One of our readers has said repeatedly that he is reassured to know that the election of a very rich man guarantees that he is not in office to make money.
That’s a good one. Trump has never released his tax returns so the public never knows when he is serving his personal interest or the national interest.
He never divested himself of his business interests. Putting his sons in charge is not the same as divestment.
He refused to relinquish the lease on the hotel near the White House even though the lease explicitly says that no government official may benefit from the lease. Renting space there is akin to a bribe.
And now he learn that Donald Jr. will be paid $100,000 to speak at the University of North Texas.
Will he speak about the meeting with a roomful of Russians on June 16, 2016, when he expected to get dirt from the Russian government about Hillary Clinton? Will he speak about the Magnitsky Act? Will he share the secrets of his business success?
One thing is sure: He will collect $100,000 not for anything he has accomplished but because he is cashing in on the family name.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I have ceased to be shocked. I am so sad for my country.
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And don’t forget, we, the American public, get to send an entourage to protect him while he’s taking in the money!
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Don’t worry Donald will give a million to the relief effort.
.8 % of of the 120million cost overrun at the secret service
Not to mention the hundreds of millions in taxes he has avoided.
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Sarah Huckabee Sanders backtracked today about whether he was giving $1 million or whether it would come from his foundation, which is not his money but contributed by others. The co-author of “The Art of the Deal” said Trump would give nothing. Promises are cheap.
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The President DONATES his salary to one of the governmental agencies. He just DONATED $1,000,000 of his personal funds to benefit victims of Harvey. Obama on the other hand STILL GETS PAID for his time in office to the tune of $1.1+ million dollars per year. Then there is also the $160,000 a year pension he got from taxpayers for his mother in law.
You have no clue what Jr is speaking about, his expertise or any other deals for the speaking engagement. Stop complaining … It makes you sound so petty.
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Really? What is Donnie’s expertise?
Trump has already run through the budget of the Secret Service for the entire year, with his lavish vacations every weekend at one of his resorts.
And don’t forget that when the Secret Service protected him at Trump Tower, he charged them full market rent.
I recall that he did give the Boy Scouts $7.
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The Secret Service regularly runs through it’s budget and has for a long time. But you must admit they are only covering the people they are required by law to cover. Maybe next time we should make sure people run for office if they have small families, instead of the 18 that are required to be covered in Trump’s family.
It appears you do not trust this educational facility to make a good decision and spend it’s money wisely. They must think that Jr has something valuable to say, or they would not have contracted for him to speak, at least at that price.
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Linda,
Did you know that Trump charged the Secret Service for protecting him in Trump Tower? He MADE A PROFIT from the agency protecting him. That’s OK, right.
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Did you know that after Melania and Barron moved to D.C. the president told the Secret Service they could discontinue the surveillance and living at Trump Tower because it is so expensive? The Secret Service refused the suggestion.
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What a thrifty guy this Trump is! If he didn’t go golfing every single weekend, the public would save millions.
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dianeravitch
Are you sure that Giffin is not a paid Trump troll. These people are delusional.
The Pension for the President is 400,000 a year > Mighty rich compared to a Teacher or a truck driver . But poverty level compared to CEOs . Spectrum’s CEO received 99 million last year while he wants to cut out pensions for his workforce .
However he earns money out of office is his business,be it a book or a speech is his business . We could insist that no lobbing be done by x reps for 10 years after leaving office. If that was a goal . Then they would not “pay for the prose.”
The mother in law thing like most of deplorable Linda’s claims is fake news.
http://www.snopes.com/marian-robinson-pension/
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Joel, you are forgetting about “paid expenses”. Even former president G.W. Bush will be getting just over $923,000 for 2018. All living presidents get the pension AND covered expenses. Carter is still getting close to $500,000. How could you not know this?
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Joel, we must have been typing at the same time—again! We have to quit thinking the same thing simultaneously. Our wives may get jealous!
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“I recall that he did give the Boy Scouts $7.” That reminds me of a joke Earl Long used to tell in his stump speeches. Here it is as recounted by A.J. Liebling in “The Earl of Louisiana”:
“We got the finest roads, finest schools, finest hospitals in the country—yet there are rich men who complain. They are so tight you can hear ‘em squeak when they walk. They wouldn’t give a nickel to see a earthquake. They sit there swallowin’ hundred-dollar bills like a bullfrog swallows minnows—if you chunked them as many as they want they’d bust.”
“Amen, Earl,” the old man said. “God have mercy on the poor people.”
“Of course, I know many fine rich people,” the Governor said, perhaps thinking of his campaign contributors. “But most of them are like a rich old feller I know down in Plaquemines Parish, who died one night and never done nobody no good in his life, and yet, when the Devil come to get him, he took an appeal to St. Peter.
“‘I done some good things on earth,’ he said. ‘Once, on a cold day in about 1913, I gave a blind man a nickel.’ St. Peter looked all through the records, and at last, on page four hundred and seventy-one, he found the entry. ‘That ain’t enough to make up for a misspent life,’ he said. ‘But, wait,’ the rich man says. ‘Now I remember, in 1922 I give five cents to a poor widow woman that had no carfare.’ St. Peter’s clerk checked the book again, and on page thirteen hundred and seventy-one, after pages and pages of this old stump-wormer loan-sharked the poor, he found the record of that nickel.
“‘That ain’t neither enough,’ St. Peter said. But the mean old thing yelled, ‘Don’t, sentence me yet. In about 1931 I give a nickel to the Red Cross.’ The clerk found that entry, too. So he said to St. Peter, ‘Your Honor, what are we going to do with him?’”
The crowd hung on Uncle Earl’s lips the way the bugs hovered in the light.
“You know what St. Peter said?” The Governor, the only one in the courthouse square who knew the answer, asked. There was, naturally, no reply.
“He said: ‘Give that man back his fifteen cents and tell him to go to Hell.’”
He had the crowd with him now…
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LG, DJT never paid the donation he promised Mary Pat Christie after 2012 Hurricane Sandy. She was overseeing a fund to help those affected.
See Sarah Burris article “Trump pledged $1 million for Harvey victims but Hurricane Sandy survivors are still waiting on 2012 pledge” Raw Story Aug 31, 2017.
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The Trump’s lie for advantage.
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@Linda: LIKE!
Former Pres. Obama is the most expensive ex-president, ever. see
https://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/barack-obama-pension-most-expensive-former-president/2017/08/31/id/810944/
Pres. Trump did not enter politics to make money. He donates his salary to charity. By being president, he is walking away from the opportunity to make a great deal of money.
Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy also donated their presidential salaries to charity.
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So impressive that Trump donates his salary to the Department of Education while proposing to cut its budget by $9 billion! He even wants to eliminate the $10 million that funds the Special Olympics for people with disabilities. What a guy!
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The 1. 2 million includes staff and offices for the X president and yes it is higher than Bush whose is higher than Clinton’s whose is higher than Carters . It is called inflation.
How much Trump has avoided in Tax scams over the years . Show me the returns .
Apparently the only reason Trump entered politics is to make money .
If he loses the midterms next year he could be hanging from a lamp post in DC, a little over a year from now. When Mueller finishes with him .
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Joel, they’ll be able to fit the Trump library in a kiosk. Not much more needed than rubber sheets and tiki torches.
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See, Charles, I think he DID “go into this for the money.” I expect that part of the reason Trump ran in the first place is that he is not nearly as wealthy as he makes himself out to be. That’s one reason why he freaks out every time someone mentions his tax returns. I think that this was a ploy to continue to live his lavish lifestyle on the backs of taxpayers. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, if and when his tax returns are published, that he’s stone broke, or close to it.
He’s filed for bankruptcy four times. And he clearly HATES being president.
I firmly believe that he ran for president for two reasons: the attention and the money.
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Whatever topic Jr. addresses, I’m sure he’ll have no clue about it either.
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I normally ignore posts by LK and C, but the responses of the other commentators drew me in, unfortunately.
They are truly two examples of why I weep for our nation and have to fight more than occasional bouts of depression about our collective present and future. Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison warned us about people like them; that ignorance and indifference combined with a lack of civic virtue would ultimately be more damaging to our nation than foreign enemies ever would.
Let’s just take the examples LK “cited” and C likes so much because just the tiniest effort would show how, let’s call it obtuse to be generous, they are. The idea that President Obama’s mother-in-law gets a generous pension is a lie made up by a fake (Russian?) website: http://www.factcheck.org/2016/11/no-first-grandma-pension/ and http://www.snopes.com/marian-robinson-pension/. It took me less than five seconds to find those sources.
C cites Newsmax as a source. It has as much credibility as Pravda and the East German Neues Deutschland had during the Cold War or North Korean state media has now—it is pure propaganda. Newsmax is a well known ultra partisan “news” source funded by your garden variety of right wing rich folks whose goal is to dumb down their readers to support their narrow selfish goals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsmax_Media (I hear you laughing, Lloyd). Their White House correspondent, John Gizzi, is that guy with the baritone voice who ALWAYS gets called upon in W.H. press conferences because he can be relied upon to ask softball questions to let them run out the clock to limit serious questions. You know you’re dealing with someone who lives in Never Neverland when they cite Newsmax for their “facts.”
Finally, the notion that President Obama is the most expensive former president is beyond ludicrous. A little history: as David McCullough described in detail in his biography “Truman,” when Truman left the White House he was virtually penniless and had to move in with his mother-in-law in Independence. McCullough writes an emotional passage about how, if you visit the house today, you can still see the nails that the former president used as he was on his knees to nail down the linoleum cover on the kitchen floor. When leaders in Washington learned how destitute he was, they felt that they should do something because it reflected poorly on the nation to have a president who was poor. With overwhelming bipartisan majorities, Congress created the concept of presidential libraries in order to give former presidents a place to do their post presidential duties, a pension so that former presidents could live comfortably, and a Secret Service security detail to protect their privacy. Every president’s post White House life since then has been afforded the same benefits that are funded through the congressional appropriations process. Every one is treated equally, regardless of party affiliation. Yes, the benefits have grown more generous over time, mostly related to cost of living increases and the changing nature of progress and technology that evolves over time. Some choose to limit the benefits they get, but the idea that one president is “more expensive” than another, is a ridiculous lie.
But I guess living in a perpetual state of delusion makes it easier to live in a self-made bubble. It must be easier than engaging in the messy responsibilities of being an informed citizen.
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@ LIKE
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Well said, GregB
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Agree!! It’s time to come together people!
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Melissa,
Did you tell Mitch McConnel the same, when he said at the beginning of Pres. Obama’s term he would oppose every initiative the President. put forth?
I’m not coming together with white supremacists…ever. Trump selected Bannon, Gorka and Steven Miller and, he has to live with the backlash. He selected those who serve the richest 0.1%, like Mnuchin, Pruitt and DeVos and, he has to live with the backlash.
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Share Blue reports the funder of Trump Jr.’s speech has a company with the mission,”to liberate our clients from the burden of being overtaxed…”
That’s a subject Trump Jr. would truly know nothing about, assuming the Trumps won’t show Americans their tax returns because they would confirm that the family’s modus operandi is taking, while never paying their way and never giving back.
Does Giffin want to defend Mnuchin’s wife?
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There certainly is no correllation between affluence and altruism. Seems like the millionaire/billionaire class is pathologically greedy and money hungry. Your falsely comforted reader should read Dark Money by Jane Mayer to get a sense of how the disgustingly wealthy will trample over everyone and everything to get ahold of yet more money.
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Its too late to get into a back and forth with you know who . But in light of precedence this may be the least offensive thing to come out of this White House .
However it would seem the University is looking to open a school of orphanage management. . So they are calling in people experienced in adoptions . Next in the lecture series will be Jared followed by Paul .
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Orphanage management: that’s a good one! With Dean Fagin? Is the alma mater “I’d Do Anything” or “Who Will Buy?”
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He’ll collect 100 grand and his jet fair will be covered by the taxpayers.
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As well as his Secret Service security team
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Gets worse and worse.
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Usually these politicians get these obscene speaking fees after they leave office. Oh wait, Donald Jr. is not a politician, he’s not been elected to anything, he just flew in on the coattails of his pater. Nepotism and greed on steroids aided and abetted by a platoon of plutocrats.
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I had to turn my ad blocker off the other day because I couldn’t read some periodicals with it on and, to my surprise, without it, I was getting tons of ads about staying at Trump hotels! WTF?
I don’t know how I targeted, but I have no money to stay anywhere and anyways I want nothing to do with anything that has the name Trump on it. That pissed me off so much that I said forget about the periodicals, I’m going back to blocking ads, especially from self-centered, greedy insatiable people on power trips who don’t know how to say, “I have enough now.”
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The GOP donors should give the dollars to a private university if they want to buy a podium for a liar like Don Jr.
It would have been wrong for the public University of North Texas to accept Goldman Sachs money to pay Chelsea Clinton to speak and it is wrong for them to set up a deal for a Trump kid speech.
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And they pilloried Hillary for accepting money for speeches.
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Students at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, will get to hear Bernie Sanders speak on progressive American foreign policy at the Green Foundation Lecture in September. Sanders will not receive a fee. This lecture series is the one at which Churchill delivered his Iron Curtain speech in 1946.
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Musing out loud- If Special Counsel obtained notes about a Russian meeting with Trump campaign staff in Trump Tower which referenced campaign contributions, Donny, in his $100,000 speech, could explain to students that his family is above reproach because they would make it clear at every opportunity, that it is illegal for foreign governments to be donors to campaigns. The second part of Donny’s speech could spell out his disdain for conflicts of interest. (sarcasm)
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