Open Thread: “A Clown Living on Credit”
Trump was propelled to the presidency, in part, by a self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome. But 10 years of tax information paint a different & far bleaker, picture of his deal-making abilities & financial condition. https://t.co/JAvVAkuHH8
— Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) May 7, 2019
Stories like this are why I subscribe, however grudgingly, to the NYTimes. Because *I* know Trump’s a deadbeat dependent on money laundering, and you know Trump’s a deadbeat, and even Melania knows better than to run up the family credit card — but until the bovine masses of Media Village Idiots and political horserace touts sense a shift in the conventional wisdom strong enough to rearrange their beloved formulas, it’s not enough.
I’m starting to think that aside from sus foreign loans, Trump is desperate to hide that even when he was making easy cash from NBC and the licensing deals that show spawned, he couldn’t manage his money worth a damn.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) May 8, 2019
Congrats to @realDonaldTrump on finally being the best at something! pic.twitter.com/lj74C1ovIg
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) May 7, 2019
Also, I’m meanly gleeful that this must be causing the Squatter-in-Chief pain…
As a narcissist, Trump’s worst nightmare is being exposed as unworthy of admiration.
His entire adult life has been an act to convince people he is someone his father would have loved.
This story is his worst outing: he’s a lifelong loser who failed at daddy’s business.
8/8
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) May 8, 2019
His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.
He was literally the worst businessman in America.
— Joe Kassabian (@jkass99) May 8, 2019
Before we knew the truth it seemed the epitome of Trump would be that he’d avoid paying taxes through criminal schemes but the fact that he actually didn’t pay taxes because of his own titanic money-losing incompetence is so perfect it actually hurts
— laura olin (@lauraolin) May 8, 2019
Maybe I’m crazy, but I think it’s both. https://t.co/eiM4g6Ukp5
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) May 8, 2019
If YOUR credit score drops below 600 or you miss a loan payment you can't buy a used car or get a department store card. How was Trump able to keep getting loans when for a decade at least, basically all he did was lose his father's money? His tax returns must be fascinating.
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) May 8, 2019
Reporters must dream of being able to write a kicker like this. pic.twitter.com/Wjm9MQN9Pv
— Schooley (@Rschooley) May 7, 2019
I saw focus groups of Trump voters in 2016. They thought the fact he was a hugely successful businessman would make him a successful president. The fact he was a loser in business will hurt him. And that is why he’s kept his taxes secret.
— Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) May 7, 2019
Says that @realDonaldTrump’s best source of $ in these yrs was bogus claims that he wanted to take over companies. Stock went up, he made $. https://t.co/6RjHhcOhSV
— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) May 7, 2019
The only man who could bankrupt a business rigged in favor of the proprietor.
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) May 7, 2019
He couldn’t hack it in the casino business so he started the only thing more profitable: a cult.
— MasterSalix (@Master_Salix) May 7, 2019
Credit where due:
Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner won a Pulitzer for their amazing exposé on the Trump family finances last year.
They broke today’s doozy as well.
Major props for your reporting, @susannecraig. https://t.co/CC2F7nJFIC
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) May 8, 2019
Maybe we should re-frame impeachment as another bankruptcy for Trump
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) May 8, 2019
This is my “surprised face: :-I
I find it truly astounding what a hapless, incompetent loser this guy is. The only thing he ever was good at was fleecing people dumber or more ignorant or more credulous than he is. But I have to give him his due, he’s a true genius at that.
Re: the Ornstein tweet. Moral bankruptcy should be non-dischargeable; maybe we can swap with student loan debt.
D
Broke smell
Why the NYT couldn’t find all this in 2015 is that they were enjoying all the clickbait from the circus and the chance to tear a Clinton down. Still not willing to give them any money.
“best source of $ in these yrs was bogus claims that he wanted to take over companies. Stock went up, he made $.”
Isn’t this securities fraud? Also too, when do we start bombing Venezuela?
So I just took a little stroll over to Twitter to see what Needy Amin has to say about the news that for ten whole years, he was literally the worst businessman in America. And, needless to say, he’s trying to ’splaine to all of us how he really, really meant to lose all that money, ’cause it was that’s what great businessmen do or something.
But what struck me was that I never saw even one lone fan of his trying to back him up. Not one. Everything else I ever saw that he posted there, there were hordes of asskissers there to tell him how ¡awesome! he is. This time? Nadie. Nobody. Nothing. I’ve never seen that before.
@Ryan: It’s probably not securities fraud if you aren’t privy to insider information and aren’t a registered broker dealer spouting known falsehoods upon which you have an expectation your clients will rely. Other than those two generalities, I am not prepared to speculate.
Hey, anyone else not seeing this post on the FP? I got here through my RSS feed, and still don’t see it on the main site.
Edit: Nevermind, I posted this comment and the article showed up on the front page instantly.
@Mary G:
Yeah, every time we plumb a new Trump depth, I am reminded about how horribly Hillary was treated in 2016.
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): FOX hasn’t told them what the spin is yet.
It’s a damn shame that whatever passes for a hometown paper in NYC couldn’t have had reporters like Craig and Buettner on staff during the campaign.
I’m sure there must be SOME people who are so dumb and gullible that they voted for Trump because they thought he was a “successful businessman” since he played one on TV, as Neera Tanden’s tweet outlines above. But among the Trumpsters I know who use that excuse (all of them!), it’s just that — an excuse to avoid admitting that the racism, sexism and xenophobia were the main draw. If pressed, they’ll meep about the awful tyranny of “political correctness.” Conclusion: I don’t think this story shaves even a quarter of a percent off Trump’s vote total in 2020.
@Barbara:
He was privy to the insider information that he was going broke.
@Mary G: This. They bet on their deadbeat horse and won. Fuck’em.
OT (slightly): Avalune and I purchased a second car on Monday. Nice little Honda Fit (early Mother’s Day/Birthday gift, plus we needed a second vehicle). It’s Avalune’s new ride to work, while I will be… driving (!!!!) myself to my outpatient therapy sessions from here on out. The way there is all back roads with essentially zero traffic and clear views. It’s about a 10 min drive, which is all I want for right now.
Baby steps and all that. Ok, back to bashing doll hands.
Trump’s base won’t care. They’ll claim the NYT obtained records illegally, invaded his privacy, and that the NYT is fake news and that Trump simply finagled the system to avoid paying overtly unfair taxes. Another hatchet job, another reason to vote for him again.
Some of his base voted for him because he had a reputation as a savvy businessman, buoyed by his TV show and publicity about his wealth. I think very few of his fans will be swayed by these revelations, and those of us who suspected it all along only have those suspicions confirmed.
I just hope he suffers great gastrointestinal discomfort as a result.
The tax dodging totus thug is now claiming the ‘losses were for tax purposes’ – aka I lied in my tax returns. If only there were some competent agency that had oversight on such lies ….
It’s definitely securities fraud: a classic pump and dump scheme. But proving that he was doing it deliberately and was never interested in acquiring those companies would be difficult I think.
Just watched Rachel’s coverage of this and other Trump-related stuff (leadoff item: the campaign likely blackmailed Jerry Falwell Jr into giving his “just like Jesus” endorsement of Trump in 2016).
I was soaked in schadenfreude afterward, and it was a nice feeling. The way Rachel describes it, there is a tidal wave of damaging information coming and all of the increasingly desperate ploys to keep it back are inevitably failing. Felt nice to hear that, and for a few minutes I believed it.
But I’m wondering how any of this is playing outside the progressive bubble. And I’m a pretty optimistic guy. Are the training wheels really coming off the bus yet?
@Leto: Been a long road with more to go, but congrats! You’ve made an amazing recovery so far.
@donnah:
Won’t that just give him more time to tweet?
(Ducks and covers)
It should be said that this article is doing a heap of good in one particular area — It is seriously bolstering the House’s demand to see Trump’s tax returns.
But… but… the script! It says right here that Trump’s a masterful businessman!
@OzarkHillbilly: Inside information about the company whose stock is being bought and sold.
Was NYT asleep during 2016? Why is this coming out now. Sorry they are still on the shit list. Never to be forgiven. Their coverage of Hillary’s emails is one of the reasons he sits in the WH.
@Betty Cracker:
Agree completely. And there are a number of people who are saying that Trump’s business incompetence was more or less common knowledge back in the day. It’s a shame that none of them bothered to reveal what they knew to the nation.
@Leto: I can relate. I had been driving the teen housemate home from school every day and to therapy once a week and tried to keep doing it despite a really bad RA flare up. Had to quit when my right knee refused to brake. So I feel your joy!
Happily, his grades are still excellent (nothing below a B), he has almost finished his community service, and finally had a clean supervised urine test, so I am not irreplaceable. I haven’t cleared up, but have my second Rituxin infusion tomorrow. Fingers crossed it works again. I miss being useful.
@rp: Not only would it be difficult to prove that he was never really interested in those companies, it would be hard to prove that he had any duty to the purchasers of stock in those companies. It is a pump and dump scheme, but publicly expressing an interest in acquiring something as causation for someone to go out and purchase stocks is much less direct than calling specific people and telling them information that has no basis in fact (even if not deliberate lies) as a means to getting them to buy the shares directly through or from you.
My experience with Trump voters — and alas I have more experience than I would care to — is that they will take the news that he didn’t pay federal taxes as a sign of how clever he is to avoid paying money to the Treasury. AL was right when she posted ages ago that Trump’s supporters are latter day Poujadistes — bigoted small business owners in small town America who hate everything that cities, and especially coastal cities, represent like cultural diversity, education, and desk work as opposed to manual labor. I think the really question Democrats should be asking is, “Who’s his daddy?” The man never grew up. He’s never earned his keep. Someone’s always been there to get him out of trouble, and it’s likely that Eastern European oligarchs became his go-to once his real daddy (Fred Trump) was no longer there to bail out his loser son.
Sheesh, preemptive surrender?
Wanna really piss off Trump? Henceforth, only refer to him as a “millionaire”, or his fortune bring in “the millions”. Besides diminishing him, it has the added benefit of probably bring true.
@James E Powell:
Look, I live in the sticks and have nothing to do with the real-estate or financial industry, but I was fully aware he was a broke shyster long before the election. Anyone who wasn’t just wasn’t paying attention. It was all fully covered in the media.
@germy:
That was a great article. It’s funny how people see these things- they know them to be true- and then there’s this endless “analysis” that takes that and turns it into a criminal trial with “beyond a reasonable doubt” as the standard and thus sort of shames them into denying their own opinion. They knew the high school boys were behaving badly, strutting around lording it over people, they recognized that, but then it became “well, can you PROVE motive?” Well, no. I didn’t know I had to do that to watch something and have an opinion. I wasn’t aware this was a grand jury.
@zhena gogolia: I was a child growing up in India in the 80s and even I knew then what a huckster T was with his low class casinos like the fucking Taj Mahal. What an insult to the original Taj.That people didn’t know about a person who has lived in the glare of limelight, and has actively sought it out all his adult life is the fucking lamest of the lame excuses I have heard.
@James E Powell: There are none so blind as those who WON’T see. I am an ordinary person with an average education a long ways from New York. I understood Trump was a lousy business man when I was in middle school. He was a tasteless joke on TV. I mean. I was trying not to hear about him in the 80’s and not just him, the whole popular celebrity culture, but I did know about his bankruptcies.
I do have an interest in business and follow that some, but still….I think a LOT of people, not just conservatives, really have a lot of trouble differentiating between TV/Movies and real life. Otherwise why would you CARE about an actor or “celebrity” says or dates.
@plato:
I don’t know, plato, should he not talk about the actual process? Why would I reflexively believe he doesn’t know the process he uses, or that his is somehow “surrendering” when he says “this complicates THIS”?
Maybe it does. Is that unimaginable, that he is actually talking about something real? When I tell my clients “we have to get this stayed before I can file this” I mean that. That’s what we have to do. Maybe Pelosi doesn’t want to do this because impeachment people are not actually asking for process. They’re demanding a result. No one in their right mind guarantees those.
@Sasha: Not even that. I’ve been saying for years the man was broke. He has NO money of his own.
It’s all from Russia. After he went to Russia seeking more, tried to fuck them, and got beat up for it. I buy Adam’s theory that he dropped out of sight briefly, and snuffles, because of face reconstructive surgery… especially if he is not a massive coke-head (he may be that way naturally!)
My question now is not ‘oh why didn’t they say this before?’. They didn’t because I figure a surprisingly huge amount of DC and the media were bought off by Russian money. Much like there are hordes of Twitter trolls supporting him, because they are paid by Russian money and relatively cheap, just like running Trump is relatively cheap (it’s probably a status symbol in those circles to have a pet American mogul, never mind a pet American President. Talk about ‘what do you get the man who has everything’, huh?)
No, my question is, ‘who are the Russians going with if they have now thrown Trump truly under the bus?’
Pence? Sanders? Do they figure they can get Biden in there and then have him completely faceplant and wreck the USA further? There has got to be a plan B for if Trump craters, because Trump ALWAYS craters. It might not be a brilliant plan, but if Russia is kicking Trump to the curb, it means they have some kind of plan B.
@schrodingers_cat:
Yep. that’s why I was in incredulous shock in Nov. 2016 (and even before) I couldn’t believe he even got the nomination.
@Kay:
I had to talk to a victims’ rights advocate about something, and she was shocked that I wasn’t immediately demanding the impossible. That’s what she deals with every single day.
The total Tax Evasion $$$ are, by far, the largest ever potentially prosecuted. I know it’s the in thing for the wealthy to snub their noses at paying unfair taxes to the Man, but maybe don’t Tweet that out as your defense for burning all that cash? Are you 100 percent sure Your People are in place at the IRS to keep you safe? 100 Percent?
But then I’m sure the 90s and 00s Tax Returns will see the light of day, and show how awesome a Business Man he really is after all. No Laundry there, no sir!
@zhena gogolia:
This is the worst thing about the political internet, IMO. The “this is all you have to do…” SURENESS of people. Okey doke.
@Chris Johnson: What makes you say the Russians have thrown Trump under the bus?
@Ryan: market manipulation is difficult to prove.
There’s nothing like going on Twitter and admitting to tax fraud first thing in the morning. What a world we live in.
@James E Powell: Shit, I knew that motherfucker was a complete and total fraud back in the 1980s. It was obvious. You didn’t need inside knowledge of business or anything. Just listening to him for thirty seconds in any medium was enough. Any money he had was Daddy’s and it was obvious he wouldn’t have it long, because he was dumb as dogshit (apologies to dogshit).
As to the election, It wouldn’t have mattered. As the esteemed Ms. Cracker notes above, this won’t cost him a quarter of a percent of votes in 2020, and it would have mattered even less in 2016.
Every Trump voter I know, and I know far more than I’d like, voted for the sack of shit to ensure that a black man would never sit in the Oval Office again, and as payback for Dems having put one there in the first place.
@Leto: Leto, what a year, what a journey you’ve had. Keep on keeping on!
@Kay: I am sure he knows the process to his gills but don’t concern troll how the thug and his corrupt minions are doing this, doing that. Instead tell the public that the thug is doing this, doing that and we dems are not going let him do this and that.
@schrodingers_cat:
That, plus their exoneration of the orange pustule from his Russian ties, also just days before the election. And their failure to do any kind of timely reporting on their openly corrupt hometown boy. I hates’em, I do.
That said, I appreciate this investigation. May it continue.
@O. Felix Culpa: There is a lot of people for whom it is still the newspaper of record. So yes, let the investigation continue.
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Toot, tweet, whatever
@plato: concern troll concern trolling – got it
I’m certain that Trump voters don’t really care and wouldn’t have cared back in 2016. But there were people in positions of authority, most especially the NYT, who knew everything about Trump, but chose to keep silent. I know for the NYT the most important thing was to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House. But what about the rest? Did they just want tax cuts?
Jesus, I was half joking back in 2016 that if Wilmer and Dump released their tax returns it would show Wilmer with more cash in hand.
Hello media, you really fucked up bigly.
@Kay: They are. And I am just astonished at the number of people I know who do not understand that without the Senate, the result they want (no more Trump) will not be forthcoming.
Pelosi isn’t stupid. You do something if it can deliver results. Investigations will yield the same results as impeachment, without handing the Republicans Trump’s martyrdom to ride to victory in 2020.
In the tin hat territory file (whatever that means now) I have seen speculation lately wondering if Russia has been manipulating the stock market because the patterns seem really odd to them. I would have thought that crazy a few years ago but why wouldn’t Russia manipulate the market. If they can access nuclear power plant controls, hack into all the government and party servers, change the messages on the roadside warning systems in Texas, and god only knows what else – it’s not out of the realm of possible.
@Betty Cracker:
Agree.
The core of Trump’s appeal is that trash people wanted to have one of their own in the White House. It makes them feel okay about being trash people.
Our system of governance was never designed for this kind of mass psychodrama,
@Betty Cracker:
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP
TRUTH
@rikyrah: +1 million, would upvote again if this blog supported upvotes in the first place.
@satby: Thanks; if someone told me that in seven months I’d be back, tentatively, to driving I probably would’ve called them cray cray. Just have to keep moving forward.
@Mary G: RA sucks. I hope your treatment works. Grats on the kid’s progress! Hope things continue to move up and forward for them :)
I came back from dog walkies, wanted to check on the contempt of Congress hearing in the judiciary, and see Gym Jordan rambling insane clown car theories for his speaking time. Also seeing Trumpov trying to assert executive privilege over the Mueller report? Wut? Cloud coo-coo land…
Yikes. Just read the news about yesterday’s school shooting in Highlands Ranch CO, where my sister, niece and nephew live. Fortunately my sister and niece are both in Florida and nephew is much younger and neither go to that school, but still…way too close to home. Especially since my sister has lived there since Columbine.
I’m watching part of last night’s Rick Wilson Periscope. He says that focus groups in the ’16 campaign were influenced most by The Apprentice. Not just Republicans, but also working class Dems. “He’s too rich to be corruptible”. Maybe this and more Trump terrible business news will break some of that.
Rick also thinks the Falwell revelations may continue, and be pretty funny. “Who doesn’t meet a poolboy in Miami and lend him a million dollars” [big grin].
Liberals have an problem/issue. They keep expecting facts to determine what the MSM & what Democrats ‘loyal’ opposition (Republicans) feel and say. While I think it is liberals who should be right, liberals acting like Lucy is not going to pull that football from Charlie Brown is the crazy here. How many times do we need to see that the MSM & Republicans have different rules for Democrats than they do for Republicans and that is on purpose to help Republicans. These are deplorables here we are talking about. They LIKE being deplorables. That leopard is not going to lose it’s spots. Stop acting like it should and recognize what you are up against and work against that.
Matt Gaetz is easily top five dumbest Congress critter currently serving.
@The Moar You Know:
This is what you and a large number of people are missing. No more Trump will require an election. The result we want is Trump and his whole family exposed for the lying, corrupt frauds that they are. We want his crimes put before the public even if the Republicans refuse to do anything about it. In fact, putting the crimes before the public and the Republicans refusing to do anything about them is a result we want. Even more, we want to expose the Republicans’ corruption and complicity with Trump. What they allowed, what they covered up, what they refused to do anything about. Our argument is that if we do not investigate & impeach, then we are saying it’s okay, it’s “some say” and “both sides” and no reason to be upset or to stop voting for Republicans.
@UncleEbeneezer:
My step brother’s son is a student there. He was home sick yesterday. His mom is a teacher at another school and they were in lockdown so she couldn’t get home to him. I’m just beside myself with anger and sadness.
@Leto:
I hope you are better at driving than the person I was behind.
1) way slower than other interstate drivers. The least bad problem.
2) at intersection, I can see all is clear, multiple times, does not go, does not go, does not go.
3) I honk in irritation, he goes when a car is coming, the car misses him.
4)can barely stay within lane, runs over the rumble strips .
I called the Highway patrol to report a future accident.
@Leto: Sounds as though you have made great progress. Remember where you started. The only good that came from the accident was that we were introduced to Avalune.
@kindness: This is a lethal weakness of the left, one that keeps getting exploited. I cannot count how many times in the last several years I hear someone talking about Republicans start saying “If they only understood…”
Stop right there. Don’t assume these people are stupid. They aren’t. They understand EVERYTHING just fine. They have a different set of goals, and if you want a person to change their goals the issue becomes not one of “education” but of salesmanship, which most people – ESPECIALLY smart people – are not very good at.
@Leto: That’s the truth. He and Louie Gohmert don’t have a thimbleful of brains between the two of them.
@James E Powell: I’m not missing that. Why do you think “exposing” Trump as being what everyone who voted for him already knows he is will make any difference at all?
@Bobby Thomson:
It’s often easy to spot though. Sorta like counter-intelligence, the evidence is in metadata(and timing) and well-timed shifts in messaging and behavior and etc. Not good court of law material, but still real.
@Mary G: Best wishes for fast remission, Mary!
Watched the Rachael Maddow show last night with the wife, who was moaning about no longer being in the news biz. Enjoyed seeing Maddow grinning as she reported those huge losses Trump reported back 25 years ago.
No surprises, just wonderment as to where all that money came from. And still more, and yet more again!!! Where from it came???
.RU
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Poll last week, 55% said they would NEVER vote for him. That’s a pretty big bubble.
@Raoul:
Losing money is embarrassing but not illegal (almost everything from ~1990 is way past the statute of limitations anyway). But blackmailing people in 2016? That’s a huge problem. Impeachable, too. And wouldn’t hearings with the pool boy and whoever was doing the fixing be fun!
@schrodingers_cat: My understanding of how they got this information was a really clever and difficult piece of detective work. Totally fair to castigate the NYT for their BS email and Clinton Foundation stories, but it’s probably unfair to have expected them to have uncovered this if only they had tried a little harder.
@kindness:
YAAAAAAS.
Again, Tyler Cowen is right on the money here: our politics are about nothing more than elevating the relative social status of some groups, thereby lowering it in others. (It’s not really about all of us succeeding together.)
Terrible, deplorable people have been feeling bad about being dumb, racist, lazy, and uneducated because, at least for a while, society sent the message that those are bad things to be…..so they elected someone who is all of those things in order to feel less bad.
While the dems keep mucking around ‘due process’, the thugs keep saying FU to any process and keep on achieving their vile agendas for the present and for the future
@catclub: goodness! No, not that bad. The speed limit from here to there is between 25 and 35, and that’s what I do. No speed demon and no turtle.
@JPL: truth!
@Betty Cracker: Rep Hakeem Jeffries – D NY is up, and he doesn’t have time for their BS. Called out the dipshits for the witch hunt of HRC for the express purpose of hurting her electability, as well as pointing out that the Rethugs didn’t give a shit about smearing a ton of people’s name/character during the past two years.
While the dems muck around ‘due process’, the thugs say FU to any process and achieve their vile agendas for the present and for the future.
Posts vanish and then appear twice. It’s a bj miracle.
I’m thinking that ship sailed somewhere around the time he was shipped off to military school – if not earlier, like maybe around the time he was conceived.
@MomSense: As my sister said (as someone who has lived there for 25 years: this sort of thing is all too familiar. Glad to hear your people were safe. Parents and children shouldn’t have to live in constant fear of this crap.
@Suzanne:
I and mr. bemused have been talking about people we went to school with, elementary and high school, who had low self-esteem then and still do. From our brief, recent encounters with them, we’re sure they are trumpers. They didn’t learn much about the world after high school and still evidently feeling they don’t measure up. Too bad. They had choices.
@Sasha:
Millionaire by inheritance, important to note. He hates acknowledging that he’d be nobody without the massive backstop of his daddy’s money.
@donnah: “I just hope he suffers great gastrointestinal discomfort as a result.”
Better yet, he could suffer someone else’s gastrointestinal distress. Maybe a roomful of people.
@JPL:
This! Leto, your wife is a real mensch, a wonderful person to reach out to us jackals while also taking care of wounded Leto!!
Thank her again from me!!
@The Moar You Know:
Because there are Republican senators and congress-creatures who do not have Trump-Armor and who are running in states and districts that are not a lock for RWers. Those senators and congress-creatures will be forced to defend Trump and explain their support of his lying, corruption and criminality.
Any thinking person in and around NYC from the 1980s forward knew this guy was full of crap. He was a bloody joke. Poor little rich boy morphed into the Music Man. Well, now there’s big trouble in River City. You reap what you sow.
@plato: Okay, William Roper, which rules and procedures should the Democrats cut down to go after Trump?
@James E Powell:
Apologies if I misunderstand your comment, but are you saying that impeachment proceedings will expose DT more than has already happened with the Mueller investigation and report, the MSM stories on his financial corruption, the House investigations? Who are the people who will hear the information from the impeachment process and say, “Holy shit, I had NO IDEA he was like this!!!!”
I believe impeachment is more realistic now than it was before the report came out, but knowing that the senate will not convict, it’s only real usefulness is if it gives the House legal tools they don’t have without it. If you think we should do it because it’s the right thing to do, we’ve been doing that and it doesn’t always yield the results we think it should. And once the impeachment process starts, the countdown starts for it to wind up in McConnell’s senate. All the usual suspects will scream that it should be over NOW. If we drag it out until the election, that’s exactly what it will look like. Whereas, with House investigations, there’s no definitive stopping point other than finding all the corruption. As long as new crap is uncovered, we can go as long as we want.
@bemused: Many of the Trumpers I know are white people who are kind of losers, or at least disappointments to their families. I am thinking of a couple of people who I know skipped the HS reunions not because they had something better to do, but because they hadn’t achieved anything of note since graduation.
I once posted a brutal tweet on my Facebook that read something like “It’s easy to deny white privilege exists when you have achieved nothing despite having it.” That sums up so much white resentment that I see. The successful people I know acknowledge the luck and generosity that helped them get to where they are. It’s the losers who are deeply invested in MAGA.
@Suzanne:
The people we ran into weren’t losers, just average folks who have stayed the rest of their lives in same area, didn’t grow and expand their experiences beyond high school. I just think they have been and are still afraid to get out of their comfort zone.
@germy: One of the front pagers should do a post about that article. I found it illuminating – I’ve always thought of Trump as a toddler, but Trump as teenagers has some stuff to recommend it also.
@zhena gogolia:
I had no proof decades ago that he was a crook, but there were stories in the financial papers then about to what both Fred and son were and how they operated.
@James E Powell: Amen!
Also, I realize the Senate won’t vote to convict Trump. NO Senate has EVER voted to convict any impeached President. Ever. Nixon might well have survived a Senate vote.
We still need to hold hearings and expose all the crimes. Because they are crimes, and history is watching.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Is that “material,” in the securities-law sense of the word?
@trnc:
Yes, they will. Mostly because of live witnesses.
Who are the people who will say they had no idea? Why, the great majority of American voters who to this day have no idea.
@burnspbesq: Burnsie, you still there?
@cckids: Nixon was told that he’d lose in the Senate by Goldwater, et. al.; that’s why he resigned.
@Mary G: Yuup.
(They had the contacts, & the investigative muscle, and they didn’t use them. Each time I read their blockbuster reports like this, I get angrier at their failure to investigate that obvious corrupt grifter).
@James E Powell: When you say live witnesses, do you mean televised public hearings? We’ve already have that and we’ll have more with the House investigations already in the pipeline.
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
Good point. The republican senators had to be convinced that crimes were committed, but the difference between those senators and today’s republicans is that those senators had to be convinced. IE, they weren’t convinced before the impeachment hearings because the crimes weren’t all committed out in the open and with those senators ready to run interference at every turn. Do McConnell, Grassley, Graham, etc have to be convinced? Hell, no. They know as well as we do that DT set a new bar for rot and corruption.
Look at the photo of Trump in one of the above tweets:
…and tell me Trump’s ties weren’t always disconcertingly long. That tie looks normal.
Is he shrinking? Or just buying ties that are custom-long? Why?
@Mary G: Totally agree… they keep sending me offers to re-subscribe for a buck a week… I say go fuck yourself, NYT!
@Ramalama: No, we have seen pictures showing the backs of his ties where he is keeping the short end held in place with tape. You can buy extra-long ties for people with large necks, they do exist.