Here’s the nut of Trump’s problem:
Trump hasn’t disclosed his financial documents
Questions over Trump’s net worth have persisted for years and his refusal to reveal actual figures in the past is one reason some believe he’ll never run for president, since to register as a candidate involves extensive financial disclosures. Trump sought to tamp down such criticism by pledging to release his financial documents if President Obama released his long-form birth certificate. The president did just that Wednesday. Trump responded by saying he’ll release his financial documents “at the appropriate time.”
There’s no “appropriate” time for Trump to release his financial documents, because most of what Trump says on any topic on any given day is a baldfaced lie, and his favorite topic is the vastness of his riches. His whole faux empire of rented helicopters and jets, over-leveraged hotels and fake reality shows is built on an illusion of fabulous wealth. Filing the disclosures required to run for President would show once and for all that he’s miles from being a billionaire, has filed for bankruptcy numerous times, and that the “art” of his deals is that he gets to be the face for other people’s money.
Trump may or may not announce a run for President, but he will certainly not file the paperwork required for a real run for the office. He knows that the clickslaves in the press who are slavering over his current freakshow are aching to garner more precious hits by mining his financial documents. And he knows that this time he can’t file a nuisance lawsuit when reporters prove that he’s a garden variety millionaire instead of the $6 billion dollar man he claims to be.
lacp
I want to see proof that his combover was born in this country.
Cat Lady
Is there a better metaphor for this country than The Donald? A shallow, belligerent phony bankrupt grifter riding on long past accomplishments. What a disgrace.
JPL
I hope that Trump runs for President. The ego maniac continues to make the news.
Donald Trump calls leaders ‘stupid’ in Vegas stoplink
Way to show some class.
nancydarling
Johann Hari nails it.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-donald-trumps-lunacy-reveals-core-truth-about-the-republicans-2276222.html
MattF
Trump, like all true grifters, aspires to cross the gap between the short con and the long con: in the short con, the grifter takes all the money you have on you, but in the long con he sends you home to get the rest.
debit
@JPL: What a pig. Every day that NBC continues to give this pig airtime cements my decision to never watch their network again.
JPL
@debit: I think you are right. Are we sure that Trump went to the finest schools? I demand to see his juvenile record.
RosiesDad
I’d like to see the media carnival barkers hound Trump for his financials the way they did Obama for his papers.
The Onion nailed Trump for what he is: A Festering Pile of Shit.
suzanne
Ugh. He’s just SO TRASHY. But… UGH. He’s like Las Vegas incarnate.
scottinnj
Technically, Donald Trump (personally) has never filed for bankruptcy. Certainly a number of his investments have gone bankruptcy such as some of the casinos. In the 90’s when he was near collapse the banks may have written off some loans but those were negotiated outside of bankruptcy.
I second the post as well as the aforementioned Onion article, but just want to clarify this technicality.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cat Lady:
There, fixed.
Trump’s entire “fortune” has nothing at all to do with any effort or talent on his part, but that he started the race to riches with a mere $20 million in his pocket. The epitome of the self made man!
As I’ve pointed out before, just about any of the regular BJ commenters could do as well with that kind of grubstake…far more than likely, a lot better.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est:
My guess is a $20 million inheritance/gift would be used differently by most of the people floating around here.
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s worse than that. There was the $20 million grubstake, and then when the old man died, he left Donald’s hair an estimated $400 million. And, if you had taken that money and stashed it in an S&P index fund back in the mid-70s, it’d be worth something like double Donald’s self-proclaimed net worth.
If Donald was a mutual-fund manager, he’d have been fired years ago for poor performance.
dms
Chris
Nancy’s link:
Which explains both his popularity in the Republican base and his unpopularity (over 60% say they won’t vote for him) in the general public.
danimal
@debit: If he’s not running, then he’s really screwed the pooch with this race-baiting presidential run. He’s alienated a huge portion of his audience, and I don’t see how he gets it back.
Screw him, and NBC as well.
JAHILL10
Seen a report that the Washington Post has invited Trump as its guest to the White House Correspondents Dinner. And I just wrote them a letter telling them what I thought of them promoting a blatant racist. I suppose this is laying the groundwork for the next nontroversy. “what will the President do when faced with his greatest detractor?”
My guess is, he will laugh in his face. gah, I need a shower. This country is starting to creep me out.
aimai
@dmsilev:
Are you the first person to call Donald the “Hair” to a fortune? Kudos.
aimai
JPL
@JAHILL10: Dana Millbank has a column about the dinner. He’s not going. link
mike in dc
Did he not notice that Glenn Beck got driven off the air in large part due to a massive advertising boycott campaign? This will not end well for him, not at all.
jazzgurl
Another brash,loud, racist low-class chump that has managed to kerfuffle the equally racist,msm bunch of dunces!
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: Milbank is weird. He can be very good when he forgets to play Villager. Unfortunately, when he does play Villager, he is awful.
dmsilev
@aimai: Thank you. One does one’s best.
dms
rikryah
he is never giving up his financials
juicetard(aka liberty60)
Just read Milbank’s column and it confirms that the Village is more corrupt than many of us even thought.
The reason why 15 million unemployed people is not news is because to the “reporters” sipping Grey Goose and puffing on cigars, it is just a dry abstraction.
Josie
The nut of Trump’s problem is that, if he by some miracle became a candidate, he would actually have to say something that made sense and debate with some people who actually sort of know what they are talking about. It would be similar to the buzz saw that Palin ran into but ten times worse.
Omnes Omnibus
@Josie: While your analysis is pretty good as to Trump’s situation, I would say that the real nut of Trump’s problem is Trump.
merrinc
Rand Paul is wrong. Donald Trump’s glaring hypocrisy is proof positive that he’s a Republican.
Xecky Gilchrist
he will certainly not file the paperwork required for a real run for the office.
Yup, he’ll pull a Palin and never do anything but whine about how he coulda been a contender if it hadn’t been for those meddling liberals. You can make beaucoup doing that, so why not.
Josie
@Omnes Omnibus: Precisely. And the comical angle is that he doesn’t know that.
Roger Moore
@Cat Lady:
Yeah, his daddy’s accomplishments. I don’t think Trump has accomplished anything but getting his face in the press and squandering his inheritance.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I demand to know if tRump has a brain. Rumors out there are that although he was born with a silver foot in his mouth, when he discovered that his birth didn’t include a brain he put a rock in his head to fill the empty space. The comb-over is only to hide the fact that the rock is sticking out of the top of his head. Donny tRump will never run for office because his financial disclosures would expose him for the fraud he is.
tRump prefers to keep living the Grand Illusion of his
mindrock.Xenocrates
Just to echo MattF above @5: Trump is a con man. He has never had the intelligence or decency to be anything else. He started life by inheriting half of a Manhattan real estate empire stolen by his father and a few other speculators after WWII. He then proceeded to waste most of the $20 million and nearly had to declare bankruptcy several times. Now he is famous for running a stupid TV show, saying “You’re fired” and questioning the President’s qualifications to hold office. There really is only one explanation for this last, and it has everything to do with the color of Barack Obama’s skin, and nothing else. Screw him, and NBC. He’s a disgusting, ignorant bigot, and I’m glad he’s so “proud of himself.” No one else in this country feels that way, Donald.
NonyNony
@Roger Moore:
Depends on your definition of “accomplishment”.
The man actually bankrupted a casino. I think that counts in a darwin awards sort of way as an accomplishment.
NonyNony
@NonyNony:
Hm. something got me stuck in moderation.
Was it the word casino? Let’s find out.
ETA – I think it was. This one’s in moderation too now. Didn’t know that word was on the list of verboten words but in retrospect I suppose I should have.
Kinda makes it hard to talk about The Donald though, doesn’t it?
catclub
@Josie: “buzz saw that Palin ran into but ten times worse.”
Katie Couric and Joe Biden? Buzz saw?
Jay C
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, and emphasis on the “nut” part…
Daulnay
Trump’s new demand to see Obama’s school records gives us the opportunity to start a discussion on affirmative action for the rich, legacy admittances.
Legacy admittance, the kind that was done for Trump’s son-in-law at Harvard, is more than just an unfair advantage for the rich.
The institutions that rely on donations have tax exempt status. They sell admittance for large donations, and the donor gets to deduct the cost of the donation as charitable giving. Of course, that means the lost taxes have to come from the rest of us.
We should 1) ban legacy admissions at state-controlled educational institutions and 2) revoke tax-exempt status for any private institutions that continue legacy admissions.
Legacy admissions are the opposite of the meritocratic ideals we Americans hold dear. They were born in bigotry (to address fears that Jewish kids would crowd out WASPS if WASPS had to fairly compete for admission). Legacies have contributed to the rise of our nepotistic elite, institutionalizing nepotism and giving it formal societal approval. (Not exactly what I mean, but I am not a facile writer.)
Our elites have grown incompetent, as social mobility in America has declined. The world and the country cannot afford to have incompetents running American institutions; look at the damage done by idiots running American institutions over the last decade. Remember Brownie? The failure of our media is also largely due to nepotism, I believe.
We need to revive the America that embraced meritocracy and looked on hereditary elites with suspicion and alarm. It was a big part of what made America great, and its loss is part of why America is declining now. Legacy admissions form part of the foundation for American anti-democratic elites. Getting rid of them is necessary
Disclosure: I have skin in the game, as I was a legacy admission, and my children will benefit from legacy admissions if they continue.
montana
Yep, mistermix nails it…can’t go in the shower in the locker room when one has been stuffing a sock in his pants. Do that, the show is over.
Josie
@catclub: Just because Katie was polite and pleasant doesn’t mean she didn’t leave a mark.
Edit: You’re right about Biden, but that isn’t who Trump would debate.
RossInDetroit
Let’s give The Donald credit for what he does best: he’s a hell of a showman. It’s an appalling display but you just can’t look away. he’s found the lowest common denominator in American culture and he’s playing them for all they’re worth.
In the media this looks like he’s the real deal and maybe a contender for the Presidency. They actually know better but they’re betting that their audience doesn’t.
catclub
@Josie: I agree, katie did indeed leave a mark. But buzz saw is just not right. Slow motion quicksand?
Villago Delenda Est
@Daulnay:
One of Thomas Jefferson’s greatest achievements, in his own view, was the institution of an estate tax.
He wanted to prevent the vile disease of inherited wealth from taking root on this continent. After travelling in Europe, and seeing first hand the appalling condition of the vast majority of the populace, and their entire inherited wealth system, he wanted to stop that in its tracks, from creating an aristocracy here in all but name.
Obviously, he failed…or we failed as a people to realize his vision of an actual elite of merit, of intellect, of thoughfulness.
Instead we’ve got short fingered vulgarians like Trump and the deserting coward.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@Xecky Gilchrist: “those meddling liberals”? I just had a Scooby-Doo flashback
Josie
@catclub: Sounds good, and possibly more unpleasant, which is fine with me.
jprfrog
I moved to Jersey City 4 years ago and have been seeing Mr. Trump’s eponymouserections…er, constructions all over the NYC area ever since. He is the poster boy for the endemic disease of our time: a sociopath with florid narcissistic personality disorder.
The real point about Narcissus is not so much that he fell in love with himself, but that he fell in love with the reflection of himself in a pool of water, in other words, with a shallow image that had nothing behind it. That seems to me to be the essence of Trump (or Palin, or Hannity, or Rush…etc. etc.): a huge black hole where most people have a soul, that craves to be fed with adulation and the illusion of power but can never be filled up because it is bottomless. It is so sad that so many fall for the con, hurting themselves and all the rest of us in the process.
Substance addiction is somewhat like that: there is never enough and the harm to others is in the destructive drive to get more, more, always more of whatever stuff makes you feel good NOW. But a Trump and his ilk cause immensely more harm than any heroin junkie, who usually just wants to be left alone in his chemical haze. And no one thinks for a millisecond that a junkie could be a President (or even run the corner bodega, for that matter).
Xecky Gilchrist
@Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water: That was what I was going for :)
Trump’s new call for grades and such is pretty galling, not only in the face of the legacy admissions Daulnay mentions above, but also where do Republicans get off caring about grades after Preznit Dumbya?
canuckistani
@Villago Delenda Est:
“short-fingered vulgarians”; Aaah, the legacy of Spy Magazine lives on.
Kilkee
Have you seen the F-bomb-laden rant Trump has just thrown out in Vegas? If I didn’t know he was a teetotaller I’d assume he was drunk. I think he might really be mentally ill. Now he’s just bellowing into a mirror: “I’d tell Saudi Arabia: You can’t raise the f–in price!”
El Cid
What’s really important for the modern right isn’t Trump’s financial information, but how much money Al Gore might have been making by investing in companies aiming to reduce harm to the Earth’s ecology.
So, on the one hand, carbon offsets are a severe harm to the American economy because no one can possibly recover their investments.
On the other hand, Gore is a crook because he backs carbon offsets as environmentally worthy while being investments capable of making a return, and he puts his own money in to prove it.
Why, this is so much more scandalous than the admirable Donald Trump!
Suffern ACE
@Kilkee: Is this before he’d lock em in a room and tell them to cut out all the bullshit?
Kilkee
@jprfrog: To really appreciate his egomania one must consider his golf courses. In order to put his stamp on them (since he buys courses, then rebrands them as “his”) he has to add his “signature” to one or two of the holes. He has tended to do this with ridiculously out of place architectural flourishes like freakin’ waterfalls that have no place in the actual landscape he’s dealing with. Honest to God: the Trump course south of LA is one of God’s most perfect locations; high on bluffs overlooking the Pacific, gorgeous rolling dune-like terrain. Then you come around the corner and see the 50-foot waterfall springing absurdly out of the ground. One waits for the windmill on the next hole, or perhaps the dinosaur.
Trump, of course, brags about these absurdities, not least because of the ridiculous costs involved. The short-fingered thing must be true: the guy spends all day throwing up compensatory phallic erections.
Lurking Canadian
@Xecky Gilchrist:
What is the “argument” for seeing the grades, anyway? The birther thing, albeit bogus, was at least based on a genuine Constitutional requirement that the President must be born in the US. The Constitution does not say that the President needs to have a 4.0 GPA in grade twelve and good SAT scores. (I’m sure he had both of those things, but that is not the point.)
It’s not much of a dog whistle, if it’s at a frequency that everybody can hear.
Kilkee
@Suffern ACE: And will do so in English, damn it!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JPL:
I wish we still had Hunter S. Thompson with us. I can only imagine what he would write about an event that has become so rancid, so dripping with the congealed fat and rotting, corpulent flesh of the American body politic which our media vultures feed upon and regurgitate on a daily basis, that even a 3rd rate hack like Dana Millbank is too repulsed by the stench of corruption to go anywhere near it.
The mind, it boggles.
Villago Delenda Est
@canuckistani:
I loved Spy back in the day.
One of my favorite articles was one on how the US strategic bomber fleet should have been made up of Cessna prop planes, not B2 bombers, as Cessnas had a documented ability to penetrate Soviet air space and deliver a payload to the centers of Soviet political power.
Shadow's Mom
Did anyone notice? Trump commented several times after the long form release that he would need to ‘examine’ it. Kudos to at least three journalists who then offered to show it to him. Two were in a gaggle, but one was during the recent face to face interview. In all cases, Trump ignored their offers to show him the birth certificate.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lurking Canadian:
The President DOES NOT need to be born in the US. The President needs to be a “natural born citizen”. John McCain, as the son of two US citizens (one a Naval officer) was born in the Panama Canal Zone (at the time, not considered officially to be US soil…although that was changed shortly after his birth) and is “natural born”. As are the sons and daughters of US diplomats and servicepeople born overseas as a consequence of the parents being their on official duties.
In fact, one of the things the xenophobes are pushing to do is make it so that being born on US soil does NOT automatically confer “natural born” status on people…particularly brown people who speak Spanish.
Citizen_X
@El Cid:
Oh, for fucks’ sake. Congratulations, Mr. Hobbs: you’ve discovered the entire point of the carbon offsets.
danimal
@El Cid: If I believed in global warning, which I do, and if I had plenty of money to invest, which I don’t, I sure as hell would put my money into green infrastructure.
Are the global warming deniers angry that their myopia is closing opportunities to make a buck?
jenniebee
Trump/Bachmann ’12
isn’t it about time America hit bottom?
Nemesis
@Kilkee: Now he’s just bellowing into a mirror: “I’d tell Saudi Arabia: You can’t raise the f—in price!”
Sadly, this simplistic, asinine response to a multi-faceted problem like oil speculation plays perfectly with the 27%ers. Easy solutions requiring no reasoning ability sold to the masses as just common sense approaches to problems.
Liberalart76
Trump is worth at least two billion dollars – to Obama
Earl Butz
@JPL: Read it. Thanks for posting it. Normally he’s one of the worst offenders, but I guess that this is a bridge too far for him.
And that makes me like him a little bit more. There’s far too many people in journalism who have no moral boundaries at all.
New Yorker
@jprfrog:
I guess this is as good a place as any to bitch about one of my biggest peeves: the fact that the wonderful art-deco era skyscraper at 40 Wall St., one of my favorites in the city, has “The Trump Building” scrawled across its front. That cocksucker just HAD to put his name on the fucking thing. At least the Helmsleys had the decency not the rename the Empire State Building “The Helmsley Building” when the owned it.
Svensker
@JPL:
That link is incredible. The reality of The Village is really gross.
Benjamin Cisco
@JPL:
That’s gonna leave a mark; Boehner’s gonna be pissed.
Fred
For the thousandth time. He is NOT running. He never had any intention of running. 100% absolutely certain.
This is the third time he has done this. He did this I think in the 80’s and again in the 90’s. Nobody ever mentions that for some reason.
Just proves my point that people are basically stupid. You are all being played for fools by him.
Svensker
@Fred:
No. Whether he runs or not isn’t the issue. The issue is that a) he has become one of the front runners for the Repub nomination, and b) he has done that by being a loud-mouthed racist asshole. That is what is causing the commotion.
Fred
@Svensker: If people believed there is no way in hell he is running (and it is 100% certain he is not) then there would be no commotion.
Chicken…meet egg.
maus
@Fred:
Nobody here thinks he’s actually running for President. You’ve been played for a fool by us?
The media is uncritically buying this act and going nuts with it. We’re rubbernecking, because he’s a creature that’s easy to hate. We’re also slightly amused that the Republican pundits are acting as if he’s as serious a candidate as anyone else on the field, and interested in the parallels between him and other more “legitimate” candidates.
danimal
@maus:
To be honest, I believe he will run as an independent. He’ll flame out and be a pretty inconsequential candidate, but I believe he’ll give it a run.
cckids
@catclub: Pretty much entirely self-inflicted, at that. Its not as though “what do you read” could have been intended as some sort of stealth IQ weapon.
BARRASSO
Donald Trump – If Cartman raped Las Vegas and the baby grew up immune to dignity.
Fred
@danimal: I rest my case.
Sorry to burst you bubble dude but it will never happen. Firstly, he would have to disclose his financial records which would show (once again) he is a lying sack of sheit and not worth nearly as much as he claims. Also the whole twice bankrupt thing would be analyzed with a microscope.
Conclusion. NOT GONNA HAPPEN!
Fred
He is proof that you cannot buy class.