Donald Trump-- the Mobster President

How did Donald Trump, a self-serving promoter who lost billions of dollars for his investors, convince the world that he is a financial genius? It wasn’t just by fabricating tales of his success. It was also by bullying and silencing people who could have stopped those deceits — particularly reporters and Wall Street analysts — forcing all but a very few into a conspiracy of silence.

These tactics, which form a core element of his politics, were something I saw him hone firsthand in the 1980s and 1990s as Trump’s company was imploding. 

I was the lead real estate wealth estimator for the Forbes 400 list in its early years. Trump called me twice in 1984, posing as his fictional “VP of finance” John Barron and professing the kind of riches that ought to land him on the list, despite failing to document them. So when a New York Times exposé last month showed that Trump had lost $1.1 billion between 1985 and 1994, I looked back at my archives and began calling old colleagues to compare these figures with what Trump was telling journalists three decades ago.

First, I turned up three never-before-published letters from Trump to Forbes from 1989, in which he claimed to be worth $3.7 billion. We now know that he reported losses of about $100 million that year and that he was treading near insolvency. Then I started to contact other people who had collided with Trump in those years. Journalists told me how he’d tried to block their reporting on his empire — by making up ethical scandals about them, furnishing fake documents and, in one case, threatening to expose the private life of a closeted media executive. Wall Street analysts witnessed a campaign of intimidation that began when Trump got one of them fired for (correctly) doubting his casinos’ ability to pay off their debts.

Even while he was suffering tremendous financial setbacks — and precisely because he was suffering those setbacks — these efforts show Trump in the desperate act of spinning a mythology about himself (rich) that would sweep aside the facts (broke). And he did it by imperiling the livelihood of his doubters, silencing them and inducing a chilling effect both in the press and among the very people who are supposed to protect investors from terrible gambles like Trump’s businesses. If this self-promotion scheme had failed, Trump would never have become a reality-TV-starring symbol of business acumen. He would have skulked off into anonymity or ignominy, just another failed real estate developer and speculator.

Instead, he fooled the world. Although he’d struggle for the rest of his career to get most legitimate banks to extend credit, the gambit basically worked: It turned him, rather than his empire, into the product, enabling decades of tabloid coverage, countless eponymous goods from casinos to steaks to airlines, dozens of film and TV cameos, and ultimately his image-defining show, “The Apprentice.” It made a man with limited business savvy and less money than he claimed into someone famous for having a surfeit of both. These early (and shockingly impudent) fabrications built one of the greatest brands in American history — one that made Trump a household name and, eventually, president.

(snip)

Trump had waged a relentless, vindictive campaign to build his own myth by suppressing the facts: Between the collapse of his empire in 1991 and the issuance of more than $1 billion in Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts stock and junk bonds by 1996, he’d compromised the truth-telling capacity of Forbes magazine, the Wall Street Journal, TV broadcasters, Arthur Andersen and casino analysts on Wall Street. By the time Trump resigned in 2009 as chairman of the public company he founded, he had paid himself an estimated $82 million in personal compensation, while the company’s stocks and bonds had become nearly worthless.

His brand survived all that, and even thrived, because he wasn’t just concocting tales of his greatness; he was also forcing others to repeat them, or at least not to contradict them. It was a strategy that more recently has paid off handsomely against onetime opponents like Sen. Lindsey Graham. Nobody can succeed on this scale simply by lying. Trump’s greatest and most cynical skill, honed during the 1980s and 1990s, was learning how to win by silencing truth-tellers and suppressing the truth when it matters most.

So bizarre and fucked up that this guy can bully people into submission. 

McConnell Is a Massive Evil Asshole

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went full-fledged off-the-wall red-baiting in a Fox News interview on Friday’s “Ingraham Angle.”

The Republican from Kentucky told host Laura Ingraham that allowing Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. to become states – which would mean full representation in the U.S. House and Senate along with voting rights, would be “full bore socialism.” Democrats “plan to make the District of Columbia a state and give them two Democratic Senators,” Leader McConnell said, adding they would also make Puerto Rico a state which “would give them two more Democratic Senators. They plan to expand the Supreme Court. So this is full bore socialism on the march in the House, and, yeah, as long as I am Majority Leader in the Senate none of that stuff is going anywhere.”

McConnell, who proudly posted the video clip (below) to his Twitter account, was not asked to defend his remarks, nor to explain how basic values of American democracy that 50 states currently enjoy and have since the founding of the Republic, are socialism.

He also admitted he wants to be called the “Grim Reaper” when it comes to bills passed by the House.

McConnell is currently sitting at least 100 bills passed by the House of Representatives. He has zero plans to allow any of them to come to the floor for debate or a vote.

U.S. citizens living in Washington, D.C. have no representation in the Senate, and their House Representative cannot vote on actual legislation. They are allowed to vote for president but are allotted only the same number of Electoral College votes as the least-populous state.

Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, but U.S. citizens who reside there have no representation in the House or Senate, and are not allowed to vote in presidential elections.

Democracy is not socialism. McConnell is a freaking fascist.

The Problem Is That Mitch McConnell Doesn't Give a Fuck About Ethics, Morality, or Law While Democrats Do

Rude Pundit does his thing.

Today, malevolent dry turd Mitch McConnell, who is the goddamn Senate Majority Leader, was at a luncheon at the Chamber of Commerce of Paducah, Kentucky (motto: "Sure, we're filthy with heroin and racism, but we have a quilting museum!"). He was asked, "Should a Supreme Court justice die next year, what will your position be on filling that spot?" See, this is a reference to 2016, when Justice Antonin Scalia died and McConnell declared that the seat shouldn't be filled until after the presidential election so "the people could decide" or whatever fucking excuse he used. 

Next year will be another presidential election, and I think you know where this is going. 

Here's his response: "The leader took a long sip of what appeared to be iced tea before announcing with a smile, 'Oh, we'd fill it,' triggering loud laughter from the audience." 

Oh, man, that's hilarious. See, he doesn't have any principles. He doesn't give a happy monkey fuck about hypocrisy. All he cares about is winning, fuck everything else. He took joy in saying that shit. It's just so funny. 

That a giant hand didn't descend from the sky and squeezed McConnell until he popped like a fat bullfrog under a steamroller is absolute proof that there is no God.

Trump Acts Treasonously with North Korea

He saluted a North Korean General back in 2018.

Now in 2019, Trump joins Kim Jung Un in calling Obama's VP Joe Biden a low IQ person, and it turns into the official White House position.  Disgusting beyond words:

Sanders: Trump and Kim Jong Un agree on assessment of Biden. 

“I think they agree in their assessment of former Vice President Joe Biden,” the White House press secretary said in an exclusive interview.

Trump Makes Massive Cuts to Federal Wildfire Fighting Crews

Trump takes aim at firefighting jobs with largest federal cut in a decade, as the West prepares for a brutal wildfire season.

Traitor Trump Accuses People Investigating His Treason of Treason

and implies they should be put to death.

There is no bottom with this psychopath.

Republicans Love Rape Babies, Incest Babies and Forced Pregnancies

In other words, they hate women:

The bill signed by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) on Wednesday prohibits abortion in almost every circumstance and is considered the most restrictive abortion law in the country. The legislation makes exceptions only for the health of the mother and for fetuses with “fatal anomalies” that make them unlikely to survive outside the womb. Rape and incest are not exceptions to Alabama’s ban.

Missouri’s Republican-controlled House on Friday voted to ban abortions at eight weeks of pregnancy, after the state’s Senate passed the measure a day earlier. Gov. Mike Parson (R), who has said the bill would make Missouri “one of the strongest pro-life states in the country,” has said he would sign it into law.

Like with the law in Alabama, rape and incest would not be exceptions to the ban in Missouri.

Some bills, like the one in Georgia, prohibit abortion after the detection of what the bills call the fetal heartbeat,which usually happens about six weeks into pregnancy. This time period is about two weeks after a woman’s missed period, when many women do not yet know they are pregnant.

Supporters of this type of abortion ban refer to the legislation as “heartbeat bills,” while many abortion rights activists say the term is inaccurate because an embryo’s heart has not fully formed at that point.

An ultrasound will usually show electric activity in an embryo’s forming heart at about six weeks of pregnancy, said Jen Villavicencio, an OB/GYN and member of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She said although that activity is not the same as a heartbeat that pumps blood, she often uses the term “heartbeat” with her patients at that point because they are familiar with that terminology.

Villavicencio said it technically is an inaccurate description.

“I think that when you are legislating biology in this way, you need to be really, really precise,” she said.

Doctors date a pregnancy from the first day of a woman’s last period, not from the date when she had sexual intercourse. Most women are at least four weeks pregnant when they discover the pregnancy, Villavicencio said.

Many women do not realize it until the fifth or sixth week, she said, especially if they did not expect to become pregnant. Women are taught to suspect pregnancy if they miss their period, but other factors — like stress, obesity or new medications — can also disrupt a woman’s menstrual cycle.