Merged So what's next for Trump?

[ZiprHead]

Report: Donald Trump golf club investigated over taxes

NEW YORK -- Donald Trump's company is under criminal investigation by a district attorney in a New York City suburb into whether it misled officials to cut taxes for a golf course there, according to The New York Times.

The district attorney's office subpoenaed records from both the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester and the town of Ossining, which handles the club's taxes, said the Times, citing "people with knowledge of the matter." The newspaper didn't say why those people had requested anonymity.

The probe led by District Attorney Mimi E. Rocah, a Democrat, appears to focus in part on whether the former president's company submitted misleading valuations on the golf course.

In a statement, the Trump Organization suggested the probe was politically motivated, noting that it had hammered out a compromise with the town over its long-running efforts to cut taxes in June, a deal signed off on by a county judge.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Sept. 26, 2016, Hofstra University
Hillary: ...Maybe he doesn't want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes...
Trump: That makes me smart.

 

[crazyfingers]

Apparently he's launching yet another social media hustle:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/577712-trump-announces-new-social-media-network-called-truth

How long before this one turns into a cesspool of conspiracy theorists, parody accounts and child pornography distributors like the ones before it? If it gets off the ground at all, that is.

Why should any of that matter? The intent is simply to profit. Orange is only and always after the money. There is no desire to produce something useful or constructive or that has social value which in turn produces personal wealth. It's a different profit model entirely.

And now we learn some investors were not informed that this deal involves Trump.

However, some of the investors who funded the venture weren't aware that Trump would be involved, according to a report from the New York Times.

"The details of Mr. Trump's latest partnership were vague," the Times reports. "The statement he issued was reminiscent of the kind of claims he made about his business dealings in New York as a real estate developer. It was replete with high-dollar amounts and superlatives that could not be verified."

https://www.rawstory.com/trumps-med...-investors-were-aware-he-was-involved-report/

 

[Keith&Co.]

Apparently he's launching yet another social media hustle:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/577712-trump-announces-new-social-media-network-called-truth

How long before this one turns into a cesspool of conspiracy theorists, parody accounts and child pornography distributors like the ones before it? If it gets off the ground at all, that is.

SITE'S DOWN!
Inside of two hours, Trump's account was hacked, a picture added of a pig defacating on its own testicles.
ALL STOP!

 

[ideologyhunter]

Not so fast. Sounds like a Donald and Melania wedding photo.

 

[ZiprHead]

Apparently he's launching yet another social media hustle:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/577712-trump-announces-new-social-media-network-called-truth

How long before this one turns into a cesspool of conspiracy theorists, parody accounts and child pornography distributors like the ones before it? If it gets off the ground at all, that is.

SITE'S DOWN!
Inside of two hours, Trump's account was hacked, a picture added of a pig defacating on its own testicles.
ALL STOP!

LOL!

Why can't right-wingers get decent IT people?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Apparently he's launching yet another social media hustle:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/577712-trump-announces-new-social-media-network-called-truth

How long before this one turns into a cesspool of conspiracy theorists, parody accounts and child pornography distributors like the ones before it? If it gets off the ground at all, that is.

SITE'S DOWN!
Inside of two hours, Trump's account was hacked, a picture added of a pig defacating on its own testicles.
ALL STOP!

LOL!

Why can't right-wingers get decent IT people?

I strongly suspect you get what you pay for. And it seems a LOT of the conservatives i know think the IT department is basically the guy at the arcade who sweeps and cleans the pinball machines, with benefits.

 

[Swammerdami]

Trump doesn't always lie. He sometimes rambles incoherently as well.

Rambles incoherently? Are you just jealous because you can't talk like this:

Look, having nuclear my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, okay, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, okay, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world it's true! but when you're a conservative Republican they try oh, do they do a number that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners now it used to be three, now it's four but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

I don't think I could talk like this. I'm not sure I could even diagram this sentence, if that's what it is.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Not so fast. Sounds like a Donald and Melania wedding photo.

OMG!

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Trump doesn't always lie. He sometimes rambles incoherently as well.

Rambles incoherently? Are you just jealous because you can't talk like this:

Look, having nuclear my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, okay, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, okay, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world it's true! but when you're a conservative Republican they try oh, do they do a number that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners now it used to be three, now it's four but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

I don't think I could talk like this. I'm not sure I could even diagram this sentence, if that's what it is.

Clearly a person suffering with unmanageable ADD.

 

[Keith&Co.]

So, Eric Trump has been critical of Biden spending time outside of the White House.

Trump literally spent more than a year of his 4-year presidency sluffing off, but leave that aside.

I suddenly wonder what Trump did to dismiss Eric's suggestions?

I have heard that when Ivanka offered political opinions, he dismissively said, "Sweetheart, you sell handbags."
I imagine that if Don Junior offered political advice, "Junior, you sell real estate."
But if he turned to Eric, what was there? "Eric, you... Um..."
What?
"You make Junior look smart?"
"You block a draft from the window?"
Or would it more be "How did you get in here again!?"

 

[ZiprHead]

LOL!

Why can't right-wingers get decent IT people?

I strongly suspect you get what you pay for. And it seems a LOT of the conservatives i know think the IT department is basically the guy at the arcade who sweeps and cleans the pinball machines, with benefits.

More trouble for the site.

Trump's Social Media Platform Could Already Face Legal Issues, After Allegedly Ripping Off Code

However, it would appear that Trump’s new site is not only unoriginal in concept but also in code. As originally reported by Vice News, Truth Social seems to have lifted its digital DNA directly from Mastodon, the open-source alternative social network known for its focus on user privacy and autonomy.

Similarities in the code were first spotted by early users of the platform, who noted front-end similarities between it and Mastodon. One user even took a screenshot of the HTML of Trump’s new site which shows explicit mention of Mastodon in the code. Mastodon subsequently had fun with this, tweeting out a reference to Trump’s apparent familiarity with their platform:

---

Mastodon leases its software under something called an AGPLv3 license, which basically stipulates that users can use its code so long as they acknowledge where it came from and make the copied or modified code available for public inspection. However, in its own terms of service, Truth Social claims that “all source code” from its software is proprietary, essentially failing to mention that it lifted it from somewhere else.

Speaking with Vice, Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko said that Truth Social’s platform appeared to be “absolutely” based on Mastodon’s code and that it would “indicate a license violation.” Rochko subsequently told Talking Points Memo that his team would lawyer up to consider the potential breach of terms.

“I do intend to seek legal counsel on the situation,” he told the outlet. “Compliance with our AGPLv3 license is very important to me, as that is the sole basis upon which I and other developers are willing to give away years of work for free,” he added.

Typical of the Trump org.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Typical of the Trump org.

Yeah, they do this copying shit ALL THE TIME. They lifted copyrighted photos for their ads, copied Obama's inauguration cake, used music without permission (and apparently without reading the actual lyrics). Copy copy copy....
What the fuck? They can't even crime creatively.

 

[jab]

Not so fast. Sounds like a Donald and Melania wedding photo.

don and a hooker photo?

 

[lpetrich]

The 13 biggest hoaxes in America, according to Donald Trump - The Washington Post

Not sure where to post it, but I find it fun.

13. The “No Collusion” finding of the Mueller Report.
12. Impeachment Hoax #2.
11. Impeachment Hoax #1.
10. Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine.
9. Russia, Russia, Russia.
8. 2020 Presidential Election Scam.
7. Global Warming Hoax.
6 through 1. [Unclear]

Trump’s delineation of the biggest hoaxes stops here. In his statement, he declared that global warming was the “7th biggest hoax” and that the six others in this list “follow closely behind.” So that means there are six unidentified hoaxes that precede it, ones that I guess we should be sufficiently familiar with to impute them ourselves.

Or maybe Trump just phrased the whole thing clunkily, opening the door for a snarky analysis of his assertions by someone who likes to think he’s more of a scalpel-word-user than a boulder one.

 

[Keith&Co.]

6 through 1. [Unclear] Trump’s delineation of the biggest hoaxes stops here.

You know, when i saw the headline, i was amazed Trump could follow through on 12 talking points. Never mind...

Maybe at #7 we start getting into hoaxes that do not boil down to "Me! Me! Me!" and he sees no reason to recall them?

 

[lpetrich]

Article about one of Trump's greatest enablers: How Mitch McConnell, one of Washington's longtime GOP power players, succumbed to the preeminence of Trump - The Washington Post - "How one of Washington’s longtime Republican power players succumbed to the preeminence of the 45th president"

Safely huddled with Democratic leaders as they watched video of police battling Trump supporters in the Capitol, McConnell reacted with anger and revulsion, according to Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who was also in the secure location.

“I thought to myself, 'This could be a transformative moment. He appears to have taken this very seriously,’ ” recalled Durbin, who spent hours that day holed up with the Republican leader.

But when it came time to hold Trump to account, McConnell backed off.

Then when Congress put Trump on trial, MMC bailed him out by rejecting impeachment of him, doing that a second time. He later bailed out Trump yet again by rejecting a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attacks. Here is how Trump repaid him:

Ten months later, Trump is once again dominating the Republican Party, expected to run again in 2024 — and utterly disdainful of the Senate leader who helped save him. Trump dismissed McConnell as a “stupid person” and suggested his favored 2022 Senate candidates should oust McConnell from his leadership post when they get to Washington.

McConnell is not a “real leader” because “he didn’t fight for the presidency,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Then "For many of his 36 years in the Senate, Addison Mitchell McConnell III has cultivated an image as a master political and legislative tactician, a consummate insider who knows how to gain power and use it to the fullest." Like blocking Obama's appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, an achievement that he chuckled over in a Fox News interview.

"Yet in the months since the Jan. 6 attack, a different portrait of McConnell has taken shape. At 79, safely reelected last year to a seventh term and in his 16th year as the Senate’s top Republican, McConnell is nonetheless increasingly playing the role of a conflicted and compromised booster of Trump’s interests — not a leader with his own vision."

 

[lpetrich]

Why has MMC gone far right?

“My guess is what happened is the tides changed and he realized there wasn’t support [to convict] in the caucus,” said Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s former secretary of state, whom McConnell once unsuccessfully endorsed in a Senate race against Rand Paul. “Sometimes leaders lead, and sometimes they have to follow some people that are trying to lead. And I guess that’s what happened.”

... He has reversed course on issues ranging from campaign finance to voting rights, moving hard to the right as the Republican Party changed around him. His guiding principle has been power — acquiring it and keeping it — not an ideological adherence to policy, say those who knew him early in his career.

Shamelessly enabling Donald Trump fits right in, even after his great enablee encouraged a lynch mob to come after him and his fellow Congresspeople.

... Midway through Trump’s term, the veteran lawmaker released a new version of his autobiography, which described his rise in the Senate in heroic terms. The book opened with a new glowing foreword penned by Trump, who lavished praise on McConnell as his “ace in the hole” and wrote that he “couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”

Except Trump never actually wrote those words — at least according to the ex-president, who now mocks McConnell’s role in pursuing his agenda. In an interview with The Post, Trump said McConnell actually wrote that foreword and simply used the president’s name on the passage.

Trump said he told McConnell, “Why don’t you write it for me and I’ll put it in, Mitch? Because that’s the way life works.”

McConnell, asked if Trump’s account was accurate, did not dispute it. “I really don’t have anything to add related to him,” McConnell said.

That doesn't seem very surprising. MMC is much better at long-term planning than Trump apparently is, and someone who wrote a whole book could easily write a little bit extra.

In his youth, MMC voted for LBJ rather than Barry Goldwater because BG was opposed to civil-rights legislation.

In the summer of 1968, while working for Marlow Cook’s Senate campaign, the 26-year-old McConnell spent months driving around Kentucky with another volunteer, John Yarmuth. What struck Yarmuth then and now is he didn’t know of any issue that animated McConnell’s thirst for politics other than winning an election.

“He never wanted to change the world. This is all about being, not doing,” Yarmuth said. As a result, he argued, McConnell has been willing to do whatever it took to win favor. While Yarmuth became a Democrat, founded an alt-weekly and later won election to Congress in 2006 to represent Louisville, McConnell moved further to the right along with the party.

“He clearly doesn’t care about being labeled a hypocrite. It just doesn’t bother him. He is brazen about it,” said Yarmuth, who said he rarely interacts anymore with McConnell even though both lawmakers live in the same area. “That’s one of the cynical sides of Mitch. He doesn’t care. If it’s expedient, he’ll do it.”

This hunger for power led him to reverse himself on several issues. Like going from wanting “complete disclosure of ALL donors, regardless of the size of their contributions” to defending dark-money secrecy. Also once supporting an environmental bill that targeted coal-burning emissions, “I had to choose between cleaner air and the status quo. I chose cleaner air.” and now opposing climate-change legislation as deleterious to his home state's main industry. Also flip-flopping on the Voting Rights Act.

In 2016, he expressed concern that Trump might alienate Hispanics the way that Barry Goldwater alienated blacks. He later left such concerns aside.

After Trump’s win, McConnell realized he and the new president could get much of what they wanted without Democratic support. For example, despite writing in his memoir that “Americans believe that on issues of great importance, one party shouldn’t be allowed to force its will on everyone else,” he pushed through Trump’s tax cuts on a party-line vote.

Seems like he'd dump the filibuster if he found it expedient to do so.

 

[lpetrich]

Though MMC said that Trump was “100 percent within his rights” to bring legal challenges to the election, MMC congratulated Joe Biden on his electoral-college victory on December 15.

McConnell spoke on the phone with Trump to explain his announcement, but the president erupted in anger. Trump insisted he had won, uttered expletives and accused him of disloyalty, and McConnell responded, “You lost the election” and hung up, according to “Peril,” a book by Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. (McConnell, asked in the interview about that account, said, “That pretty well covers it.”)

Three weeks later, the two Democrats won in Georgia, turning McConnell into the minority leader, followed by the Jan. 6 insurrection. McConnell said in the interview that as he watched footage from his secure location of the attack, “I was intent that we got back in session at 8 p.m. in prime time to finish the job, so the American people would know that the insurrection had failed.”

Trump blamed MMC for losing Georgia and MMC blamed Trump for the Jan. 6 attacks.

Even as he voted to acquit Trump, McConnell seemed to ratify the Democratic case that the president had incited the attack. “There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” McConnell said Feb. 13. But, after insisting the impeachment trial be held after Trump’s term ended, he then argued it was not an option to convict a former president — a rationale rejected by all Democrats and seven Republicans.

He seems to want to have it both ways.

Senator Dick Durbin:

“Now he’s looking at Trump, not in the rearview mirror, but looking through the windshield and realizing he’s going to have to live with this man in the Republican Party for the foreseeable future,” Durbin said.

The maneuver left some longtime backers furious. McConnell’s once-admiring biographer, John David Dyche, has recanted the accolades he once bestowed in his 2009 book, “Republican Leader.”

John David Dyche on Twitter: "Cowardly, cynical, dishonorable, pathetic & wrong. He has been, is & will live in infamy as “Trump’s principal enabler.” Will be a shameful but fitting epitaph. Had to flee his Senate for his life, but now backs off his big talk & bows again before his proto-fascist master Trump." / Twitter

... After McConnell garnered enough Republican support to help Democrats temporarily increase the debt ceiling last month, Trump told Fox News on Oct. 7 that “the Republican Senate needs new leadership. Mitch is not the guy, not the right guy, he’s not doing the job.”

He conceded that MMC is a big fundraising moneybags, and implied that MMC has bought his continuing leadership by financing his colleagues' careers.

 

[lpetrich]

MMC supports black former football player Herschel Walker, Trump's pick for the Republican Georgia Senate nomination to challenge Sen. Rafael Warnock. MMC's former chief of staff and campaign director tweeted about HW:

Josh Holmes on Twitter: "This is about as comprehensive a takedown as I’ve ever read. My lord." / Twitter
noting
Brian Slodysko on Twitter: "NEW: An @AP review of records from @HerschelWalker's business and divorce, many not previously reported, detail accusations that he repeatedly threatened to kill his ex-wife, exaggerated his success and alarmed associates. W/@BillBarrowAP, @JZBleiberg (link)" / Twitter
noting
As Herschel Walker eyes Senate run, a turbulent past emerges

Walker, now 59, has at times been open about his long struggle with mental illness, writing at length in a 2008 book about being diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, once known as multiple personality disorder. But it’s unclear how he would discuss these events as a candidate.

MMC also says that he won't support Democratic efforts to raise the debt ceiling when the issue comes up again in December.

Scott Jennings, a former campaign adviser to McConnell, said understanding his former boss, and the relationship with Trump, entails a “psychological study about how what each of these two guys think is the point of politics.”

“Trump’s motivation is personal, maybe to become president again, get revenge of people who wronged him. It’s not ‘did we enact stuff,’ but ‘did we glorify Trump?’ ” Jennings said.

McConnell’s motivation, Jennings said, “is impersonal. It’s only to win back the Senate for the purpose of enacting Republican stuff or blocking Democrat stuff, because without control, we can’t do anything. And if you didn’t do any of those things, then you failed.”

Thus explaining that odd couple: Trump and MMC.

McConnell, in his speech at the anniversary celebration in 2008, never mentioned that he had voted for Johnson or that he had been so angry at Goldwater’s opposition to civil rights legislation.

Instead, he told the audience of congressional leaders and Johnson descendants a lesson he had learned from the man who preceded him as a “master of the Senate.”

“Lyndon B. Johnson knew to amass power,” McConnell said, “and how to use it.”

...
For now, McConnell is focused on doing whatever is necessary to regain Senate control — and his own power.

“You might have noticed I’m no longer the majority leader in setting the agenda in the Senate,” McConnell said. “I hope to be again sometime.”