.” He remanded the case to lower courts to be reconsidered, but no time was left before scheduled printing began. Instead Trump signed an executive order directing the Commerce Department, which houses the Census Bureau, "to strengthen its efforts ... to obtain State administrative records concerning citizenship."
So in August, the Census Bureau entered a proposal for a general clearance to acquire state administrative records, such as those of recipients of public-assistance programs, into the federal registry. Although the bureau already receives some administrative records from states, it has complained that the records it receives are stripped of identifiable information. With more than a month left open for public comment and consideration on the proposal, the Associated Press reported on Monday that the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators confirmed that nearly every state has recently received additional requests from the Census Bureau for information including citizenship status, race, and home address.
This move is strongly reminiscent of the request for sensitive voter data from every state made by Trump's now-defunct “election integrity” commission, led by notorious vote-suppression guru Kris Kobach, and is clearly meant to serve as an end-run of the Supreme Court’s ruling. While acquiring citizenship data through a direct inquiry on the census was not ruled illegal — Roberts instead determined that bureau officials were not honest in their answers to the district court — collecting citizenship information through the census bureau still presents similar problems.
Experts warn that many households with undocumented immigrants won't complete the necessary census forms for fear of retaliation. This could ultimately lead to a less accurate headcount, as was feared with a question on the Census itself, and deprive cities with large immigrant communities of federal funding and representation. The census serves as the basis for reapportioning seats in the House of Representatives every 10 years as well as for the distribution of social spending.
“The result is going to be fairly similar to including the citizen question directly on the census form,” Jennifer Lee, an associate professor of law at Temple University, told Courthouse News. “It’s really just an act that’s going to instill a lot of fear.”
It is not difficult to imagine how sharing state motor vehicle records with the federal government can increase the amount of uninsured and unregistered drivers on the road. As The New York Times’ Jose A. Del Real noted shortly before the Supreme Court’s ruling on the census question, “the fear engendered by the administration’s immigration policies will make the job of census workers difficult in primarily immigrant neighborhoods, regardless of whether or not the citizenship question is added.”
States, of course, could simply ignore the request for data (a move Trump certainly ought to appreciate). Illinois has already said no. Some states are already planning to supplement the Census Bureau's efforts following reports of widespread disarray under the supervision of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. California is allocating $187 million — nearly 95 times what it did a decade ago — to local outreach groups.
“If you don’t participate in the census, Trump wins,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat.
Some other states at risk of an undercount, including Florida and Texas, have seen efforts to bulk up community outreach stymied by Republicans in the state's legislatures.
The official census count doesn't get under way until April 2020, but the Trump administration's latest move demonstrates that the president seems determined to disrupt the constitutionally-mandated count as much as possible and as long as possible.
Almost 200 years later, Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden hours after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had voted with the "liberal" justices to stop the administration’s attempt to rig the 2020 census — and declared his own intention to go around that ruling. After a two-year-battle to politicize the census by including a question about citizenship status, which experts say would result in an undercount, the Trump administration dropped its pursuit following the Supreme Court’s decision.
The administration had initially argued it needed citizenship data to help prepare for voting rights cases, but because Trump's Department of Justice had never engaged in such litigation, Roberts determined that rationale “seems to have been contrived.” He remanded the case to lower courts to be reconsidered, but no time was left before scheduled printing began. Instead Trump signed an executive order directing the Commerce Department, which houses the Census Bureau, "to strengthen its efforts ... to obtain State administrative records concerning citizenship."
So in August, the Census Bureau entered a proposal for a general clearance to acquire state administrative records, such as those of recipients of public-assistance programs, into the federal registry. Although the bureau already receives some administrative records from states, it has complained that the records it receives are stripped of identifiable information. With more than a month left open for public comment and consideration on the proposal, the Associated Press reported on Monday that the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators confirmed that nearly every state has recently received additional requests from the Census Bureau for information including citizenship status, race, and home address.
This move is strongly reminiscent of the request for sensitive voter data from every state made by Trump's now-defunct “election integrity” commission, led by notorious vote-suppression guru Kris Kobach, and is clearly meant to serve as an end-run of the Supreme Court’s ruling. While acquiring citizenship data through a direct inquiry on the census was not ruled illegal — Roberts instead determined that bureau officials were not honest in their answers to the district court — collecting citizenship information through the census bureau still presents similar problems.
Experts warn that many households with undocumented immigrants won't complete the necessary census forms for fear of retaliation. This could ultimately lead to a less accurate headcount, as was feared with a question on the Census itself, and deprive cities with large immigrant communities of federal funding and representation. The census serves as the basis for reapportioning seats in the House of Representatives every 10 years as well as for the distribution of social spending.
“The result is going to be fairly similar to including the citizen question directly on the census form,” Jennifer Lee, an associate professor of law at Temple University, told Courthouse News. “It’s really just an act that’s going to instill a lot of fear.”
It is not difficult to imagine how sharing state motor vehicle records with the federal government can increase the amount of uninsured and unregistered drivers on the road. As The New York Times’ Jose A. Del Real noted shortly before the Supreme Court’s ruling on the census question, “the fear engendered by the administration’s immigration policies will make the job of census workers difficult in primarily immigrant neighborhoods, regardless of whether or not the citizenship question is added.”
States, of course, could simply ignore the request for data (a move Trump certainly ought to appreciate). Illinois has already said no. Some states are already planning to supplement the Census Bureau's efforts following reports of widespread disarray under the supervision of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. California is allocating $187 million — nearly 95 times what it did a decade ago — to local outreach groups.
“If you don’t participate in the census, Trump wins,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat.
Some other states at risk of an undercount, including Florida and Texas, have seen efforts to bulk up community outreach stymied by Republicans in the state's legislatures.
The official census count doesn't get under way until April 2020, but the Trump administration's latest move demonstrates that the president seems determined to disrupt the constitutionally-mandated count as much as possible and as long as possible.
Donald Trump
Donald Trump: xenophobe in public, international mobster in private
The founding fathers said betraying America to foreign powers was an impeachable offense. The president must go
ROBERT REICH - the guardian
Sun 13 Oct 2019 01.45 EDT
The most xenophobic and isolationist American president in modern history has been selling America to foreign powers for his own personal benefit.
Trump withdrew American troops from the Syrian-Turkish border, leaving our Kurdish allies to be slaughtered and opening the way for a resurgent Islamic State. Trump’s rationale? He promised to bring our soldiers home.
There could be another reason. Trump never divested from his real estate business, and the Trump Towers Istanbul is the Trump Organization’s first and only office and residential building in Europe. Businesses linked to the Turkish government are also major patrons of the Trump Organization. Which may be why Trump has repeatedly sided with the Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been intent on eliminating the Kurds.
Back home, Trump has separated families at the border, locked migrant children in cages and tried to ban Muslims from entering the country. He says he wants to protect America’s borders.
But guarding America’s geographic borders isn’t nearly as important as guarding the integrity of American democracy, which Trump has repeatedly compromised for personal political gain. He did this on 25 July when he asked the president of Ukraine to do him a personal “favor” by digging up dirt on Joe Biden, his most likely 2020 opponent.
Trump justifies his trade war with China as protecting America from Chinese predation. But he asked China to start an investigation of Biden, and last week his adviser on China conceded he spoke with Chinese officials about the former vice-president.
During the 2016 election, Trump publicly called on Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. Within hours, Russian agents sought to do just that by trying to break into her computer servers.
Special counsel Robert Mueller found that Russia sought to help Trump get elected, and Trump’s campaign welcomed the help.
Now Trump is playing at being a double foreign agent – pushing the prime minister of Australia, among others, to gather information to discredit Mueller.
Rudy Giuliani is Trump’s international thug, arranging deals with foreign powers. On Wednesday, two of Giuliani’s business associates were arrested in connection with a criminal scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for office, including donations to a Super Pac formed to support Trump.
Under Trump, thuggery has replaced diplomacy. On Friday, in an opening statement for congressional impeachment investigators, Marie Yovanovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine, said people associated with Giuliani “may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine”.
Meanwhile, even as Trump spews conspiracy theories about the Biden family, his own children are openly profiting from foreign deals. Eric and Don Jr have projects in the works in Ireland, India, Indonesia, Uruguay, Turkey and the Philippines.
Trump is pocketing money from foreign governments eager to curry favor by staying at his hotels. The practice has become so routine that during Trump’s 25 July phone call, the Ukrainian president assured him that the “last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower”.
According to a former Trump Organization official, foreign governments spent more than a million dollars at Trump businesses in 2018, mostly at the Trump International hotel in Washington. Trump will make even more money if he carries out his plan to host next year’s G7 meeting at his Doral golf resort, in Florida.
All of this is precisely what the founding fathers sought to prevent.
When they gathered in Philadelphia 232 years ago to write a constitution, a major goal was to protect the new nation from what Alexander Hamilton called the “desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils”.
To ensure no president would “betray his trust to foreign powers”, as James Madison put it, they included an emoluments clause – barring a president from accepting foreign payments.
They also gave Congress the right to impeach a president for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”. During the Virginia ratifying convention, Edmund Randolph confirmed that a president “may be impeached” if discovered “receiving [help] from foreign powers”.
You don’t have to be an originalist to see the dangers to democracy when a president seeks or receives personal favors from foreign governments. There is no limit to how far a foreign power might go to help a president enlarge his political power and wealth, in exchange for selling out America.
Donald Trump is a xenophobe in public and international mobster in private. He has brazenly sought private gain from foreign governments at the expense of the American people.
This is shameful and criminal. At the very least, it is impeachable.
Trump withdrew American troops from the Syrian-Turkish border, leaving our Kurdish allies to be slaughtered and opening the way for a resurgent Islamic State. Trump’s rationale? He promised to bring our soldiers home.
There could be another reason. Trump never divested from his real estate business, and the Trump Towers Istanbul is the Trump Organization’s first and only office and residential building in Europe. Businesses linked to the Turkish government are also major patrons of the Trump Organization. Which may be why Trump has repeatedly sided with the Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been intent on eliminating the Kurds.
Back home, Trump has separated families at the border, locked migrant children in cages and tried to ban Muslims from entering the country. He says he wants to protect America’s borders.
But guarding America’s geographic borders isn’t nearly as important as guarding the integrity of American democracy, which Trump has repeatedly compromised for personal political gain. He did this on 25 July when he asked the president of Ukraine to do him a personal “favor” by digging up dirt on Joe Biden, his most likely 2020 opponent.
Trump justifies his trade war with China as protecting America from Chinese predation. But he asked China to start an investigation of Biden, and last week his adviser on China conceded he spoke with Chinese officials about the former vice-president.
During the 2016 election, Trump publicly called on Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. Within hours, Russian agents sought to do just that by trying to break into her computer servers.
Special counsel Robert Mueller found that Russia sought to help Trump get elected, and Trump’s campaign welcomed the help.
Now Trump is playing at being a double foreign agent – pushing the prime minister of Australia, among others, to gather information to discredit Mueller.
Rudy Giuliani is Trump’s international thug, arranging deals with foreign powers. On Wednesday, two of Giuliani’s business associates were arrested in connection with a criminal scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for office, including donations to a Super Pac formed to support Trump.
Under Trump, thuggery has replaced diplomacy. On Friday, in an opening statement for congressional impeachment investigators, Marie Yovanovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine, said people associated with Giuliani “may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine”.
Meanwhile, even as Trump spews conspiracy theories about the Biden family, his own children are openly profiting from foreign deals. Eric and Don Jr have projects in the works in Ireland, India, Indonesia, Uruguay, Turkey and the Philippines.
Trump is pocketing money from foreign governments eager to curry favor by staying at his hotels. The practice has become so routine that during Trump’s 25 July phone call, the Ukrainian president assured him that the “last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower”.
According to a former Trump Organization official, foreign governments spent more than a million dollars at Trump businesses in 2018, mostly at the Trump International hotel in Washington. Trump will make even more money if he carries out his plan to host next year’s G7 meeting at his Doral golf resort, in Florida.
All of this is precisely what the founding fathers sought to prevent.
When they gathered in Philadelphia 232 years ago to write a constitution, a major goal was to protect the new nation from what Alexander Hamilton called the “desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils”.
To ensure no president would “betray his trust to foreign powers”, as James Madison put it, they included an emoluments clause – barring a president from accepting foreign payments.
They also gave Congress the right to impeach a president for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”. During the Virginia ratifying convention, Edmund Randolph confirmed that a president “may be impeached” if discovered “receiving [help] from foreign powers”.
You don’t have to be an originalist to see the dangers to democracy when a president seeks or receives personal favors from foreign governments. There is no limit to how far a foreign power might go to help a president enlarge his political power and wealth, in exchange for selling out America.
Donald Trump is a xenophobe in public and international mobster in private. He has brazenly sought private gain from foreign governments at the expense of the American people.
This is shameful and criminal. At the very least, it is impeachable.
Hate for Trump sets new record of Americans who can’t stand a president
September 22, 2019
By Sarah K. Burris - raw story
A new poll shows a record number of Americans can’t stand the president of the United States.
According to the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal public opinion poll, an astounding 69 percent of Americans don’t like Trump personally.
During the early 2000s, President George W. Bush enjoyed the benefit of Americans finding him likable and wanting to “have a beer” with the sober leader. That measure of “likability” has been a kind of inspiration for political leaders searching for voters based not on issues but on personality.
In past elections, favorability of a candidate or leader was key to reelection, but in 2020, that may not be an important factor.
Political analysts have warned that Trump will likely fight his lack of favorability not by being a nicer or better person, but by dragging everyone else down to his level.
Washington Post analyst Aaron Blake explained in July that the Trump campaign knows how to do this because it has already mastered it.
“Given Trump’s long-standing unpopularity, a big question has always been whether he will be able to take the eventual Democratic nominee and drag them down to his level,” Blake wrote. “He showed he could do it in 2016 with Hillary Clinton, who ended the campaign as unpopular as Trump was, but it’s not clear whether he’ll be able to do it again.”
According to the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal public opinion poll, an astounding 69 percent of Americans don’t like Trump personally.
During the early 2000s, President George W. Bush enjoyed the benefit of Americans finding him likable and wanting to “have a beer” with the sober leader. That measure of “likability” has been a kind of inspiration for political leaders searching for voters based not on issues but on personality.
In past elections, favorability of a candidate or leader was key to reelection, but in 2020, that may not be an important factor.
Political analysts have warned that Trump will likely fight his lack of favorability not by being a nicer or better person, but by dragging everyone else down to his level.
Washington Post analyst Aaron Blake explained in July that the Trump campaign knows how to do this because it has already mastered it.
“Given Trump’s long-standing unpopularity, a big question has always been whether he will be able to take the eventual Democratic nominee and drag them down to his level,” Blake wrote. “He showed he could do it in 2016 with Hillary Clinton, who ended the campaign as unpopular as Trump was, but it’s not clear whether he’ll be able to do it again.”
A veteran teacher explains why Trump is incapable of learning
September 18, 2019
By Harriet Feinberg - raw story
While dyslexia has been mentioned now and then as one of the reasons Donald Trump is so ignorant of what it takes to govern in a free society, I want to explore it as foundational to his inability to learn and grow while in office—and also as a way to link disparate troubling elements in his makeup.
So what follows is the informed speculation of a former classroom teacher.
Considering Trump’s well-documented aversion to reading and his difficulty with complex sentence structures when he talks without a script, my hunch is that he has mild to moderate dyslexia, a neurobiological condition that makes it difficult to learn to read and can also affect sentence formation and vocabulary. When he was young it may not have been adequately diagnosed and treated.
Because trying to read was frustrating, as time went on he read as little as possible. Because he experienced humiliation and shame in the early grades when he saw other children acquiring information with ease from books, I believe he came to resent those children who were academically successful, who loved school, and drew the teacher’s praise. His own natural curiosity about the world waned.
Trump has left himself no way to enjoy learning and to benefit from knowledge. As he grew older, he neither had the patience to laboriously read even moderately difficult material. Nor could he enjoy listening to people who knew a lot more about specific realms of knowledge than he did. That felt like school, which he hated. Reporting indicates he still can’t tolerate policy briefings of more than a few minutes.
How does Trump’s difficulty in reading relate to his penchant for uttering falsehoods? I think he began faking when he was six or seven and couldn’t keep up with the other children his age who had learned their letters and were starting to read sentences and little stories. He wanted to be “great” so he made things up. Faking got baked into his personality.
He couldn’t stop now, not for anything.
Trump was fortunate to find a lucrative role in television where he didn’t need to read much and his fakery, tall tales, and grandiosity enhanced his media personality. If only he had stayed there!
Instead, he turned into a president who not only disregards expertise and knowledge but also enjoys surrounding himself with people who are totally unsuited to their offices or are even more ignorant than he.
He especially rejects academics, scientists, and people with deep knowledge of other cultures when they oppose his actions. These people are to be scorned and distanced from his regime. He loves lording it over them and making them unhappy.
Consider his current imposition of very large tariffs on imports from China and elsewhere despite vehement opposition from a whole array of economists, diplomats and international trade experts. He simply cannot allow himself to learn from those people and refuses to admit he has made some bad decisions and should change course.
Estimates are that Trump’s reading level is about fifth grade, maybe fourth or sixth. That’s enough to tweet and to follow a teleprompter, but not enough to comprehend an ordinary longish article in The Wall Street Journal. If there were a way to give him a reading test, I would have someone choose a few such articles, give him three times as long to read them as a typical Journal reader would take, and then ask him for a coherent explanation of what’s in each one.
I would wager thousands of dollars that he couldn’t do it. He could never have read his textbooks at the Wharton School. Someone would have had to read them aloud to him or create “bullet points” so he would grasp the main ideas.
Dyslexia is not predictive of a particular fate but combines with elements in each person’s personality. One person might become an excellent forest guide who knows all the birds, small creatures, and trees intimately and doesn’t need to rely on reading. By contrast, another might undertake a strenuous course of tutoring to maintain grade level in school, be open about his or her reading problem, ask for extra time in exams, and eventually graduate from college with a stellar record. A third might inherit a lot of money, then create and monitor a foundation to help people with various disabilities. A fourth, discouraged, might drop out of school and settle for doing odd jobs in the neighborhood.
And a fifth might fake and falsify his way to fame and power and enjoy lording it over so-called “smart” people and thwarting their hopes. I am suggesting that Trump’s lifelong experience with dyslexia, instead of increasing his capacity for compassion, has instead combined with problematic elements in his personality, including a penchant for revenge that was apparent even when he was a young adult.
The result is a toxic combination of ignorance. Because it was so hard for him to learn from books—coupled with his unwillingness to listen to people with deep knowledge and alternative perspectives—he nurtured resentment and mistrust. He just doesn’t have what it takes to govern thoughtfully and fairly in a free society. Instead he exhibits a combative complacency, a receptivity to unworkable and dangerous ideas, an admiration of dictators, and an almost savage destructive push that is causing severe ongoing harm to our democracy.
Thanks for reading. If my thoughts help people create and implement strategies for resistance and find ways to legally cut Trump’s term short, I will be grateful to have made a contribution.
So what follows is the informed speculation of a former classroom teacher.
Considering Trump’s well-documented aversion to reading and his difficulty with complex sentence structures when he talks without a script, my hunch is that he has mild to moderate dyslexia, a neurobiological condition that makes it difficult to learn to read and can also affect sentence formation and vocabulary. When he was young it may not have been adequately diagnosed and treated.
Because trying to read was frustrating, as time went on he read as little as possible. Because he experienced humiliation and shame in the early grades when he saw other children acquiring information with ease from books, I believe he came to resent those children who were academically successful, who loved school, and drew the teacher’s praise. His own natural curiosity about the world waned.
Trump has left himself no way to enjoy learning and to benefit from knowledge. As he grew older, he neither had the patience to laboriously read even moderately difficult material. Nor could he enjoy listening to people who knew a lot more about specific realms of knowledge than he did. That felt like school, which he hated. Reporting indicates he still can’t tolerate policy briefings of more than a few minutes.
How does Trump’s difficulty in reading relate to his penchant for uttering falsehoods? I think he began faking when he was six or seven and couldn’t keep up with the other children his age who had learned their letters and were starting to read sentences and little stories. He wanted to be “great” so he made things up. Faking got baked into his personality.
He couldn’t stop now, not for anything.
Trump was fortunate to find a lucrative role in television where he didn’t need to read much and his fakery, tall tales, and grandiosity enhanced his media personality. If only he had stayed there!
Instead, he turned into a president who not only disregards expertise and knowledge but also enjoys surrounding himself with people who are totally unsuited to their offices or are even more ignorant than he.
He especially rejects academics, scientists, and people with deep knowledge of other cultures when they oppose his actions. These people are to be scorned and distanced from his regime. He loves lording it over them and making them unhappy.
Consider his current imposition of very large tariffs on imports from China and elsewhere despite vehement opposition from a whole array of economists, diplomats and international trade experts. He simply cannot allow himself to learn from those people and refuses to admit he has made some bad decisions and should change course.
Estimates are that Trump’s reading level is about fifth grade, maybe fourth or sixth. That’s enough to tweet and to follow a teleprompter, but not enough to comprehend an ordinary longish article in The Wall Street Journal. If there were a way to give him a reading test, I would have someone choose a few such articles, give him three times as long to read them as a typical Journal reader would take, and then ask him for a coherent explanation of what’s in each one.
I would wager thousands of dollars that he couldn’t do it. He could never have read his textbooks at the Wharton School. Someone would have had to read them aloud to him or create “bullet points” so he would grasp the main ideas.
Dyslexia is not predictive of a particular fate but combines with elements in each person’s personality. One person might become an excellent forest guide who knows all the birds, small creatures, and trees intimately and doesn’t need to rely on reading. By contrast, another might undertake a strenuous course of tutoring to maintain grade level in school, be open about his or her reading problem, ask for extra time in exams, and eventually graduate from college with a stellar record. A third might inherit a lot of money, then create and monitor a foundation to help people with various disabilities. A fourth, discouraged, might drop out of school and settle for doing odd jobs in the neighborhood.
And a fifth might fake and falsify his way to fame and power and enjoy lording it over so-called “smart” people and thwarting their hopes. I am suggesting that Trump’s lifelong experience with dyslexia, instead of increasing his capacity for compassion, has instead combined with problematic elements in his personality, including a penchant for revenge that was apparent even when he was a young adult.
The result is a toxic combination of ignorance. Because it was so hard for him to learn from books—coupled with his unwillingness to listen to people with deep knowledge and alternative perspectives—he nurtured resentment and mistrust. He just doesn’t have what it takes to govern thoughtfully and fairly in a free society. Instead he exhibits a combative complacency, a receptivity to unworkable and dangerous ideas, an admiration of dictators, and an almost savage destructive push that is causing severe ongoing harm to our democracy.
Thanks for reading. If my thoughts help people create and implement strategies for resistance and find ways to legally cut Trump’s term short, I will be grateful to have made a contribution.
Donald Trump is a deeply stupid man who routinely gets his ass kicked on the world stage
Laurence Lewis for Daily Kos
Community
Sunday September 15, 2019 · 8:40 AM PDT
Donald Trump is a deeply stupid man, and that stupidity is just one of the many ways he is undermining American national security. The latest example was reported this week:
President Donald Trump has left the impression with foreign officials, members of his administration, and others involved in Iranian negotiations that he is actively considering a French plan to extend a $15 billion credit line to the Iranians if Tehran comes back into compliance with the Obama-era nuclear deal.
Trump has in recent weeks shown openness to entertaining President Emmanuel Macron’s plan, according to four sources with knowledge of Trump’s conversations with the French leader. Two of those sources said that State Department officials, including Secretary Mike Pompeo, are also open to weighing the French proposal, in which the Paris government would effectively ease the economic sanctions regime that the Trump administration has applied on Tehran for more than a year.
The deal put forward by France would compensate Iran for oil sales disrupted by American sanctions. A large portion of Iran’s economy relies on cash from oil sales. Most of that money is frozen in bank accounts across the globe. The $15 billion credit line would be guaranteed by Iranian oil. In exchange for the cash, Iran would have to come back into compliance with the nuclear accord it signed with the world’s major powers in 2015. Tehran would also have to agree not to threaten the security of the Persian Gulf or to impede maritime navigation in the area. Lastly, Tehran would have to commit to regional Middle East talks in the future.
Let's be clear: At the end of May, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran was still in compliance with the deal. Iran has been in compliance all along. It was Trump who first threatened to break the deal. The European Union urged Congress to preserve it. And then even though Iran was in compliance with the deal, and it was he who was threatening to break it, Trump also threatened to sanction European businesses that do business with Iran. And then Trump did break the deal. This was a crisis entirely of Trump's own making.
Iran's leaders are not nice, but they are smart. They saw what the Bush-Cheney administration did to Iraq. Saddam Hussein was not Iran’s friend. But he did give up his weapons of mass destruction, and Bush-Cheney took advantage of that. And like all aspirants to nuclear weapons, Iranian leaders understood that they were in a better position to bargain if they had nuclear weapons than if they left themselves open to being invaded and devastated for no reason, the way Iraq was. So Iran ramped up the development of its nuclear weapons program, and then President Obama and the European Union made a deal with them to end that program. They abided by that deal, and then Trump broke it.
Republican presidents are dangerous to national and world security, but none more than Trump. By breaking the deal with Iran, Trump gave Iran the incentive to resume its arms program, which they have done. Which makes the world less safe. Because that's what Trump's ineptitude does: make the world less safe.
Trump's lickspittle Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was outraged that Iran was again ramping up its nuclear weapons program, nevermind why. And with tensions again rising, Trump did what he always does on the world stage: He got his ass kicked. Now he's considering giving Iran $15 billion dollars in credit to get back in compliance with the deal with which it had always been in compliance—until Trump gave them the incentive not to be. That's Trump's artistry in making deals: getting his ass kicked.
North Korea also learned the lesson from the Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq, and now has a rapidly developing nuclear weapons program. North Korea's despotic leader Kim Jong Un also wanted to use his weapons program as a bargaining chip to cut a deal with the economically developed world. He is smart where Trump is stupid, and realized that by flattering Trump, by pretending to like and respect him, he could have his way with Trump. And it worked.
Kim and his father and his grandfather always wanted to be taken seriously on the world stage. It would strengthen them at home. It would legitimize their tyrannous regime. And one big prize they'd always dreamed of attaining was a meeting with an American president. It would make them look big. Every American president, Republican and Democrat, refused to give them that gift. But Kim played Trump for the deeply stupid man that he is and got that meeting.
Kim pretended that he might end his nuclear weapons program, and Republicans and some in the American media even hyperventilated when Kim said he'd like to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, as if Trump had attained something. They were as stupid as Trump, not understanding that denuclearizing the Korean peninsula would mean South Korea no longer was protected by the American nuclear umbrella. This would mean that North Korea's massive conventional military would have overwhelming superiority on the Korean peninsula. Kim went ahead and kept building his nuclear program, and then Trump met with him again.
Trump thought this was a great success, which it was—for Kim. And Trump again got nothing. Kim keeps developing his nuclear weapons program, because Trump got played again. Because Trump is a deeply stupid man who routinely gets his ass kicked on the world stage.
Trump wanted a trade war with China. Because he thought he could bluster and bully and get his way. But like the rest of the world, China is laughing at Trump, when they're not scratching their heads because Trump is so deeply stupid, and his administration so profoundly incompetent that China doesn't even know with whom to negotiate. But Trump got his trade war. Which he is losing. Because he is a deeply stupid man.
Trump's trade war already has cost 300,000 American jobs. And every time he opens his mouth about China, the American stock markets get spooked. And then after threatening to escalate his trade war, Trump backed down, and now desperately wants to find a way out of yet another crisis that is entirely of his own making. Because he has no idea what he’s doing. Because he is a deeply stupid man who routinely gets his ass kicked on the world stage.
This would be funny if it weren't so serious. Trump's trade war could devastate the American economy. A nuclear armed Iran would be bad for everyone. A North Korea that is ramping up its nuclear program is bad for everyone. And that the guy who sits at the big desk in the Oval Office is a deeply stupid man who routinely gets his ass kicked on the world stage also is bad for everyone.
Except for those foreign leaders who routinely kick his ass.
President Donald Trump has left the impression with foreign officials, members of his administration, and others involved in Iranian negotiations that he is actively considering a French plan to extend a $15 billion credit line to the Iranians if Tehran comes back into compliance with the Obama-era nuclear deal.
Trump has in recent weeks shown openness to entertaining President Emmanuel Macron’s plan, according to four sources with knowledge of Trump’s conversations with the French leader. Two of those sources said that State Department officials, including Secretary Mike Pompeo, are also open to weighing the French proposal, in which the Paris government would effectively ease the economic sanctions regime that the Trump administration has applied on Tehran for more than a year.
The deal put forward by France would compensate Iran for oil sales disrupted by American sanctions. A large portion of Iran’s economy relies on cash from oil sales. Most of that money is frozen in bank accounts across the globe. The $15 billion credit line would be guaranteed by Iranian oil. In exchange for the cash, Iran would have to come back into compliance with the nuclear accord it signed with the world’s major powers in 2015. Tehran would also have to agree not to threaten the security of the Persian Gulf or to impede maritime navigation in the area. Lastly, Tehran would have to commit to regional Middle East talks in the future.
Let's be clear: At the end of May, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran was still in compliance with the deal. Iran has been in compliance all along. It was Trump who first threatened to break the deal. The European Union urged Congress to preserve it. And then even though Iran was in compliance with the deal, and it was he who was threatening to break it, Trump also threatened to sanction European businesses that do business with Iran. And then Trump did break the deal. This was a crisis entirely of Trump's own making.
Iran's leaders are not nice, but they are smart. They saw what the Bush-Cheney administration did to Iraq. Saddam Hussein was not Iran’s friend. But he did give up his weapons of mass destruction, and Bush-Cheney took advantage of that. And like all aspirants to nuclear weapons, Iranian leaders understood that they were in a better position to bargain if they had nuclear weapons than if they left themselves open to being invaded and devastated for no reason, the way Iraq was. So Iran ramped up the development of its nuclear weapons program, and then President Obama and the European Union made a deal with them to end that program. They abided by that deal, and then Trump broke it.
Republican presidents are dangerous to national and world security, but none more than Trump. By breaking the deal with Iran, Trump gave Iran the incentive to resume its arms program, which they have done. Which makes the world less safe. Because that's what Trump's ineptitude does: make the world less safe.
Trump's lickspittle Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was outraged that Iran was again ramping up its nuclear weapons program, nevermind why. And with tensions again rising, Trump did what he always does on the world stage: He got his ass kicked. Now he's considering giving Iran $15 billion dollars in credit to get back in compliance with the deal with which it had always been in compliance—until Trump gave them the incentive not to be. That's Trump's artistry in making deals: getting his ass kicked.
North Korea also learned the lesson from the Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq, and now has a rapidly developing nuclear weapons program. North Korea's despotic leader Kim Jong Un also wanted to use his weapons program as a bargaining chip to cut a deal with the economically developed world. He is smart where Trump is stupid, and realized that by flattering Trump, by pretending to like and respect him, he could have his way with Trump. And it worked.
Kim and his father and his grandfather always wanted to be taken seriously on the world stage. It would strengthen them at home. It would legitimize their tyrannous regime. And one big prize they'd always dreamed of attaining was a meeting with an American president. It would make them look big. Every American president, Republican and Democrat, refused to give them that gift. But Kim played Trump for the deeply stupid man that he is and got that meeting.
Kim pretended that he might end his nuclear weapons program, and Republicans and some in the American media even hyperventilated when Kim said he'd like to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, as if Trump had attained something. They were as stupid as Trump, not understanding that denuclearizing the Korean peninsula would mean South Korea no longer was protected by the American nuclear umbrella. This would mean that North Korea's massive conventional military would have overwhelming superiority on the Korean peninsula. Kim went ahead and kept building his nuclear program, and then Trump met with him again.
Trump thought this was a great success, which it was—for Kim. And Trump again got nothing. Kim keeps developing his nuclear weapons program, because Trump got played again. Because Trump is a deeply stupid man who routinely gets his ass kicked on the world stage.
Trump wanted a trade war with China. Because he thought he could bluster and bully and get his way. But like the rest of the world, China is laughing at Trump, when they're not scratching their heads because Trump is so deeply stupid, and his administration so profoundly incompetent that China doesn't even know with whom to negotiate. But Trump got his trade war. Which he is losing. Because he is a deeply stupid man.
Trump's trade war already has cost 300,000 American jobs. And every time he opens his mouth about China, the American stock markets get spooked. And then after threatening to escalate his trade war, Trump backed down, and now desperately wants to find a way out of yet another crisis that is entirely of his own making. Because he has no idea what he’s doing. Because he is a deeply stupid man who routinely gets his ass kicked on the world stage.
This would be funny if it weren't so serious. Trump's trade war could devastate the American economy. A nuclear armed Iran would be bad for everyone. A North Korea that is ramping up its nuclear program is bad for everyone. And that the guy who sits at the big desk in the Oval Office is a deeply stupid man who routinely gets his ass kicked on the world stage also is bad for everyone.
Except for those foreign leaders who routinely kick his ass.
Maureen Dowd: He is a faux tough guy who lets other people do the fighting for him, a needy brat who never accepts responsibility for his actions, an oaf with no trace of courage, class or chivalry.
just what a racist would say!!!
Trump says Bahamas full of 'very bad gang members' as he doubles down on not letting Hurricane Dorian refugees in to US
‘We’re also recovering from the hurricane. Let me explain – large sections of the Bahamas were not hit’
Andrew Buncombe - independent(uk)
9/9/19
Donald Trump has claimed – without evidence – the Bahamas is full of “very bad gang members”, as he defended a decision not to let survivors of Hurricane Dorian enter the US.
A day after survivors of the storm were ordered off a boat from Freeport to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, if they did not have a US visa, and the official death toll on the islands rose to 45, Mr Trump doubled down on a decision not to do more to accommodate those struck by the record-equalling storm.
“We have to be very careful. Everyone needs totally proper documentation. I don’t want to allow people who weren’t supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the United States, including some very bad people,” the president told reporters at the White House.
“Look, the Bahamas had some tremendous problems with people going to the Bahamas that weren’t supposed to be there.”
Without providing evidence to back his claim, he said the nation, that was struck by Dorian as it carried winds of 185 mph, had some “very bad people and some very bad gang members and some very, very bad drug dealers”.
The president, who has placed a tough anti-immigration policy at the centre of his re-election strategy, spoke after an incident in which a number of survivors of the storm were forced off a boat travelling to the US.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, who has emerged as one of the president’s sternest critics on issues of immigration, said the incident marked “the height of cruelty”.
CNN said a spokesman for the US’s customs and border agency, Michael Silva, said that Balearia, the ferry operator, did not properly co-ordinate the evacuation efforts with the US embassy, the Bahamian government and the US agency for international development.
“We’re there to facilitate and accommodate that process in an orderly fashion, according to regulation and protocol. However, Balearia did not do that,” Mr Silva said. “We asked them to co-ordinate ahead of time. They did not that do that.”
Mr Trump claimed that parts of the US were themselves still recovering from the effects of the storm, though he admitted they were not as bad as had been anticipated.
---
Despite his clear reservations, the president said his administration was talking to a “lot of people” about possibly extending temporary protected status, granted to people who cannot safely return to their countries, to immigrants from the Bahamas.
A mounting number of politicians from both major parties are pushing the White House to suspend visa requirements to help reunite Bahamians stranded by Dorian with relatives in the US.
On Monday, acting commissioner of US customs and border protection Mark Morgan told reporters the agency would work to vet all immigrants from the Bahamas for possible threats to national security.
At a White House briefing, Mr Morgan said there had not been “any formal grant” of temporary protected status for Bahamians. Asked if he planned to discuss it with Mr Trump or other White House officials, he said: “I think so.”
“If the history shows that it’s taken a lengthy time to get the Bahamas back to where these people can return to, I’m sure that that will be a discussion that we’d be having,” he said.
In his comments to reporters, Mr Trump also claimed parts of the US were also recovering and that “large sections of the Bahamas were not hit.”
A day after survivors of the storm were ordered off a boat from Freeport to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, if they did not have a US visa, and the official death toll on the islands rose to 45, Mr Trump doubled down on a decision not to do more to accommodate those struck by the record-equalling storm.
“We have to be very careful. Everyone needs totally proper documentation. I don’t want to allow people who weren’t supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the United States, including some very bad people,” the president told reporters at the White House.
“Look, the Bahamas had some tremendous problems with people going to the Bahamas that weren’t supposed to be there.”
Without providing evidence to back his claim, he said the nation, that was struck by Dorian as it carried winds of 185 mph, had some “very bad people and some very bad gang members and some very, very bad drug dealers”.
The president, who has placed a tough anti-immigration policy at the centre of his re-election strategy, spoke after an incident in which a number of survivors of the storm were forced off a boat travelling to the US.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, who has emerged as one of the president’s sternest critics on issues of immigration, said the incident marked “the height of cruelty”.
CNN said a spokesman for the US’s customs and border agency, Michael Silva, said that Balearia, the ferry operator, did not properly co-ordinate the evacuation efforts with the US embassy, the Bahamian government and the US agency for international development.
“We’re there to facilitate and accommodate that process in an orderly fashion, according to regulation and protocol. However, Balearia did not do that,” Mr Silva said. “We asked them to co-ordinate ahead of time. They did not that do that.”
Mr Trump claimed that parts of the US were themselves still recovering from the effects of the storm, though he admitted they were not as bad as had been anticipated.
---
Despite his clear reservations, the president said his administration was talking to a “lot of people” about possibly extending temporary protected status, granted to people who cannot safely return to their countries, to immigrants from the Bahamas.
A mounting number of politicians from both major parties are pushing the White House to suspend visa requirements to help reunite Bahamians stranded by Dorian with relatives in the US.
On Monday, acting commissioner of US customs and border protection Mark Morgan told reporters the agency would work to vet all immigrants from the Bahamas for possible threats to national security.
At a White House briefing, Mr Morgan said there had not been “any formal grant” of temporary protected status for Bahamians. Asked if he planned to discuss it with Mr Trump or other White House officials, he said: “I think so.”
“If the history shows that it’s taken a lengthy time to get the Bahamas back to where these people can return to, I’m sure that that will be a discussion that we’d be having,” he said.
In his comments to reporters, Mr Trump also claimed parts of the US were also recovering and that “large sections of the Bahamas were not hit.”
op-ed: Donald Trump Is a Category 5 Liar
BY William Rivers Pitt, Truthout
PUBLISHED September 4, 2019
Much of the Eastern Seaboard spent the holiday weekend staring down the barrel of a violent and unpredictable storm. Hurricane Dorian, the first of the season to menace the continental U.S., exploded with incredible speed into a Category 5 screamer. As of this writing, Dorian has diminished in strength, but northern Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas remain under threat.
Dorian raked the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama with winds that reached 225 mph and a 23-foot storm surge, leaving unimaginable damage in its wake. It is the strongest hurricane to make landfall since 1935, and the second strongest Atlantic hurricane on record.
Thanks to advancements in meteorological technology, hurricanes have become much more of a predictable phenomenon: We can see them developing a long way off, and we generally have a good idea of where they are going and how strong they will be. This makes them no less terrifying or destructive, but at least people stand a better chance of getting out of the way than they did, say, 30 years ago.
Having this technology in hand is all the more important because of the way climate disruption is serving to turn already huge storms into absolute monsters. Climate change does not create hurricanes, but it does make them stronger.
In the 14 years since the quartet of Emily, Katrina, Rita and Wilma roared out of the ocean in 2005, there have been 11 Category 5 hurricanes, with five of those coming in the last four years. More than 6,000 people were killed by these storms, and Dorian is not yet finished. By comparison, there were four Category 5 hurricanes in the 14 years before 2005. Clearly, the trend — like the storms — is accelerating.
To be simultaneously predictable and terrifying is a trait shared by hurricanes and Donald Trump nowadays. Sadly, Trump has been predictably awful, contradictory and singularly unhelpful in his handling of these crises before, during and after they happen. Despite its predictability, his behavior is also terrifying and destructive.
It is Trump’s essentially deceitful nature that has made his handling of Hurricane Dorian especially confounding and perilous for those in its potential path. Dorian is the fourth Category 5 hurricane to appear during Trump’s time in office, and yet he spent the weekend repeatedly claiming that neither he nor his weather advisers knew a “Category 5” storm could even exist.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard of a Category 5,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “I knew it existed. And I’ve seen some Category 4s. You don’t even see them that much. But a Category 5 is something that, uh, I don’t know that I’ve never even heard the term, other than I know it’s there. That’s the ultimate. And that’s what we have, unfortunately.”
This professed ignorance is an old tune often repeated.
Trump on September 14, 2017: “It actually hit the Keys with a — it was a Category 5. I never even knew a Category 5 existed.”
Trump on September 26, 2017: “It actually touched down as a Category 5. People have never seen anything like that.”
Trump on October 19, 2017: “But then they got hit dead-center, if you look at those maps, by a Category 5. Nobody has ever heard of a [Category] 5 hitting land.”
Trump on May 8, 2019: “Never heard about Category 5’s before. A Category 5 is big stuff.”
Yet, tellingly, there have also been several instances when Trump was transmogrified into a world-class hurricane expert. On multiple occasions after Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Trump made sure reporters knew it was a Category 5 storm — though it was actually a Category 4 when it made landfall on the island — as a means of deflecting criticism from his administration’s lethally torpid response to the storm’s destruction.
Nobody expects a president to have the power to manipulate a storm, especially with nuclear weapons, but presidents are expected to help with preparation and warnings beforehand, and to expedite needed assistance once the hurricane has passed.
Instead, we get a president who tweeted with inaccurate abandon some 122 times over the weekend, leaping subjects from Dorian to Debra Messing along the way. We get a president who played golf while “monitoring” Dorian. We get a president who warned Alabama on Sunday that it “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated,” a pronouncement that motivated the National Weather Service (NWS) to issue an immediate correction: “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian,” tweeted the NWS. “We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama.”
“Although it might seem like a harmless curiosity,” writes weather editor Andrew Freedman for The Washington Post, “Trump’s self-professed ignorance of Category 5 monsters could slow the government’s response to such disasters or contribute to confusion at the highest levels of government as well as among people in harm’s way.”
“Confusion at the highest levels of government” is an interesting statement at this juncture, given that there is currently no permanent director for the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA). The way Trump tells it, however, he likes it that way. “Acting gives you great flexibility that you don’t have with permanent,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “When I like people, I make them permanent, but I can leave acting for a long period of time.”
Trump’s convenient ignorance of the existence of Category 5 hurricanes is the behavior of a man seeking to lie his way out of consequences, even consequences for something he has no real control over. That he simultaneously bellows his thoroughgoing ignorance for all to see as he plays weatherman on Twitter is evidence of someone who enjoys pretending to be president far more than he enjoys the actual responsibilities of the presidency. Hurricane Dorian is just more reality TV for him.
A thousand years ago, give or take a year, legend holds that Canute the Great — whose kingdom spanned from England to Denmark to Norway — carried his throne to the shore and placed it before the waves. Once there, he commanded the tide not to wet his royal feet and robes. The sea, of course, paid him no mind as it ran up the beach and soaked him. Canute did this to show his subjects, and the fawning sycophants at court, that even his power had limits.
Donald Trump is King Canute in reverse. In his desperation to seem powerful and all-knowing, he has instead exposed himself as a truthless, thoroughly inadequate fabulist fool, blown about by the hurricane winds of his own Category 5 ego.
Dorian raked the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama with winds that reached 225 mph and a 23-foot storm surge, leaving unimaginable damage in its wake. It is the strongest hurricane to make landfall since 1935, and the second strongest Atlantic hurricane on record.
Thanks to advancements in meteorological technology, hurricanes have become much more of a predictable phenomenon: We can see them developing a long way off, and we generally have a good idea of where they are going and how strong they will be. This makes them no less terrifying or destructive, but at least people stand a better chance of getting out of the way than they did, say, 30 years ago.
Having this technology in hand is all the more important because of the way climate disruption is serving to turn already huge storms into absolute monsters. Climate change does not create hurricanes, but it does make them stronger.
In the 14 years since the quartet of Emily, Katrina, Rita and Wilma roared out of the ocean in 2005, there have been 11 Category 5 hurricanes, with five of those coming in the last four years. More than 6,000 people were killed by these storms, and Dorian is not yet finished. By comparison, there were four Category 5 hurricanes in the 14 years before 2005. Clearly, the trend — like the storms — is accelerating.
To be simultaneously predictable and terrifying is a trait shared by hurricanes and Donald Trump nowadays. Sadly, Trump has been predictably awful, contradictory and singularly unhelpful in his handling of these crises before, during and after they happen. Despite its predictability, his behavior is also terrifying and destructive.
It is Trump’s essentially deceitful nature that has made his handling of Hurricane Dorian especially confounding and perilous for those in its potential path. Dorian is the fourth Category 5 hurricane to appear during Trump’s time in office, and yet he spent the weekend repeatedly claiming that neither he nor his weather advisers knew a “Category 5” storm could even exist.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard of a Category 5,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “I knew it existed. And I’ve seen some Category 4s. You don’t even see them that much. But a Category 5 is something that, uh, I don’t know that I’ve never even heard the term, other than I know it’s there. That’s the ultimate. And that’s what we have, unfortunately.”
This professed ignorance is an old tune often repeated.
Trump on September 14, 2017: “It actually hit the Keys with a — it was a Category 5. I never even knew a Category 5 existed.”
Trump on September 26, 2017: “It actually touched down as a Category 5. People have never seen anything like that.”
Trump on October 19, 2017: “But then they got hit dead-center, if you look at those maps, by a Category 5. Nobody has ever heard of a [Category] 5 hitting land.”
Trump on May 8, 2019: “Never heard about Category 5’s before. A Category 5 is big stuff.”
Yet, tellingly, there have also been several instances when Trump was transmogrified into a world-class hurricane expert. On multiple occasions after Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Trump made sure reporters knew it was a Category 5 storm — though it was actually a Category 4 when it made landfall on the island — as a means of deflecting criticism from his administration’s lethally torpid response to the storm’s destruction.
Nobody expects a president to have the power to manipulate a storm, especially with nuclear weapons, but presidents are expected to help with preparation and warnings beforehand, and to expedite needed assistance once the hurricane has passed.
Instead, we get a president who tweeted with inaccurate abandon some 122 times over the weekend, leaping subjects from Dorian to Debra Messing along the way. We get a president who played golf while “monitoring” Dorian. We get a president who warned Alabama on Sunday that it “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated,” a pronouncement that motivated the National Weather Service (NWS) to issue an immediate correction: “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian,” tweeted the NWS. “We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama.”
“Although it might seem like a harmless curiosity,” writes weather editor Andrew Freedman for The Washington Post, “Trump’s self-professed ignorance of Category 5 monsters could slow the government’s response to such disasters or contribute to confusion at the highest levels of government as well as among people in harm’s way.”
“Confusion at the highest levels of government” is an interesting statement at this juncture, given that there is currently no permanent director for the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA). The way Trump tells it, however, he likes it that way. “Acting gives you great flexibility that you don’t have with permanent,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “When I like people, I make them permanent, but I can leave acting for a long period of time.”
Trump’s convenient ignorance of the existence of Category 5 hurricanes is the behavior of a man seeking to lie his way out of consequences, even consequences for something he has no real control over. That he simultaneously bellows his thoroughgoing ignorance for all to see as he plays weatherman on Twitter is evidence of someone who enjoys pretending to be president far more than he enjoys the actual responsibilities of the presidency. Hurricane Dorian is just more reality TV for him.
A thousand years ago, give or take a year, legend holds that Canute the Great — whose kingdom spanned from England to Denmark to Norway — carried his throne to the shore and placed it before the waves. Once there, he commanded the tide not to wet his royal feet and robes. The sea, of course, paid him no mind as it ran up the beach and soaked him. Canute did this to show his subjects, and the fawning sycophants at court, that even his power had limits.
Donald Trump is King Canute in reverse. In his desperation to seem powerful and all-knowing, he has instead exposed himself as a truthless, thoroughly inadequate fabulist fool, blown about by the hurricane winds of his own Category 5 ego.
Trump Tries Strong-Arming Jeff Bezos
He Doesn’t Like that the Amazon CEO Owns The Washington Post So He Orders a Hold on a Pentagon Contract
By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport Opinion Editor
8/30/19
You wouldn’t want to leave it to me to defend military procurement procedures.
We’ve become inured to stories about $90,000 toilet seats and the like.
But in the last couple of weeks, we’ve been presented with a seemingly understandable military winnowing process for new computer systems to transform, update and coordinate Pentagon communications and tracking only to find that Donald Trump is sticking his thumb in the process to make political points.
At heart is a decision due on a competitive, 10-year, $10-million contract to ensure that military units and planners are working together. The work to review the bids has been going on for some months, postponed until we had a new, confirmed Secretary of Defense, which we now have in Mark Esper.
Esper had been Army Secretary, and before that, a lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon, dealing with the Pentagon, which is swampy enough for questions, of course. Esper has put a hold on a decision to complete a new examination of the issues.
It looked as if the contract would be going to Amazon Web Services, which has become the country’s dominant cloud computing service provider, though Oracle has been putting on a late spurt of lobbying, along with Microsoft and IBM.
But the more powerful reason for the delay is that Donald Trump has intervened. It looks like a bald attempt to ensure that all involved know that he dislikes Amazon, whose head, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post. Trump hates The Post, which he sees as reflecting too much criticism of his presidency – you know, “fake news” that does not adulate him.
May Still Get the Nod
The contract may still go to Amazon on the merits, but not just because the other competitors had already been ruled out by reviewers for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), the Pentagon’s contracting arm for these services.
Of course, the Pentagon’s spokesman, Johnathan Hoffman, told reporters, “The secretary was not ordered by the president to make any specific determination about JEDI, period.” Yet, his intervention in the contract, a clear overstep of ethical standards, left little doubt about whom he thought should not get the contract. Every protocol in the book says the president should not be putting his thumb on the contract scales.
Esper himself acknowledged to The Post that there was pressure within the government to take a new look at the competitors, but added that as a new guy in the job, he owes it to taxpayers to take a new look.
Trump has made no secret of his animosity for Amazon and Bezos and has brought up related subjects frequently in interviews in the Oval Office.
As it happens, Marty Baron, the editor of The Washington Post, is a personal friend, and a fiercely independent individual and editor well beyond the journalistic grasp of a mere owner of the business. Baron is probably less open to hearing what Bezos thinks than he is to what Trump has to offer about what ought to be reflected in the Post coverage.
Trump’s Animosity
Clearly what is at stake in this deal is highly technical, relatively objective work, measurable by standards that are beyond common sense alone. It’s not clear what besides animosity could be prompting Trump’s involvement.
For its part, Oracle has refused to go away as a bidder, and has launched a noisy legal and public relations campaign against Amazon Web Services. Oracle argued there is a conspiracy by Amazon to monopolize military computing for the next ten years, and apparently a chart used in the arguments was forwarded to Trump.
Oracle also lobbied various congressmen to press its campaign, even going to court in a losing effort to challenge Amazon’s conflicts of interest.
It could also be that the final contract is broken into smaller pieces with several companies being given parts of the whole.
The Pentagon’s financial and technical service planners are following what has become fairly standard corporate practices by moving to cloud computing rather than build, maintain and staff its own computer storage services.
The JEDI contract initially was expected more than a year ago, but was delayed by the various legal challenges.
This is a president who insists that the federal government put its money where his mouth is.
That is called an ethics violation.
We’ve become inured to stories about $90,000 toilet seats and the like.
But in the last couple of weeks, we’ve been presented with a seemingly understandable military winnowing process for new computer systems to transform, update and coordinate Pentagon communications and tracking only to find that Donald Trump is sticking his thumb in the process to make political points.
At heart is a decision due on a competitive, 10-year, $10-million contract to ensure that military units and planners are working together. The work to review the bids has been going on for some months, postponed until we had a new, confirmed Secretary of Defense, which we now have in Mark Esper.
Esper had been Army Secretary, and before that, a lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon, dealing with the Pentagon, which is swampy enough for questions, of course. Esper has put a hold on a decision to complete a new examination of the issues.
It looked as if the contract would be going to Amazon Web Services, which has become the country’s dominant cloud computing service provider, though Oracle has been putting on a late spurt of lobbying, along with Microsoft and IBM.
But the more powerful reason for the delay is that Donald Trump has intervened. It looks like a bald attempt to ensure that all involved know that he dislikes Amazon, whose head, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post. Trump hates The Post, which he sees as reflecting too much criticism of his presidency – you know, “fake news” that does not adulate him.
May Still Get the Nod
The contract may still go to Amazon on the merits, but not just because the other competitors had already been ruled out by reviewers for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), the Pentagon’s contracting arm for these services.
Of course, the Pentagon’s spokesman, Johnathan Hoffman, told reporters, “The secretary was not ordered by the president to make any specific determination about JEDI, period.” Yet, his intervention in the contract, a clear overstep of ethical standards, left little doubt about whom he thought should not get the contract. Every protocol in the book says the president should not be putting his thumb on the contract scales.
Esper himself acknowledged to The Post that there was pressure within the government to take a new look at the competitors, but added that as a new guy in the job, he owes it to taxpayers to take a new look.
Trump has made no secret of his animosity for Amazon and Bezos and has brought up related subjects frequently in interviews in the Oval Office.
As it happens, Marty Baron, the editor of The Washington Post, is a personal friend, and a fiercely independent individual and editor well beyond the journalistic grasp of a mere owner of the business. Baron is probably less open to hearing what Bezos thinks than he is to what Trump has to offer about what ought to be reflected in the Post coverage.
Trump’s Animosity
Clearly what is at stake in this deal is highly technical, relatively objective work, measurable by standards that are beyond common sense alone. It’s not clear what besides animosity could be prompting Trump’s involvement.
For its part, Oracle has refused to go away as a bidder, and has launched a noisy legal and public relations campaign against Amazon Web Services. Oracle argued there is a conspiracy by Amazon to monopolize military computing for the next ten years, and apparently a chart used in the arguments was forwarded to Trump.
Oracle also lobbied various congressmen to press its campaign, even going to court in a losing effort to challenge Amazon’s conflicts of interest.
It could also be that the final contract is broken into smaller pieces with several companies being given parts of the whole.
The Pentagon’s financial and technical service planners are following what has become fairly standard corporate practices by moving to cloud computing rather than build, maintain and staff its own computer storage services.
The JEDI contract initially was expected more than a year ago, but was delayed by the various legal challenges.
This is a president who insists that the federal government put its money where his mouth is.
That is called an ethics violation.
US spies say Trump's G7 performance suggests he's either a 'Russian asset' or a 'useful idiot' for Putin
Sonam Sheth - Business Insider
Aug 29, 2019, 4:17 PM
- Current and former spies are floored by President Donald Trump's fervent defense of Russia at this year's G7 summit in Biarritz, France.
- "It's hard to see the bar anymore since it's been pushed so far down the last few years, but President Trump's behavior over the weekend was a new low," one FBI agent who works in counterintelligence told Insider.
- At the summit, Trump aggressively lobbied for Russia to be readmitted into the G7, refused to hold it accountable for violating international law, blamed former President Barack Obama for Russia's annexation of Crimea, and expressed sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
- One former senior Justice Department official, who worked closely with the former special counsel Robert Mueller when he was the FBI director, told Insider Trump's behavior was "directly out of the Putin playbook. We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office."
- A former CIA operative told Insider the evidence is "overwhelming" that Trump is a Russian agent, but another CIA and NSA veteran said it was more likely Trump was currying favor with Putin for future business deals.
- Meanwhile, a recently retired FBI special agent told Insider that Trump's freewheeling and often unfounded statements make it more likely that he's a "useful idiot" for the Russians. But "it would not surprise me in the least if the Russians had at least one asset in Trump's inner circle."
"It's hard to see the bar anymore since it's been pushed so far down the last few years, but President Trump's behavior over the weekend was a new low."
That was the assessment an FBI agent who works in counterintelligence gave Insider of President Donald Trump's performance at this year's G7 summit in Biarritz, France. The agent requested anonymity because they feared that speaking publicly on the matter would jeopardize their job.
Trump's attendance at the G7 summit was peppered with controversy, but none was more notable than his fervent defense of Russia's military and cyber aggression around the world, and its violation of international law in Ukraine.
Trump repeatedly refused to hold Russia accountable for annexing Crimea in 2014, blamed former President Barack Obama for Russia's move to annex it, expressed sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and castigated other G7 members for not giving the country a seat at the table.
Since being booted from the G8 after annexing Crimea, Russia's done little to make up for its actions. In fact, by many accounts, it's stepped up its aggression.
In addition to continuing to encroach on Ukraine, the Russian government interfered in the 2016 US election and was behind the attempted assassination of a former Russian spy in the UK. US officials also warn that as the 2020 election looms, the Russians are stepping up their cyberactivities against the US and have repeatedly tried to attack US power grids.
"What in God's name made Trump think it would be a good idea to ask to bring Russia back to the table?" the FBI agent told Insider. "How does this serve US national-security interests?"
Trump's advocacy for Russia is renewing concerns among intelligence veterans that Trump may be a Russian "asset" who can be manipulated or influenced to serve Russian interests, although some also speculate that Trump could just be currying favor for future business deals.
'We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office'
A former senior Justice Department official, who worked closely with the former special counsel Robert Mueller when he was FBI director, didn't mince words when reacting to Trump's performance at the G7 summit: "We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office."
"There is no fathomable explanation for why the president said these things," the former official said. "Letting Russia off the hook for bullying smaller countries and then blaming Obama for it? It's directly out of the Putin playbook."
While arguing for Russia to be invited back into the G7, Trump said the country would be helpful in addressing hot-button issues like Iran, Syria, and North Korea and that the alliance was better off with Russia "inside rather than outside."
But Russia is a staunch ally of Syria's Assad regime, and it's also cozied up to Iran in recent years. US military and intelligence officials view Russia as one of the US's foremost rivals and believe it generally stands in opposition to American interests.
Glenn Carle, a former CIA covert operative and frequent Trump critic, told Insider there's been "no question" in his mind for years that the president is behaving like "a spy for the Russians."
"The evidence is so overwhelming that in my 35 years in intelligence, I have never seen anything so certain," Carle said, adding that he's spoken with several intelligence veterans about the matter in the four years since Trump first launched his presidential campaign, many of whom believe Trump's actions are a threat to national security.
"Intelligence assets become convinced to be spies for multiple reasons," Carle, who specialized in getting foreign spies to become turncoats when he was at the CIA, said in an earlier interview with Insider. "It might start with kompromat or financial hooks, and the asset may be convinced he is acting as a patriot until he becomes accustomed to his role."
"Trump clearly responds favorably to praise," he said. "And over the years, the handling officer - Putin, in this case - realizes what the asset wants, and that's what they provide. Trump wants to be told he's the greatest, so that's what you tell him, over and over again, until he comes to believe that is the motivation for his actions."
'A useful idiot' or 'currying favor'
Frank Montoya Jr., a recently retired FBI special agent, told Insider "it's hard not to think the Russians have an asset in the White House." But he added that Trump's erratic behavior and his freewheeling and often false statements imply he's "not playing with a full deck on any matter of state these days."
"Still, those same delusions are what give me pause when conclusions are reached about the likelihood he is a Russian asset," Montoya said. "Useful idiot is more like it."
But given the abundance of meetings and contacts between Trump associates and Russians before, during, and after the election, Montoya said "it would not surprise me in the least if the Russians had at least one asset in Trump's inner circle."
Robert Deitz, a former top lawyer at the CIA and the National Security Agency, agreed that Trump was catering to Putin's interests, but he disagreed on why.
"I think what's going on right now is an Occam's razor scenario," he told Insider, referring to the philosophical theory that the simplest explanation for an event is often the correct one.
"Trump wants to do deals with Russia when he leaves the presidency," Deitz said. "We already know he was interested in building a Trump Tower in Moscow before and during the election. The best way of doing a deal with Putin is to be nice to him, so I think what Trump is doing is currying favor."
He emphasized, however, that regardless of Trump's motives for being subservient to Putin, "it's still harmful" to US interests.
"When Trump goes to bed each night, what do you think his last thoughts are: the welfare of the United States, or the size of his bank account?" Deitz added.
A familiar pattern emerges
Trump's defense of Putin at the G7 summit didn't go unnoticed in Russia.
According to The Washington Post, one show on the state-run Rossiya-1 network played a celebratory soundtrack as it showed six video clips of Trump demanding that Putin be given a seat at the table.
The Russian media analyst Julia Davis said that Kremlin-controlled media reacted to Trump's G7 performance with laughter and mockery.
One anchor rejoiced that "Trump is dancing to Putin's tune," while others were amused by the "maniacal persistence" with which Trump was lobbying for Russia.
This isn't the first time the president has been accused of working to advance Russia's interests ahead of the US's.
Perhaps the sharpest example of this was when Trump and Putin held a bilateral summit in Helsinki last year. After the meeting, Trump stunned the US national-security apparatus and foreign allies when he sided with Russia over the US intelligence community, blamed "both sides" for the deterioration of US-Russia relations, and praised Putin as being "extremely strong and powerful."
In 2017, Trump refused to accept the US intelligence-community finding that Moscow meddled in the 2016 race to propel Trump to the presidency.
That May, he fired FBI director James Comey, who was overseeing the FBI's investigation into Russia's election interference and cited "this Russia thing" as the reason. Two days after firing Comey, Trump shared classified intelligence with two Russian officials in the Oval Office and told them firing Comey had taken "great pressure" off of him.
Shortly after, the FBI began investigating whether Trump was a Russian agent.
The World of Incredible Coincidence
NanceGreggs - demo underground
8/26/19
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he handed them highly classified information in a closed-door meeting in the Oval Office is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he has done everything in his power to undermine investigations into his possible collusion is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he stood on a stage in Helsinki and took Putin’s ‘word for it’ over the overwhelming evidence presented by our own intelligence agencies of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he, his family members, his staff and his GOP enablers repeatedly lied about contacts with the Russians – until those contacts were proven and rendered undeniable – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he has never spoken a word against Putin – but instead has praised him at every opportunity – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he has refused to reveal anything about his one-on-one meetings with Putin – going so far as to confiscate and destroy the translators’ notes of such meetings – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he and his administration have tried (and sometimes succeeded) in lifting sanctions on Russian oligarchs is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he covered-up/lied about his ongoing efforts to build a Trump hotel in Moscow – a highly lucrative project that represents billions of dollars flowing into Trump’s personal bank account – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he is now insisting that Russia be invited back into the G-7, thus ignoring what got them booted from what was once the G-8 in the first place, is just an incredible coincidence.
It is ALL just coincidence. There is no reason to believe that Trump has been compromised in any way by the Russians, no reason to believe that he is Putin’s stooge, no reason to believe that his unwavering support of Putin has anything to do with Vlad’s having this “pResident’s” political and financial balls in a vise.
If you believe in incredible coincidences, Trump is a shining example of how such coincidences can be easily explained away – as long as you also believe that what you hear isn't really what you've heard, what you see isn't really what you've seen, and facts simply don’t matter at all.
It is settled fact that Russia is our enemy - just as it is a proven fact that they did everything possible to put Trump in the White House. To dismiss Trump's oh-so-obvious kow-towing to Putin as an 'incredible coincidence' is as ludicrous as dismissing acknowledged facts as 'fake news'.
There is nothing that "pResident Trump" has said or done that hasn't put Russia's interests ahead of the interests of the US, or ahead of the interests of the global community.
The only real coincidence happening here is that the low-info, low IQ, brain-dead voters are the only group that believes in incredible coincidences - which, given their ignorance, is not a coincidence at all.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he has done everything in his power to undermine investigations into his possible collusion is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he stood on a stage in Helsinki and took Putin’s ‘word for it’ over the overwhelming evidence presented by our own intelligence agencies of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he, his family members, his staff and his GOP enablers repeatedly lied about contacts with the Russians – until those contacts were proven and rendered undeniable – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he has never spoken a word against Putin – but instead has praised him at every opportunity – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he has refused to reveal anything about his one-on-one meetings with Putin – going so far as to confiscate and destroy the translators’ notes of such meetings – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he and his administration have tried (and sometimes succeeded) in lifting sanctions on Russian oligarchs is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he covered-up/lied about his ongoing efforts to build a Trump hotel in Moscow – a highly lucrative project that represents billions of dollars flowing into Trump’s personal bank account – is just an incredible coincidence.
Trump did not collude with the Russians. The fact that he is now insisting that Russia be invited back into the G-7, thus ignoring what got them booted from what was once the G-8 in the first place, is just an incredible coincidence.
It is ALL just coincidence. There is no reason to believe that Trump has been compromised in any way by the Russians, no reason to believe that he is Putin’s stooge, no reason to believe that his unwavering support of Putin has anything to do with Vlad’s having this “pResident’s” political and financial balls in a vise.
If you believe in incredible coincidences, Trump is a shining example of how such coincidences can be easily explained away – as long as you also believe that what you hear isn't really what you've heard, what you see isn't really what you've seen, and facts simply don’t matter at all.
It is settled fact that Russia is our enemy - just as it is a proven fact that they did everything possible to put Trump in the White House. To dismiss Trump's oh-so-obvious kow-towing to Putin as an 'incredible coincidence' is as ludicrous as dismissing acknowledged facts as 'fake news'.
There is nothing that "pResident Trump" has said or done that hasn't put Russia's interests ahead of the interests of the US, or ahead of the interests of the global community.
The only real coincidence happening here is that the low-info, low IQ, brain-dead voters are the only group that believes in incredible coincidences - which, given their ignorance, is not a coincidence at all.
A Clear And Present Danger To The Republic
Joe Conason - The National Memo
August 21, 2019
Whenever Donald Trump makes a remark that embarrasses our country before the world, conventional analysis suggests that this is yet another instance of his infantile narcissism. So we were told again when the president of the United States insulted Denmark, one of the founding nations of NATO and a dedicated American ally, by canceling his scheduled trip to meet with the Danish prime minister — supposedly because she had deemed his scheme to buy Greenland “absurd,” which of course it is.
His visit to Denmark was originally requested by Trump, which made its abrupt, petulant cancellation all the more insulting to the Danes. The usual anonymous sources explained that he had other reasons to break the date, such as his aversion to flying overseas and his aversion to Barack Obama, who is also scheduled to visit Denmark next month.
When Trump appears to lose control — and follows up by suggesting that he is “the chosen one” or “the King of Israel” — it seems natural to worry that he is mentally ill. And that is one way to interpret his behavior.
But it isn’t the only explanation.
We consider Trump’s behavior bizarre because it is so incongruous with what we expect from an American president — whose sworn duty, after all, is to act in the national interest. But what if he is consciously acting against the national interest? That disturbing question arises again and again, as it did during the Russia investigation, because almost everything Trump does can be viewed as inimical to the nation. The Danish incident is only the latest example in the long list that shows a certain method to his supposed “madness.”
In one way or another, Trump has denigrated or undermined American relationships with nearly all of our traditional allies, sometimes repeatedly. He has complained publicly about the French, the Germans, the British, the Australians, to name a few of the most important, and slammed the European Union as a trading and military partner. Indeed, he has strenuously sought to destroy the EU while befriending the so-called populist far right — the heirs of our fascist enemy. That approach to European affairs just happens to coincide perfectly with the political aims of the Russian Federation.
Meanwhile Trump has abandoned long-standing US policy on human rights, not only committing violations on our border but encouraging dictators around the world. Within the space of a few days this year he berated the Canadian prime minister, our friend and ally, while praising the murderous dictator of North Korea. Maybe that was just crazy, or maybe it was something else.
At home, Trump never stops promoting the same divisive themes that pollute our political system, courtesy of the Russian bots sent by his friend Vladimir Putin. For some reason, Trump won’t allow anyone to record his meetings with Putin as would normally be the case. Perhaps he doesn’t want anyone to hear the Russian dictator expressing appreciation for Trump’s long campaign to undermine the FBI counter-intelligence division, which exists to thwart Kremlin espionage.
But then Trump has sought to discredit and disorganize the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States, most recently with his attempted appointment of a lunatic Congressman from Texas as the director of national intelligence. Putin must also be quite grateful for Trump’s systematic effort to destroy American diplomatic capacity, by appointing non-entities to run the State Department while leaving half of its posts unfilled.
Like the trade war that is decimating our agricultural heartland — among the US economy’s most vital sectors — these recurring acts of sabotage are cited by his supporters as evidence of his “nationalism.” They are nothing of the kind. They are inflicting damage that our most determined enemies could never have dreamed possible before he entered the Oval Office.
You can tell yourself it’s all merely proof of his mental instability, his narcissistic compulsions, his ignorance and stupidity. Or you can wonder, as I sometimes do, whether something rational and sinister lies behind this troubling pattern.
Either way, Trump is a clear and present danger to our republic.
His visit to Denmark was originally requested by Trump, which made its abrupt, petulant cancellation all the more insulting to the Danes. The usual anonymous sources explained that he had other reasons to break the date, such as his aversion to flying overseas and his aversion to Barack Obama, who is also scheduled to visit Denmark next month.
When Trump appears to lose control — and follows up by suggesting that he is “the chosen one” or “the King of Israel” — it seems natural to worry that he is mentally ill. And that is one way to interpret his behavior.
But it isn’t the only explanation.
We consider Trump’s behavior bizarre because it is so incongruous with what we expect from an American president — whose sworn duty, after all, is to act in the national interest. But what if he is consciously acting against the national interest? That disturbing question arises again and again, as it did during the Russia investigation, because almost everything Trump does can be viewed as inimical to the nation. The Danish incident is only the latest example in the long list that shows a certain method to his supposed “madness.”
In one way or another, Trump has denigrated or undermined American relationships with nearly all of our traditional allies, sometimes repeatedly. He has complained publicly about the French, the Germans, the British, the Australians, to name a few of the most important, and slammed the European Union as a trading and military partner. Indeed, he has strenuously sought to destroy the EU while befriending the so-called populist far right — the heirs of our fascist enemy. That approach to European affairs just happens to coincide perfectly with the political aims of the Russian Federation.
Meanwhile Trump has abandoned long-standing US policy on human rights, not only committing violations on our border but encouraging dictators around the world. Within the space of a few days this year he berated the Canadian prime minister, our friend and ally, while praising the murderous dictator of North Korea. Maybe that was just crazy, or maybe it was something else.
At home, Trump never stops promoting the same divisive themes that pollute our political system, courtesy of the Russian bots sent by his friend Vladimir Putin. For some reason, Trump won’t allow anyone to record his meetings with Putin as would normally be the case. Perhaps he doesn’t want anyone to hear the Russian dictator expressing appreciation for Trump’s long campaign to undermine the FBI counter-intelligence division, which exists to thwart Kremlin espionage.
But then Trump has sought to discredit and disorganize the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States, most recently with his attempted appointment of a lunatic Congressman from Texas as the director of national intelligence. Putin must also be quite grateful for Trump’s systematic effort to destroy American diplomatic capacity, by appointing non-entities to run the State Department while leaving half of its posts unfilled.
Like the trade war that is decimating our agricultural heartland — among the US economy’s most vital sectors — these recurring acts of sabotage are cited by his supporters as evidence of his “nationalism.” They are nothing of the kind. They are inflicting damage that our most determined enemies could never have dreamed possible before he entered the Oval Office.
You can tell yourself it’s all merely proof of his mental instability, his narcissistic compulsions, his ignorance and stupidity. Or you can wonder, as I sometimes do, whether something rational and sinister lies behind this troubling pattern.
Either way, Trump is a clear and present danger to our republic.
Virginia winemaker Eric Trump has a big grin on his face — and one of daddy’s signature issues may be the reason why
August 7, 2019
By Dana Kennedy, DCReport @ RawStory - Commentary
Is Trump hoping that his threatened new tax on French wine might benefit his son’s poorly-reviewed Trump Winery in the vineyards of Virginia?
No one inside the lush halls of the Miraval winery, co-owned by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt with a French partner and located in Provence, wanted to answer that question this week. But the French receptionist who picked up the phone kept laughing. “C’est amusant,” she said.
What was so funny? The international catfight—call it the wine wars—between President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron that’s erupted over a new 3% tax to be levied on the revenues earned by big U.S. digital companies in France.
Trump was furious—or at least he pretended to be—by the so-called GAFA (stands for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) tax and retaliated by threatening to impose tariffs on French wine which he called inferior to the American brand.
The U.S. has also launched a Section 301 investigation into France’s new digital tax, marking a new low in Franco-American relations.
‘Always Liked American Wines’
“They shouldn’t have done this,” Trump said. “I told them, I said, ‘Don’t do it because if you do it, I’m going to tax your wine.'”
He added, “I’ve always liked American wines better than French wines—even though I don’t drink wine.”
Trump called Macron out for his “foolishness” in enacting the tax and the French Agricultural Minister Didier Guillaume fired back on local TV a few days later.
“It’s absurd, in terms of having a political and economic debate, to say that if you tax the ‘GAFAs’, I’ll tax wine. It’s completely moronic,” Guillaume told BFM TV. “American wine is not better than French wine,” he added.
‘Grape Jelly’
Some suggested that Eric Trump’s vineyards in Charlottesville could benefit if the president slaps a tax on French wine. However, Trump Winery was savaged in a Vanity Fair review that described the wine taste as “Welch’s grape jelly with alcohol.”
It’s unlikely, then, that Trump wine will get a boost over French wines like the Jolie-Pitt Miraval rosé, a shock bestseller in the U.S. since it was rolled out in 2012 and now consistently ranked one of the best wines in the world.
“French wine is sold as a premium,” said Rémi Bourgeot, an economist at IRIS, the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs. “Even if Trump targets it, he won’t have that much of an impact. People aren’t going to stop buying French wine.”
A Smokescreen
Bourgeot said that the wine kerfuffle may actually be a smokescreen for Trump’s more overarching ambitions in his trade wars with Europe.
For one thing, Trump has no right to be angry at Macron. America’s Big Tech gets away with information highway robbery in countries like France. They avoid paying the same taxes as local companies via complicated, shady-sounding schemes that European economists like to call “financial engineering” but which are all legal, thanks to the European Union’s lack of a unified tax code.
Certain countries, notably Luxembourg and Ireland, offer bargain corporate taxes of between 10% and 14% to woo big US digital and multinational companies.
Facebook, Google, Apple and Airbnb, among others, have their European headquarters in Dublin or Cork. Since 2003, Amazon Europe has been based in Luxembourg, once called the “financial secrecy death star” by the Tax Justice Network. So Amazon gets to sell products in France, but it avoids the roughly 32% French corporate income tax by going through Luxembourg.
Trump knows this, said Bourgeot, who believes his real goal is to force the EU to reduce the German trade surplus and lower trade barriers between the U.S. and Europe.
“The real issue is the German trade surplus, especially German cars,” Bourgeot said. “It’s caused a big imbalance in Europe but every time Trump criticizes the Germans, Macron defends them. So now he’s leaning on Macron by threatening a wine tax over GAFA. This is all very tit for tat trade bargaining. Trump’s base may applaud him for taxing French wine but he’s got ulterior motives. He’s been focusing on China but those of us in Europe knew we were next in line.”
No one inside the lush halls of the Miraval winery, co-owned by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt with a French partner and located in Provence, wanted to answer that question this week. But the French receptionist who picked up the phone kept laughing. “C’est amusant,” she said.
What was so funny? The international catfight—call it the wine wars—between President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron that’s erupted over a new 3% tax to be levied on the revenues earned by big U.S. digital companies in France.
Trump was furious—or at least he pretended to be—by the so-called GAFA (stands for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) tax and retaliated by threatening to impose tariffs on French wine which he called inferior to the American brand.
The U.S. has also launched a Section 301 investigation into France’s new digital tax, marking a new low in Franco-American relations.
‘Always Liked American Wines’
“They shouldn’t have done this,” Trump said. “I told them, I said, ‘Don’t do it because if you do it, I’m going to tax your wine.'”
He added, “I’ve always liked American wines better than French wines—even though I don’t drink wine.”
Trump called Macron out for his “foolishness” in enacting the tax and the French Agricultural Minister Didier Guillaume fired back on local TV a few days later.
“It’s absurd, in terms of having a political and economic debate, to say that if you tax the ‘GAFAs’, I’ll tax wine. It’s completely moronic,” Guillaume told BFM TV. “American wine is not better than French wine,” he added.
‘Grape Jelly’
Some suggested that Eric Trump’s vineyards in Charlottesville could benefit if the president slaps a tax on French wine. However, Trump Winery was savaged in a Vanity Fair review that described the wine taste as “Welch’s grape jelly with alcohol.”
It’s unlikely, then, that Trump wine will get a boost over French wines like the Jolie-Pitt Miraval rosé, a shock bestseller in the U.S. since it was rolled out in 2012 and now consistently ranked one of the best wines in the world.
“French wine is sold as a premium,” said Rémi Bourgeot, an economist at IRIS, the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs. “Even if Trump targets it, he won’t have that much of an impact. People aren’t going to stop buying French wine.”
A Smokescreen
Bourgeot said that the wine kerfuffle may actually be a smokescreen for Trump’s more overarching ambitions in his trade wars with Europe.
For one thing, Trump has no right to be angry at Macron. America’s Big Tech gets away with information highway robbery in countries like France. They avoid paying the same taxes as local companies via complicated, shady-sounding schemes that European economists like to call “financial engineering” but which are all legal, thanks to the European Union’s lack of a unified tax code.
Certain countries, notably Luxembourg and Ireland, offer bargain corporate taxes of between 10% and 14% to woo big US digital and multinational companies.
Facebook, Google, Apple and Airbnb, among others, have their European headquarters in Dublin or Cork. Since 2003, Amazon Europe has been based in Luxembourg, once called the “financial secrecy death star” by the Tax Justice Network. So Amazon gets to sell products in France, but it avoids the roughly 32% French corporate income tax by going through Luxembourg.
Trump knows this, said Bourgeot, who believes his real goal is to force the EU to reduce the German trade surplus and lower trade barriers between the U.S. and Europe.
“The real issue is the German trade surplus, especially German cars,” Bourgeot said. “It’s caused a big imbalance in Europe but every time Trump criticizes the Germans, Macron defends them. So now he’s leaning on Macron by threatening a wine tax over GAFA. This is all very tit for tat trade bargaining. Trump’s base may applaud him for taxing French wine but he’s got ulterior motives. He’s been focusing on China but those of us in Europe knew we were next in line.”
Trump encouraged his own daughter to release a sex tape: New York Magazine
August 5, 2019
By Sarah K. Burris - Raw Story
A recent profile on Ivanka Trump has revealed a lot about her self-obsession and lack of self-awareness, as well as her obsession with an Ayn Rand character who used her beauty to outwit her opponents. But it also divulged the president’s fascination with Paris Hilton’s sex tape, reported New York Magazine.
The piece talked about Ivanka’s perfected roll as the “dutiful daughter,” who “never talked back or even rolled her eyes,” even when he does cringe-worthy things.
“Among the members of New York society in the ’90s and early aughts, [Donald Trump] was seen as a credit clown, a joke, but never to Ivanka,” the profile outlined. “His chauvinism frustrated her, however, and she was repelled by the way he talked about women’s bodies — who was fat, who was not.”
But after Paris Hilton’s sex tape was posted to the internet in 2003, the president couldn’t stop talking about it.
“Paris is laughing all the way to the bank, she’s got the last laugh, she’s marvelous,” Trump allegedly said.
“Ivanka could not believe her father was not only idolizing an airhead heiress caught blowing a guy on a night-vision video but encouraging her to follow Paris’s lead.”
When asked about the recollection, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham denied the account, calling it “untrue and disgusting.”
“The thing with Paris hurt Ivanka a lot,” a friend told New York Magazine. “He was heartbreaking to her at times.”
The piece said that she “buried her feelings and moved on,” thinking her father’s feelings about women were “complicated.”
“Donald hired many women at the Trump Organization, she knew, and these women weren’t universally pretty; he wanted to employ women with traditionally masculine attitudes and almost enjoyed feeling discomfited by them, having them boss him around,” the piece continued. “Her father may have had issues with women, she felt, but he did not meet the textbook definition of a misogynist — a belief she seems to hold to the present day.”
Read the full piece in New York Magazine.
The piece talked about Ivanka’s perfected roll as the “dutiful daughter,” who “never talked back or even rolled her eyes,” even when he does cringe-worthy things.
“Among the members of New York society in the ’90s and early aughts, [Donald Trump] was seen as a credit clown, a joke, but never to Ivanka,” the profile outlined. “His chauvinism frustrated her, however, and she was repelled by the way he talked about women’s bodies — who was fat, who was not.”
But after Paris Hilton’s sex tape was posted to the internet in 2003, the president couldn’t stop talking about it.
“Paris is laughing all the way to the bank, she’s got the last laugh, she’s marvelous,” Trump allegedly said.
“Ivanka could not believe her father was not only idolizing an airhead heiress caught blowing a guy on a night-vision video but encouraging her to follow Paris’s lead.”
When asked about the recollection, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham denied the account, calling it “untrue and disgusting.”
“The thing with Paris hurt Ivanka a lot,” a friend told New York Magazine. “He was heartbreaking to her at times.”
The piece said that she “buried her feelings and moved on,” thinking her father’s feelings about women were “complicated.”
“Donald hired many women at the Trump Organization, she knew, and these women weren’t universally pretty; he wanted to employ women with traditionally masculine attitudes and almost enjoyed feeling discomfited by them, having them boss him around,” the piece continued. “Her father may have had issues with women, she felt, but he did not meet the textbook definition of a misogynist — a belief she seems to hold to the present day.”
Read the full piece in New York Magazine.
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Racism, Inc.: How Donald Trump profits from xenophobia
Until we understand how Trump profits from his racism, we won’t be able to effectively counter it
SOPHIA A. MCCLENNEN - Salon
JULY 21, 2019 10:00AM (UTC)
...The more racist Trump is; the more successful he is. As disturbing as this may be to process, it is simply true. This means that calling out Trump for his racism, as important and ethically necessary and self-satisfying as it may be, is not going to make any sort of difference. But what might be of interest — and what might work as a counter-strategy — is calling attention to the various ways that he has profited from these tactics.
Trump benefits from his racism in four key ways. If we want to take his fascist tendencies seriously, we first need to understand how they work.
Trump’s racism bolsters his media coverage and his control of the media narrative
Every time Trump goes on a racist rant he dominates the media coverage. Each racist meltdown allows him to turn the news media focus entirely to him. From there, Trump and his supporters come to occupy a tremendous amount — if not all — of the news cycle. In fact, well before Trump was a political candidate his birther attacks on President Barack Obama gave him a significant stream of media coverage — one that may well have helped position him to win the Republican primary.[...]
Trump’s racism builds up strength with his supporters
The blatant racism of a number of Trump supporters has been an uncomfortable truth, but, again, these facts have been open and present for years now. Each time Trump has the gall to voice his racism publicly it only stokes and energizes the racist segments of society that support him.
---
But perhaps the most perplexing part of the story is the way this behavior plays with those Trump supporters who are not racist, or at least not openly and unashamedly racist. Recall when Samantha Bee interviewed a series of college-educated Trump supporters in March 2016, well before the general election. Her goal was to try to understand how this group of people could make a case for supporting Trump.
In case we need reminding, at the time, Trump was openly calling for his Muslim ban and he was also already associated with KKK leader David Duke. When Bee asked about those connections, the college-educated Trump supporters immediately came up with excuses for him. Then, when she asked the one African American member of the group about Trump’s openly racist comments, the interviewee simply answered that Trump “speaks in an old way.”
What she found, and what has since been confirmed in various studies, is that those Trump voters who don’t agree with his racism just brush it off, make excuses for it, blame negative media coverage, or say that they don’t think he really means it. What happens with this group is a classic case of confirmation bias. Thinking of Trump as racist is incongruent for these supporters, so they just won’t do it.
This means that when he goes off on a xenophobic rant he is able to energize his racist base while being ignored by his other supporters. He literally has nothing to lose.
Trump’s racism allows him to sow division and build loyalty
The one silver lining to Trump’s mainstreaming of racism may be the way that it can mobilize unity among the left. Days before his recent racist rant, the Democratic Party was in conflict with Nancy Pelosi expressing disdain for the very same congresswomen Trump would later attack. Trump’s attack on them, though, pulled the party back behind them in an effort to offer a united front.
---
Trump makes money off of his racism
Much of the critical focus on Trump’s racism centers on identity politics, political values, and notions of democracy. But possibly the strongest case against Trump’s racism is the way he makes money from it. While many Democratic politicians have called out Trump for his outrageous comments, few have underscored the way that Trump’s racism has had tangible economic benefits for him.
The Trump administration’s immigration policies have created a multi-billion dollar industry. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses a slew of private contractors, many of which have contributed to Trump’s campaign. As Truthout reports, ICE contracts with private security corporations to run some of the 250 immigrant detention facilities across the United States. And In These Times reports that ICE spent $1.7 billion on close to 5,000 contractors in 2017.
The top two private companies contracted to manage detained immigrants include The GEO Group and CoreCivic. Both have contributed to the Trump campaign.
Whether or not Trump is a direct recipient of campaign funds from these companies is less the point, though, because the overall move to privatize public operations is in keeping with Trump’s pro-corporate political agenda. While the privatization of prisons and detention facilities pre-dates the Trump era, there is little doubt that his administration has accelerated and expanded its reach. According to Bianca Tylek, director of the Corrections Accountability Project, “The immigration system is used as a vehicle to extract wealth from communities, or at the very least as a vehicle to launder taxpayer money into the private sector.”
Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren has been one of the few candidates to emphasize that the core problem here is that of profit. As long as private contractors can generate revenue from this system, they will spend money on lobbyists and politicians to protect their business and they, too, can potentially stoke the racist flames that keep their business thriving.
One way to counter this trend is to call it out and to protest the companies connected to the detention industry. A growing group of protesters and activists has turned their focus to highlighting how various companies are profiting economically from institutionalized racism. A recent protest held in New York City, for example, centered on drawing attention to the ties between JPMorgan and the detention industry. In These Times reports that since Trump took office, JPMorgan has increased its stockholdings in Geo Group and CoreCivic 15,600 percent. They also reveal that JPMorgan has provided at least $167.5 million in debt financing to the two companies. Protests like the one held in New York help educate the public about these practices. Any effort to counteract Trump’s racist agenda will depend on making racist revenue more visible.
Trump profits from his racism, then, in four key ways. It helps him control the media, build loyalty, sow division, and make money while advancing his pro-corporate agenda. Until we grasp the various ways he benefits from racism, we aren’t going to make any progress in stopping it. That means that calling Trump racist isn't enough. It wasn't enough in 2016 and it will be even less so in 2020.
Trump benefits from his racism in four key ways. If we want to take his fascist tendencies seriously, we first need to understand how they work.
Trump’s racism bolsters his media coverage and his control of the media narrative
Every time Trump goes on a racist rant he dominates the media coverage. Each racist meltdown allows him to turn the news media focus entirely to him. From there, Trump and his supporters come to occupy a tremendous amount — if not all — of the news cycle. In fact, well before Trump was a political candidate his birther attacks on President Barack Obama gave him a significant stream of media coverage — one that may well have helped position him to win the Republican primary.[...]
Trump’s racism builds up strength with his supporters
The blatant racism of a number of Trump supporters has been an uncomfortable truth, but, again, these facts have been open and present for years now. Each time Trump has the gall to voice his racism publicly it only stokes and energizes the racist segments of society that support him.
---
But perhaps the most perplexing part of the story is the way this behavior plays with those Trump supporters who are not racist, or at least not openly and unashamedly racist. Recall when Samantha Bee interviewed a series of college-educated Trump supporters in March 2016, well before the general election. Her goal was to try to understand how this group of people could make a case for supporting Trump.
In case we need reminding, at the time, Trump was openly calling for his Muslim ban and he was also already associated with KKK leader David Duke. When Bee asked about those connections, the college-educated Trump supporters immediately came up with excuses for him. Then, when she asked the one African American member of the group about Trump’s openly racist comments, the interviewee simply answered that Trump “speaks in an old way.”
What she found, and what has since been confirmed in various studies, is that those Trump voters who don’t agree with his racism just brush it off, make excuses for it, blame negative media coverage, or say that they don’t think he really means it. What happens with this group is a classic case of confirmation bias. Thinking of Trump as racist is incongruent for these supporters, so they just won’t do it.
This means that when he goes off on a xenophobic rant he is able to energize his racist base while being ignored by his other supporters. He literally has nothing to lose.
Trump’s racism allows him to sow division and build loyalty
The one silver lining to Trump’s mainstreaming of racism may be the way that it can mobilize unity among the left. Days before his recent racist rant, the Democratic Party was in conflict with Nancy Pelosi expressing disdain for the very same congresswomen Trump would later attack. Trump’s attack on them, though, pulled the party back behind them in an effort to offer a united front.
---
Trump makes money off of his racism
Much of the critical focus on Trump’s racism centers on identity politics, political values, and notions of democracy. But possibly the strongest case against Trump’s racism is the way he makes money from it. While many Democratic politicians have called out Trump for his outrageous comments, few have underscored the way that Trump’s racism has had tangible economic benefits for him.
The Trump administration’s immigration policies have created a multi-billion dollar industry. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses a slew of private contractors, many of which have contributed to Trump’s campaign. As Truthout reports, ICE contracts with private security corporations to run some of the 250 immigrant detention facilities across the United States. And In These Times reports that ICE spent $1.7 billion on close to 5,000 contractors in 2017.
The top two private companies contracted to manage detained immigrants include The GEO Group and CoreCivic. Both have contributed to the Trump campaign.
Whether or not Trump is a direct recipient of campaign funds from these companies is less the point, though, because the overall move to privatize public operations is in keeping with Trump’s pro-corporate political agenda. While the privatization of prisons and detention facilities pre-dates the Trump era, there is little doubt that his administration has accelerated and expanded its reach. According to Bianca Tylek, director of the Corrections Accountability Project, “The immigration system is used as a vehicle to extract wealth from communities, or at the very least as a vehicle to launder taxpayer money into the private sector.”
Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren has been one of the few candidates to emphasize that the core problem here is that of profit. As long as private contractors can generate revenue from this system, they will spend money on lobbyists and politicians to protect their business and they, too, can potentially stoke the racist flames that keep their business thriving.
One way to counter this trend is to call it out and to protest the companies connected to the detention industry. A growing group of protesters and activists has turned their focus to highlighting how various companies are profiting economically from institutionalized racism. A recent protest held in New York City, for example, centered on drawing attention to the ties between JPMorgan and the detention industry. In These Times reports that since Trump took office, JPMorgan has increased its stockholdings in Geo Group and CoreCivic 15,600 percent. They also reveal that JPMorgan has provided at least $167.5 million in debt financing to the two companies. Protests like the one held in New York help educate the public about these practices. Any effort to counteract Trump’s racist agenda will depend on making racist revenue more visible.
Trump profits from his racism, then, in four key ways. It helps him control the media, build loyalty, sow division, and make money while advancing his pro-corporate agenda. Until we grasp the various ways he benefits from racism, we aren’t going to make any progress in stopping it. That means that calling Trump racist isn't enough. It wasn't enough in 2016 and it will be even less so in 2020.
A Canadian cartoonist was fired for this cartoon. Demovictory9 - Demo Undergound
Trump has brought ‘naked racism to the White House’ — and ‘Republicans absolutely love him for it’: Charles Blow
July 15, 2019
By Travis Gettys - Raw Story
President Donald Trump has long ago removed any doubt that he’s a “raging racist,” said columnist Charles Blow, but he continues to offer new reminders to appeal to the racists who support him.
The president launched racist attacks Sunday morning at the four Democratic lawmakers feuding with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Blow wrote in his New York Times column argued that Trump’s tweets betrayed his white nationalist ideology.
“The central framing of this kind of thinking is that this is a white country, founded and built by white men, and destined to be maintained as a white country,” Blow wrote. “For anyone to be accepted as truly American they must assimilate and acquiesce to that narrative, to bow to that heritage and bend to those customs.”
White supremacy is based on a lie, Blow wrote, because the United States expanded through bloodshed and broken treaties with Native Americans, and built its wealth through enslaving blacks, and he argued that anti-Muslim bigotry and xenophobia were being folded into the anti-black racism that had always existed.
“White people and whiteness are the center of the Trump presidency,” Blow wrote. “His primary concern is to defend, protect and promote it. All that threatens it must be attacked and assaulted. Trump is bringing the force of the American presidency to the rescue of white supremacy. And, self-identified Republicans absolutely love him for it.”
“We are watching a very dark chapter in this nation’s history unfold in real time,” he added. “We are watching as a president returns naked racism to the White House. And we are watching as fellow citizens — possibly a third of them — reveal to us their open animus for us through their continued support of him.”
The president launched racist attacks Sunday morning at the four Democratic lawmakers feuding with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Blow wrote in his New York Times column argued that Trump’s tweets betrayed his white nationalist ideology.
“The central framing of this kind of thinking is that this is a white country, founded and built by white men, and destined to be maintained as a white country,” Blow wrote. “For anyone to be accepted as truly American they must assimilate and acquiesce to that narrative, to bow to that heritage and bend to those customs.”
White supremacy is based on a lie, Blow wrote, because the United States expanded through bloodshed and broken treaties with Native Americans, and built its wealth through enslaving blacks, and he argued that anti-Muslim bigotry and xenophobia were being folded into the anti-black racism that had always existed.
“White people and whiteness are the center of the Trump presidency,” Blow wrote. “His primary concern is to defend, protect and promote it. All that threatens it must be attacked and assaulted. Trump is bringing the force of the American presidency to the rescue of white supremacy. And, self-identified Republicans absolutely love him for it.”
“We are watching a very dark chapter in this nation’s history unfold in real time,” he added. “We are watching as a president returns naked racism to the White House. And we are watching as fellow citizens — possibly a third of them — reveal to us their open animus for us through their continued support of him.”
Trump cruising to big Electoral College loss — according to model that predicted the 2018 blue wave
on July 1, 2019
By Travis Gettys - Raw Story
An election model that accurately predicted Democratic congressional gains last year is forecasting a big loss for President Donald Trump next year.
The election forecast model designed by Rachel Bitecofer, assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, predicts Trump will fall well short of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win re-election, reported the Washington Examiner.
Bitecofer’s model sees Trump losing the Electoral College by a 297-197 total after three key states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — flip back to the Democrats.
“Trump’s 2016 path to the White House was the political equivalent of getting dealt a Royal Flush in poker,” Bitecofer said. “It’s probably not replicable in 2020 with an agitated Democratic electorate.”
An energized Democratic base would most likely drown out a predicted increase in Republican voters in 2020, according to Bitecofer.
“The country’s hyperpartisan and polarized environment has largely set the conditions of the 2020 election in stone,” Bitecofer said. “The complacent electorate of 2016, who were convinced Trump would never be president, has been replaced with the terrified electorate of 2020. Under my model, that distinction is not only important, it is everything,” she added.
Bitecofer’s model accurately predicted a 42-seat pickup for Democrats in the House, where they actually gained 40 seats.
The election forecast model designed by Rachel Bitecofer, assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, predicts Trump will fall well short of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win re-election, reported the Washington Examiner.
Bitecofer’s model sees Trump losing the Electoral College by a 297-197 total after three key states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — flip back to the Democrats.
“Trump’s 2016 path to the White House was the political equivalent of getting dealt a Royal Flush in poker,” Bitecofer said. “It’s probably not replicable in 2020 with an agitated Democratic electorate.”
An energized Democratic base would most likely drown out a predicted increase in Republican voters in 2020, according to Bitecofer.
“The country’s hyperpartisan and polarized environment has largely set the conditions of the 2020 election in stone,” Bitecofer said. “The complacent electorate of 2016, who were convinced Trump would never be president, has been replaced with the terrified electorate of 2020. Under my model, that distinction is not only important, it is everything,” she added.
Bitecofer’s model accurately predicted a 42-seat pickup for Democrats in the House, where they actually gained 40 seats.
Soph0571 - demo underground. ....a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit.
MSNBC Pundit’s Truth Bomb: Trump Appeal All About Racism
On Deadline White House, Donny Deutsch identifies what Trump 2016 was really about, and it's no different now. In fact, it's worse.
By Aliza Worthington - Crooks & Liars
6/19/19 5:36am
Nicolle Wallace and her panel discussed Trump's ridiculousness regarding the new polling numbers showing him doing pretty poorly in comparison to several of the 491 Democratic candidates running for president in 2020. To be sure, there's lots of material there, since adding Trump to any topic of conversation increases the ridiculousness ratio exponentially.
But enough with the math talk. The Deadline White House crew was discussing why the latest polls show Trump doing badly against the Dems in match-ups, and Donny Deutsch tried to throw cold water on the whole thing.
I want to caution everybody about these polls. When I see polls that says Elizabeth Warren beating or even with Donald Trump in Texas, I say, "No." I love Elizabeth Warren, that's just not true. You know it, I know it. To me, more than ever, the first time around in the polls we missed by a few points because people were guilty about admitting they were voting for trump. They're MORE guilty now. If you really think about this, think about the way polls are conducted. And, particularly because I believe it's all about racism, Make America Great Again was Make America White Again, and he keeps going down and down. Think about it. A stranger called you up and now you're basically endorsing this behavior. I think these polls are probably less accurate than any polls in the history of polling. Doesn't mean he's in trouble but not to this extent.
You don't say! All Trump was ever about was racism? And people were too embarrassed to say so over the phone to pollsters? Well, that's an interesting take, and I agree with some of it...namely that Trump is all racism all the time, and I so appreciate any and all of my fellow white people who shout that from the rooftops as often as possible. So, sincerely, it's great to hear Deutsch that point so clearly. And he's absolutely correct that polls are ever inaccurate and not to be relied upon — especially this early.
I'm not sure I buy that people are embarrassed to say they support him, though. Especially given the uptick in hate crime since his 2015 campaign and 2016 election. Especially given the number of Proud Boys who showed up at his rally in Orlando. Especially given the fact that the only thing WORKING for him is his racism.
Listen, maybe there are certain segments of society that support Trump and also recognize that it's unsavory or impolitic to express that affinity publicly. And to those people, we say, "Fuck your mealy-mouth hypocritical racist psycho greedy @sses." But in the privacy of their own home, with the anonymity of a phone poll provides? I doubt these cowards would bother to hold back their opinions just to be polite.
But enough with the math talk. The Deadline White House crew was discussing why the latest polls show Trump doing badly against the Dems in match-ups, and Donny Deutsch tried to throw cold water on the whole thing.
I want to caution everybody about these polls. When I see polls that says Elizabeth Warren beating or even with Donald Trump in Texas, I say, "No." I love Elizabeth Warren, that's just not true. You know it, I know it. To me, more than ever, the first time around in the polls we missed by a few points because people were guilty about admitting they were voting for trump. They're MORE guilty now. If you really think about this, think about the way polls are conducted. And, particularly because I believe it's all about racism, Make America Great Again was Make America White Again, and he keeps going down and down. Think about it. A stranger called you up and now you're basically endorsing this behavior. I think these polls are probably less accurate than any polls in the history of polling. Doesn't mean he's in trouble but not to this extent.
You don't say! All Trump was ever about was racism? And people were too embarrassed to say so over the phone to pollsters? Well, that's an interesting take, and I agree with some of it...namely that Trump is all racism all the time, and I so appreciate any and all of my fellow white people who shout that from the rooftops as often as possible. So, sincerely, it's great to hear Deutsch that point so clearly. And he's absolutely correct that polls are ever inaccurate and not to be relied upon — especially this early.
I'm not sure I buy that people are embarrassed to say they support him, though. Especially given the uptick in hate crime since his 2015 campaign and 2016 election. Especially given the number of Proud Boys who showed up at his rally in Orlando. Especially given the fact that the only thing WORKING for him is his racism.
Listen, maybe there are certain segments of society that support Trump and also recognize that it's unsavory or impolitic to express that affinity publicly. And to those people, we say, "Fuck your mealy-mouth hypocritical racist psycho greedy @sses." But in the privacy of their own home, with the anonymity of a phone poll provides? I doubt these cowards would bother to hold back their opinions just to be polite.
The Best People review: how Trump flooded the swamp
Lloyd Green
The Guardian
Sun 16 Jun 2019 01.00 EDT
The swamp remains fetid. Just blocks away from the White House, the Trump International Hotel hoovers greenbacks from foreign governments. On the west coast, word seeps out that the president sold his Beverly Hills mansion at an inflated price to a Virgin Islands-registered company linked to an Indonesian businessman-cum-Trump business partner. From New York, reports that a Kushner family investment vehicle recycles offshore cash and petrodollars.
So much for America First and the emoluments clause.
At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, together with Elaine Chao, his wife and Trump’s secretary of transportation, have transformed their day jobs into a taxpayer-fundedfamily business. Chao reportedly acts as a human “bridge” to the Chinese government on behalf of her kin’s China-centric maritime ventures. The Department of Transportation plays adjunct to her husband’s re-election bid.
This is what American kakistocracy looks like.
Alexander Nazaryan’s The Best People is another story for our turbulent times. Subtitled Trump’s Cabinet and the Siege on Washington, the Yahoo News correspondent’s portrait of Trump and his world receives direct assists from an on-the-record interview with the president, from Steve Bannon and from sundry government officials and spectators.
Few look good. Delusion and disappointment abound. Trump admits that some of his appointees were “clinkers”. Yet the president boasts that “there are those that say we have one of the finest cabinets”.
Trump is also captured blaming Kellyanne Conway for Bob Woodward’s less than flattering picture of him in Fear, the Washington Post man’s latest tale of a dysfunctional administration and a wrath-filled president. With Conway in the room, Trump tells Nazaryan she failed to advise him that Woodward had “asked 10 times for a meeting”. Had Conway conveyed the message, Trump asserts, Fear “would have been a little bit of a different book”.
Perhaps. The same way the Mueller report would have been a different kind of report if Trump had faced off against the special counsel.
These days, Conway also runs the gauntlet of her husband’s anti-Trump tweets and pro-impeachment op-eds and an official recommendation that she be bounced from the West Wing for violating the Hatch Act. Apparently, Conway went way too far in blurring the line between her day job and electoral politics.
But in Trumpworld, so what? Bet on her staying where she is. The law is meant for suckers and others.
Bannon, the brains behind Trump’s election upset, once a senior adviser, casts a wide and generally damning net: “Here’s the brutal reality … There was not a deep bench of talent that could step in to the government and run things.” As to be expected he unloads on Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and first head of the Trump transition. But he also dumps on Steve Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, calling him an “errand boy” for Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire behind the Blackstone Group who is also a Trump buddy.
In his takedown of Mnuchin, Bannon adds: “I thought Wall Street would go through fucking conniptions because he’s not a heavy hitter.” He may have spoken too soon. Mnuchin is now tasked with negotiating the debt ceiling and budget in the shadow of the 2020 campaign. A hunch: Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will eat him alive.
Bannon has kind words for Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, who was ultimately shoved out the door and shared a lawyer with Bannon. Ladling out praise, Bannon refers to McGahn packing the bench with conservatives, undoing the legacy of the New Deal and gutting the so-called administrative state, making him the “most significant White House counsel in the history of the republic” with the exception FDR and Harry Truman’s guy, Samuel Rosenman.
The Best People also lays out the fates of the “formers”, cabinet officials who were not long for the world of government. There is Tom Price, the former health secretary; there is Ryan Zinke, the former secretary of the interior; and there is Scott Pruitt, the former director of the Environmental Protection Agency. None had any business being in the cabinet. Ever.
At best they were clueless, at worst self-aggrandizing and brazenly venal. As Elijah Cummings, now chair of House committee on oversight and reform, exclaimed: “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
If all this sounds chaotic, it was and remains so. The Best People also describes how during the transition, Trump’s “beachhead” teams took a lackadaisical approach to scoping out their agencies and departments, emitting little more than mere impressions of ineptitude and a dearth of seriousness. One official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development complained that Trump’s team possessed only an “‘elementary understanding’ of federal housing policy”. The nuts and bolts of government were not their thing. Then again, Trump is not much of a reader.
Members of the transition left to become lobbyists, notwithstanding a supposed lobbying ban. As Politico reported in May 2017: “Three months after Trump moved into the White House, at least nine people who worked on his transition have registered as lobbyists.” Trump promised to drain the swamp. Instead, it has grown murkier than ever.
Although unemployment sits under 4% and the economy grows, the electorate is dissatisfied. Early polls show Trump down by double digits to Joe Biden. As for other Democrats, the numbers project a foot race. In other words, Trump’s unpopularity has placed a ceiling on his upside. The tumult that characterizes his tenure has eclipsed the economy, arguably his signature achievement.
And yet, as The Best People impresses upon its readers, Trump was repeatedly warned that governing is not the same as campaigning. Routinized order, ethics and structure all matter. The seeds of the president’s possible electoral downfall were sown with his election in 2016. If not earlier.
So much for America First and the emoluments clause.
At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, together with Elaine Chao, his wife and Trump’s secretary of transportation, have transformed their day jobs into a taxpayer-fundedfamily business. Chao reportedly acts as a human “bridge” to the Chinese government on behalf of her kin’s China-centric maritime ventures. The Department of Transportation plays adjunct to her husband’s re-election bid.
This is what American kakistocracy looks like.
Alexander Nazaryan’s The Best People is another story for our turbulent times. Subtitled Trump’s Cabinet and the Siege on Washington, the Yahoo News correspondent’s portrait of Trump and his world receives direct assists from an on-the-record interview with the president, from Steve Bannon and from sundry government officials and spectators.
Few look good. Delusion and disappointment abound. Trump admits that some of his appointees were “clinkers”. Yet the president boasts that “there are those that say we have one of the finest cabinets”.
Trump is also captured blaming Kellyanne Conway for Bob Woodward’s less than flattering picture of him in Fear, the Washington Post man’s latest tale of a dysfunctional administration and a wrath-filled president. With Conway in the room, Trump tells Nazaryan she failed to advise him that Woodward had “asked 10 times for a meeting”. Had Conway conveyed the message, Trump asserts, Fear “would have been a little bit of a different book”.
Perhaps. The same way the Mueller report would have been a different kind of report if Trump had faced off against the special counsel.
These days, Conway also runs the gauntlet of her husband’s anti-Trump tweets and pro-impeachment op-eds and an official recommendation that she be bounced from the West Wing for violating the Hatch Act. Apparently, Conway went way too far in blurring the line between her day job and electoral politics.
But in Trumpworld, so what? Bet on her staying where she is. The law is meant for suckers and others.
Bannon, the brains behind Trump’s election upset, once a senior adviser, casts a wide and generally damning net: “Here’s the brutal reality … There was not a deep bench of talent that could step in to the government and run things.” As to be expected he unloads on Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and first head of the Trump transition. But he also dumps on Steve Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, calling him an “errand boy” for Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire behind the Blackstone Group who is also a Trump buddy.
In his takedown of Mnuchin, Bannon adds: “I thought Wall Street would go through fucking conniptions because he’s not a heavy hitter.” He may have spoken too soon. Mnuchin is now tasked with negotiating the debt ceiling and budget in the shadow of the 2020 campaign. A hunch: Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will eat him alive.
Bannon has kind words for Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, who was ultimately shoved out the door and shared a lawyer with Bannon. Ladling out praise, Bannon refers to McGahn packing the bench with conservatives, undoing the legacy of the New Deal and gutting the so-called administrative state, making him the “most significant White House counsel in the history of the republic” with the exception FDR and Harry Truman’s guy, Samuel Rosenman.
The Best People also lays out the fates of the “formers”, cabinet officials who were not long for the world of government. There is Tom Price, the former health secretary; there is Ryan Zinke, the former secretary of the interior; and there is Scott Pruitt, the former director of the Environmental Protection Agency. None had any business being in the cabinet. Ever.
At best they were clueless, at worst self-aggrandizing and brazenly venal. As Elijah Cummings, now chair of House committee on oversight and reform, exclaimed: “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
If all this sounds chaotic, it was and remains so. The Best People also describes how during the transition, Trump’s “beachhead” teams took a lackadaisical approach to scoping out their agencies and departments, emitting little more than mere impressions of ineptitude and a dearth of seriousness. One official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development complained that Trump’s team possessed only an “‘elementary understanding’ of federal housing policy”. The nuts and bolts of government were not their thing. Then again, Trump is not much of a reader.
Members of the transition left to become lobbyists, notwithstanding a supposed lobbying ban. As Politico reported in May 2017: “Three months after Trump moved into the White House, at least nine people who worked on his transition have registered as lobbyists.” Trump promised to drain the swamp. Instead, it has grown murkier than ever.
Although unemployment sits under 4% and the economy grows, the electorate is dissatisfied. Early polls show Trump down by double digits to Joe Biden. As for other Democrats, the numbers project a foot race. In other words, Trump’s unpopularity has placed a ceiling on his upside. The tumult that characterizes his tenure has eclipsed the economy, arguably his signature achievement.
And yet, as The Best People impresses upon its readers, Trump was repeatedly warned that governing is not the same as campaigning. Routinized order, ethics and structure all matter. The seeds of the president’s possible electoral downfall were sown with his election in 2016. If not earlier.
"maga" by not paying your bills!!!
Actually, 10 Cities Are Reportedly Waiting For Trump Campaign To Pay $841,000 In Rally Bills
Five of them have been stuck with unpaid bills dating back to 2016, according to an investigation by The Center for Public Integrity and NBC.
By Mary Papenfuss - Huff Post
06/13/2019 11:29 pm ET
Officials in El Paso complained last week that they were still waiting for President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign to pay up for expenses related to providing extra police, fire department and other services for a rally months ago. Now it turns out there are nine more cities across the country that haven’t received a dime from the campaign for similar charges, according to The Center for Public Integrity.
Five of the 10 invoices date back to 2016, when Donald Trump was campaigning to become president.
Ironically, Trump often gushes at rallies about police officers and other brave first responders, but his campaign is apparently stiffing police and firefighters across the nation.
“Do we love law enforcement or what?” he asked at a rally in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, in October. Apparently, his campaign didn’t love them enough to even bother to respond to a $16,191 bill for city police and other safety costs, according to the report by the nonprofit CPI in conjunction with NBC and CNBC.
The expenses can be significant, especially for smaller towns like Lebanon, population 21,000. The Trump campaign bill would cover two days of police force operations there, according to CPI.
The Trump campaign owes a total of $841,219 to cities from Burlington, Vermont, to Green Bay and Eau Claire in Wisconsin, Mesa, Arizona, and Spokane, Washington, according to invoices. The largest bill — $470,000 — was for El Paso for a February rally, including $381,000 for extra police and $61,000 for fire department services. Erie, Pennsylvania; Billings, Montana; and Tucson, Arizona, are also still waiting for payment.
“When one considers how much money campaigns raise and spend, it does not seem unreasonable to expect some degree of reimbursement for such demands for service,” Richard Myers, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, told CPI.
El Paso’s mayor, Dee Margo, called it a “character integrity issue” when people “don’t pay their bills.”
Spokane City Council member Kate was even less diplomatic: “Let’s be honest, when does Trump ever pay his bills?” she asked CPI, referring to his multiple bankruptcies and lawsuits filed against him for nonpayment of bills.
Trump rally officials don’t typically sign a contract with cities, according to CPI, but the events incur significant extra safety costs involving police and fire personnel, and the Secret Service demands stepped-up support. Many cities simply absorb the extra costs for any political rally and don’t charge politicians or campaigns. Some have opted specifically not to charge the Trump campaign, according to CPI.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a HuffPost request for comment, nor did it respond to CPI.
When asked earlier this month about the El Paso bill by ABC News, a Trump campaign spokesman indicated that the city may have overcharged the campaign. Michael Glassner, Trump Campaign CEO, told ABC: “We are reviewing” the bill.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s campaign, Beto for America, paid up his total $29,000 El Paso rally tab for a March event by May O’Rourke is a former congressman from El Paso.
RELATED: Trump still owes D.C. $7 million in inauguration costs as he plans July Fourth gala
President Trump’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial on the Fourth of July is expected to drive up security costs for an annual event that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to the nation’s capital. But the president has still not fully paid the bi ... (WaPo)
Five of the 10 invoices date back to 2016, when Donald Trump was campaigning to become president.
Ironically, Trump often gushes at rallies about police officers and other brave first responders, but his campaign is apparently stiffing police and firefighters across the nation.
“Do we love law enforcement or what?” he asked at a rally in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, in October. Apparently, his campaign didn’t love them enough to even bother to respond to a $16,191 bill for city police and other safety costs, according to the report by the nonprofit CPI in conjunction with NBC and CNBC.
The expenses can be significant, especially for smaller towns like Lebanon, population 21,000. The Trump campaign bill would cover two days of police force operations there, according to CPI.
The Trump campaign owes a total of $841,219 to cities from Burlington, Vermont, to Green Bay and Eau Claire in Wisconsin, Mesa, Arizona, and Spokane, Washington, according to invoices. The largest bill — $470,000 — was for El Paso for a February rally, including $381,000 for extra police and $61,000 for fire department services. Erie, Pennsylvania; Billings, Montana; and Tucson, Arizona, are also still waiting for payment.
“When one considers how much money campaigns raise and spend, it does not seem unreasonable to expect some degree of reimbursement for such demands for service,” Richard Myers, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, told CPI.
El Paso’s mayor, Dee Margo, called it a “character integrity issue” when people “don’t pay their bills.”
Spokane City Council member Kate was even less diplomatic: “Let’s be honest, when does Trump ever pay his bills?” she asked CPI, referring to his multiple bankruptcies and lawsuits filed against him for nonpayment of bills.
Trump rally officials don’t typically sign a contract with cities, according to CPI, but the events incur significant extra safety costs involving police and fire personnel, and the Secret Service demands stepped-up support. Many cities simply absorb the extra costs for any political rally and don’t charge politicians or campaigns. Some have opted specifically not to charge the Trump campaign, according to CPI.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a HuffPost request for comment, nor did it respond to CPI.
When asked earlier this month about the El Paso bill by ABC News, a Trump campaign spokesman indicated that the city may have overcharged the campaign. Michael Glassner, Trump Campaign CEO, told ABC: “We are reviewing” the bill.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s campaign, Beto for America, paid up his total $29,000 El Paso rally tab for a March event by May O’Rourke is a former congressman from El Paso.
RELATED: Trump still owes D.C. $7 million in inauguration costs as he plans July Fourth gala
President Trump’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial on the Fourth of July is expected to drive up security costs for an annual event that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to the nation’s capital. But the president has still not fully paid the bi ... (WaPo)
i am not a traitor, i am just stupid!!!
Trump defends remarks about accepting information from foreign government
BY BRETT SAMUELS - The Hill
06/13/19 09:20 AM EDT
President Trump on Thursday defended his comment that he would listen if a foreign entity offered damaging information on a political opponent, equating it to his contacts with foreign governments as part of his role as president.
In a series of tweets, the president sought to downplay the significance of his comment a day earlier to ABC News, which critics argued invited a foreign power to interfere in the 2020 election and some Democrats highlighted as reason to begin impeachment proceedings.
Trump first suggested listening to damaging information from a foreign actor was equivalent to holding diplomatic meetings with foreign heads of state, while later arguing Democrats were guilty of improper contacts.
"I meet and talk to 'foreign governments' every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Whales, the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about 'Everything!'" Trump tweeted.
"Should I immediately call the FBI about these calls and meetings?" he continued. "How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again."
Trump then blamed the press for not playing the entirety of his answer, which was broadcast on Wednesday night in an interview with ABC News.
I meet and talk to “foreign governments” every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Whales, the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about “Everything!” Should I immediately.....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2019
.....call the FBI about these calls and meetings? How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again. With that being said, my full answer is rarely played by the Fake News Media. They purposely leave out the part that matters.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2019Trump wasn't discussing conversations during state visits with allied governments in the interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, but instead was talking about a situation in which a potential rival foreign government offered more clandestine information on a political opponent.
Trump told the ABC host that he would not call the FBI in such a situation, even though Trump's own FBI director has said that is the right protocol for such a situation.
Told that by Stephanopoulos, Trump said the FBI director was wrong.
"I think you might want to listen. There’s nothing wrong with listening," Trump said in the interview. "It’s not an interference. They have information. I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI."
Trump on Thursday morning attempted to deflect attention to Democrats by alleging his campaign was spied on and that Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) had improper contacts with Russian nationals.
A spokeswoman for Warner responded that she had "NO idea" what Trump was referring to.
In a series of tweets, the president sought to downplay the significance of his comment a day earlier to ABC News, which critics argued invited a foreign power to interfere in the 2020 election and some Democrats highlighted as reason to begin impeachment proceedings.
Trump first suggested listening to damaging information from a foreign actor was equivalent to holding diplomatic meetings with foreign heads of state, while later arguing Democrats were guilty of improper contacts.
"I meet and talk to 'foreign governments' every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Whales, the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about 'Everything!'" Trump tweeted.
"Should I immediately call the FBI about these calls and meetings?" he continued. "How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again."
Trump then blamed the press for not playing the entirety of his answer, which was broadcast on Wednesday night in an interview with ABC News.
I meet and talk to “foreign governments” every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Whales, the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about “Everything!” Should I immediately.....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2019
.....call the FBI about these calls and meetings? How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again. With that being said, my full answer is rarely played by the Fake News Media. They purposely leave out the part that matters.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2019Trump wasn't discussing conversations during state visits with allied governments in the interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, but instead was talking about a situation in which a potential rival foreign government offered more clandestine information on a political opponent.
Trump told the ABC host that he would not call the FBI in such a situation, even though Trump's own FBI director has said that is the right protocol for such a situation.
Told that by Stephanopoulos, Trump said the FBI director was wrong.
"I think you might want to listen. There’s nothing wrong with listening," Trump said in the interview. "It’s not an interference. They have information. I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI."
Trump on Thursday morning attempted to deflect attention to Democrats by alleging his campaign was spied on and that Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) had improper contacts with Russian nationals.
A spokeswoman for Warner responded that she had "NO idea" what Trump was referring to.
These are the 7 biggest failures of Trumponomics
June 11, 2019
By Robert Reich - Commentary - Raw Story
Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress keep crowing about the economy, when in reality Trumponomics has been a disaster. Here are its 7 biggest failures:
1. Trump promised to bring down America’s trade deficit “as fast as possible.” Instead, the trade deficit has hit an all-time high. The United States is now purchasing more goods and services from the rest of the world than we sell abroad than at any time in history.
2. As a presidential candidate in 2016, he said he could completely eliminate the federal debt in 8 years. Instead, the federal debt has exploded thanksto Trump and the GOP’s $1.9 trillion tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. They’re already using the growing debt to threaten cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
3. He promised to boost the wages of American workers, including a $4,000 pay raise for the average American family. Instead, wages for most Americans have been flat, adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, over the same period, corporate profits have soared and the rich have become far richer, but the gains haven’t trickled down.
4. His administration said that corporations would invest their savings from tax cuts. Instead, corporations spent more money buying back shares of their own stock in 2018 than they invested in new equipment or facilities. These stock buybacks provide no real benefit for the economy, but boost executive bonuses and payouts for wealthy investors.
5. He promised a tax cut for middle-class families. Instead most Americans will end up paying more by 2027.
6. He promised to keep jobs in America and crack down on companies that ship jobs overseas. Instead, his tax law has created financial incentives for corporations to expand their operations abroad. Trump’s trade wars have also encouraged companies like Harley Davidson to move production overseas.
7. He promised to “drain the swamp” of Washington lobbyists. Instead, he’s put them in charge of health, safety, and environmental protections–which has endangered most Americans while increasing corporate profits even further.
The real recipe for economic growth is to invest in Americans–in their health, education, job training, and infrastructure.
But Trumponomics has exploded the deficit, hurt ordinary Americans, and lined the pockets of the wealthy and corporations.
Don’t let Trump and Republicans claim otherwise.
1. Trump promised to bring down America’s trade deficit “as fast as possible.” Instead, the trade deficit has hit an all-time high. The United States is now purchasing more goods and services from the rest of the world than we sell abroad than at any time in history.
2. As a presidential candidate in 2016, he said he could completely eliminate the federal debt in 8 years. Instead, the federal debt has exploded thanksto Trump and the GOP’s $1.9 trillion tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. They’re already using the growing debt to threaten cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
3. He promised to boost the wages of American workers, including a $4,000 pay raise for the average American family. Instead, wages for most Americans have been flat, adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, over the same period, corporate profits have soared and the rich have become far richer, but the gains haven’t trickled down.
4. His administration said that corporations would invest their savings from tax cuts. Instead, corporations spent more money buying back shares of their own stock in 2018 than they invested in new equipment or facilities. These stock buybacks provide no real benefit for the economy, but boost executive bonuses and payouts for wealthy investors.
5. He promised a tax cut for middle-class families. Instead most Americans will end up paying more by 2027.
6. He promised to keep jobs in America and crack down on companies that ship jobs overseas. Instead, his tax law has created financial incentives for corporations to expand their operations abroad. Trump’s trade wars have also encouraged companies like Harley Davidson to move production overseas.
7. He promised to “drain the swamp” of Washington lobbyists. Instead, he’s put them in charge of health, safety, and environmental protections–which has endangered most Americans while increasing corporate profits even further.
The real recipe for economic growth is to invest in Americans–in their health, education, job training, and infrastructure.
But Trumponomics has exploded the deficit, hurt ordinary Americans, and lined the pockets of the wealthy and corporations.
Don’t let Trump and Republicans claim otherwise.
The cost of a criminal in the White House!!!
Trump Using Marine One As A Prop To Promote His Irish Golf Course
Minutes after Trump left his course at Doonbeg, it posted video of his arrival there aboard a government helicopter and him getting ready to tee off in promotional material.
By S.V. Date - Huff Post
06/07/2019 11:47 am ET
President Donald Trump’s for-profit golf course in Ireland on Friday started using video of his arrival aboard Marine One and of him getting ready to tee off in its promotional material.
Videos were posted on the Trump International Golf Links, Doonbeg, Twitter feed within minutes of his departure back to Washington. Trump played golf there at least Friday morning and possibly on Wednesday and Thursday, as well. The video of him on the first tee, with the Atlantic Ocean in the background, was also posted on the resort’s Facebook page.
The addition of Ireland to this week’s itinerary taking him to London and Normandy cost U.S. taxpayers at least $3.6 million beyond what the trip would have cost otherwise, according to a preliminary HuffPost analysis of the extra travel and security costs.
That would bring the total for Trump’s golf vacations during his first two and a half years in office to $105.8 million.
“At this point, it appears that Donald Trump views his presidency as just another way to support his business,” said Jordan Libowitz of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government. “On an international trip at taxpayer expense, he stopped by to film a commercial for his Irish golf course, which is advertising the stop explicitly as one by the president of the United States. His own lawyers, in their ‘Conflict of Interest’ white paper, said this would not happen. But at this point, it’s clear all that matters to President Trump is what makes him money.”
The White House declined to comment for this story.
(After HuffPost began making inquiries about the posts, Trump’s golf resort appeared to delete them. HuffPost, however, captured screenshots of all three videos and was able to download the two that were posted to Twitter.)
Trump had already spent 178 days of his first 2½ years in office on a golf course, all but two of which have been on his own properties. (He has played twice in Japan at the invitation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.) Trump has been at his Florida courses near his Palm Beach resort, Mar-a-Lago, on 61 days; at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort 58 days; his course in Los Angeles one day; and on his course in Turnberry, Scotland, for two days last summer.
That count is more than twice the number of days former President Barack Obama had golfed at the same point in his presidency. And because Trump insists on playing on courses he owns, his dollar total is more than three times the $30 million Obama had spent by this point.
Each trip to Mar-a-Lago costs taxpayers $3.4 million and each Bedminster trip at least $1.2 million. Obama, except for two vacations per year, played almost all of his golf at military bases within a short drive of the White House. Those trips, like Trump’s to his course in Northern Virginia, cost taxpayers very little beyond gas for the motorcade vehicles and some overtime expenses.
Trump’s golfing trips outside the United States cost taxpayers a great deal more than his domestic golf vacations because of the enormous footprint generated by presidential foreign travel, with more agencies becoming involved. Dozens of White House staff members may travel with Trump during a weekend to Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster, but that number swells to several hundred on an overseas trip. The White House avoids lengthy motorcades on foreign soil, so Marine helicopters and V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft must be pre-positioned using C-17 transports that cost $200,000 an hour to fly, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. A backup Air Force One is sent along as the support plane.
Videos were posted on the Trump International Golf Links, Doonbeg, Twitter feed within minutes of his departure back to Washington. Trump played golf there at least Friday morning and possibly on Wednesday and Thursday, as well. The video of him on the first tee, with the Atlantic Ocean in the background, was also posted on the resort’s Facebook page.
The addition of Ireland to this week’s itinerary taking him to London and Normandy cost U.S. taxpayers at least $3.6 million beyond what the trip would have cost otherwise, according to a preliminary HuffPost analysis of the extra travel and security costs.
That would bring the total for Trump’s golf vacations during his first two and a half years in office to $105.8 million.
“At this point, it appears that Donald Trump views his presidency as just another way to support his business,” said Jordan Libowitz of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government. “On an international trip at taxpayer expense, he stopped by to film a commercial for his Irish golf course, which is advertising the stop explicitly as one by the president of the United States. His own lawyers, in their ‘Conflict of Interest’ white paper, said this would not happen. But at this point, it’s clear all that matters to President Trump is what makes him money.”
The White House declined to comment for this story.
(After HuffPost began making inquiries about the posts, Trump’s golf resort appeared to delete them. HuffPost, however, captured screenshots of all three videos and was able to download the two that were posted to Twitter.)
Trump had already spent 178 days of his first 2½ years in office on a golf course, all but two of which have been on his own properties. (He has played twice in Japan at the invitation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.) Trump has been at his Florida courses near his Palm Beach resort, Mar-a-Lago, on 61 days; at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort 58 days; his course in Los Angeles one day; and on his course in Turnberry, Scotland, for two days last summer.
That count is more than twice the number of days former President Barack Obama had golfed at the same point in his presidency. And because Trump insists on playing on courses he owns, his dollar total is more than three times the $30 million Obama had spent by this point.
Each trip to Mar-a-Lago costs taxpayers $3.4 million and each Bedminster trip at least $1.2 million. Obama, except for two vacations per year, played almost all of his golf at military bases within a short drive of the White House. Those trips, like Trump’s to his course in Northern Virginia, cost taxpayers very little beyond gas for the motorcade vehicles and some overtime expenses.
Trump’s golfing trips outside the United States cost taxpayers a great deal more than his domestic golf vacations because of the enormous footprint generated by presidential foreign travel, with more agencies becoming involved. Dozens of White House staff members may travel with Trump during a weekend to Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster, but that number swells to several hundred on an overseas trip. The White House avoids lengthy motorcades on foreign soil, so Marine helicopters and V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft must be pre-positioned using C-17 transports that cost $200,000 an hour to fly, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. A backup Air Force One is sent along as the support plane.
The Unchecked Corruption of Trump’s Cabinet
The lavish spending of top officials rarely makes headlines anymore, but that doesn’t mean the problem has gone away.
3:04 PM ET
David A. Graham
Staff writer at The Atlantic
It would have been easy to miss the stories late last week, what with a trade war in progress, a hot war with Iran threatened, and the president accusing his critics of treason.
But on Thursday, a report from the Government Accountability Office concluded that Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, broke the law in lavishly refurnishing his office. The same day, the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency said that former Administrator Scott Pruitt wasted nearly $124,000 of taxpayer money on excessive travel, including first-class airline tickets.
For the first year and a half of the Trump administration, the petty corruption of Donald Trump’s aides was a leading story. During the spring and summer of 2018, there seemed to be nearly daily revelations about abuses at one department or another, from tony travel to soundproof booths. Then the issue sank from the headlines, for a variety of reasons. There were bigger stories, especially as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe began producing more indictments. Pruitt was finally forced to resign, which seemed to tie a bow on the corruption thread. Besides, a certain numbness sets in after so many cases of wasted money.
But it would be a mistake to believe the problem has gone away, or that it’s safe to ignore. Pruitt is gone from the government and on to an inevitable career in lobbying, it’s true. So is Ryan Zinke, the former secretary of the interior, who was embroiled in several scandals. They were preceded out the door by Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services. Price’s relatively quick and contrite resignation from office in his own excessive-expenses scandal now seems like a quaint throwback to an earlier era when shame applied to Cabinet members. If he’d only understood how much the ground had shifted, he might have resolved to just stay in the job and weather the storm.
That’s what Carson did. In spring 2018, it emerged that Carson had spent around $45,000 refitting his office at HUD, including four grand for new blinds, more than $8,000 for a dishwasher, and nearly $32,000 for a dining-room table. In March 2018, Congress asked the GAO to investigate the spending. The good news for Carson: The blinds were all clear. The bad news: The table and dishwasher broke the law.
Such behavior might be forgivable in the case of a hard-working public servant who begged pardon. But Carson is a multimillionaire in his own right, who infamously (if with laudable self-awarenesss) declared himself unqualified for his post, and blamed his wife when the spending was revealed. Carson remains in the Cabinet. Now that the federal government’s internal watchdog has concluded he broke the law, will that change? It’s unlikely. HUD seldom captures the attention of the public overall, and Trump has made clear he has little interest in it except as a forum to enact his unrelated policy priorities.
Moreover, Trump has little interest in policing this sort of bad behavior among his aides. Historically, scandalous spending of taxpayer dollars was a one-way ticket out of government. Price, a veteran elected official, was acting on this understanding when he resigned. But Pruitt’s demise came only after the drumbeat apparently became such a distraction and nuisance that Trump became unwilling to deal with it any longer. It took nearly a year.
Still in the Cabinet along with Carson is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. In February, the Office of Government Ethics refused to certify Ross’s financial disclosure—a highly unusual step—because he hadn’t sold a stock that he claimed he had. Ross insisted the error was inadvertent. This would be more plausible if OGE hadn’t already had to warn Ross about inaccuracies in his disclosures, and if he hadn’t been caught lying to the press about his finances as well.
These are the most egregious cases. There’s also Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who became the subject of an inspector general’s investigation into multiple allegations of ethics violations less than a week after being confirmed. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta remains under scrutiny for signing off on what appears to have been a sweetheart deal with child-sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while Acosta was a U.S. attorney. Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie omitted to disclose appearances to pro-Confederate groups during his confirmation process. There are reportedly Justice Department and inspector general investigations into Zinke, who left the administration in January.
These scandals are peculiar because they mostly don’t directly involve personal enrichment—it’s not theft or embezzlement. Carson, Pruitt, and Zinke engaged in what I have labeled “conspicuous corruption,” a decision to travel and live lavishly on the public dime, in one’s own official capacity. It’s a style informed by President Trump’s ostentatious mien, and by the disregard with which the administration’s top officials seem to hold the idea of public service.
Any other president would likely have fired Cabinet officials facing the same scandals at Carson and Ross—out of simple political expediency, if not out of any moral conviction. But Trump sets the tone for his administration. He stands accused of personally profiting from his public work, especially through the Trump International Hotel in D.C., though other parts of his empire have struggled during his presidency. The shared problem is that because he has not truly separated himself from his companies, his work as president is inextricable from their ups and downs.
Ongoing violations like this remain one of the most important, and overlooked, scandals of this administration. The continued, unapologetic presence of Carson and his ilk in the Cabinet can seem like a sideshow to other, bigger issues—not least the ramifications of the Mueller report. In fact, they are connected. It’s not the sums of cash spent by these officials that matter most, though the money was not theirs to spend. If leading officials are willing to break the law and mislead the public about things as minor as interior decorating, and meet with few consequences, why would they hesitate to break the law and mislead on bigger issues?
If Ross is any example, they wouldn’t. The Commerce Department is currently embroiled in a court fight over whether the 2020 Census will ask respondents whether they are U.S. citizens. Ross told Congress that he’d sought to add the question at the behest of the Justice Department, but documents revealed during the litigation contradict him.
Late in the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump began using the slogan “drain the swamp” to represent his supposed intention to root out corruption and self-dealing in Washington. He confessed to crowds that when his advisers brought it to him, he didn’t like the slogan—it seemed “hokey”—but he decided it wasn’t hokey. He never decided he meant it, though, and the result is a Cabinet that exemplifies just what he promised to eliminate.
But on Thursday, a report from the Government Accountability Office concluded that Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, broke the law in lavishly refurnishing his office. The same day, the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency said that former Administrator Scott Pruitt wasted nearly $124,000 of taxpayer money on excessive travel, including first-class airline tickets.
For the first year and a half of the Trump administration, the petty corruption of Donald Trump’s aides was a leading story. During the spring and summer of 2018, there seemed to be nearly daily revelations about abuses at one department or another, from tony travel to soundproof booths. Then the issue sank from the headlines, for a variety of reasons. There were bigger stories, especially as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe began producing more indictments. Pruitt was finally forced to resign, which seemed to tie a bow on the corruption thread. Besides, a certain numbness sets in after so many cases of wasted money.
But it would be a mistake to believe the problem has gone away, or that it’s safe to ignore. Pruitt is gone from the government and on to an inevitable career in lobbying, it’s true. So is Ryan Zinke, the former secretary of the interior, who was embroiled in several scandals. They were preceded out the door by Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services. Price’s relatively quick and contrite resignation from office in his own excessive-expenses scandal now seems like a quaint throwback to an earlier era when shame applied to Cabinet members. If he’d only understood how much the ground had shifted, he might have resolved to just stay in the job and weather the storm.
That’s what Carson did. In spring 2018, it emerged that Carson had spent around $45,000 refitting his office at HUD, including four grand for new blinds, more than $8,000 for a dishwasher, and nearly $32,000 for a dining-room table. In March 2018, Congress asked the GAO to investigate the spending. The good news for Carson: The blinds were all clear. The bad news: The table and dishwasher broke the law.
Such behavior might be forgivable in the case of a hard-working public servant who begged pardon. But Carson is a multimillionaire in his own right, who infamously (if with laudable self-awarenesss) declared himself unqualified for his post, and blamed his wife when the spending was revealed. Carson remains in the Cabinet. Now that the federal government’s internal watchdog has concluded he broke the law, will that change? It’s unlikely. HUD seldom captures the attention of the public overall, and Trump has made clear he has little interest in it except as a forum to enact his unrelated policy priorities.
Moreover, Trump has little interest in policing this sort of bad behavior among his aides. Historically, scandalous spending of taxpayer dollars was a one-way ticket out of government. Price, a veteran elected official, was acting on this understanding when he resigned. But Pruitt’s demise came only after the drumbeat apparently became such a distraction and nuisance that Trump became unwilling to deal with it any longer. It took nearly a year.
Still in the Cabinet along with Carson is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. In February, the Office of Government Ethics refused to certify Ross’s financial disclosure—a highly unusual step—because he hadn’t sold a stock that he claimed he had. Ross insisted the error was inadvertent. This would be more plausible if OGE hadn’t already had to warn Ross about inaccuracies in his disclosures, and if he hadn’t been caught lying to the press about his finances as well.
These are the most egregious cases. There’s also Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who became the subject of an inspector general’s investigation into multiple allegations of ethics violations less than a week after being confirmed. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta remains under scrutiny for signing off on what appears to have been a sweetheart deal with child-sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while Acosta was a U.S. attorney. Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie omitted to disclose appearances to pro-Confederate groups during his confirmation process. There are reportedly Justice Department and inspector general investigations into Zinke, who left the administration in January.
These scandals are peculiar because they mostly don’t directly involve personal enrichment—it’s not theft or embezzlement. Carson, Pruitt, and Zinke engaged in what I have labeled “conspicuous corruption,” a decision to travel and live lavishly on the public dime, in one’s own official capacity. It’s a style informed by President Trump’s ostentatious mien, and by the disregard with which the administration’s top officials seem to hold the idea of public service.
Any other president would likely have fired Cabinet officials facing the same scandals at Carson and Ross—out of simple political expediency, if not out of any moral conviction. But Trump sets the tone for his administration. He stands accused of personally profiting from his public work, especially through the Trump International Hotel in D.C., though other parts of his empire have struggled during his presidency. The shared problem is that because he has not truly separated himself from his companies, his work as president is inextricable from their ups and downs.
Ongoing violations like this remain one of the most important, and overlooked, scandals of this administration. The continued, unapologetic presence of Carson and his ilk in the Cabinet can seem like a sideshow to other, bigger issues—not least the ramifications of the Mueller report. In fact, they are connected. It’s not the sums of cash spent by these officials that matter most, though the money was not theirs to spend. If leading officials are willing to break the law and mislead the public about things as minor as interior decorating, and meet with few consequences, why would they hesitate to break the law and mislead on bigger issues?
If Ross is any example, they wouldn’t. The Commerce Department is currently embroiled in a court fight over whether the 2020 Census will ask respondents whether they are U.S. citizens. Ross told Congress that he’d sought to add the question at the behest of the Justice Department, but documents revealed during the litigation contradict him.
Late in the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump began using the slogan “drain the swamp” to represent his supposed intention to root out corruption and self-dealing in Washington. He confessed to crowds that when his advisers brought it to him, he didn’t like the slogan—it seemed “hokey”—but he decided it wasn’t hokey. He never decided he meant it, though, and the result is a Cabinet that exemplifies just what he promised to eliminate.
COHEN: TRUMP IS A RACIST, A CON MAN, AND A CHEAT!!!
How bad does Trump have to get before he’s forced from office?
COMMON DREAMS - COMMENTARY - raw story
28 APR 2019 AT 13:25 ET
We could go on. And on. And on. And on. But as bad as all of this is, the real question is, “When does it get so bad that we will no longer tolerate this scum running the country, dividing us against each other, desecrating our values, degrading our civic spaces, and destroying our institutions?” When does it get bad enough that WE will actually do something to stop being so mocked, so humiliated, and so defiled? When will we have Republican Congressmen who will get up off their knees before him and represent us, the people who actually elected them, and defend our country against the greatest domestic threat it has faced in over a century?
- It’s bad enough that he lost the election by 3,000,000 popular votes.
- It’s bad enough that the Russians helped him get elected by manipulating social media in critical electoral college states.
- It’s bad enough that he helped the Russians do that by providing them confidential polling data to guide their Facebook ad targeting.
- It’s bad enough that those ads were seen by more than 100,000,000 people when the total electoral college difference over three states was 70,000 votes.
- It’s bad enough that those involved with his campaign who were also engaged with the Russians lied repeatedly, both publicly and under oath, about that engagement.
- It’s bad enough that many tens of millions of dollars mysteriously disappeared from his inauguration committee, and he feels no compunction to explain where it went.
- It’s bad enough that he brags about groping women and grabbing them by the pussy. Is there an honest woman in the country who admires that? Wants that?
- It’s bad enough that he’s been credibly accused of sexual assault by more than 20 women.
- It’s bad enough that he is an unindicted co-conspirator in the felony to commit election finance fraud by paying hush money to a Playboy bunny and a porn star.
- It’s bad enough that he filed for bankruptcy six times, stiffing workers, contractors, and lenders for tens of millions of dollars.
- It’s bad enough that his resorts and other properties for years hired undocumented aliens, even as he railed against a “tidal wave” of illegal immigrants.
- It’s bad enough that he inherited $413,000,000 from his father, much of it through illegal tax dodges, but pretends to be a self-made man.
- It’s bad enough that his “charitable” foundation was ordered shut down after having been revealed to be a sham, used to help promote his business and political interests.
- It’s bad enough he claims he was a good student, but threatens to sue any schools that release his grades.
- It’s bad enough he claims to be a brilliant businessman but refuses to release his taxes which would prove it. Or, disprove it.
- It’s bad enough that he says the Mueller report “totally exonerates” him, yet refuses to allow it to be released, or, for critical witnesses to be able to testify about it.
- It’s bad enough that he grossly understated the value of his assets to dodge taxes, while grossly overstating their value to secure bank loans.
- It’s bad enough that the Mueller report detailed 10 instances of obstruction of justice that would be criminal, were he not the president and, so, immune from indictment.
- It’s bad enough that he’s a pathological liar, telling almost 10,000 lies since assuming office, literally not being able to deal with reality.
- It’s bad enough, his boot-licking of Putin at Helsinki, where he said he believed Putin about Russian interference in the 2016 election, but not his own intelligence chiefs.
- It’s bad enough that he has separated thousands of immigrant children from their parents, put them in cages, and then lost track of them.
- It’s bad enough that he praised neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville two years ago, then re-defended them just a few days ago.
- It’s bad enough that, though sworn to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed, he told immigration officials to break the law, promising to pardon them if they were convicted.
- It’s bad enough that he told senior White House aides to lie to the Mueller commission about his efforts to obstruct the same commission’s investigation.
- It’s bad enough that he smeared a Gold Star Family whose son was killed in Iraq.
- It’s bad enough that he repeatedly smeared bona-fide Vietnam war hero, John McCain, while he, himself, wrangled five draft deferments to dodge service in the same war.
- It’s bad enough he promised to help the working man, but immediately passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut that went almost exclusively to corporations and the wealthy.
- It’s bad enough he continues to claim he’s building The Wall when not a single inch of new wall has been built since he took office.
- It’s bad enough he promised to protect Social Security but just two weeks ago submitted a budget that cuts benefits to millions, including seniors in poverty.
- It’s bad enough that he refuses to cooperate with Congressional hearings, trashing the Constitution and the checks and balances at the very heart of our form of government.
We could go on. And on. And on. And on. But as bad as all of this is, the real question is, “When does it get so bad that we will no longer tolerate this scum running the country, dividing us against each other, desecrating our values, degrading our civic spaces, and destroying our institutions?” When does it get bad enough that WE will actually do something to stop being so mocked, so humiliated, and so defiled? When will we have Republican Congressmen who will get up off their knees before him and represent us, the people who actually elected them, and defend our country against the greatest domestic threat it has faced in over a century?
#BROKEAHONTAS
The Tyranny Of Donald J. Trump
Two Generations of Tax Cheating, and Now He Holds Himself and His Family Above the Law
By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Editor-in-Chief
4/11/19
Donald J. Trump and his team have now openly declared that he is above the law rather than, as our Constitution provides, a public servant whose duty is to faithfully execute the law.
His administration is taking numerous steps that move us in the direction of a Trumpian dictatorship by defeating the rule of law, something I’ve warned about since 2016. We’ll look at one aspect of this today: Trump family taxes.
Trump and his team insist that no one is ever going to see his tax returns, which he promised voters he would make public as every president has done back to Richard Nixon.
Now his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has scurried away from the investigative spotlight of her fellow federal judges, who were looking into whether she was a tax cheat in black robes. By resigning from the federal bench, Trump’s older sister ends that inquiry, the kind of legal favor our system affords those in positions of power to escape scrutiny.
As for defiance of the law, Trump, his personal lawyers and the White House acting chief of staff all declared in recent days that they will defy a 1924 anti-corruption statute that gives certain members of Congress, and one Congressional employee, the unqualified authority to examine any tax return.
Trump claims that “the law is 100% on my side” in refusing the turn over the documents. In fact, the law is 100% against Trump. When I asked a half dozen former top Congressional tax-writing staffers about Trump’s claim some of them laughed out loud, while others said in sober turns that there is no legal argument on Trump’s side – none.
The most direct Trump declaration that he is above the law is his directing the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service to keep his federal income tax returns locked up. No previous president has defied this statute and no document request has ever been refused, a host of people who worked for the tax-writing committees on Capitol Hill told me.
Trump’s arguments are mere political rhetoric. But it gets worse than that.
Trump lawyer William S. Consovoy in an April 5 letter asked Treasury to hold back the documents. Consovoy asserted mind-reading powers in his letter: “His request is a transparent effort by one political party to harass an official from the other party because they dislike his politics and speech.”
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, declared on Fox News Sunday that the Trump administration will “never” comply with the law.
‘Party of the Lawless’
Mulvaney’s words show how the political party that once sold itself as the party of law and order has, under Trump, become the party of lawlessness, at least for those in power.
“They knew they are not going to get these taxes,” Mulvaney said, referring not to the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who alone would receive the documents, but Democrats as a whole.
These declarations require diligence by Congress and the federal courts, as well as by New York state and Manhattan authorities if we are to preserve the rule of law. The duty of these officials, under law and the oaths they swore, is to thoroughly investigate Trump’s business dealings, taxes and other matters to see how they affect his fitness for office, whether he committed tax and other crimes and whether the IRS is properly auditing the tax returns of the president.
Think of judge Trump Barry’s resignation as one of the many ways American government is infected by institutionalized corruption, an issue explored deeply by Zephyr Teachout in her revealing and concise book Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United.
While the federal judiciary is letting Judge Trump slither away, the prosecutorial authorities still have the power to investigate whether she and her siblings engaged in years of calculated tax cheating, as The New York Times persuasively demonstrated last October.
The Cheating Goes On
There is no statute of limitations on criminal tax fraud and there is reason aplenty to believe Trump family tax cheating has continued up to this day.
At issue are Trump’s last six years of tax returns and related “tax information.” Representative Richard Neal (D-Mass), who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee requested the returns and related information in an April 3 letter.
Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, called the request “unprecedented” – it’s not – and said he needed time to consult the law. Treasury posted the letter on Twitter.
The law is crystal clear that the Treasury secretary or his designee, the IRS commissioner, “shall” produce the returns “on written request.” Every request has been honored until now.
Mnuchin is a former Goldman Sachs-er, hedge fund operator, mortgage foreclosure mogul and Hollywood movie producer (The Lego Movie; Suicide Squad), exactly the kind of swamp dweller who Trump told voters he would rid Washington of by “draining the swamp.”
Presidents take an oath to faithfully execute their office, which includes complying with all federal laws, while dictators are by definition above the law.
Trump’s declaration should alarm all American, but especially those Republicans who claim to support strict interpretations of the clear meaning of both statutes and Constitutional principles.
Even Richard Nixon complied with this law during Watergate more than four decades ago, resulting in a second IRS audit of his returns as well as scrutiny by Congressional tax experts.
Nixon Complied with the Law
That second audit turned up a fraudulent tax deduction which saved Nixon $500,000 in taxes, about $3.4 million in today’s money. Chairman Neal’s request specifically cites the quality of IRS audits of presidential tax returns as a justification for examination of them by his committee, which oversees the IRS.
“In all of my years of public life. I have never profited. Never profited from public service I’ve earned every cent,” Nixon said in 1973. “And — all of my years of public life. I have never obstructed justice. And I think to that I could say that in my years of public life. That I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook, I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”
Actually, he was a crook, but his handpicked successor Gerald Ford pardoned him.
Trump takes a different approach, asserting that voters have no interest in his tax returns.
Mulvaney takes a similar tack, ignoring the law in favor of presumed political passions.
“That’s an issue that was already litigated during the election,” Mulvaney said. “Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didn’t, and they elected him anyway.”
Of course, the voters chose Trump’s opponent by three million votes. It was the Electoral College that chose Trump. But only the enablers of a tyrant would argue that popular passions, not law, govern official conduct.
His administration is taking numerous steps that move us in the direction of a Trumpian dictatorship by defeating the rule of law, something I’ve warned about since 2016. We’ll look at one aspect of this today: Trump family taxes.
Trump and his team insist that no one is ever going to see his tax returns, which he promised voters he would make public as every president has done back to Richard Nixon.
Now his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has scurried away from the investigative spotlight of her fellow federal judges, who were looking into whether she was a tax cheat in black robes. By resigning from the federal bench, Trump’s older sister ends that inquiry, the kind of legal favor our system affords those in positions of power to escape scrutiny.
As for defiance of the law, Trump, his personal lawyers and the White House acting chief of staff all declared in recent days that they will defy a 1924 anti-corruption statute that gives certain members of Congress, and one Congressional employee, the unqualified authority to examine any tax return.
Trump claims that “the law is 100% on my side” in refusing the turn over the documents. In fact, the law is 100% against Trump. When I asked a half dozen former top Congressional tax-writing staffers about Trump’s claim some of them laughed out loud, while others said in sober turns that there is no legal argument on Trump’s side – none.
The most direct Trump declaration that he is above the law is his directing the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service to keep his federal income tax returns locked up. No previous president has defied this statute and no document request has ever been refused, a host of people who worked for the tax-writing committees on Capitol Hill told me.
Trump’s arguments are mere political rhetoric. But it gets worse than that.
Trump lawyer William S. Consovoy in an April 5 letter asked Treasury to hold back the documents. Consovoy asserted mind-reading powers in his letter: “His request is a transparent effort by one political party to harass an official from the other party because they dislike his politics and speech.”
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, declared on Fox News Sunday that the Trump administration will “never” comply with the law.
‘Party of the Lawless’
Mulvaney’s words show how the political party that once sold itself as the party of law and order has, under Trump, become the party of lawlessness, at least for those in power.
“They knew they are not going to get these taxes,” Mulvaney said, referring not to the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who alone would receive the documents, but Democrats as a whole.
These declarations require diligence by Congress and the federal courts, as well as by New York state and Manhattan authorities if we are to preserve the rule of law. The duty of these officials, under law and the oaths they swore, is to thoroughly investigate Trump’s business dealings, taxes and other matters to see how they affect his fitness for office, whether he committed tax and other crimes and whether the IRS is properly auditing the tax returns of the president.
Think of judge Trump Barry’s resignation as one of the many ways American government is infected by institutionalized corruption, an issue explored deeply by Zephyr Teachout in her revealing and concise book Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United.
While the federal judiciary is letting Judge Trump slither away, the prosecutorial authorities still have the power to investigate whether she and her siblings engaged in years of calculated tax cheating, as The New York Times persuasively demonstrated last October.
The Cheating Goes On
There is no statute of limitations on criminal tax fraud and there is reason aplenty to believe Trump family tax cheating has continued up to this day.
At issue are Trump’s last six years of tax returns and related “tax information.” Representative Richard Neal (D-Mass), who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee requested the returns and related information in an April 3 letter.
Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, called the request “unprecedented” – it’s not – and said he needed time to consult the law. Treasury posted the letter on Twitter.
The law is crystal clear that the Treasury secretary or his designee, the IRS commissioner, “shall” produce the returns “on written request.” Every request has been honored until now.
Mnuchin is a former Goldman Sachs-er, hedge fund operator, mortgage foreclosure mogul and Hollywood movie producer (The Lego Movie; Suicide Squad), exactly the kind of swamp dweller who Trump told voters he would rid Washington of by “draining the swamp.”
Presidents take an oath to faithfully execute their office, which includes complying with all federal laws, while dictators are by definition above the law.
Trump’s declaration should alarm all American, but especially those Republicans who claim to support strict interpretations of the clear meaning of both statutes and Constitutional principles.
Even Richard Nixon complied with this law during Watergate more than four decades ago, resulting in a second IRS audit of his returns as well as scrutiny by Congressional tax experts.
Nixon Complied with the Law
That second audit turned up a fraudulent tax deduction which saved Nixon $500,000 in taxes, about $3.4 million in today’s money. Chairman Neal’s request specifically cites the quality of IRS audits of presidential tax returns as a justification for examination of them by his committee, which oversees the IRS.
“In all of my years of public life. I have never profited. Never profited from public service I’ve earned every cent,” Nixon said in 1973. “And — all of my years of public life. I have never obstructed justice. And I think to that I could say that in my years of public life. That I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook, I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”
Actually, he was a crook, but his handpicked successor Gerald Ford pardoned him.
Trump takes a different approach, asserting that voters have no interest in his tax returns.
Mulvaney takes a similar tack, ignoring the law in favor of presumed political passions.
“That’s an issue that was already litigated during the election,” Mulvaney said. “Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didn’t, and they elected him anyway.”
Of course, the voters chose Trump’s opponent by three million votes. It was the Electoral College that chose Trump. But only the enablers of a tyrant would argue that popular passions, not law, govern official conduct.
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Bombshell report links Trump’s Azerbaijan hotel to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard
Travis Gettys - raw story
08 APR 2019 AT 11:07 ET
The Trump administration on Monday officially designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. But reporting from The New Yorker indicates that President Donald Trump could have business entanglements with the foreign military group.
Trump and his eldest daughter developed a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation run by a family known as “the Corleones of the Caspian” with links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku — conceived in 2008 as a luxury apartment building but converted in 2014 into a hotel — has never opened, and both local observers and international experts are baffled by the building’s existence, reported The New Yorker in 2017.
The project was intended as an “ultra-luxury property” with both hotel and residential space, but both its location and timing are odd, according to the report.
Trump Tower Baku is located in an underdeveloped part of the city’s downtown, across the street from a discount shopping center and miles away from the main business district.
“Why would someone put a luxury hotel there?” said former top official in Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Tourism. “Nobody who can afford to stay there would want to be in that neighborhood.”
The Trump Organization announced the project would be converted into just a hotel in 2014, after a construction boom had ended in Baku and luxury hotel occupancy rate hovered around 35 percent, the magazine reported.
A Cornell University expert told The New Yorker that developers of five-star hotels typically must demonstrate an average occupancy rate of at least 60 percent over 10 years.
Newsweek‘s Kurt Eichenwald reported in September 2017 that Trump’s financial filings show he’s partners in the Baku deal with the son of Azerbaijan’s transportation minister.
U.S. officials believe that official, Ziya Mammadov, laundered money for the Iranian military, although no formal charges were brought against him or his son, Anar Mammadov — who is Trump’s partner in the Baku hotel venture.
The New Yorker examined Trump’s ties to Ziya Mammadov — one of the wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs in one of the world’s most corrupt nations — and his brother, Elton Mammadov, an influential member of the Azerbaijani parliament, who signed contracts for the project and founded Baku XXI Century, which owns the tower.
The Mammadov family, described by Foreign Policy magazine as “The Corleones of the Caspian,” has a reputation for using their government positions to enrich themselves and their partners — which includes construction firms tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Trump administration has now condemned that group — which has been accused of drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad and money laundering — as a terrorist organization.
“This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft,” Trump said in a statement.
The Baku development was the subject of numerous reports after Trump announced his presidential campaign in 2015, and the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, dismissed any concerns by saying the company never engaged directly with Mammadov.
Garten claimed Trump played only a passive role in the Baku development by licensing his name for use by Mammadov’s son, for which he was paid at least $2.8 million, according to limited public filings.
Other documents suggest Trump was paid an additional $2.5 million for the use of his name in 2012, and the future U.S. president also signed a contract to manage the hotel after it opened for an undisclosed fee tied to the venture’s performance.
Garten announced a month after Trump’s election that the Trump Organization had severed ties with the hotel, but The New Yorker reported those claims were incomplete and inaccurate.
Jan deRoos, the Cornell professor, said the Trump Organization’s interest in the Baku project — which was overseen by Ivanka Trump — was atypical and “very, very intense.”
That close involvement may open up the Trump Organization to criminal prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which was passed in 1977 to forbid American companies from rewarding corrupt foreign officials — even if they did so unwittingly.
Garten all but admitted corruption was involved with the project — “I’m not going to sit here and defend the Mammadovs,” he said — but he insisted the Trump Organization should be exempt from prosecution because the company didn’t control the project and didn’t pay money to anyone.
However, a legal expert who specializes in the foreign corruption law dismissed those claims as nonsense.
“You can’t go into business deals in Azerbaijan assuming that you are immune from the FCPA, nor can you escape liability by looking the other way,” said Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean at George Washington University Law School. “The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag — the direct involvement of foreign government officials and their relatives in Azerbaijan with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious.”
Trump complained about the law during a phone-in appearance on CNBC in May 2012, the month before the Baku deal was completed.
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do,” Trump said. “It’s a horrible law and it should be changed.”
He complained that American companies that refused to give bribes — and The New Yorker reports on duffel bags of cash changing hands during construction — would “do business nowhere.”
“There is one answer — go to your room, close the door, go to sleep and don’t do any deals, because that’s the only way,” Trump whined to CNBC. “The only way you’re going to do it is the other way.”
Trump and his eldest daughter developed a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation run by a family known as “the Corleones of the Caspian” with links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku — conceived in 2008 as a luxury apartment building but converted in 2014 into a hotel — has never opened, and both local observers and international experts are baffled by the building’s existence, reported The New Yorker in 2017.
The project was intended as an “ultra-luxury property” with both hotel and residential space, but both its location and timing are odd, according to the report.
Trump Tower Baku is located in an underdeveloped part of the city’s downtown, across the street from a discount shopping center and miles away from the main business district.
“Why would someone put a luxury hotel there?” said former top official in Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Tourism. “Nobody who can afford to stay there would want to be in that neighborhood.”
The Trump Organization announced the project would be converted into just a hotel in 2014, after a construction boom had ended in Baku and luxury hotel occupancy rate hovered around 35 percent, the magazine reported.
A Cornell University expert told The New Yorker that developers of five-star hotels typically must demonstrate an average occupancy rate of at least 60 percent over 10 years.
Newsweek‘s Kurt Eichenwald reported in September 2017 that Trump’s financial filings show he’s partners in the Baku deal with the son of Azerbaijan’s transportation minister.
U.S. officials believe that official, Ziya Mammadov, laundered money for the Iranian military, although no formal charges were brought against him or his son, Anar Mammadov — who is Trump’s partner in the Baku hotel venture.
The New Yorker examined Trump’s ties to Ziya Mammadov — one of the wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs in one of the world’s most corrupt nations — and his brother, Elton Mammadov, an influential member of the Azerbaijani parliament, who signed contracts for the project and founded Baku XXI Century, which owns the tower.
The Mammadov family, described by Foreign Policy magazine as “The Corleones of the Caspian,” has a reputation for using their government positions to enrich themselves and their partners — which includes construction firms tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Trump administration has now condemned that group — which has been accused of drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad and money laundering — as a terrorist organization.
“This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft,” Trump said in a statement.
The Baku development was the subject of numerous reports after Trump announced his presidential campaign in 2015, and the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, dismissed any concerns by saying the company never engaged directly with Mammadov.
Garten claimed Trump played only a passive role in the Baku development by licensing his name for use by Mammadov’s son, for which he was paid at least $2.8 million, according to limited public filings.
Other documents suggest Trump was paid an additional $2.5 million for the use of his name in 2012, and the future U.S. president also signed a contract to manage the hotel after it opened for an undisclosed fee tied to the venture’s performance.
Garten announced a month after Trump’s election that the Trump Organization had severed ties with the hotel, but The New Yorker reported those claims were incomplete and inaccurate.
Jan deRoos, the Cornell professor, said the Trump Organization’s interest in the Baku project — which was overseen by Ivanka Trump — was atypical and “very, very intense.”
That close involvement may open up the Trump Organization to criminal prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which was passed in 1977 to forbid American companies from rewarding corrupt foreign officials — even if they did so unwittingly.
Garten all but admitted corruption was involved with the project — “I’m not going to sit here and defend the Mammadovs,” he said — but he insisted the Trump Organization should be exempt from prosecution because the company didn’t control the project and didn’t pay money to anyone.
However, a legal expert who specializes in the foreign corruption law dismissed those claims as nonsense.
“You can’t go into business deals in Azerbaijan assuming that you are immune from the FCPA, nor can you escape liability by looking the other way,” said Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean at George Washington University Law School. “The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag — the direct involvement of foreign government officials and their relatives in Azerbaijan with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious.”
Trump complained about the law during a phone-in appearance on CNBC in May 2012, the month before the Baku deal was completed.
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do,” Trump said. “It’s a horrible law and it should be changed.”
He complained that American companies that refused to give bribes — and The New Yorker reports on duffel bags of cash changing hands during construction — would “do business nowhere.”
“There is one answer — go to your room, close the door, go to sleep and don’t do any deals, because that’s the only way,” Trump whined to CNBC. “The only way you’re going to do it is the other way.”
I am I, Don Trumpote, The Lord of la 'Murica, My destiny calls and I go
Here are the investigations that will haunt Trump and his family long after Mueller’s final report is delivered
Alex Henderson, AlterNet - raw story
03 MAR 2019 AT 10:26 ET
Some critics of President Donald Trump are hoping that when the final report for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is released, it will be so damning that impeachment will be inevitable. But if there is a major lesson to be learned from attorney Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee on February 27, 2019, it is that Trump’s legal woes don’t begin or end with Russiagate. Cohen, who spent more than a decade in Trump’s employ, wasn’t allowed to discuss Mueller’s probe at the Wednesday hearing—and yet, he spoke for hours about things he believed could imperil Trump legally, from banking and tax matters to campaign finance violations.
The federal prosecutors Cohen has been cooperating with include not only Mueller’s office, but also, U.S. attorneys for the Southern District of New York. And investigations of Trump will not end after Mueller’s final report is delivered.
Here are some legal or political entities apart from Mueller’s team that will no doubt be paying close attention to President Trump, members of his family and his business associates in the months ahead.
1. The Southern District of New York
After Cohen’s February 27 testimony, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told CNN’s Chris Cuomo, “I’ve always said, Chris, that Bob Mueller is not what should concern the president or the White House. That’s the Southern District of New York.” Christie added that Southern District prosecutors “have no limit on their scope. Bob Mueller has a limit on his scope; it’s Russia and Russia-related activities.”
Christie went on to say that he is confident that the Southern District is building a case against Trump’s associates as well as Trump himself after he leaves office. Cohen, he stressed, spent more than a decade working for Trump and has extensive knowledge of the president’s business activities—and he predicted that Cohen will be having a lot more conservations with Southern District prosecutors.
2. The New York State Attorney General’s Office
In 2018, former New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood proved to be a major thorn in Trump’s side—and it was under her watch that Trump agreed to dissolve his charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Underwood declared that she saw a “shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation, including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing and much more. This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.”
But the New York State Attorney General’s Office won’t be easing up on Trump now that Underwood is gone. Underwood’s successor, fellow Democrat Letitia James, has made it clear that she has an abundance of Trump-related investigations in mind and plans to examine everything from his real estate holdings to whether or not he has violated the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause, which restricts presidents and other federal officials from receiving payments or gifts from foreign powers.
A spokesperson for James told Philly.com that she is “reviewing Michael Cohen’s testimony carefully to determine if it will impact” any “investigation that the office is undertaking.”
3. The District of Columbia Attorney General’s Office
On February 26, the District of Columbia Attorney General’s Office subpoenaed Trump’s inaugural committee for documents pertaining to its finances. DC Attorney General Karl A. Racine, in the subpoena, said his office is investigating Trump’s inaugural committee to see if “expenditures of its nonprofit funds were wasteful, mismanaged, and/or improperly provided private benefit, causing the committee to exceed or abuse its authority or act contrary to its nonprofit purpose.” Previously, the DA’s offices of the District of Columbia and Maryland filed a lawsuit against Trump, alleging he had received illegal payments from foreign governments through his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
4. The House Financial Services Committee and House Ways and Means Committee
Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia said of Cohen’s February 27 testimony, “He set a very rich table. We’re now looking at a 10-course meal.” And there are many Trump-related matters that Democrats in the House of Representatives can investigate. For example, the House Finance Committee has said it will be taking a look at the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The House Ways and Means Committee has been expressing interest in Trump’s tax returns, and Rep. Maxine Waters (who now heads the House Financial Services Committee) has indicated she plans to investigate whether or not Trump “directed payments into” the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to keep from paying taxes.”
On top of all that, California Rep. Brad Sherman (also on the House Financial Services Committee) has said that House Democrats will be looking into Cohen’s allegation that Trump exaggerated his net worth in order to lower his insurance premiums and receive bank loans.
The federal prosecutors Cohen has been cooperating with include not only Mueller’s office, but also, U.S. attorneys for the Southern District of New York. And investigations of Trump will not end after Mueller’s final report is delivered.
Here are some legal or political entities apart from Mueller’s team that will no doubt be paying close attention to President Trump, members of his family and his business associates in the months ahead.
1. The Southern District of New York
After Cohen’s February 27 testimony, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told CNN’s Chris Cuomo, “I’ve always said, Chris, that Bob Mueller is not what should concern the president or the White House. That’s the Southern District of New York.” Christie added that Southern District prosecutors “have no limit on their scope. Bob Mueller has a limit on his scope; it’s Russia and Russia-related activities.”
Christie went on to say that he is confident that the Southern District is building a case against Trump’s associates as well as Trump himself after he leaves office. Cohen, he stressed, spent more than a decade working for Trump and has extensive knowledge of the president’s business activities—and he predicted that Cohen will be having a lot more conservations with Southern District prosecutors.
2. The New York State Attorney General’s Office
In 2018, former New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood proved to be a major thorn in Trump’s side—and it was under her watch that Trump agreed to dissolve his charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Underwood declared that she saw a “shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation, including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing and much more. This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.”
But the New York State Attorney General’s Office won’t be easing up on Trump now that Underwood is gone. Underwood’s successor, fellow Democrat Letitia James, has made it clear that she has an abundance of Trump-related investigations in mind and plans to examine everything from his real estate holdings to whether or not he has violated the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause, which restricts presidents and other federal officials from receiving payments or gifts from foreign powers.
A spokesperson for James told Philly.com that she is “reviewing Michael Cohen’s testimony carefully to determine if it will impact” any “investigation that the office is undertaking.”
3. The District of Columbia Attorney General’s Office
On February 26, the District of Columbia Attorney General’s Office subpoenaed Trump’s inaugural committee for documents pertaining to its finances. DC Attorney General Karl A. Racine, in the subpoena, said his office is investigating Trump’s inaugural committee to see if “expenditures of its nonprofit funds were wasteful, mismanaged, and/or improperly provided private benefit, causing the committee to exceed or abuse its authority or act contrary to its nonprofit purpose.” Previously, the DA’s offices of the District of Columbia and Maryland filed a lawsuit against Trump, alleging he had received illegal payments from foreign governments through his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
4. The House Financial Services Committee and House Ways and Means Committee
Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia said of Cohen’s February 27 testimony, “He set a very rich table. We’re now looking at a 10-course meal.” And there are many Trump-related matters that Democrats in the House of Representatives can investigate. For example, the House Finance Committee has said it will be taking a look at the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The House Ways and Means Committee has been expressing interest in Trump’s tax returns, and Rep. Maxine Waters (who now heads the House Financial Services Committee) has indicated she plans to investigate whether or not Trump “directed payments into” the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to keep from paying taxes.”
On top of all that, California Rep. Brad Sherman (also on the House Financial Services Committee) has said that House Democrats will be looking into Cohen’s allegation that Trump exaggerated his net worth in order to lower his insurance premiums and receive bank loans.
Even as speculation mounts that special counsel Robert Mueller might be winding down his investigation, a parallel threat to President Donald Trump only seems to be growing within his own Justice Department: the Southern District of New York.
Manhattan-based federal prosecutors can challenge Trump in ways Mueller can’t. They have jurisdiction over the president’s political operation and businesses — subjects that aren’t protected by executive privilege, a tool Trump is considering invoking to block portions of Mueller’s report. From a PR perspective, Trump has been unable to run the same playbook on SDNY that he’s used to erode conservatives’ faith in Mueller, the former George W. Bush-appointed FBI director. Legal circles are also buzzing over whether SDNY might buck DOJ guidance and seek to indict a sitting president.
The threat was highlighted when SDNY prosecutors ordered officials from Trump’s inaugural committee to hand over donor and financial records. It was the latest aggressive move from an office that has launched investigations into the president’s company, former lawyer and campaign finance practices. New York prosecutors have even implicated Trump in a crime.
Add it all up and the result is a spate of hard-to-stymie, legally perilous probes that appears on track to drag on well into Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. SDNY stands poised to carry on Mueller’s efforts whenever the special counsel’s office closes shop, and it’s likely to draw even more attention if freshly confirmed Attorney General William Barr — who now oversees the Russia probe as DOJ head — clamps down on the public release of Mueller’s findings.
“When you combine their experience with the traditional independence of the southern district and the reputation it has, this is like another Mueller investigation going on,” said Nick Akerman, a former SDNY assistant attorney who also worked on the Watergate prosecution team.
Mueller can take credit for spawning significant parts of SDNY’s work. The two DOJ units have shared staff, witnesses and leads, and SDNY has been well-positioned to pick up anything that is outside Mueller’s primary lane of investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
A Mueller referral to SDNY, for example, triggered an FBI raid on Michael Cohen's office and hotel room, according to Cohen’s former lawyer. And the fruits of that raid culminated late last year in Cohen’s guilty plea, in which the longtime Trump fixer and former personal attorney admitted in federal court that Trump directed him to make hush money payments to sway the 2016 presidential election.
The New York federal prosecutors are far from finished. They’re still seeking interviews with Trump Organization executives, according to a source with knowledge of the probe. And Trump’s inaugural committee confirmed earlier this month that it had received a wide-ranging subpoena from SDNY for documents as part of a probe into how the group raised and doled out a record $107 million. Investigators are looking at everything from potential mail and wire fraud to illegal foreign contributions and money laundering.
“This is why I’ve been saying for months that the Southern District of New York investigation presents a much more serious threat to the administration, potentially, than what Bob Mueller is doing,” Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and former federal prosecutor, told ABC News earlier this month.
Elaborating on MSNBC, Christie said that SDNY, unlike Mueller, has “no restrictions on their purview.”
“Bob Mueller has a task: It’s Russian interference and potential collision in the 2016 election,” he said. “Southern District of New York is whatever the heck you want.”
SDNY poses an potent threat because the office has accumulated a perfect storm of witnesses who have guided Trump throughout his career, from his businesses to his meteoric rise in presidential politics up through his inauguration to the White House.
The list of cooperators includes Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer; David Pecker, the CEO of the National Enquirer’s parent company who has admitted to working with Trump for years to kill incriminating media stories; and Rick Gates, who served as Trump campaign deputy and then de facto leader of the inaugural committee. Gates pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe to lying to the FBI last February but his sentencing has been delayed while he cooperates in “several ongoing investigations,” according to a filing last month from the special counsel’s office.
Then there’s Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer who is scheduled to begin serving a three-year prison sentence next month. Christie called Cohen a “tour guide” for SDNY investigators into the president’s orbit.
Another concern for Trump: SDNY’s independence. Its nickname is the “Sovereign District of New York," and former prosecutors who have worked there describe its authorities and experience as unique among the nation's 93 U.S. attorney offices.
Trump-appointed officials are also not directly overseeing SDNY’s Trump-related investigations. The president’s hand-selected SDNY head, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, has recused himself from the probes, deferring to a pair of longtime federal prosecutors: Robert Khuzami and Audrey Strauss.
An SDNY spokesman declined to comment for this story.
Alumni from the office have said SDNY's investigative powers and independent streak are so robust that — depending on what it finds on Trump — the office could skirt DOJ legal protocol dating to Watergate that holds a sitting president can’t be indicted.
“I’m thoroughly convinced the SDNY will make its own evaluation. They will not say that’s a department policy,” said Jon Sale, a former SDNY and Watergate prosecutor who is close with Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “They’re obviously looking at the president and I wouldn’t rule out that they could decide you can indict a sitting president.”
Trump's attack-Mueller playbook can’t be replicated in New York. For starters, the bounds of what SDNY is looking at don’t deal with Trump’s tenure in the White House, meaning any push back on executive privilege grounds won’t fly. Trump’s lawyers have said they’ve resisted Mueller’s attempts to get the president to answer questions about potential obstruction of justice matters dealing with his time in the Oval Office. And they continue to signal the president’s team should be allowed to review the special counsel’s finished report to ensure it doesn’t violate the president’s rights.
Trump is limited in his abilities to use his bully pulpit against SDNY — which has nowhere near the name recognition of the special counsel — in the way he has used Twitter, rallies and even the State of the Union to lambaste Mueller.
That’s not to say the president isn’t concerned about SDNY. Trump reportedly complained about SDNY’s pursuit of Cohen to Matthew Whitaker, his former acting attorney general, though Whitaker last week denied to Congress that the president had chided him.
Giuliani has confirmed Trump’s frustrations with SDNY’s handling of the Cohen probe.
“The president and his lawyers are upset about the professional prosecutors in the Southern District of New York going after a noncrime and the innuendo the president was involved,” Giuliani, who served as the U.S. attorney leading SDNY for more than five years during the Reagan administration, told CNN in December.
But in an interview with POLITICO on Friday, Giuliani downplayed any broader concerns that his former office posed a wider threat to the president.
“The same thing will happen as has happened over the last two years with all of these things. They’ll run them down and they’ll find out the president didn’t do anything wrong. Not a darn thing,” Giuliani said.
Trump’s complaints about the Mueller probe — railing against his team of “angry Democrats” and even going after the special counsel himself in more than 70 mentions on Twitter since last March — have helped the president turn his political base against the Russia investigation. A voters, a record low 13 percent of registered Republican voters reported having a favorable view of Mueller in a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. While that can help the president maintain GOP support in an impeachment battle, legal experts and Trump’s allies have said similar attacks on SDNY won’t matter much should the battleground become a court of law and not the halls of Congress.
“That’s one you can’t win,” said Andrew McCarthy, a former SDNY prosecutor and National Review columnist whom the president has cited on Twitter while blasting the Mueller probe. “There’s no upside for Trump in attacking the southern district, whereas there might be in attacking Mueller.”
What’s more, SDNY’s efforts have found a allies in Democratic lawmakers who have made the U.S. attorney’s office a key feature of their hearings, floor speeches and in written demands of Trump’s Justice Department.
Ahead of Whitaker’s recent appearance before Congress, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler told the acting DOJ head that SDNY’s work would be one of his primary lines of questioning. And in a follow-up letter after the hearing, the New York Democrat pressed Whitaker over his denials that Trump lashed out at him about SDNY. Whitaker’s rebuttals, Nadler said, were “directly contradicted by several media reports” and other people with “direct knowledge” of the calls he got from the White House.
In a floor speech last week announcing his opposition to Barr’s confirmation, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned that any Trump pardons for people tied up in either the Mueller or SDNY investigation “would represent an abuse of power that would require a response by Congress.”
Barr said SDNY’s work stands on the other side of a red line that he wouldn’t let Trump cross. Pressed by Democratic senators during his confirmation hearing last month, the soon-to-be attorney general said he’d protest the removal of SDNY’s head if he thought the president had nefarious intentions.
“I would not stand by and allow a U.S. attorney to be fired for the purpose of stopping an investigation,” Barr said.
Manhattan-based federal prosecutors can challenge Trump in ways Mueller can’t. They have jurisdiction over the president’s political operation and businesses — subjects that aren’t protected by executive privilege, a tool Trump is considering invoking to block portions of Mueller’s report. From a PR perspective, Trump has been unable to run the same playbook on SDNY that he’s used to erode conservatives’ faith in Mueller, the former George W. Bush-appointed FBI director. Legal circles are also buzzing over whether SDNY might buck DOJ guidance and seek to indict a sitting president.
The threat was highlighted when SDNY prosecutors ordered officials from Trump’s inaugural committee to hand over donor and financial records. It was the latest aggressive move from an office that has launched investigations into the president’s company, former lawyer and campaign finance practices. New York prosecutors have even implicated Trump in a crime.
Add it all up and the result is a spate of hard-to-stymie, legally perilous probes that appears on track to drag on well into Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. SDNY stands poised to carry on Mueller’s efforts whenever the special counsel’s office closes shop, and it’s likely to draw even more attention if freshly confirmed Attorney General William Barr — who now oversees the Russia probe as DOJ head — clamps down on the public release of Mueller’s findings.
“When you combine their experience with the traditional independence of the southern district and the reputation it has, this is like another Mueller investigation going on,” said Nick Akerman, a former SDNY assistant attorney who also worked on the Watergate prosecution team.
Mueller can take credit for spawning significant parts of SDNY’s work. The two DOJ units have shared staff, witnesses and leads, and SDNY has been well-positioned to pick up anything that is outside Mueller’s primary lane of investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
A Mueller referral to SDNY, for example, triggered an FBI raid on Michael Cohen's office and hotel room, according to Cohen’s former lawyer. And the fruits of that raid culminated late last year in Cohen’s guilty plea, in which the longtime Trump fixer and former personal attorney admitted in federal court that Trump directed him to make hush money payments to sway the 2016 presidential election.
The New York federal prosecutors are far from finished. They’re still seeking interviews with Trump Organization executives, according to a source with knowledge of the probe. And Trump’s inaugural committee confirmed earlier this month that it had received a wide-ranging subpoena from SDNY for documents as part of a probe into how the group raised and doled out a record $107 million. Investigators are looking at everything from potential mail and wire fraud to illegal foreign contributions and money laundering.
“This is why I’ve been saying for months that the Southern District of New York investigation presents a much more serious threat to the administration, potentially, than what Bob Mueller is doing,” Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and former federal prosecutor, told ABC News earlier this month.
Elaborating on MSNBC, Christie said that SDNY, unlike Mueller, has “no restrictions on their purview.”
“Bob Mueller has a task: It’s Russian interference and potential collision in the 2016 election,” he said. “Southern District of New York is whatever the heck you want.”
SDNY poses an potent threat because the office has accumulated a perfect storm of witnesses who have guided Trump throughout his career, from his businesses to his meteoric rise in presidential politics up through his inauguration to the White House.
The list of cooperators includes Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer; David Pecker, the CEO of the National Enquirer’s parent company who has admitted to working with Trump for years to kill incriminating media stories; and Rick Gates, who served as Trump campaign deputy and then de facto leader of the inaugural committee. Gates pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe to lying to the FBI last February but his sentencing has been delayed while he cooperates in “several ongoing investigations,” according to a filing last month from the special counsel’s office.
Then there’s Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer who is scheduled to begin serving a three-year prison sentence next month. Christie called Cohen a “tour guide” for SDNY investigators into the president’s orbit.
Another concern for Trump: SDNY’s independence. Its nickname is the “Sovereign District of New York," and former prosecutors who have worked there describe its authorities and experience as unique among the nation's 93 U.S. attorney offices.
Trump-appointed officials are also not directly overseeing SDNY’s Trump-related investigations. The president’s hand-selected SDNY head, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, has recused himself from the probes, deferring to a pair of longtime federal prosecutors: Robert Khuzami and Audrey Strauss.
An SDNY spokesman declined to comment for this story.
Alumni from the office have said SDNY's investigative powers and independent streak are so robust that — depending on what it finds on Trump — the office could skirt DOJ legal protocol dating to Watergate that holds a sitting president can’t be indicted.
“I’m thoroughly convinced the SDNY will make its own evaluation. They will not say that’s a department policy,” said Jon Sale, a former SDNY and Watergate prosecutor who is close with Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “They’re obviously looking at the president and I wouldn’t rule out that they could decide you can indict a sitting president.”
Trump's attack-Mueller playbook can’t be replicated in New York. For starters, the bounds of what SDNY is looking at don’t deal with Trump’s tenure in the White House, meaning any push back on executive privilege grounds won’t fly. Trump’s lawyers have said they’ve resisted Mueller’s attempts to get the president to answer questions about potential obstruction of justice matters dealing with his time in the Oval Office. And they continue to signal the president’s team should be allowed to review the special counsel’s finished report to ensure it doesn’t violate the president’s rights.
Trump is limited in his abilities to use his bully pulpit against SDNY — which has nowhere near the name recognition of the special counsel — in the way he has used Twitter, rallies and even the State of the Union to lambaste Mueller.
That’s not to say the president isn’t concerned about SDNY. Trump reportedly complained about SDNY’s pursuit of Cohen to Matthew Whitaker, his former acting attorney general, though Whitaker last week denied to Congress that the president had chided him.
Giuliani has confirmed Trump’s frustrations with SDNY’s handling of the Cohen probe.
“The president and his lawyers are upset about the professional prosecutors in the Southern District of New York going after a noncrime and the innuendo the president was involved,” Giuliani, who served as the U.S. attorney leading SDNY for more than five years during the Reagan administration, told CNN in December.
But in an interview with POLITICO on Friday, Giuliani downplayed any broader concerns that his former office posed a wider threat to the president.
“The same thing will happen as has happened over the last two years with all of these things. They’ll run them down and they’ll find out the president didn’t do anything wrong. Not a darn thing,” Giuliani said.
Trump’s complaints about the Mueller probe — railing against his team of “angry Democrats” and even going after the special counsel himself in more than 70 mentions on Twitter since last March — have helped the president turn his political base against the Russia investigation. A voters, a record low 13 percent of registered Republican voters reported having a favorable view of Mueller in a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. While that can help the president maintain GOP support in an impeachment battle, legal experts and Trump’s allies have said similar attacks on SDNY won’t matter much should the battleground become a court of law and not the halls of Congress.
“That’s one you can’t win,” said Andrew McCarthy, a former SDNY prosecutor and National Review columnist whom the president has cited on Twitter while blasting the Mueller probe. “There’s no upside for Trump in attacking the southern district, whereas there might be in attacking Mueller.”
What’s more, SDNY’s efforts have found a allies in Democratic lawmakers who have made the U.S. attorney’s office a key feature of their hearings, floor speeches and in written demands of Trump’s Justice Department.
Ahead of Whitaker’s recent appearance before Congress, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler told the acting DOJ head that SDNY’s work would be one of his primary lines of questioning. And in a follow-up letter after the hearing, the New York Democrat pressed Whitaker over his denials that Trump lashed out at him about SDNY. Whitaker’s rebuttals, Nadler said, were “directly contradicted by several media reports” and other people with “direct knowledge” of the calls he got from the White House.
In a floor speech last week announcing his opposition to Barr’s confirmation, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned that any Trump pardons for people tied up in either the Mueller or SDNY investigation “would represent an abuse of power that would require a response by Congress.”
Barr said SDNY’s work stands on the other side of a red line that he wouldn’t let Trump cross. Pressed by Democratic senators during his confirmation hearing last month, the soon-to-be attorney general said he’d protest the removal of SDNY’s head if he thought the president had nefarious intentions.
“I would not stand by and allow a U.S. attorney to be fired for the purpose of stopping an investigation,” Barr said.
Trump’s profound hatred for Democratic Senator dates back to a petty feud over the Empire State Building
Noor Al-Sibai - raw story
29 JAN 2019 AT 20:49 ET
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) gets under Donald Trump’s skin — and the reason why spans back decades.
Politico reported Tuesday that Trump’s attacks on Blumenthal, a former Connecticut attorney general, have more to do with a family feud than his record in Vietnam.
On Monday night, Trump went after the Connecticut Senator on Twitter.
“How does Da Nang Dick (Blumenthal) serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee when he defrauded the American people about his so called War Hero status in Vietnam, only to later admit, with tears pouring down his face, that he was never in Vietnam,” the president tweeted. “An embarrassment to our Country!”
Blumenthal has admitted that he “misstated” his service during the Vietnam war (he was a Marine reservist during that period) — and according to one former senior White House official, that disambiguation angered Trump.
“Trump gets a bad rap for not serving in the military and when he saw someone else who claimed to have served but technically didn’t,” the official told Politico, “he seized on that opportunity.”
But it was a feud between Blumenthal’s in-laws and Trump over the Empire State Building that may be at the core of the president’s animosity towards the Connecticut Democrat.
“Trump and Blumenthal’s father-in-law, Peter Malkin, were competitors in the Manhattan real estate market,” the report noted, “and eventually clashed over a deal involving control of the iconic Empire State Building.”
According to Blumenthal’s seatmate, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), the former Connecticut attorney general “is picking a scab regularly that Trump’s particularly sensitive about.”
Politico reported Tuesday that Trump’s attacks on Blumenthal, a former Connecticut attorney general, have more to do with a family feud than his record in Vietnam.
On Monday night, Trump went after the Connecticut Senator on Twitter.
“How does Da Nang Dick (Blumenthal) serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee when he defrauded the American people about his so called War Hero status in Vietnam, only to later admit, with tears pouring down his face, that he was never in Vietnam,” the president tweeted. “An embarrassment to our Country!”
Blumenthal has admitted that he “misstated” his service during the Vietnam war (he was a Marine reservist during that period) — and according to one former senior White House official, that disambiguation angered Trump.
“Trump gets a bad rap for not serving in the military and when he saw someone else who claimed to have served but technically didn’t,” the official told Politico, “he seized on that opportunity.”
But it was a feud between Blumenthal’s in-laws and Trump over the Empire State Building that may be at the core of the president’s animosity towards the Connecticut Democrat.
“Trump and Blumenthal’s father-in-law, Peter Malkin, were competitors in the Manhattan real estate market,” the report noted, “and eventually clashed over a deal involving control of the iconic Empire State Building.”
According to Blumenthal’s seatmate, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), the former Connecticut attorney general “is picking a scab regularly that Trump’s particularly sensitive about.”
fox news in charge!!!
Trump touts proposed Bible literacy classes in state schools
BY BRETT SAMUELS - the hill
01/28/19 08:58 AM EST
Pissident Trump on Monday embraced proposals from lawmakers in six states that would allow public schools to offer Bible literacy classes.
The president's tweet came shortly after the subject was discussed on "Fox & Friends."
"Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!" Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump's tweet came roughly a half hour after North Dakota state Rep. Aaron McWilliams (R) appeared on "Fox & Friends." McWilliams is co-sponsoring a measure in North Dakota to support Bible literacy classes.
Similar measures have been introduced in Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia and Florida.
USA Today reported that the proposals would require or encourage public schools to offer elective classes on the Bible, with a focus on its historical significance.
Critics of the measures have argued that they could violate the constitutional separation between church and state, USA Today reported.
Trump has often courted the support of evangelical leaders, with many defending him despite criticism over his rhetoric toward immigrants and on the campaign trail.
The president's tweet came shortly after the subject was discussed on "Fox & Friends."
"Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!" Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump's tweet came roughly a half hour after North Dakota state Rep. Aaron McWilliams (R) appeared on "Fox & Friends." McWilliams is co-sponsoring a measure in North Dakota to support Bible literacy classes.
Similar measures have been introduced in Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia and Florida.
USA Today reported that the proposals would require or encourage public schools to offer elective classes on the Bible, with a focus on its historical significance.
Critics of the measures have argued that they could violate the constitutional separation between church and state, USA Today reported.
Trump has often courted the support of evangelical leaders, with many defending him despite criticism over his rhetoric toward immigrants and on the campaign trail.
The Atlantic: IMPEACH DONALD TRUMP
Starting the process will rein in a president who is undermining American ideals—and bring the debate about his fitness for office into Congress, where it belongs.
kpete - demo underground
1/17/19
On january 20, 2017, Donald Trump stood on the steps of the Capitol, raised his right hand, and solemnly swore to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He has not kept that promise.
Instead, he has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal.
...................
The oath of office is a president’s promise to subordinate his private desires to the public interest, to serve the nation as a whole rather than any faction within it. Trump displays no evidence that he understands these obligations. To the contrary, he has routinely privileged his self-interest above the responsibilities of the presidency. He has failed to disclose or divest himself from his extensive financial interests, instead using the platform of the presidency to promote them. This has encouraged a wide array of actors, domestic and foreign, to seek to influence his decisions by funneling cash to properties such as Mar-a-Lago (the “Winter White House,” as Trump has branded it) and his hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. Courts are now considering whether some of those payments violate the Constitution.
..........
Trump’s bipartisan critics are not merely arguing that he has dishonored the presidency. The most serious charge is that he is attacking the bedrock of American democracy.
........... By delaying the start of the process, in the hope that even clearer evidence will be produced by Mueller or some other source, lawmakers are delaying its eventual conclusion. Better to forge ahead, weighing what is already known and incorporating additional material as it becomes available.
...........
........The process of impeachment itself is likely to shift public opinion, both by highlighting what’s already known and by bringing new evidence to light. If Trump’s support among Republican voters erodes, his support in the Senate may do the same. One lesson of Richard Nixon’s impeachment is that when legislators conclude a presidency is doomed, they can switch allegiances in the blink of an eye.
.........
With a newly seated Democratic majority, the House of Representatives can no longer dodge its constitutional duty. It must immediately open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and bring the debate out of the court of public opinion and into Congress, where it belongs.
MORE:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/impeachment-trump/580468/
Instead, he has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal.
...................
The oath of office is a president’s promise to subordinate his private desires to the public interest, to serve the nation as a whole rather than any faction within it. Trump displays no evidence that he understands these obligations. To the contrary, he has routinely privileged his self-interest above the responsibilities of the presidency. He has failed to disclose or divest himself from his extensive financial interests, instead using the platform of the presidency to promote them. This has encouraged a wide array of actors, domestic and foreign, to seek to influence his decisions by funneling cash to properties such as Mar-a-Lago (the “Winter White House,” as Trump has branded it) and his hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. Courts are now considering whether some of those payments violate the Constitution.
..........
Trump’s bipartisan critics are not merely arguing that he has dishonored the presidency. The most serious charge is that he is attacking the bedrock of American democracy.
........... By delaying the start of the process, in the hope that even clearer evidence will be produced by Mueller or some other source, lawmakers are delaying its eventual conclusion. Better to forge ahead, weighing what is already known and incorporating additional material as it becomes available.
...........
........The process of impeachment itself is likely to shift public opinion, both by highlighting what’s already known and by bringing new evidence to light. If Trump’s support among Republican voters erodes, his support in the Senate may do the same. One lesson of Richard Nixon’s impeachment is that when legislators conclude a presidency is doomed, they can switch allegiances in the blink of an eye.
.........
With a newly seated Democratic majority, the House of Representatives can no longer dodge its constitutional duty. It must immediately open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and bring the debate out of the court of public opinion and into Congress, where it belongs.
MORE:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/impeachment-trump/580468/
Here’s the bizarre story behind Trump’s bungled attempt to build a high-rise in Moscow
Travis Gettys - raw story
29 NOV 2018 AT 10:43 ET
Pissident Donald Trump may have endangered his presidency and American democracy with his business dealings in Russia — but he has nothing to show for it.
His longtime attorney revealed Thursday in federal court that he had lied to Congress by saying the Trump Tower Moscow deal fell apart in January 2016, and admitted the project remained under negotiation until June 2016.
Trump signed a letter of intent in October 2015, after launching his improbably successful presidential campaign, but the back story for the project shows how the president aligned himself with sketchy characters to pursue the ill-fated project.
The former real estate developer and reality TV star spent decades cultivating relationships in Russia, but he never actually built anything there, and The Atlantic‘s Julia Ioffe tried to find out why in a September 2017 investigative report.
What she found, in short, is that Trump isn’t nearly as good a businessman as he likes to brag.
“Trump wants everything and he’s dealing with the Russians, who aren’t stupid,” said one Western real estate investor in Moscow. “If you want everything from the Russians, they’re not going to give it to you. Trump’s way of negotiating is to ask for every f*cking thing. The Russians have a different philosophy of negotiation: He who asks is the weak party.”
Other big-name hotel brands have built in Moscow, but they actually run those businesses in addition to licensing their names — which was all Trump offered.
“Trump wants a fee for branding and doesn’t put money in, so most developers’ in Moscow responses are, ‘So what the f*ck do we need him for?’” said a person familiar with the licensing negotiations.
Donald Trump Jr. summed up the complex back story by admitting Russia “really is a scary place.”
The younger Trump told a trade publication in 2008, when he revealed “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” that Trump Organization was concerned about the payoffs necessary to do business in Russia, where corruption is rampant and bribes are necessary.
“Moscow is like New York in many ways, just way more corrupt,” said one Western real estate developer in Russia, who asked for anonymity to avoid upsetting his foreign partners. “To pull a building out of the ground, you need so many permits, so many authorizations — the mind reels. And all of it is so corrupt, it’s insane.”
Ioffe, who was born in Moscow and came to the U.S. with her parents at 7, said the Trump Organization would have needed a capable and connected local partner to obtain all the necessary permits.
Trump worked with Aras Agalarov — whose son was involved in arranging the campaign meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer — in 2013, but that deal fell apart over a scandal in Kyrgyzstan and amid Russian economic woes.
The future president instead relied on Felix Sater, a Russian-American convicted felon with mob ties who also worked as an FBI informant.
Sater started traveling to Moscow on Trump’s behalf in 2004, and three years later also started advising the self-described Donald Trump of Russia, Sergei Polonsky, over the objections of the developer’s lieutenants.
“I would never hire somebody like that,” said Alexey Kunitsin, who was then chairman of the board at Polonsky’s company. “You can’t trust him in any way, not in a professional setting, not in a personal setting — you could see it very clearly. He was telling constant crazy stories, wild fantasies about all the people he knew. He was not a balanced dude. He’s very emotional and gets into conflicts very easily.”
Sater gained a reputation as a “bullsh*tter” and raised suspicions with his colorful tales of profligate spending, and Moscow developers didn’t trust him or take him seriously.
Those developers also didn’t trust Trump, who was an outsider without the necessary political protection to do business in Moscow.
Sater seems to have hoped that might change after Trump announced his presidential campaign, according to emails recently obtained by the New York Times that show him bragging to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen that he had lined up financing for Trump Tower from VTB — a bank under U.S. sanctions.
“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater said in one email, and Trump signed a non-binding letter of attempt in fall 2015 to pursue the project.
However, that deal too went nowhere because Sater lacked the right connections and because Russia’s economy was still staggering under U.S. sanctions imposed the year before.
Cohen tried to revive the project in 2016 by trying to contact the players Sater had bragged about but instead sent an email to a top Putin lieutenant using his general email listed on the Kremlin website, and the official declined to respond.
Moscow developers described Cohen’s action as more of a rookie mistake than evidence of high-level contacts — and they told The Atlantic it shows why Trump never got anything built in Russia.
“That is like the stupidest, most absurd thing ever,” said one Western real estate developer. “The Russians that (Trump) associates with, I would never do business with. I’ve been involved with Russia for 25 years.”
The developer offered a withering criticism of Trump’s business acumen, given his famous name that’s become synonymous with a certain type of luxury.
“A genuine developer could’ve done a lot with that brand,” the developer said.
His longtime attorney revealed Thursday in federal court that he had lied to Congress by saying the Trump Tower Moscow deal fell apart in January 2016, and admitted the project remained under negotiation until June 2016.
Trump signed a letter of intent in October 2015, after launching his improbably successful presidential campaign, but the back story for the project shows how the president aligned himself with sketchy characters to pursue the ill-fated project.
The former real estate developer and reality TV star spent decades cultivating relationships in Russia, but he never actually built anything there, and The Atlantic‘s Julia Ioffe tried to find out why in a September 2017 investigative report.
What she found, in short, is that Trump isn’t nearly as good a businessman as he likes to brag.
“Trump wants everything and he’s dealing with the Russians, who aren’t stupid,” said one Western real estate investor in Moscow. “If you want everything from the Russians, they’re not going to give it to you. Trump’s way of negotiating is to ask for every f*cking thing. The Russians have a different philosophy of negotiation: He who asks is the weak party.”
Other big-name hotel brands have built in Moscow, but they actually run those businesses in addition to licensing their names — which was all Trump offered.
“Trump wants a fee for branding and doesn’t put money in, so most developers’ in Moscow responses are, ‘So what the f*ck do we need him for?’” said a person familiar with the licensing negotiations.
Donald Trump Jr. summed up the complex back story by admitting Russia “really is a scary place.”
The younger Trump told a trade publication in 2008, when he revealed “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” that Trump Organization was concerned about the payoffs necessary to do business in Russia, where corruption is rampant and bribes are necessary.
“Moscow is like New York in many ways, just way more corrupt,” said one Western real estate developer in Russia, who asked for anonymity to avoid upsetting his foreign partners. “To pull a building out of the ground, you need so many permits, so many authorizations — the mind reels. And all of it is so corrupt, it’s insane.”
Ioffe, who was born in Moscow and came to the U.S. with her parents at 7, said the Trump Organization would have needed a capable and connected local partner to obtain all the necessary permits.
Trump worked with Aras Agalarov — whose son was involved in arranging the campaign meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer — in 2013, but that deal fell apart over a scandal in Kyrgyzstan and amid Russian economic woes.
The future president instead relied on Felix Sater, a Russian-American convicted felon with mob ties who also worked as an FBI informant.
Sater started traveling to Moscow on Trump’s behalf in 2004, and three years later also started advising the self-described Donald Trump of Russia, Sergei Polonsky, over the objections of the developer’s lieutenants.
“I would never hire somebody like that,” said Alexey Kunitsin, who was then chairman of the board at Polonsky’s company. “You can’t trust him in any way, not in a professional setting, not in a personal setting — you could see it very clearly. He was telling constant crazy stories, wild fantasies about all the people he knew. He was not a balanced dude. He’s very emotional and gets into conflicts very easily.”
Sater gained a reputation as a “bullsh*tter” and raised suspicions with his colorful tales of profligate spending, and Moscow developers didn’t trust him or take him seriously.
Those developers also didn’t trust Trump, who was an outsider without the necessary political protection to do business in Moscow.
Sater seems to have hoped that might change after Trump announced his presidential campaign, according to emails recently obtained by the New York Times that show him bragging to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen that he had lined up financing for Trump Tower from VTB — a bank under U.S. sanctions.
“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater said in one email, and Trump signed a non-binding letter of attempt in fall 2015 to pursue the project.
However, that deal too went nowhere because Sater lacked the right connections and because Russia’s economy was still staggering under U.S. sanctions imposed the year before.
Cohen tried to revive the project in 2016 by trying to contact the players Sater had bragged about but instead sent an email to a top Putin lieutenant using his general email listed on the Kremlin website, and the official declined to respond.
Moscow developers described Cohen’s action as more of a rookie mistake than evidence of high-level contacts — and they told The Atlantic it shows why Trump never got anything built in Russia.
“That is like the stupidest, most absurd thing ever,” said one Western real estate developer. “The Russians that (Trump) associates with, I would never do business with. I’ve been involved with Russia for 25 years.”
The developer offered a withering criticism of Trump’s business acumen, given his famous name that’s become synonymous with a certain type of luxury.
“A genuine developer could’ve done a lot with that brand,” the developer said.
Cowardice is the real source of Donald Trump’s perpetual lying and narcissistic insensitivity to others
By Michael Winship, Common Dreams - COMMENTARY - raw story
27 NOV 2018 AT 15:38 ET
Our president is a coward.
This may not come as news to you.
But as we cascade toward the latter half of his first and, God hope it, only term, Donald Trump’s craven fearfulness is worth a reminder simply because of its vast continuing implications for our country and the world.
Of course, there’s the surface narcissistic indifference and insensitivity to others, in particular his disregard for members of the military and veterans, despite his many tweeted proclamations of support and gratitude.
This disrespect was made manifest in early November during the 100th anniversary celebrations of the armistice that ended World War I. His well-known fear of wet head kept him indoors, a no show both on one of the days he was in France and later at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. Panic at the prospect of a bad hair day apparently took precedence over Veterans’ Day.
Not since the first month of his administration has Trump made a visit to pay his respects at Dover Air Force Base, where the bodies of America’s war dead are returned home. According to Bob Woodward in his book, Fear, the commander-in-chief was “clearly rattled” by that one experience and won’t go back. Duty and sacrifice just aren’t his thing.
And although he loudly has supported more defense spending, unlike his predecessors, it’s no surprise that Trump has yet to visit any of our troops deployed abroad in combat zones. “In modern times, we expect presidents to do that much more than in the old days when travel was more difficult,”historian Michael Beschloss told The Washington Post. “When Trump doesn’t come anywhere close to meeting the expectation, it makes people wonder why.”
Despite his self-professed “unbelievably busy schedule,” (including 154 visits to golf resorts, mostly his own, since Inauguration Day), the president now says that a visit will happen, although no date has been set. Yet Josh Dawsey and Paul Sonne at The Post quote a former White House official: “He’s never been interested in going. He’s afraid of those situations. He’s afraid people want to kill him.”
Acting out his timorous bully tendencies, Trump has lashed out at those possessing the courage he lacks, insulting Gold Star families, the late senator and former POW John McCain and recently, retired Navy SEAL and Special Operations commander Bill McRaven.
So, as opposed as you and I may be to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else our armed forces are placed in harm’s way—including the Mexican border, where their presence is political, gratuitous and unlawful—there’s no denying that the commander-in-chief’s graceless apathy, even antipathy, have done nothing but create ill will.
Worse and scarier, according to The New York Times, “[T]op Defense Department officials say that Mr. Trump has not fully grasped the role of the troops he commands, nor the responsibility that he has to lead them and protect them from politics.”
Beyond his personal cowardice (including his seeming, non-Apprentice-like inability to fire anyone face-to-face), an overall paranoia about the world beyond his bubble leaves him ignorant and unwilling to face inconvenient truths. That’s why conspiracy theories are so reassuring to Trump and his followers – there’s always some larger force at work that makes it easy to shirk responsibility and blame someone –anyone – else.
It’s part of what keeps him from confronting the awful and incontrovertible reality of climate change, his administration trying to bury on the day after Thanksgiving that stunning, 1656-page assessment from thirteen federal agencies. As per The Times, “The report puts the most precise price tags to date on the cost to the United States economy of projected climate impacts: $141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century, among others.”
Trump’s response? “I don’t believe it.”
Look, too, at his refusal to listen to the tape of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey. “It’s a suffering tape, it’s a terrible tape,” Trump told Fox’s Chris Wallace. “I’ve been fully briefed on it. There’s no reason for me to hear it.”
That denial is a singular metaphor for the president’s gutless inability to confront Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or his father Saudi King Salman over the killing – or any of Saudi Arabia’s grotesque and cruel violations of human rights. Despite overwhelming evidence presented to him by the intelligence community, “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t,” was Trump’s response when asked if the crown prince was complicit in Khashoggi’s death. It was an answer eerily reminiscent of his “very fine people on both sides” comments in the wake of the fatal neo-Nazi riot in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Much of his cowardice is egged on by avarice and amoral political calculation, as our chief executive evaluates everything by price and values nothing by standards of common sense, common decency or the greater common good. Living in a constant greed-fueled state of fear and suspicion, Trump sidles up to dictators abroad. He only attacks our democratic allies, who sensibly, so far, have valued the length and durability of our friendships over the short-term ravings of an uninformed and intolerant autocrat.
Like his fellow totalitarian Putin and others, he brooks no dissent or opposition and views the facts as daggers pointed straight at his heart. Trump is so afraid to face the truth that he makes up lies to comfort himself, fabrications that give him an excuse to take no action—or to take actions so heinous we’ll be trying to recover from them for decades to come.
This may not come as news to you.
But as we cascade toward the latter half of his first and, God hope it, only term, Donald Trump’s craven fearfulness is worth a reminder simply because of its vast continuing implications for our country and the world.
Of course, there’s the surface narcissistic indifference and insensitivity to others, in particular his disregard for members of the military and veterans, despite his many tweeted proclamations of support and gratitude.
This disrespect was made manifest in early November during the 100th anniversary celebrations of the armistice that ended World War I. His well-known fear of wet head kept him indoors, a no show both on one of the days he was in France and later at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. Panic at the prospect of a bad hair day apparently took precedence over Veterans’ Day.
Not since the first month of his administration has Trump made a visit to pay his respects at Dover Air Force Base, where the bodies of America’s war dead are returned home. According to Bob Woodward in his book, Fear, the commander-in-chief was “clearly rattled” by that one experience and won’t go back. Duty and sacrifice just aren’t his thing.
And although he loudly has supported more defense spending, unlike his predecessors, it’s no surprise that Trump has yet to visit any of our troops deployed abroad in combat zones. “In modern times, we expect presidents to do that much more than in the old days when travel was more difficult,”historian Michael Beschloss told The Washington Post. “When Trump doesn’t come anywhere close to meeting the expectation, it makes people wonder why.”
Despite his self-professed “unbelievably busy schedule,” (including 154 visits to golf resorts, mostly his own, since Inauguration Day), the president now says that a visit will happen, although no date has been set. Yet Josh Dawsey and Paul Sonne at The Post quote a former White House official: “He’s never been interested in going. He’s afraid of those situations. He’s afraid people want to kill him.”
Acting out his timorous bully tendencies, Trump has lashed out at those possessing the courage he lacks, insulting Gold Star families, the late senator and former POW John McCain and recently, retired Navy SEAL and Special Operations commander Bill McRaven.
So, as opposed as you and I may be to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else our armed forces are placed in harm’s way—including the Mexican border, where their presence is political, gratuitous and unlawful—there’s no denying that the commander-in-chief’s graceless apathy, even antipathy, have done nothing but create ill will.
Worse and scarier, according to The New York Times, “[T]op Defense Department officials say that Mr. Trump has not fully grasped the role of the troops he commands, nor the responsibility that he has to lead them and protect them from politics.”
Beyond his personal cowardice (including his seeming, non-Apprentice-like inability to fire anyone face-to-face), an overall paranoia about the world beyond his bubble leaves him ignorant and unwilling to face inconvenient truths. That’s why conspiracy theories are so reassuring to Trump and his followers – there’s always some larger force at work that makes it easy to shirk responsibility and blame someone –anyone – else.
It’s part of what keeps him from confronting the awful and incontrovertible reality of climate change, his administration trying to bury on the day after Thanksgiving that stunning, 1656-page assessment from thirteen federal agencies. As per The Times, “The report puts the most precise price tags to date on the cost to the United States economy of projected climate impacts: $141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century, among others.”
Trump’s response? “I don’t believe it.”
Look, too, at his refusal to listen to the tape of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey. “It’s a suffering tape, it’s a terrible tape,” Trump told Fox’s Chris Wallace. “I’ve been fully briefed on it. There’s no reason for me to hear it.”
That denial is a singular metaphor for the president’s gutless inability to confront Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or his father Saudi King Salman over the killing – or any of Saudi Arabia’s grotesque and cruel violations of human rights. Despite overwhelming evidence presented to him by the intelligence community, “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t,” was Trump’s response when asked if the crown prince was complicit in Khashoggi’s death. It was an answer eerily reminiscent of his “very fine people on both sides” comments in the wake of the fatal neo-Nazi riot in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Much of his cowardice is egged on by avarice and amoral political calculation, as our chief executive evaluates everything by price and values nothing by standards of common sense, common decency or the greater common good. Living in a constant greed-fueled state of fear and suspicion, Trump sidles up to dictators abroad. He only attacks our democratic allies, who sensibly, so far, have valued the length and durability of our friendships over the short-term ravings of an uninformed and intolerant autocrat.
Like his fellow totalitarian Putin and others, he brooks no dissent or opposition and views the facts as daggers pointed straight at his heart. Trump is so afraid to face the truth that he makes up lies to comfort himself, fabrications that give him an excuse to take no action—or to take actions so heinous we’ll be trying to recover from them for decades to come.
Here are all the Trump projects where Ivanka and her dad misled real estate buyers
Pro Publica - raw story
18 OCT 2018 AT 06:39 ET
A pattern of deception ran through the Trumps’ real estate deals since the mid-2000s. Not only were the Trumps more than the mere licensors they claimed to be, extracting millions in fees from nearly every facet of these projects, but they often misled buyers and investors on key information — such as the level of sales and the Trumps’ role and investment in the deals. (Read our full investigation.) The Trump Organization did not respond to our questions, and the White House didn’t have a comment.
Projects Where a Trump Family Member Overstated Sales Numbers
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Claim: Donald Trump claimed $365 million in sales in a 2007 letter to The Wall Street Journal.
Reality: Trump reported $290 million in a 2009 project audit.
Result: Never built.
FORT LAUDERDALE
Claim: Trump announced the hotel/condo was “pretty much sold out” in April 2006, according to a broker who attended the presentation.
Reality: 62 percent of units were sold as of July 2006, according to bank records that emerged in a court case.
Result: Entered foreclosure. Trump’s name removed before construction completed.
LAS VEGAS
Claim: Condos “sold out,” Trump told The Associated Press in 2005
Reality: About 25 percent of units were sold by 2011, according to press accounts.
Result: Built.
PANAMA
Claim: “It’s a 1,000-unit building, we’ve sold over 90 percent of it,” Ivanka told Portfolioin 2008.
Reality: As of three months later, 79 percent of the units were pre-sold, according to Moody’s.
Result: Built, but went bankrupt; Trump name removed.
SOHO
Claim: In 2008, Ivanka told reporters that 60 percent of units had sold.
Reality:A Trump partner’s affidavit revealed that 15 percent had been sold at the time.
Result: Built, but went bankrupt; Trump name removed.
TAMPA
Claim: The building “sold out,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal in 2007.
Reality: The developers failed to sell a minimum of 70 percent of units, according to a Trump company letter that year, which deemed that a violation of its contract.
Result: Never built.
TORONTO
Claim: In a 2009 interview, Ivanka referred to the property as “virtually sold out.”
Reality: 24.8 percent of units had sold, according to a 2016 bankruptcy filing by the developers.
Result: Built, but went bankrupt; Trump name removed.
Projects Where the Trumps Suggested They Were Developers, Partners or Equity Owners (They Weren’t)BAJAMore than 50 buyers claimed Ivanka said the Trump Organization was a developer on the project at a 2007 sales event, according to a lawsuit quoted by Univision.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
“I am excited to be building Trump at Cap Cana,” Trump was quoted saying in a 2007 press release, according to Univision.
FORT LAUDERDALE
Trump called the hotel and tower “my latest development” in a letter announcing the project.
REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA
“TRUMP INVESTS IN GEORGIA” read banners for the project, according to The New Yorker. Asked by a Fox anchor what he was “investing in,” Trump responded, “I’m doing a big development” in Georgia.
PANAMA
“I am honored to develop this extraordinary high rise with my partner Roger Khafif of the K Group,” Trump said in a 2009 marketing statement.
TAMPA
Trump claimed an ownership stake in a news article at the time, stating it was less than 50 percent, then adding: “But it’s a substantial stake. I recently said I’d like to increase my stake but when they’re selling that well they don’t let you do that.”
WAIKIKI
In the final episode of season five of “The Apprentice,” Trump announced the project on national TV, saying “that’s why I’m building the magnificent Trump Hotel and Tower Waikiki.” In 2007, he told The Wall Street Journal: “This building is largely owned by me and being developed by me.”
Projects Where a Trump Family Member Overstated Sales Numbers
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Claim: Donald Trump claimed $365 million in sales in a 2007 letter to The Wall Street Journal.
Reality: Trump reported $290 million in a 2009 project audit.
Result: Never built.
FORT LAUDERDALE
Claim: Trump announced the hotel/condo was “pretty much sold out” in April 2006, according to a broker who attended the presentation.
Reality: 62 percent of units were sold as of July 2006, according to bank records that emerged in a court case.
Result: Entered foreclosure. Trump’s name removed before construction completed.
LAS VEGAS
Claim: Condos “sold out,” Trump told The Associated Press in 2005
Reality: About 25 percent of units were sold by 2011, according to press accounts.
Result: Built.
PANAMA
Claim: “It’s a 1,000-unit building, we’ve sold over 90 percent of it,” Ivanka told Portfolioin 2008.
Reality: As of three months later, 79 percent of the units were pre-sold, according to Moody’s.
Result: Built, but went bankrupt; Trump name removed.
SOHO
Claim: In 2008, Ivanka told reporters that 60 percent of units had sold.
Reality:A Trump partner’s affidavit revealed that 15 percent had been sold at the time.
Result: Built, but went bankrupt; Trump name removed.
TAMPA
Claim: The building “sold out,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal in 2007.
Reality: The developers failed to sell a minimum of 70 percent of units, according to a Trump company letter that year, which deemed that a violation of its contract.
Result: Never built.
TORONTO
Claim: In a 2009 interview, Ivanka referred to the property as “virtually sold out.”
Reality: 24.8 percent of units had sold, according to a 2016 bankruptcy filing by the developers.
Result: Built, but went bankrupt; Trump name removed.
Projects Where the Trumps Suggested They Were Developers, Partners or Equity Owners (They Weren’t)BAJAMore than 50 buyers claimed Ivanka said the Trump Organization was a developer on the project at a 2007 sales event, according to a lawsuit quoted by Univision.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
“I am excited to be building Trump at Cap Cana,” Trump was quoted saying in a 2007 press release, according to Univision.
FORT LAUDERDALE
Trump called the hotel and tower “my latest development” in a letter announcing the project.
REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA
“TRUMP INVESTS IN GEORGIA” read banners for the project, according to The New Yorker. Asked by a Fox anchor what he was “investing in,” Trump responded, “I’m doing a big development” in Georgia.
PANAMA
“I am honored to develop this extraordinary high rise with my partner Roger Khafif of the K Group,” Trump said in a 2009 marketing statement.
TAMPA
Trump claimed an ownership stake in a news article at the time, stating it was less than 50 percent, then adding: “But it’s a substantial stake. I recently said I’d like to increase my stake but when they’re selling that well they don’t let you do that.”
WAIKIKI
In the final episode of season five of “The Apprentice,” Trump announced the project on national TV, saying “that’s why I’m building the magnificent Trump Hotel and Tower Waikiki.” In 2007, he told The Wall Street Journal: “This building is largely owned by me and being developed by me.”
Making us proud to be Americans!!!
Trump Statuettes Spotted On Brooklyn Sidewalks.
A treat for our canine friends
The Planners Of The Trump Tower Meeting Moved Millions, And Mueller Is Now Investigating
Documents show suspicious transfers began six days before the controversial meeting.
Anthony Cormier
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Jason Leopold
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on September 21, 2018, at 10:45 a.m. ET
On June 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. received one of the most striking emails of the presidential campaign, offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump Jr. responded 17 minutes later: “if it’s what you say I love it.”
That email led to a meeting at Trump Tower that has become a central focus of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
But the very day that email was sent, another exchange was taking place behind the scenes.
Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that $3.3 million began moving on June 3 between two of the men who orchestrated the meeting: Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime Agalarov employee once investigated for money laundering.
That money is on top of the more than $20 million that was flagged as suspicious, BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month, after the money ricocheted among the planners and participants of the Trump Tower meeting. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating whether any individuals colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, is examining the suspicious transactions, four federal law enforcement officials said. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Although the documents do not directly link the $3.3 million to the meeting, they show that officials at three separate banks raised red flags about the funds. Many of the transfers seemed to have no legitimate purpose, bankers noted. Kaveladze quickly moved money to other accounts he controlled, and appeared to use some of it to make payments on Agalarov’s behalf — including more than $700,000 to pay off American Express charges.
Scott Balber, an attorney for Agalarov and Kaveladze, said each of these transactions was legitimate and there is nothing improper with their financial activity. Balber explained that Agalarov sent funds to Kaveladze, an employee, to pay various business or personal expenses in the US.
“What is suspicious, or insidious, about a billionaire who pays his employee in the US to pay his business or domestic bills?” Balber said. “This looks like complete nonsense.”
“It’s obvious the events of June 2016 have been a focal point of the special counsel’s investigation, various congressional inquiries, tremendous media attention and the like,” Balber said. “We are in the lens of that reality, so it doesn’t surprise me that there’s been some flyspecking, some gross overreporting by a number of financial institutions. They won’t be criticized for overreporting suspicious activity.”
None of these transactions was discovered until 2017, after the New York Times revealed the Trump Tower meeting. Shortly after those reports, investigators asked financial institutions to look back at their accounts to learn how money flowed among the people who planned and attended the meeting: Agalarov; Kaveladze; Agalarov’s pop star son, Emin; their employee, Rob Goldstone, who sent the original email to Trump Jr.; and others.
To unearth connections between some of their accounts, banks took an extraordinary step: They invoked a provision of the Patriot Act — a post-9/11 law that included new tools to track money laundering and terrorist financing. That provision, rarely used in the Trump-Russia investigation, allowed the banks to share information about customers with one another.
Three financial institutions — Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley — discovered the $3.3 million that flowed from Agalarov to Kaveladze.
They also learned that Kaveladze had given different banks radically different descriptions of one of his main companies, Corsy International. To JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze said Corsy was a “transportation equipment and supplies merchant wholesaler.” He told Citibank it was a “music promotion company.” Agalarov gave yet another description to Morgan Stanley, calling the firm a “service provider” for his vast real estate company, Crocus Group.
Balber, the attorney, said that there are two separate businesses, both named “Corsy International,” that Kaveladze controlled. One is based in California and is involved in “procurement” issues related to Agalarov’s business empire. The other is based in New York and is largely involved with the music career of Emin Agalarov.
That lack of transparency made it difficult for bankers to know the true purpose of the funds into the company’s accounts. Examiners also became concerned with how Kaveladze handled the money.
On June 3, the day of the email exchange with Donald Trump Jr., Kaveladze began depositing checks into his JP Morgan Chase Platinum business checking account in California. He used three different branches in Huntington Beach, California, and the five checks totaled about $397,000. Each originated with Agalarov and referred to “compensation Amex expenses.”
Then on June 6, Agalarov started sending checks through an account at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management to Kaveladze’s company.
Those funds totaled about $971,000.
When they reviewed these accounts, bank examiners became suspicious because it was unclear exactly how the money was supposed to be used.
For instance, at JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze transferred money from one of his companies’ accounts to another and ultimately sent 24 payments over 15 months to American Express for a total of $725,000 — a red flag to bankers because they said it appeared Kaveladze was making the payments for Agalarov. The documents do not say what expenses were charged to American Express, and three federal law enforcement agents said investigators are still trying to figure it out. Balber said these transactions were legitimate personal and business expenses for Agalarov.
The details unearthed by bankers were compiled in “suspicious activity reports” sent to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which shared them with other law enforcement agencies investigating Russian interference.
Suspicious activity reports are not evidence of wrongdoing, but they can provide valuable information to investigators looking into possible money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, or other financial misconduct.
During their reviews in 2017, some banks noticed behavior that they had not previously flagged. Bank of America, for example, noted about $7.8 million that was sent from Corsy International to another of Kaveladze’s businesses, Promomed, between 2012 and 2014. Bankers said they were concerned that by transferring funds from one company to another, Kaveladze was trying to obscure the original source of the money.
Citibank went far back into its accounts to search for suspicious activity by Kaveladze and the Agalarov family. Examiners “elevated” about $11.9 million in transactions that began in 2015, largely because the transactions originated in “high-risk jurisdictions,” or locations that are known as havens for money laundering, and because the funds were sent for “unknown purposes.”
Kaveladze had popped up on Citibank’s radar in September 2015, when he applied for a $100,000 line of credit for Corsy International. At that time, he told bankers that the company had $8 million in sales the previous year and that it had about $240,000 in available funds — but when Citibank investigated further, examiners learned that Corsy International’s account was actually overdrawn.
Citibank denied the loan.
Balber, Kaveladze’s attorney, said that his client did nothing improper, and that he doesn’t recall telling the bank about Corsy International’s available funds.
All three banks cited a 2000 report by the Government Accountability Office, in which Kaveladze was investigated as part of a Russian money laundering scheme. Kaveladze, that report found, established more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian real estate brokers, then set up US bank accounts for them. The brokers used these accounts to transfer about $1.4 billion, the report found.
Kaveladze was never charged with a crime and called the GAO’s inquiry a “witch hunt.”
Trump Jr. responded 17 minutes later: “if it’s what you say I love it.”
That email led to a meeting at Trump Tower that has become a central focus of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
But the very day that email was sent, another exchange was taking place behind the scenes.
Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that $3.3 million began moving on June 3 between two of the men who orchestrated the meeting: Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime Agalarov employee once investigated for money laundering.
That money is on top of the more than $20 million that was flagged as suspicious, BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month, after the money ricocheted among the planners and participants of the Trump Tower meeting. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating whether any individuals colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, is examining the suspicious transactions, four federal law enforcement officials said. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Although the documents do not directly link the $3.3 million to the meeting, they show that officials at three separate banks raised red flags about the funds. Many of the transfers seemed to have no legitimate purpose, bankers noted. Kaveladze quickly moved money to other accounts he controlled, and appeared to use some of it to make payments on Agalarov’s behalf — including more than $700,000 to pay off American Express charges.
Scott Balber, an attorney for Agalarov and Kaveladze, said each of these transactions was legitimate and there is nothing improper with their financial activity. Balber explained that Agalarov sent funds to Kaveladze, an employee, to pay various business or personal expenses in the US.
“What is suspicious, or insidious, about a billionaire who pays his employee in the US to pay his business or domestic bills?” Balber said. “This looks like complete nonsense.”
“It’s obvious the events of June 2016 have been a focal point of the special counsel’s investigation, various congressional inquiries, tremendous media attention and the like,” Balber said. “We are in the lens of that reality, so it doesn’t surprise me that there’s been some flyspecking, some gross overreporting by a number of financial institutions. They won’t be criticized for overreporting suspicious activity.”
None of these transactions was discovered until 2017, after the New York Times revealed the Trump Tower meeting. Shortly after those reports, investigators asked financial institutions to look back at their accounts to learn how money flowed among the people who planned and attended the meeting: Agalarov; Kaveladze; Agalarov’s pop star son, Emin; their employee, Rob Goldstone, who sent the original email to Trump Jr.; and others.
To unearth connections between some of their accounts, banks took an extraordinary step: They invoked a provision of the Patriot Act — a post-9/11 law that included new tools to track money laundering and terrorist financing. That provision, rarely used in the Trump-Russia investigation, allowed the banks to share information about customers with one another.
Three financial institutions — Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley — discovered the $3.3 million that flowed from Agalarov to Kaveladze.
They also learned that Kaveladze had given different banks radically different descriptions of one of his main companies, Corsy International. To JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze said Corsy was a “transportation equipment and supplies merchant wholesaler.” He told Citibank it was a “music promotion company.” Agalarov gave yet another description to Morgan Stanley, calling the firm a “service provider” for his vast real estate company, Crocus Group.
Balber, the attorney, said that there are two separate businesses, both named “Corsy International,” that Kaveladze controlled. One is based in California and is involved in “procurement” issues related to Agalarov’s business empire. The other is based in New York and is largely involved with the music career of Emin Agalarov.
That lack of transparency made it difficult for bankers to know the true purpose of the funds into the company’s accounts. Examiners also became concerned with how Kaveladze handled the money.
On June 3, the day of the email exchange with Donald Trump Jr., Kaveladze began depositing checks into his JP Morgan Chase Platinum business checking account in California. He used three different branches in Huntington Beach, California, and the five checks totaled about $397,000. Each originated with Agalarov and referred to “compensation Amex expenses.”
Then on June 6, Agalarov started sending checks through an account at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management to Kaveladze’s company.
Those funds totaled about $971,000.
When they reviewed these accounts, bank examiners became suspicious because it was unclear exactly how the money was supposed to be used.
For instance, at JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze transferred money from one of his companies’ accounts to another and ultimately sent 24 payments over 15 months to American Express for a total of $725,000 — a red flag to bankers because they said it appeared Kaveladze was making the payments for Agalarov. The documents do not say what expenses were charged to American Express, and three federal law enforcement agents said investigators are still trying to figure it out. Balber said these transactions were legitimate personal and business expenses for Agalarov.
The details unearthed by bankers were compiled in “suspicious activity reports” sent to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which shared them with other law enforcement agencies investigating Russian interference.
Suspicious activity reports are not evidence of wrongdoing, but they can provide valuable information to investigators looking into possible money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, or other financial misconduct.
During their reviews in 2017, some banks noticed behavior that they had not previously flagged. Bank of America, for example, noted about $7.8 million that was sent from Corsy International to another of Kaveladze’s businesses, Promomed, between 2012 and 2014. Bankers said they were concerned that by transferring funds from one company to another, Kaveladze was trying to obscure the original source of the money.
Citibank went far back into its accounts to search for suspicious activity by Kaveladze and the Agalarov family. Examiners “elevated” about $11.9 million in transactions that began in 2015, largely because the transactions originated in “high-risk jurisdictions,” or locations that are known as havens for money laundering, and because the funds were sent for “unknown purposes.”
Kaveladze had popped up on Citibank’s radar in September 2015, when he applied for a $100,000 line of credit for Corsy International. At that time, he told bankers that the company had $8 million in sales the previous year and that it had about $240,000 in available funds — but when Citibank investigated further, examiners learned that Corsy International’s account was actually overdrawn.
Citibank denied the loan.
Balber, Kaveladze’s attorney, said that his client did nothing improper, and that he doesn’t recall telling the bank about Corsy International’s available funds.
All three banks cited a 2000 report by the Government Accountability Office, in which Kaveladze was investigated as part of a Russian money laundering scheme. Kaveladze, that report found, established more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian real estate brokers, then set up US bank accounts for them. The brokers used these accounts to transfer about $1.4 billion, the report found.
Kaveladze was never charged with a crime and called the GAO’s inquiry a “witch hunt.”
Trump admits Fox News hosts influenced his decision to declassify key Russia documents
"The great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful great Jeanie Pirro."
FRANK DALE - thinkprogress
SEP 19, 2018, 6:25 PM
Any doubt about the feedback loop between President Donald Trump and FoxNews can be put to rest, as the president credited Fox’s Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro for his decision to declassify key Russia documents in an interview with The Hill released on Wednesday.
As ThinkProgress reported on Tuesday, Trump’s declassification of materials relating to the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was made “at the request of” top congressional Republicans, including Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who was a member of the Executive Committee for Trump’s White House transition.
Despite concerns about potential national security issues resulting from Trump’s actions, especially since neither the Department of Justice nor FBI were reportedly involved in the decision, the president praised Fox News and Fox Business hosts for making the recommendation to him during a conversation with Hill.tv’s John Solomon and Buck Sexton.
“I have been asked by so many people that I respect, please — the great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful great Jeanie Pirro. (laughs)
No, she takes it so personally. And that’s not, let’s say they like me. But this is beyond liking me. They know that this is one of the great scandals in the history of our country.”
Trump also mentioned Fox News’ Gregg Jarrett when he was asked about the declassification of Russia documents earlier in the interview.
“You know Gregg Jarrett wrote a book called the Russian Hoax. It actually is a hoax. I call it a witch hunt, but it’s a hoax. Beyond a witch hunt.”
Hannity first referenced Trump’s ability to declassify Russia documents on the July 23 episode of his Fox News show, according to Media Matters’ Nick Fernandez. Hannity and Dobbs have discussed the subject at least a dozen separate times on their shows since then.
Trump’s mention of how Fox News influenced his decision to declassify documents was not included in The Hill’s article about the interview, which contained a note that “brief segments where the president went off the record or made personal observations unrelated to the interview” were removed. However, the names of Hannity, Dobbs, Pirro, and Jarrett appear in the transcript released later on Wednesday.
Solomon, who conducted the interview for Hill.tv, has a long history of twisting the truth to defend Trump.
As ThinkProgress reported on Tuesday, Trump’s declassification of materials relating to the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was made “at the request of” top congressional Republicans, including Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who was a member of the Executive Committee for Trump’s White House transition.
Despite concerns about potential national security issues resulting from Trump’s actions, especially since neither the Department of Justice nor FBI were reportedly involved in the decision, the president praised Fox News and Fox Business hosts for making the recommendation to him during a conversation with Hill.tv’s John Solomon and Buck Sexton.
“I have been asked by so many people that I respect, please — the great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful great Jeanie Pirro. (laughs)
No, she takes it so personally. And that’s not, let’s say they like me. But this is beyond liking me. They know that this is one of the great scandals in the history of our country.”
Trump also mentioned Fox News’ Gregg Jarrett when he was asked about the declassification of Russia documents earlier in the interview.
“You know Gregg Jarrett wrote a book called the Russian Hoax. It actually is a hoax. I call it a witch hunt, but it’s a hoax. Beyond a witch hunt.”
Hannity first referenced Trump’s ability to declassify Russia documents on the July 23 episode of his Fox News show, according to Media Matters’ Nick Fernandez. Hannity and Dobbs have discussed the subject at least a dozen separate times on their shows since then.
Trump’s mention of how Fox News influenced his decision to declassify documents was not included in The Hill’s article about the interview, which contained a note that “brief segments where the president went off the record or made personal observations unrelated to the interview” were removed. However, the names of Hannity, Dobbs, Pirro, and Jarrett appear in the transcript released later on Wednesday.
Solomon, who conducted the interview for Hill.tv, has a long history of twisting the truth to defend Trump.
Trump said that condemning Charlottesville neo-Nazis was ‘the biggest fUcking mistake I’ve made’: Bob Woodward
Brad Reed - RAW STORY
04 SEP 2018 AT 11:50 ET
Bob Woodward’s new book on President Donald Trump — titled “Fear: Inside the Trump White House” — is filled with explosive revelations about Trump’s presidency.
One of the most explosive has to do with the president’s handling of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in the summer of 2017, in which the president said that there were “very fine people” on “both sides” of the demonstration.
According to a leaked excerpt obtained by the Washington Post, Trump deeply resented being forced to come out and specifically condemn white nationalists after being advised by aides that he needed to do so to make clear that he was opposed to racism.
“That was the biggest f*cking mistake I’ve made,” Trump told advisers shortly after giving a speech that condemned Nazis, according to Woodward’s sources, who also say Trump called the speech “the worst” he’d ever given.
Woodward also reports that former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn, who is Jewish, threatened to resign after Trump’s Charlottesville performance, but was convinced to stay aboard by the president, who accused him of “treason” for thinking of stepping down.
Chief of staff John Kelly, whom Woodward also reports believes Trump is an “idiot,”told Cohn that he was similarly horrified by Trump’s performance and also considered resigning from his post.
RELATED: Trump’s staff staged a ‘coup’ to stop him from destroying nation: Woodward
Pr*sdent’s own staff staged a quiet “coup” to prevent “a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world,” according to a new book by Pulitzer-winning Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.
One of the most explosive has to do with the president’s handling of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in the summer of 2017, in which the president said that there were “very fine people” on “both sides” of the demonstration.
According to a leaked excerpt obtained by the Washington Post, Trump deeply resented being forced to come out and specifically condemn white nationalists after being advised by aides that he needed to do so to make clear that he was opposed to racism.
“That was the biggest f*cking mistake I’ve made,” Trump told advisers shortly after giving a speech that condemned Nazis, according to Woodward’s sources, who also say Trump called the speech “the worst” he’d ever given.
Woodward also reports that former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn, who is Jewish, threatened to resign after Trump’s Charlottesville performance, but was convinced to stay aboard by the president, who accused him of “treason” for thinking of stepping down.
Chief of staff John Kelly, whom Woodward also reports believes Trump is an “idiot,”told Cohn that he was similarly horrified by Trump’s performance and also considered resigning from his post.
RELATED: Trump’s staff staged a ‘coup’ to stop him from destroying nation: Woodward
Pr*sdent’s own staff staged a quiet “coup” to prevent “a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world,” according to a new book by Pulitzer-winning Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.
Trump was involved in scuttling FBI building across from Trump’s DC Hotel: Inspector General report
Bob Brigham - raw story
27 AUG 2018 AT 16:19 ET
The Inspector General of the General Services Administration on Monday released an in-depth report showing President Donald Trump was involved in scuttling plans by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to build a new headquarters.
The president was mentioned over three dozen times in the report.
The Inspector General report found that GSA Administrator Emily Murphy’s testimony before Congress on the scandal, “was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with the President or senior White House officials in the decision-making process about the project.”
The Trump administration invoked executive privilege to prevent the inspector general from learning exactly what was said when President Trump allegedly intervened in the rebuilding process.
The FBI plan would have created a large construction zone across the street from Trump’s luxury DC hotel.
The investigation was initiated by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Vice Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“This IG report demonstrates that Administration officials obscured the White House’s involvement in the FBI headquarters project,” Connolly concluded.
“When we began this investigation, the prospect that President Trump was personally involved in the government-led redevelopment of a property in close proximity to the Trump Hotel was dismissed as a conspiracy theory,” he added. “Now, the president’s involvement in this multi-billion-dollar government procurement which will directly impact his bottom line has been confirmed by the White House Press Secretary and government photographs.”
Connolly also urged further investigation.
“This IG report is only the beginning. We must develop a comprehensive understanding of the President’s involvement in this procurement and what it has cost the United States in terms of both national security and taxpayer dollars. I am calling on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to convene immediate hearings on this matter and to subpoena any GSA officials who are suspected of misleading Congress,” he demanded.
Read the full report (PDF).
The president was mentioned over three dozen times in the report.
The Inspector General report found that GSA Administrator Emily Murphy’s testimony before Congress on the scandal, “was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with the President or senior White House officials in the decision-making process about the project.”
The Trump administration invoked executive privilege to prevent the inspector general from learning exactly what was said when President Trump allegedly intervened in the rebuilding process.
The FBI plan would have created a large construction zone across the street from Trump’s luxury DC hotel.
The investigation was initiated by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Vice Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“This IG report demonstrates that Administration officials obscured the White House’s involvement in the FBI headquarters project,” Connolly concluded.
“When we began this investigation, the prospect that President Trump was personally involved in the government-led redevelopment of a property in close proximity to the Trump Hotel was dismissed as a conspiracy theory,” he added. “Now, the president’s involvement in this multi-billion-dollar government procurement which will directly impact his bottom line has been confirmed by the White House Press Secretary and government photographs.”
Connolly also urged further investigation.
“This IG report is only the beginning. We must develop a comprehensive understanding of the President’s involvement in this procurement and what it has cost the United States in terms of both national security and taxpayer dollars. I am calling on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to convene immediate hearings on this matter and to subpoena any GSA officials who are suspected of misleading Congress,” he demanded.
Read the full report (PDF).
Trump's future
Here’s how the Russian mob used cash from a multi-billion dollar gas scam to get their hooks into Trump
Travis Gettys - raw story
16 AUG 2018 AT 08:55 ET
President Donald Trump got his start laundering money for the Russian mob more than 30 years ago as part of one of the biggest scams in U.S. history, according to a new book.
Investigative reporter Craig Unger has described Trump Tower as a “cathedral to money laundering,” and his new book — “House of Trump, House of Putin” — examines the depth of the president’s relationship with the Russian mafia, which he says has no meaningful distinction from the country’s intelligence agencies.
Unger traces the links between Trump and the Russian mob back to at least 1984, when a Soviet refugee David Bogatin was looking for a place to stash the millions he was raking in from a gasoline tax scam he was running with the Colombo crime family.
That scam, the largest of its kind in American history, was busted up by federal investigators as part of Operation Red Daisy, which resulted in the indictment of 15 Russian nationals and 10 others for evading more than $140 million in fuel excise taxes.
Bogatin and two associates, Michael Markowitz and Lev Persits, approached Michael Franzese, the son of a notorious underboss in the Colombo organization, in 1980 asking for protection for their own network of sketchy gas stations.
“These Russians were having trouble collecting money owed them,” Franzese later recalled. “They were also having problems obtaining and holding on to the licenses they needed to keep the gas tax scam going.”
Franzese, the son of mob enforcer John “Sonny” Franzese, was not initially impressed by the Russians — he mocked Markowitz’s disco-styled attire and thought Bogatin looked more like an accountant than a mafioso — but agreed to work for them in exchange for 75 percent of their take in the scheme, Unger wrote.
The lopsided deal proved spectacularly successful for both sides, as profits soared to $100 million a month and more than $1 billion a year — but the conspirators needed a place to launder their ill-gotten cash.
“After seven years in New York, Bogatin had stashed away enough money to buy real estate anywhere he wanted,” Unger wrote. “For roughly a decade, thousands of Russian Jews like him had been pouring into Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. But Bogatin had his eyes on something more prestigious.”
Bogatin became fixated on a “garish” 58-story building that had opened a year before — Trump Tower — and he paid $6 million in cash from his fuel tax scheme for five apartments there.
Unger tracked more than 1,300 similar cash transactions at Trump Tower over the next three decades involving mobsters that ensnared the future president in the closely tied web of Russian spies and mobsters.
“Russian Mafia and Russian intelligence operatives successfully targeted, compromised, and implanted either a willfully ignorant or an inexplicably unaware Russian asset in the White House as the most powerful man on earth,” Unger concludes.
“In doing so, without firing a shot, the Russians helped put in power a man who would immediately begin to undermine the Western Alliance,” he added, “which has been the foundation of American national security for more than 70 years; who would start massive trade wars with America’s longtime allies; fuel right‐wing anti‐immigrant populism; and assault the rule of law in the United States.”
Investigative reporter Craig Unger has described Trump Tower as a “cathedral to money laundering,” and his new book — “House of Trump, House of Putin” — examines the depth of the president’s relationship with the Russian mafia, which he says has no meaningful distinction from the country’s intelligence agencies.
Unger traces the links between Trump and the Russian mob back to at least 1984, when a Soviet refugee David Bogatin was looking for a place to stash the millions he was raking in from a gasoline tax scam he was running with the Colombo crime family.
That scam, the largest of its kind in American history, was busted up by federal investigators as part of Operation Red Daisy, which resulted in the indictment of 15 Russian nationals and 10 others for evading more than $140 million in fuel excise taxes.
Bogatin and two associates, Michael Markowitz and Lev Persits, approached Michael Franzese, the son of a notorious underboss in the Colombo organization, in 1980 asking for protection for their own network of sketchy gas stations.
“These Russians were having trouble collecting money owed them,” Franzese later recalled. “They were also having problems obtaining and holding on to the licenses they needed to keep the gas tax scam going.”
Franzese, the son of mob enforcer John “Sonny” Franzese, was not initially impressed by the Russians — he mocked Markowitz’s disco-styled attire and thought Bogatin looked more like an accountant than a mafioso — but agreed to work for them in exchange for 75 percent of their take in the scheme, Unger wrote.
The lopsided deal proved spectacularly successful for both sides, as profits soared to $100 million a month and more than $1 billion a year — but the conspirators needed a place to launder their ill-gotten cash.
“After seven years in New York, Bogatin had stashed away enough money to buy real estate anywhere he wanted,” Unger wrote. “For roughly a decade, thousands of Russian Jews like him had been pouring into Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. But Bogatin had his eyes on something more prestigious.”
Bogatin became fixated on a “garish” 58-story building that had opened a year before — Trump Tower — and he paid $6 million in cash from his fuel tax scheme for five apartments there.
Unger tracked more than 1,300 similar cash transactions at Trump Tower over the next three decades involving mobsters that ensnared the future president in the closely tied web of Russian spies and mobsters.
“Russian Mafia and Russian intelligence operatives successfully targeted, compromised, and implanted either a willfully ignorant or an inexplicably unaware Russian asset in the White House as the most powerful man on earth,” Unger concludes.
“In doing so, without firing a shot, the Russians helped put in power a man who would immediately begin to undermine the Western Alliance,” he added, “which has been the foundation of American national security for more than 70 years; who would start massive trade wars with America’s longtime allies; fuel right‐wing anti‐immigrant populism; and assault the rule of law in the United States.”
Trump- Putin Summit
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trump funnies
When an Idiot is in charge!!!
trump family values
Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump ran a restaurant, bar, and brothel in British Columbia.
America's Criminal-in-Chief
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But her emails
trade fool!!!
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Trump Confirms His “Shithole” Racism By Saying He Wants Immigrants From Non-White Countries Out
By Jason Easley on Tue, Jan 16th, 2018 at 3:20 pm
politicus usa
Trump responded that he wanted immigrants from other non-white parts of the world out of the United States when he was asked about his immigration views in the White House.
Here is the transcript via the White House as provided to PoliticusUSA:
Q Mr. President, did you say that you want more people to come in from Norway? Did you say that you wanted more people coming in from Norway?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Q Is that true, Mr. President?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I want them to come in from everywhere — everywhere. Thank you very much, everybody.
Q Just the Caucasian or white countries, sir? Or do you want people to come in from other parts of the world?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Out.
Why would Trump answer out if that isn’t what he wants to see happen to immigrant who come to the United States from non-white majority countries? Trump’s entire immigration policy has been focused on deporting black and brown skinned people, so his one word answer was not a surprise.
Republicans and the administration have never denied that Trump wants non-white immigrants out of the country. They claim that he didn’t use the word “shithole,” but there has never been a firm denial that Trump holds a racist view of African countries.
Trump’s own answer confirmed that it doesn’t matter what Republicans pretend like they didn’t hear, this president is bigoted and intends to deport non-white immigrants.
Here is the transcript via the White House as provided to PoliticusUSA:
Q Mr. President, did you say that you want more people to come in from Norway? Did you say that you wanted more people coming in from Norway?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Q Is that true, Mr. President?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I want them to come in from everywhere — everywhere. Thank you very much, everybody.
Q Just the Caucasian or white countries, sir? Or do you want people to come in from other parts of the world?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Out.
Why would Trump answer out if that isn’t what he wants to see happen to immigrant who come to the United States from non-white majority countries? Trump’s entire immigration policy has been focused on deporting black and brown skinned people, so his one word answer was not a surprise.
Republicans and the administration have never denied that Trump wants non-white immigrants out of the country. They claim that he didn’t use the word “shithole,” but there has never been a firm denial that Trump holds a racist view of African countries.
Trump’s own answer confirmed that it doesn’t matter what Republicans pretend like they didn’t hear, this president is bigoted and intends to deport non-white immigrants.
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Trump getting up at the crack of 11 ... after spending the morning in bed watching TV
By Mark Sumner - daily kos
Monday Jan 08, 2018 · 7:30 AM PST
Over the past week, multiple stories have appeared about Trump’s mental decline. His evaporating vocabulary. His dwindling attention span. His shriveling comprehension.
But while those losses are hard to prove without Trump actually going through with his offer to take an IQ test—which seems extremely unlikely—Axois reports that there’s one other thing that Trump is doing … littlely.
President Trump is starting his official day much later than he did in the early days of his presidency, often around 11am, and holding far fewer meetings, according to copies of his private schedule shown to Axios. This is largely to meet Trump’s demands for more “Executive Time,” which almost always means TV and Twitter time alone in the residence, officials tell us.
This news of Trump’s extremely abbreviated morning session comes a week after we learned about Trump’s senior discount evening plans.
"If (Trump) was not having his 6:30 dinner with Steve Bannon, then, more to his liking, he was in bed by that time with a cheeseburger, watching his three screens and making phone calls -- the phone was his true contact point with the world -- to a small group of friends, who charted his rising and falling levels of agitation through the evening and then compared notes with one another."
So, Donald Trump spends at least 17 hours of each day in his PJs. His presidenting schedule has apparently been reduced to a 11-4 interval between parking himself back in front of the bedroom TV.
The schedule says Trump has "Executive Time" in the Oval Office every day from 8am to 11am, but the reality is he spends that time in his residence, watching TV, making phone calls and tweeting. Trump comes down for his first meeting of the day, which is often an intelligence briefing, at 11am.
Which means Trump has plenty of time for the Gorilla Channel (which is a joke) and Fox & Friends (which is a different kind of joke). Read More
But while those losses are hard to prove without Trump actually going through with his offer to take an IQ test—which seems extremely unlikely—Axois reports that there’s one other thing that Trump is doing … littlely.
President Trump is starting his official day much later than he did in the early days of his presidency, often around 11am, and holding far fewer meetings, according to copies of his private schedule shown to Axios. This is largely to meet Trump’s demands for more “Executive Time,” which almost always means TV and Twitter time alone in the residence, officials tell us.
This news of Trump’s extremely abbreviated morning session comes a week after we learned about Trump’s senior discount evening plans.
"If (Trump) was not having his 6:30 dinner with Steve Bannon, then, more to his liking, he was in bed by that time with a cheeseburger, watching his three screens and making phone calls -- the phone was his true contact point with the world -- to a small group of friends, who charted his rising and falling levels of agitation through the evening and then compared notes with one another."
So, Donald Trump spends at least 17 hours of each day in his PJs. His presidenting schedule has apparently been reduced to a 11-4 interval between parking himself back in front of the bedroom TV.
The schedule says Trump has "Executive Time" in the Oval Office every day from 8am to 11am, but the reality is he spends that time in his residence, watching TV, making phone calls and tweeting. Trump comes down for his first meeting of the day, which is often an intelligence briefing, at 11am.
Which means Trump has plenty of time for the Gorilla Channel (which is a joke) and Fox & Friends (which is a different kind of joke). Read More
NARCO-A-LAGO: MONEY LAUNDERING AT THE TRUMP OCEAN CLUB PANAMA
You can download the PDF version of this report here.
From Global Witness: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do… It’s a horrible law and [the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] should be changed.”
In the early 2000s, a series of bankruptcies meant Donald J. Trump was shunned by most lenders. Struggling for credit, he started selling his name to high-end real estate projects. This report examines in detail the criminal connections that propelled one such project – the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama – and how this case bears some of the same disturbing hallmarks as other Trump developments.
Since he became President of the United States, numerous investigations and articles have probed Trump’s business dealings and his alleged links to criminals and other shadowy characters. It is understood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation under the Department of Justice will also examine his real estate business. This is important because it seems likely that, following his various bankruptcies, at least a part of Trump’s business empire has been built on untraceable funds, some apparently linked to Russian criminal networks.
Trump may not have deliberately set out to facilitate criminal activity in his business dealings. But, as this Global Witness investigation shows, licensing his brand to the luxurious Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama aligned Trump’s financial interests with those of crooks looking to launder ill-gotten gains. Trump seems to have done little to nothing to prevent this. What is clear is that proceeds from Colombian cartels’ narcotics trafficking were laundered through the Trump Ocean Club and that Donald Trump was one of the beneficiaries.
One key player in the laundering of drug money at the Trump Ocean Club was notorious fraudster David Eduardo Helmut Murcia Guzmán, whom a U.S. court subsequently sentenced to nine years for laundering millions of dollars' worth of illicit funds, including narcotics proceeds, through companies and real estate.
Another was Murcia Guzmán’s business associate, Alexandre Henrique Ventura Nogueira, who brokered nearly a third of the 666 pre-construction unit sales at the Trump Ocean Club and claims to have sold 350-400 units overall. Ventura Nogueira’s sales brokerage was critical to ensuring the project’s lift-off and Trump’s ability to earn tens of millions of dollars.
The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere. In most countries, regulation is notoriously lax in the real estate sector. Cash payments are subject to hardly any scrutiny, giving opportunistic and unprincipled developers free rein to accept dirty money.
In the case of the Trump Ocean Club, accepting easy – and possibly dirty – money early on would have been in Trump’s interest; a certain volume of pre-construction sales was necessary to secure financing for the project, which stood to net him $75.4 million by the end of 2010. Trump received a percentage of the financing he helped secure, and a cut on the sale of every unit at the development.
He and his family have made millions of dollars more from management fees and likely continue to profit from the Trump Ocean Club. Eager for the project’s success, Trump and his children have participated directly in marketing, management, and even project design. According to broker Ventura Nogueira, Trump’s daughter Ivanka attended at least 10 meetings with him and project developer Roger Khafif.
A large number of those involved with the Trump Ocean Club in its early phase were Russian and Eastern European citizens or diaspora members. In an interview with NBC and Reuters, Ventura Nogueira said that 50 percent of his buyers were Russian, and that some had “questionable backgrounds.” He added that he found out later that some were part of the Russian Mafia.
Since the Russian government’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, a lot has been made of Trump’s heavy reliance on funds from Russia for his licensing deals. Trump relying on funds from Russia is not in itself a problem – some of these funds are no doubt from legitimate sources. What is deeply problematic, however, is the fact that some of this money appears to have come from criminal networks.
Donald Trump has incessantly promoted himself as a successful and viable businessman, and this was critical to his success in the 2016 presidential election. But this report presents evidence that this façade was built, at least in part, on ventures used to launder cash generated by criminal activities. Trump’s unscrupulous business dealings and blindness to potential illegality raise serious questions about his suitability to govern the most powerful country in the world.
The dubious dealings of Trump the businessman also raise questions about the commitment of Trump the President to tackling crime and corruption. Trump got elected by repeatedly pledging to “drain the swamp”, but in the nine months since his inauguration he has actually taken steps that could worsen corruption in the U.S. and internationally. Indeed, one of his administration’s few legislative successes to date has been to overturn the implementing regulation of a ground-breaking anti-corruption law.[...]
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do… It’s a horrible law and [the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] should be changed.”
In the early 2000s, a series of bankruptcies meant Donald J. Trump was shunned by most lenders. Struggling for credit, he started selling his name to high-end real estate projects. This report examines in detail the criminal connections that propelled one such project – the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama – and how this case bears some of the same disturbing hallmarks as other Trump developments.
Since he became President of the United States, numerous investigations and articles have probed Trump’s business dealings and his alleged links to criminals and other shadowy characters. It is understood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation under the Department of Justice will also examine his real estate business. This is important because it seems likely that, following his various bankruptcies, at least a part of Trump’s business empire has been built on untraceable funds, some apparently linked to Russian criminal networks.
Trump may not have deliberately set out to facilitate criminal activity in his business dealings. But, as this Global Witness investigation shows, licensing his brand to the luxurious Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama aligned Trump’s financial interests with those of crooks looking to launder ill-gotten gains. Trump seems to have done little to nothing to prevent this. What is clear is that proceeds from Colombian cartels’ narcotics trafficking were laundered through the Trump Ocean Club and that Donald Trump was one of the beneficiaries.
One key player in the laundering of drug money at the Trump Ocean Club was notorious fraudster David Eduardo Helmut Murcia Guzmán, whom a U.S. court subsequently sentenced to nine years for laundering millions of dollars' worth of illicit funds, including narcotics proceeds, through companies and real estate.
Another was Murcia Guzmán’s business associate, Alexandre Henrique Ventura Nogueira, who brokered nearly a third of the 666 pre-construction unit sales at the Trump Ocean Club and claims to have sold 350-400 units overall. Ventura Nogueira’s sales brokerage was critical to ensuring the project’s lift-off and Trump’s ability to earn tens of millions of dollars.
The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere. In most countries, regulation is notoriously lax in the real estate sector. Cash payments are subject to hardly any scrutiny, giving opportunistic and unprincipled developers free rein to accept dirty money.
In the case of the Trump Ocean Club, accepting easy – and possibly dirty – money early on would have been in Trump’s interest; a certain volume of pre-construction sales was necessary to secure financing for the project, which stood to net him $75.4 million by the end of 2010. Trump received a percentage of the financing he helped secure, and a cut on the sale of every unit at the development.
He and his family have made millions of dollars more from management fees and likely continue to profit from the Trump Ocean Club. Eager for the project’s success, Trump and his children have participated directly in marketing, management, and even project design. According to broker Ventura Nogueira, Trump’s daughter Ivanka attended at least 10 meetings with him and project developer Roger Khafif.
A large number of those involved with the Trump Ocean Club in its early phase were Russian and Eastern European citizens or diaspora members. In an interview with NBC and Reuters, Ventura Nogueira said that 50 percent of his buyers were Russian, and that some had “questionable backgrounds.” He added that he found out later that some were part of the Russian Mafia.
Since the Russian government’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, a lot has been made of Trump’s heavy reliance on funds from Russia for his licensing deals. Trump relying on funds from Russia is not in itself a problem – some of these funds are no doubt from legitimate sources. What is deeply problematic, however, is the fact that some of this money appears to have come from criminal networks.
Donald Trump has incessantly promoted himself as a successful and viable businessman, and this was critical to his success in the 2016 presidential election. But this report presents evidence that this façade was built, at least in part, on ventures used to launder cash generated by criminal activities. Trump’s unscrupulous business dealings and blindness to potential illegality raise serious questions about his suitability to govern the most powerful country in the world.
The dubious dealings of Trump the businessman also raise questions about the commitment of Trump the President to tackling crime and corruption. Trump got elected by repeatedly pledging to “drain the swamp”, but in the nine months since his inauguration he has actually taken steps that could worsen corruption in the U.S. and internationally. Indeed, one of his administration’s few legislative successes to date has been to overturn the implementing regulation of a ground-breaking anti-corruption law.[...]
Trump’s appearance in Panama Papers revealed
International Business Times
25 NOV 2017 AT 08:12 ET
From Raw Story: The instance of President Donald Trump’s appearance in the Panama Papers – the massive trove of leaked documents, reveals in detail how the world’s richest people hide their business dealings from scrutiny and taxation.
A real estate deal from the early 1990s is the first instance of President Trump’s name being mentioned in the Panama Papers.
An investigative reporter, Jake Bernstein, Friday afternoon flagged the discovery that involves the purchase and subsequent sale of a unit at the newly constructed Trump Palace on the Upper East Side in the 1990s. This deal involved a Panamanian company named Process Consultants, Inc., that purchased a 16th floor condo at the Trump skyscraper in 1991.
Process Consultants was owned through bearer shares. These share certificates indicate that whoever physically possessed the papers owned the company. The bearer shares could be used to transfer assets completely anonymously and were favorite tools among money launderers.
Three year after the purchase in 1994, the Process Consultants decided to sell this condo at the Trump Palace. Trump Corporation was the exclusive broker for this. According to a contract document, which provided the details of an agreement, the apartment was sold for apartment for $395,000. However, later, the price appeared to have been cut down to $355,000. It is believed a woman from Hong Kong, whose name has appeared in other leaked documents had purchased the apartment, reported the New York daily News.
However, the New York City Department of Finance online database Automated City Registered Information System has information on the apartment only after 2005, which pointed out during this time, the condo was owned by a Brazilian from Sao Paolo. He sold the unit for $795,400, that year.
But with most Panama Papers revelations, there has been no indication of who is actually behind Process Consultants or from where that person’s money came. According to the New York Daily News, using bearer shares doesn’t prove that Process Consultants was involved in something dubious, the quick turnover seems to be a characteristic of money laundering.
The publication reported that if Trump’s company knowingly facilitated the condo sale for the purpose of laundering money then the president himself could land in difficulty.
As part of his investigation into Russian election meddling, special prosecutor Robert Mueller had been looking into Trump’s sprawling real estate empire. It's unclear if the Process Consultants deal is of interest in the probe.
The Trump condo contract is one among the thousands of documents that were leaked in 2015 from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sold anonymous shell companies around the globe and had created more than 160,000 offshore entities by the year 2008. Some of the world’s richest people were able to conduct dubious business deals by hiding behind the law firm’s offshore companies.
The founders behind Mossack Fonseca were arrested after the massive leak. The firm is under investigation across the world.
Last month, the Paradise Papers leak revealed Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wibur Ross had been involved in doing million dollar business deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov.
A real estate deal from the early 1990s is the first instance of President Trump’s name being mentioned in the Panama Papers.
An investigative reporter, Jake Bernstein, Friday afternoon flagged the discovery that involves the purchase and subsequent sale of a unit at the newly constructed Trump Palace on the Upper East Side in the 1990s. This deal involved a Panamanian company named Process Consultants, Inc., that purchased a 16th floor condo at the Trump skyscraper in 1991.
Process Consultants was owned through bearer shares. These share certificates indicate that whoever physically possessed the papers owned the company. The bearer shares could be used to transfer assets completely anonymously and were favorite tools among money launderers.
Three year after the purchase in 1994, the Process Consultants decided to sell this condo at the Trump Palace. Trump Corporation was the exclusive broker for this. According to a contract document, which provided the details of an agreement, the apartment was sold for apartment for $395,000. However, later, the price appeared to have been cut down to $355,000. It is believed a woman from Hong Kong, whose name has appeared in other leaked documents had purchased the apartment, reported the New York daily News.
However, the New York City Department of Finance online database Automated City Registered Information System has information on the apartment only after 2005, which pointed out during this time, the condo was owned by a Brazilian from Sao Paolo. He sold the unit for $795,400, that year.
But with most Panama Papers revelations, there has been no indication of who is actually behind Process Consultants or from where that person’s money came. According to the New York Daily News, using bearer shares doesn’t prove that Process Consultants was involved in something dubious, the quick turnover seems to be a characteristic of money laundering.
The publication reported that if Trump’s company knowingly facilitated the condo sale for the purpose of laundering money then the president himself could land in difficulty.
As part of his investigation into Russian election meddling, special prosecutor Robert Mueller had been looking into Trump’s sprawling real estate empire. It's unclear if the Process Consultants deal is of interest in the probe.
The Trump condo contract is one among the thousands of documents that were leaked in 2015 from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sold anonymous shell companies around the globe and had created more than 160,000 offshore entities by the year 2008. Some of the world’s richest people were able to conduct dubious business deals by hiding behind the law firm’s offshore companies.
The founders behind Mossack Fonseca were arrested after the massive leak. The firm is under investigation across the world.
Last month, the Paradise Papers leak revealed Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wibur Ross had been involved in doing million dollar business deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov.
The Trump Family Made Millions from Drug Cartels and the Russian Mafia in Panama City: Report
Maybe we should start calling the president's Florida estate "Mar-a-Narco."
By Liz Posner / AlterNet November 17, 2017, 9:04 AM GMT
Robert Mueller has some new material to work with as he continues his investigation of the Trump administration's ties to Russia. A new report shows that for 10 years, a Trump property in Panama City collected millions of dollars from the Russian mafia and Colombian drug cartels. An investigation from Global Witness, an international NGO that probes corruption and money laundering, reveals how the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower turned a blind eye to crime lords looking for a safe haven to stash their blood money.
The property, which the lead broker Alexandre Ventura Nogueira describes as “Ivanka Trump’s baby,” listed units for three times the going rate in Panama City, thanks to the Trump name. Nogueira worked closely with the Trump family; he claims he attended at least 10 meetings with Ivanka Trump, who challenged him to sell 100 units in the building.
“The agreement was, I had a week to sell 100 units,” Nogueira told Reuters. “I said, ‘I’m going to do better, I’m going to sell without telling (the buyers) the price.'”
Nogueira later fled Panama after he was arrested for unrelated charges of real estate fraud. From his European asylum, he told NBC that at least half of his Trump Ocean Club customers were Russians, including some with “questionable backgrounds." Only later did he learn of their ties to Russian organized crime circles.
NBC reports that Mauricio Ceballos, a former prosecutor in Panama who investigated Trump’s business associates for financial crimes, called the Trump Ocean Club “a vehicle for money laundering.”
Among the shady buyers are:
By 2010, Donald Trump had made approximately $74.2 million through his association with the hotel. From 2014-2017, he was paid as much as $13.9 million.
As Global Witness explains:
“The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
“Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere.”
The Trump Organization has shrugged off responsibility in a statement following the news, but legal experts say it should have done its due diligence into the backgrounds of buyers. Arthur Middlemiss, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and a former head of the global anti-corruption program at JPMorgan, blames the Trumps directly:
“Those who do business there should perform due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they fail to do so, they risk being liable under U.S. law of turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.”
The property, which the lead broker Alexandre Ventura Nogueira describes as “Ivanka Trump’s baby,” listed units for three times the going rate in Panama City, thanks to the Trump name. Nogueira worked closely with the Trump family; he claims he attended at least 10 meetings with Ivanka Trump, who challenged him to sell 100 units in the building.
“The agreement was, I had a week to sell 100 units,” Nogueira told Reuters. “I said, ‘I’m going to do better, I’m going to sell without telling (the buyers) the price.'”
Nogueira later fled Panama after he was arrested for unrelated charges of real estate fraud. From his European asylum, he told NBC that at least half of his Trump Ocean Club customers were Russians, including some with “questionable backgrounds." Only later did he learn of their ties to Russian organized crime circles.
NBC reports that Mauricio Ceballos, a former prosecutor in Panama who investigated Trump’s business associates for financial crimes, called the Trump Ocean Club “a vehicle for money laundering.”
Among the shady buyers are:
- David Murcia Guzmán, founder of a large Colombian marketing company, who purchased 10 units in the Trump Ocean Club. Guzmán is now in U.S. custody, convicted of laundering money on behalf of drug cartels, and will be extradited to Colombia. Guzmán also has financial ties to the terrorist organization FARC.
- Louis Pargiolas, who pleaded guilty in 2009 in Miami to conspiracy to import cocaine.
- Stanislav Kavalenka, a Russian national charged in Canada for compelling women into prostitution.
- Arkady Vodovozov, convicted in Israel of kidnapping, according to Reuters.
By 2010, Donald Trump had made approximately $74.2 million through his association with the hotel. From 2014-2017, he was paid as much as $13.9 million.
As Global Witness explains:
“The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
“Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere.”
The Trump Organization has shrugged off responsibility in a statement following the news, but legal experts say it should have done its due diligence into the backgrounds of buyers. Arthur Middlemiss, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and a former head of the global anti-corruption program at JPMorgan, blames the Trumps directly:
“Those who do business there should perform due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they fail to do so, they risk being liable under U.S. law of turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.”
the criminal administration!!!
The wealthy men in Trump's inner circle with links to tax havens
The president promised to bring trillions of dollars back to the US, but many around him are no strangers to the offshore world
Jon Swaine and Ed Pilkington in New York
Sunday 5 November 2017 13.00 EST
From The Guardian: On the election trail in 2016, Donald Trump promised tax reforms to tempt major US companies back onshore and “bring back trillions of dollars from American businesses that is now parked overseas”.
As the first anniversary of his election victory looms this week, Trump and fellow Republicans are trying to drive those tax reforms through Congress.
On 1 November, Trump reiterated his commitment.
“Finally, our plan will bring back trillions of dollars from offshore … that will come pouring back into our country that will be put to work and will be spent by our companies that could never get the money back for many years. Bring the money back. We’re rebuilding America.”
But Trump is surrounded by wealthy individuals who have legally either sheltered their own investments or presided over policies to keep company profits or clients’ funds out of reach in tax havens.
Gary Cohn
Trump’s chief economic adviser, who is the driving force behind the White House tax reform effort, is no stranger to offshore finance. The leaked documents reveal that for various periods between 2002 and 2006, Cohn was president or vice-president of 22 separate entities in Bermuda for Goldman Sachs....
Rex Tillerson
The US secretary of state is named in the leaked files as a director of an offshore firm used in a multibillion-dollar oil and gas venture in the Middle East that became embroiled in controversy.
Tillerson was a director of Marib Upstream Services Company, incorporated in Bermuda in 1997. The company was tied to ExxonMobil, the American oil and gas corporation that Tillerson later led as chief executive. At the time, Tillerson was president of ExxonMobil’s Yemen division....
Steven Mnuchin
The US Treasury secretary’s former bank financed offshore private jets for wealthy clients, including a billionaire Yemeni businessman whose son is wanted for rape and murder in the UK.
CIT Bank, where Mnuchin was deputy chairman, provided customers with financing structures for personal aircraft priced at tens of millions of dollars, which customers used to legally avoid sales taxes and other charges....
Randal Quarles
The Trump administration’s most senior banking watchdog appears in the Paradise Papers in connection with an offshore bank that is under investigation by US authorities for possible tax evasion.
Quarles, Trump’s vice-chairman for supervision at the Federal Reserve, is named in the files as an officer of two firms incorporated in the Cayman Islands by the Carlyle Group, the private equity giant where Quarles was a partner until 2013.
The files detail transactions between one of Quarles’s offshore vehicles and Butterfield, a Bermuda-based bank in which Carlyle had led a $550m investment in 2010. That stake was one of several in distressed banks bought up by a new specialist team at Carlyle, including Quarles, following the 2008 financial crisis...
Jon Huntsman
Trump’s new US ambassador to Russia helped lead a previously undisclosed offshore company, according to the leaked files.
Huntsman, the former Utah governor, was listed as a director of HICI International Sales Corporation in a confidential filing to authorities in Barbados, where the company was formed in 1999. The offshore vehicle was set up to carry out overseas sales for Huntsman ICI, an industrial chemicals branch of Huntsman Corporation.
The filing said HICI was owned by Huntsman ICI Holdings LLC in the US, where Huntsman was vice-chairman and manager. In 2000, Huntsman ICI reported making a $151m profit on revenues of $4.4bn....
Kenneth Juster
Trump’s ambassador to India benefited from the offshore business of his former investment company and its billion-dollar purchase of a shipping corporation.
Juster is named in the Paradise Papers as a beneficial owner of a Bermuda-based branch of Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm where he was a partner before joining the Trump administration...
Carl Icahn
Icahn, a friend and former adviser to Trump, owns a $250m mining company spread across three tax havens and structured in a way that limits the information it must disclose to US authorities.
The leaks detail how Icahn holds a controlling stake in Ferrous Resources, a Brazilian mining company officially based on the Isle of Man. It in turn owns a pair of holding companies in Luxembourg and Malta, which operate iron mines in Brazil.
All three jurisdictions offer low- or zero-tax regimes for corporations, making them destinations of choice for foreign businesses seeking to legally lower their tax bills. A report in 2015 by Citizens for Tax Justice said Icahn operated 20 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens....
Tom Barrack
The chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee leads a $58bn real estate investment trust that channels some of its profits to the low- or no-tax jurisdictions of Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands and Lebanon.
Barrack, who has described himself as one of the president’s “closest friends for 40 years”, appears in the Paradise Papers through offshore subsidiaries of Colony NorthStar, of which he is CEO...
Jay Clayton
Trump’s SEC chairman received income from a hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands.
Clayton disclosed to the government ethics office before taking up the SEC job that he received income from Mount Kellett Capital Partners (Cayman) LP, the offshore subsidiary of a US hedge fund. A proposed structure chart in the leaked Appleby files shows a complex web of ties that were created between the Cayman Islands offshoot, its head company, and other offshore subsidiaries....
Ben Carson
A biotechnology company headed by Carson, Trump’s housing and urban development (HUD) secretary, set up offshore firms that could have reduced its tax bill.
The Paradise Papers contain files on two subsidiaries of Vaccinogen in Bermuda that date from Carson’s time as chairman of the Baltimore-based biotechnology company. The offshore vehicles were established as holding companies for “intellectual property related to the treatment of cancer and other diseases”, according to the files...
(complete article)
As the first anniversary of his election victory looms this week, Trump and fellow Republicans are trying to drive those tax reforms through Congress.
On 1 November, Trump reiterated his commitment.
“Finally, our plan will bring back trillions of dollars from offshore … that will come pouring back into our country that will be put to work and will be spent by our companies that could never get the money back for many years. Bring the money back. We’re rebuilding America.”
But Trump is surrounded by wealthy individuals who have legally either sheltered their own investments or presided over policies to keep company profits or clients’ funds out of reach in tax havens.
Gary Cohn
Trump’s chief economic adviser, who is the driving force behind the White House tax reform effort, is no stranger to offshore finance. The leaked documents reveal that for various periods between 2002 and 2006, Cohn was president or vice-president of 22 separate entities in Bermuda for Goldman Sachs....
Rex Tillerson
The US secretary of state is named in the leaked files as a director of an offshore firm used in a multibillion-dollar oil and gas venture in the Middle East that became embroiled in controversy.
Tillerson was a director of Marib Upstream Services Company, incorporated in Bermuda in 1997. The company was tied to ExxonMobil, the American oil and gas corporation that Tillerson later led as chief executive. At the time, Tillerson was president of ExxonMobil’s Yemen division....
Steven Mnuchin
The US Treasury secretary’s former bank financed offshore private jets for wealthy clients, including a billionaire Yemeni businessman whose son is wanted for rape and murder in the UK.
CIT Bank, where Mnuchin was deputy chairman, provided customers with financing structures for personal aircraft priced at tens of millions of dollars, which customers used to legally avoid sales taxes and other charges....
Randal Quarles
The Trump administration’s most senior banking watchdog appears in the Paradise Papers in connection with an offshore bank that is under investigation by US authorities for possible tax evasion.
Quarles, Trump’s vice-chairman for supervision at the Federal Reserve, is named in the files as an officer of two firms incorporated in the Cayman Islands by the Carlyle Group, the private equity giant where Quarles was a partner until 2013.
The files detail transactions between one of Quarles’s offshore vehicles and Butterfield, a Bermuda-based bank in which Carlyle had led a $550m investment in 2010. That stake was one of several in distressed banks bought up by a new specialist team at Carlyle, including Quarles, following the 2008 financial crisis...
Jon Huntsman
Trump’s new US ambassador to Russia helped lead a previously undisclosed offshore company, according to the leaked files.
Huntsman, the former Utah governor, was listed as a director of HICI International Sales Corporation in a confidential filing to authorities in Barbados, where the company was formed in 1999. The offshore vehicle was set up to carry out overseas sales for Huntsman ICI, an industrial chemicals branch of Huntsman Corporation.
The filing said HICI was owned by Huntsman ICI Holdings LLC in the US, where Huntsman was vice-chairman and manager. In 2000, Huntsman ICI reported making a $151m profit on revenues of $4.4bn....
Kenneth Juster
Trump’s ambassador to India benefited from the offshore business of his former investment company and its billion-dollar purchase of a shipping corporation.
Juster is named in the Paradise Papers as a beneficial owner of a Bermuda-based branch of Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm where he was a partner before joining the Trump administration...
Carl Icahn
Icahn, a friend and former adviser to Trump, owns a $250m mining company spread across three tax havens and structured in a way that limits the information it must disclose to US authorities.
The leaks detail how Icahn holds a controlling stake in Ferrous Resources, a Brazilian mining company officially based on the Isle of Man. It in turn owns a pair of holding companies in Luxembourg and Malta, which operate iron mines in Brazil.
All three jurisdictions offer low- or zero-tax regimes for corporations, making them destinations of choice for foreign businesses seeking to legally lower their tax bills. A report in 2015 by Citizens for Tax Justice said Icahn operated 20 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens....
Tom Barrack
The chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee leads a $58bn real estate investment trust that channels some of its profits to the low- or no-tax jurisdictions of Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands and Lebanon.
Barrack, who has described himself as one of the president’s “closest friends for 40 years”, appears in the Paradise Papers through offshore subsidiaries of Colony NorthStar, of which he is CEO...
Jay Clayton
Trump’s SEC chairman received income from a hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands.
Clayton disclosed to the government ethics office before taking up the SEC job that he received income from Mount Kellett Capital Partners (Cayman) LP, the offshore subsidiary of a US hedge fund. A proposed structure chart in the leaked Appleby files shows a complex web of ties that were created between the Cayman Islands offshoot, its head company, and other offshore subsidiaries....
Ben Carson
A biotechnology company headed by Carson, Trump’s housing and urban development (HUD) secretary, set up offshore firms that could have reduced its tax bill.
The Paradise Papers contain files on two subsidiaries of Vaccinogen in Bermuda that date from Carson’s time as chairman of the Baltimore-based biotechnology company. The offshore vehicles were established as holding companies for “intellectual property related to the treatment of cancer and other diseases”, according to the files...
(complete article)
Here are the 5 biggest links connecting Trump to Manafort and Russian money laundering
Brad Reed
30 OCT 2017 AT 11:51 ET
From Raw Story: The Trump White House is claiming victory in the wake of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s indictment on money laundering charges on the grounds that the indictment did not specifically mention Manafort’s work in the Trump campaign in 2016.
However, the nature of the charges against Manafort serves as a basis for establishing links between President Donald Trump and the Russian mob.
Here are the five biggest links that connect Trump, Manafort and Russian organized crime operations.
However, the nature of the charges against Manafort serves as a basis for establishing links between President Donald Trump and the Russian mob.
Here are the five biggest links that connect Trump, Manafort and Russian organized crime operations.
- The indictment against Manafort alleges he was laundering money he earned from his work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. Specifically, the indictment states that, “in order to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities, from approximately 2006 through at least 2016, Manafort and Gates laundered money through scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts.”
- Long before he ran Trump’s campaign, Manafort lived in an apartment in Trump Tower. Manafort first purchased an apartment in Trump Tower in 2006, which WNYC notes was right around the time that his lobbying firm signed a $10 million contract with a Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska — the same man whom Manafort agreed to give personal briefings about the state of Trump’s presidential campaign to in 2016.
- In 2013, the FBI obtained a search warrant to eavesdrop on what it believed to be a massive Russian money laundering operation — and which also happened to be running out of Trump Tower. As ABC News reported earlier this year, the investigation into the operation led “to a federal grand jury indictment of more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov.”
- Another figure allegedly involved in the Russian money laundering business is Felix Sater — a longtime Trump associate. Sater’s financial relationship with Trump dates back to at least 2003, when the Trump Organization rented out office space to Sater’s former company. Even though Trump initially tried to distance himself from Sater after news of his criminal past came to light in 2007, he subsequently tapped Sater in 2010 to scout out real estate. This is notable because Sater is reportedly cooperating with an investigation into money laundering that used American properties to help hide money.
- Sater’s company, Bayrock Capital, also operated out of Trump Tower — and may have used Trump properties to launder Russian money. A Bloomberg report from earlier this year reveals that a former Bayrock insider, Jody Kriss, now claims that Sater’s firm was all an elaborate money laundering operation. In 2007, Trump teamed with Bayrock to secure funding for the Trump Soho hotel via FL Group, an Icelandic bank that was regularly used by Russians to launder money.
*IN 1927, 1,000 WHITE-ROBED KLANSMEN RIOTED IN QUEENS. TRUMP'S FATHER WAS ARRESTED IN THAT INCIDENT.
bigtree
From Demo. Underground: Joy Reid @JoyAnnReid 3h3 hours ago
...this story creeps out of the memory hole, and gains new and chilling resonance.
Donald Trump's father was arrested at Ku Klux Klan riot in New York in 1927, records reveal
_____The predication for the Klan to march, according to a flier passed around Jamaica beforehand, was that “Native-born Protestant Americans” were being “assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City.” “Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon,” it continued, “when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organise to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language.”
It's not clear from the context what role Fred Trump played in the brawl. The news article simply notes that seven men were arrested in the “near-riot of the parade,” all of whom were represented by the same lawyers. Update: A contemporaneous article from the Daily Star notes that Trump was detained “on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so.”
When news of the old report surfaced last year, Donald Trump vehemently denied his father's arrest. “He was never arrested. He has nothing to do with this. This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened,” he said to the Daily Mail. “This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It's a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place.”
...It's worth noting that Trump's comments came one day after another Klan brawl, this time in Anaheim, Calif. Thirteen people were arrested and three were stabbed after a Klan rally turned violent. And it's worth noting, too, as did Jonathan Chait at New York magazine, that Trump's claim to “know nothing” about white supremacists echoes the language of the 19th-century “Know Nothing” party — a nativist group that supported only Protestants for public office...
read: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/charlottesville-latest-donald-trump-father-fred-arrested-ku-klux-klan-kkk-rally-riot-queens-new-york-a7891701.html
...this story creeps out of the memory hole, and gains new and chilling resonance.
Donald Trump's father was arrested at Ku Klux Klan riot in New York in 1927, records reveal
_____The predication for the Klan to march, according to a flier passed around Jamaica beforehand, was that “Native-born Protestant Americans” were being “assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City.” “Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon,” it continued, “when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organise to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language.”
It's not clear from the context what role Fred Trump played in the brawl. The news article simply notes that seven men were arrested in the “near-riot of the parade,” all of whom were represented by the same lawyers. Update: A contemporaneous article from the Daily Star notes that Trump was detained “on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so.”
When news of the old report surfaced last year, Donald Trump vehemently denied his father's arrest. “He was never arrested. He has nothing to do with this. This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened,” he said to the Daily Mail. “This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It's a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place.”
...It's worth noting that Trump's comments came one day after another Klan brawl, this time in Anaheim, Calif. Thirteen people were arrested and three were stabbed after a Klan rally turned violent. And it's worth noting, too, as did Jonathan Chait at New York magazine, that Trump's claim to “know nothing” about white supremacists echoes the language of the 19th-century “Know Nothing” party — a nativist group that supported only Protestants for public office...
read: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/charlottesville-latest-donald-trump-father-fred-arrested-ku-klux-klan-kkk-rally-riot-queens-new-york-a7891701.html
no shit
pbmus -demo. underground
Donald Trump admitted in 2007 that he had invested in Russia
In a deposition in 2007, Trump said something he and his family would later deny repeatedly
MATTHEW ROZSA
From Salon: Pr*sident Donald Trump may want the headaches associated with the Russia scandal to go away, but a new report has drawn attention to yet another controversial aspect of Trump’s relationship with that country’s financial elite.
Although Trump told NBC in May, “I am not involved in Russia,” he admitted in a 2007 deposition that a real estate development firm known as the Bayrock Group had brought Russian investors to Trump Tower to discuss investing in Moscow, according to a report by Bloomberg.
“It’s ridiculous that I wouldn’t be investing in Russia,” Trump said. “Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment.”
Bloomberg also reported that one of the principals at Bayrock is businessman Felix Sater, who reportedly has ties to organized crime in both the United States and Russia. Although Trump has repeatedly insisted that he is only passingly acquainted with Sater, former Bayrock employees insist that Sater often met with Trump at his business empire’s New York City headquarters and guided Trump’s children around Moscow.
They also report that Sater is still in contact with the president and some of his advisers. It is worth noting that the Bayrock Group itself also had an office located in Trump Tower.
While the president likes to downplay his business ties to Russia, his son Donald Trump Jr. once admitted to a real estate conference in 2008 that Trump built a tower in Panama for wealthy Russian clients, according to a report by Time.
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” Trump told the crowd.
Although Trump told NBC in May, “I am not involved in Russia,” he admitted in a 2007 deposition that a real estate development firm known as the Bayrock Group had brought Russian investors to Trump Tower to discuss investing in Moscow, according to a report by Bloomberg.
“It’s ridiculous that I wouldn’t be investing in Russia,” Trump said. “Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment.”
Bloomberg also reported that one of the principals at Bayrock is businessman Felix Sater, who reportedly has ties to organized crime in both the United States and Russia. Although Trump has repeatedly insisted that he is only passingly acquainted with Sater, former Bayrock employees insist that Sater often met with Trump at his business empire’s New York City headquarters and guided Trump’s children around Moscow.
They also report that Sater is still in contact with the president and some of his advisers. It is worth noting that the Bayrock Group itself also had an office located in Trump Tower.
While the president likes to downplay his business ties to Russia, his son Donald Trump Jr. once admitted to a real estate conference in 2008 that Trump built a tower in Panama for wealthy Russian clients, according to a report by Time.
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” Trump told the crowd.
taking the former leader of the free world for a stroll!!
charlyvi - from Demo Underground
On this President's Day, congratulations to James Buchanan on finally moving out of the bottom spot in the presidential rankings.
Thanks to Ignorant Americans, this Loser is now "President"
America's Next GOP Presidential Traitor joining Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1 & 2
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Trump's Cabinet, etc
the trailer trash adminstration
(archives - for description & news of swamp members)
Puerto Rico salutes Trump...
DonViejo
From Demo Underground: Pendejo =
adjective
stupid
estúpido, pendejo, bruto, atontado, estulto, bozal
noun
motherfucker
hijo de puta, pendejo, coño
coward
cobarde, gallina, temeroso, pendejo, asqueroso, rajado
berk
imbécil, idiota, pendejo
Word Origin and History for berk. n. "fool," 1936, abbreviation of Berkshire Hunt (or Berkeley Hunt), rhyming slang for cunt but typically applied only to contemptible persons, not to the body part. This is not an objective, anatomical term, neither does it imply coitus.
adjective
stupid
estúpido, pendejo, bruto, atontado, estulto, bozal
noun
motherfucker
hijo de puta, pendejo, coño
coward
cobarde, gallina, temeroso, pendejo, asqueroso, rajado
berk
imbécil, idiota, pendejo
Word Origin and History for berk. n. "fool," 1936, abbreviation of Berkshire Hunt (or Berkeley Hunt), rhyming slang for cunt but typically applied only to contemptible persons, not to the body part. This is not an objective, anatomical term, neither does it imply coitus.
white house concerns
trump: the "escape from la" pr*sident
PRESIDENT TRUMP:
CHILD MOLESTER, RACIST, SEXIST, CRIMINAL, KLAN SYMPATHIZER, MAFIA ASSOCIATE, TAX FRAUD, FASCIST, RUSSIAN MOLE
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Trump exhibits the same level of gravitas as, say, a spoiled child wearing a cardboard crown from Burger King. His tacky, garish displays of wealth, his clownish stab at a normal head of hair, and his ridiculously ill-fitting suits utterly fail to convey a basic sense of taste, much less gravitas. The other day, for example, Trump referred to third-party candidate Evan McMullin as “Evan McMuffin.” Petty insults like this one (along with “Crooked Hillary,” “Crazy Bernie,” “Lyin’ Ted,” etc.) convey a level of gravitas equal to purple-nurples during recess. And while Trump insists that he’ll be a very, very terrific president and, literally, the greatest jobs president God ever created, no one with a sense of history who believes he’s going to be any of those things.
tough guy!!!
Hillary Weighs In
Demo Underground
John Adams: “Obsta principiis, nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society.”
trump - i never did it
