Remember that Trump promised to “drain the swamp”? He said it again and again. Maybe he did drain the swamp, but he created another one: his swamp. The New York Times reported on Trump’s swamp. The story has many wonderful graphics, which I am unable to reproduce. I am posting only the beginning of the story, which goes into detail about Trump’s own swamp of money, influence, and power. Subscribe to the Times to finish reading and to see the graphics.
IT WAS SPRINGTIME at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, and the favor-seekers were swarming.
In a gold-adorned ballroom filled with Republican donors, an Indian-born industrialist from Illinois pressed Mr. Trump to tweetabout easing immigration rules for highly skilled workers and their children.
“He gave a million dollars,” the president told his guests approvingly, according to a recording of the April 2018 event.
Later that month, in the club’s dining room, the president wandered over to one of its newer members, an Australian cardboard magnate who had brought along a reporter to flaunt his access. Mr. Trump thanked him for taking out a newspaper ad hailing his role in the construction of an Ohio paper mill and box factory, whose grand opening the president would attend.
And in early March, a Tennessee real estate developer who had donated lavishly to the inauguration, and wanted billions in loans from the new administration, met the president at the club and asked him for help.
Mr. Trump waved over his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. “Get it done,” the president said, describing the developer as “a very important guy,” Mr. Cohen recalled in an interview.
Campaigning for president as a Washington outsider, Mr. Trump electrified rallies with his vows to “drain the swamp.”
But Mr. Trump did not merely fail to end Washington’s insider culture of lobbying and favor-seeking.
He reinvented it, turning his own hotels and resorts into the Beltway’s new back rooms, where public and private business mix and special interests reign.
As president-elect, he had pledged to step back from the Trump Organization and recuse himself from his private company’s operation. As president, he built a system of direct presidential influence-peddling unrivaled in modern American politics.
Federal tax-return data for Mr. Trump and his business empire, which was disclosed by The New York Times last month, showed that even as he leveraged his image as a successful businessman to win the presidency, large swaths of his real estate holdings were under financial stress, racking up losses over the preceding decades.
But once Mr. Trump was in the White House, his family business discovered a lucrative new revenue stream: people who wanted something from the president. An investigation by The Times found over 200 companies, special-interest groups and foreign governments that patronized Mr. Trump’s properties while reaping benefits from him and his administration. Nearly a quarter of those patrons have not been previously reported.
The tax records — along with membership rosters for Mar-a-Lago and the president’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., as well as other sources — reveal how much money this new line of business was worth.
Just 60 customers with interests at stake before the Trump administration brought his family business nearly $12 million during the first two years of his presidency, The Times found. Almost all saw their interests advanced, in some fashion, by Mr. Trump or his government.
It has long been known that Mr. Trump conducted official business at his properties, and those seeking help from his administration were not shy about advertising their access to the president’s realm. The Times’s compilation reflects a review of hundreds of social media posts by his patrons, many of whom enthusiastically documented their visits to Mr. Trump’s properties, as well as an array of published news articles.
But interviews with nearly 250 business executives, club members, lobbyists, Trump property employees and current or former administration officials provide a comprehensive account of how well Mr. Trump’s customers fared with his government — and how the president profited from his reinvented swamp.
In response to detailed questions about this article, a White House spokesman, Judd Deere, issued a brief statement saying that Mr. Trump had “turned over the day-to-day responsibilities of the very successful business he built” to his two adult sons. “The president has kept his promise every day to the American people to fight for them, drain the swamp and always put America first,” he added.
Patrons at the properties ranged widely: foreign politicians and Florida sugar barons, a Chinese billionaire and a Serbian prince, clean-energy enthusiasts and their adversaries in the petroleum industry, avowed small-government activists and contractors seeking billions from ever-fattening federal budgets. Mr. Trump’s administration delivered them funding and laws and land. He handed them appointments to task forces and ambassadorships, victories as weighty as a presidential directive and as ephemeral as a presidential tweet.
Some of Mr. Trump’s patrons lost out to better-favored interests, to the chaos of his White House or to the president’s own fleeting attention span. Others are still pushing for last-minute victories. Many said in interviews that any favorable outcome from the administration was incidental to their patronage.
But whether they won or lost, Mr. Trump benefited financially. They paid his family business for golf outings and steak dinners, for huge corporate retreats and black-tie galas.
More than 70 advocacy groups, businesses and foreign governments threw events at the president’s properties that were previously held elsewhere, or created new events that drove dollars into Mr. Trump’s business. Religious organizations did both, booking more than two dozen prayer meetings, banquets and tours, capitalizing on the president’s popularity with white evangelicals to bolster their own fund-raising and clout. Until the pandemic, one well-connected lawyer hosted a monthly mixer, known as Trump First Tuesdays, attended by the president’s acolytes.
Trump is the original swamp creature, but without the charm or empathy of your average swamp creature.
What makes me mad is that if I were to send this article from the NYT to any Trump supporter, they’d scream that it’s ‘fake news’. Then I’d get some worthless article from the far R telling how much good Trump has done for this country.
The GOP has no problem with this amount of corruption and does nothing to stop it.
Trump doesn’t want a peaceful turnover on the election. He has too much at stake and might end up in prison.
Poor people, especially people of color, face a far greater risk of being fined, arrested, and even incarcerated for minor offenses than other Americans. A broken taillight, an unpaid parking ticket, a minor drug offense, sitting on a sidewalk, or sleeping in a park can all result in jail time. Injustice maybe?
We have many who are homeless, starving and living under bridges. Nobody in power cares for them. We “don’t have money for that”.
Yet our president can get away with getting richer while in office..and it will NOT end as long as he stays in office. What is needed is laws to prevent this type of corruption for the future.
CNN:
The Supreme Court won’t revive a lawsuit by Democratic members of Congress who argued that President Donald Trump has been violating the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which bans foreign payments to a sitting US president.
The court, without comment, on Tuesday let stand a lower court opinion that dismissed the lawsuit. “Petitioners do not constitute a majority of either chamber of Congress and thus are, as the court of appeals emphasized, powerless to approve or deny the President’s acceptance of foreign emoluments,” government lawyers told the Supreme Court.
Assuming the legitimacy of these decisions, it would appear that there is need for a legislative closing of a loophole.
There are many loopholes that need closing. Both sides have been making loopholes for years. There are so many loopholes that average Americans aren’t able to understand how we got to this government mess today.
Like Ptolemy’s planetary system of epicycles, there are loopholes upon loopholes.
The Plenary System
Loopholes upon loopholes
The Plenarary System
Revolving round the black holes
Of corporate position
Transition is always demanding. After this election, it would be trebly so. The transition will have to be done during a pandemic. It will have to be done without the cooperation of the outgoing occupant. And then there’s this additional business to attend to: indicting Trump for his many crimes.
The fumigation of the Whiter House will itself be an enormous job. It will be a busy time.
Trump’s favorite Fox Fake News programs, Sinclair Media, and One America Fake News Network will never share this real news with Trump’s hardcore scatterbrained, hate-filled, ignorant loyalists.
If Trump’s loyalists did hear this real news, they’d just dismiss it with two words, “Fake news!”
With the poll as it is, it is surprising the smooches are not repositioning their allegiances. I imagine they are banking an overwhelming popular win will not manifest itself in actual candidates.
It may be the Idiot’s swamp, but there are lots of McConnell, McCarthy, and Koch-like lizards and snakes keeping his fat head above the slimy water.
Here on the cusp of the resounding defeat of Don the Con in the 2020 election, a couple observations:
Imagine being this moron, Trump. Imagine having had the astonishing opportunity to wield the power of the presidency for good. What amazing things you could have done? Now imagine having entirely trashed everything you touched during that time–every federal agency and department, the environment, the economy, civil political discourse, science-based approaches to serious problems (like the pandemic), and all our alliances with democratic nations. And imagine, by running for this office, having invited close scrutiny of your entire personal and business history, revealing LITERALLY hundreds of actionable criminal and civil offenses for which you will doubtless pay in the future. Imagine having divided the country more deeply than at any time since the Civil War. Imagine having denied the very existence of the most dangerous threats to the country, and imagine that, by the end of your term, some 400,000 Americans will have died because of your ignorance and heedlessness and nepotism and ineptitude. Imagine having overseen (well, sort of) vast increases in economic inequity among citizens of the United States. Imagine having stoked racial tensions to the point that there are riots in the streets. Imagine having made a complete fool of yourself on a daily basis, to the point that whenever you spoke to an international office–at the UN for example–your peers around the world almost unanimously LAUGHED OUTLOUD AT YOU. Quite a job there, Donnie! Putin made an excellent investment in you!
Now imagine being one of the toadying enablers of all that failure–one with previous experience in government–someone like Bill Barr or Rudolph Ghouliani. Imagine having entirely trashed your reputation and any good will you had accumulated throughout your career by hitching your star to the Trump bulldozer of democratic norms and simple decency.
It’s all pretty breathtaking, isn’t it? Undoing the damage is going to take a good while, and we must not forget those who ignored Trump’s incompetence and actually aided the Idiot in his treason and malfeasance and criminality and incompetence.
Please pardon the typos in that post. Some corrections:
Second sentence of the second paragraph should end with an exclamation mark, not a question.
In the sentence about the UN, the word “office” should be “audience.”
In the final sentence, the first “incompetence” should be replaced with “encyclopedic failings.”
I just received my copy of AARP’s magazine and almost threw up at the lies Trump is telling older Americans.I didn’t see any fact-checking.
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AARP spoke with President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden about the key issues leading up to the general election in November.
More than half of all retired Americans rely on Social Security for at least half of their income. If reelected, how will you ensure that Social Security benefits are not cut?
TRUMP: We’ll never cut Social Security, and you can rely on that. One thing you need is a strong country. We had a really strong country until we had the pandemic, the China virus. We were doing a level that we’ve never done before and Social Security was strong, and our country was strong. Right now, we’re coming back. I’m looking at numbers now that look like the best quarter ever in terms of hiring people. I will tell you that we will never cut our Social Security. We will guard it with everything we have.
You have said you would like to “terminate the payroll tax” if you win reelection. As you know, payroll taxes fund Social Security and Medicare. How would you finance these programs without payroll taxes?
TRUMP: Providing a payroll tax deferral [which an Aug. 8 executive order permits] poses no risk to the Social Security trust fund and puts more money in the pockets of hardworking Americans.
Even with Medicare coverage, older Americans spend something like $1 out of $6 on health care, on average. If reelected, how will you protect Medicare from benefit cuts, and how can the program be improved?
TRUMP: The one thing that is so important and that I’ve done like nobody else: cut the cost of prescription drugs. As you know, I just signed executive orders to get it done. If you look back, you’ll see that last year drug prices went down; very little, but they went down about 1 percent. That’s the first time in 51 years that the cost of drugs went down.
Through executive orders, I’ve instituted “favored nations” [deals] and also buying from other countries. Germany gets a tremendous deal and so do many other countries, except us. We’re the only ones that don’t. In Germany, if they sell a pill for 10 cents and we sell it for $2, under favored nations we [also] get it for 10 cents. Now I’m taking a lot of heat. Big pharma is not happy. But this will be the greatest price reduction in drugs in the history of our country.
How will you take it from executive orders to actually implementing a program like this?
TRUMP: It will be very hard to [undo the executive orders]. A president would have to come in and say, “Hey, we’re going to raise the prices” of whatever drug you’re buying by 10 times, nine times, eight times in order to go back to the old system.
I don’t think that’s going to be politically viable once we do this. This is one of those executive orders where once it’s instituted, it’s going to be very hard, if not impossible, to break. I’m not dealing with Congress on it. In fact, I will tell you that a lot of congressmen and senators are not happy with it .… But I felt I had an obligation to do it. I understand the system, and it’s a rigged system. It’s a rigged system against the customer. It’s actually a rigged system against our government because, as you know, much of it is paid for by our government. I’ve taken a lot of heat, a lot of commercials against me, but it’s something I felt I had to do…
https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/info-2020/trump-biden-interviews.html
AARP and the Koch’s ALEC
Holcomb [R-IN] is up for re-election and I’m sure he doesn’t want to rattle Trump supporters…so numbers are rising in the state and he does nothing except extend a rule to wear a mask. There are no penalties if you don’t wear one.
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No new action taken to stop virus [in Indiana]
Holcomb [R-IN] scolds lax Hoosiers; state health chief infected
NIKI KELLY | The Journal Gazette
INDIANAPOLIS – Gov. Eric Holcomb chastised Hoosiers for not wearing masks and cautioned about Indiana’s worsening numbers Wednesday – even as the state’s health commissioner tested positive for COVID-19.
But he chose not to take any new action to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus, such as limiting gatherings, closing schools or putting capacity limits on businesses.
“Too many are ignoring science and rolling the dice,” Holcomb said. “It is the literal definition of whistling past the graveyard, pretending this isn’t around us.”
Indiana will remain in Stage 5 and Holcomb will extend the state mask order, which has no enforcement mechanism.
Holcomb and other state employees were tested Wednesday afternoon for the virus and are awaiting results.
Indiana’s positivity rate of tests has jumped from 3.9% to 5.3% in a month. Hospitalizations are at their highest levels since May….
“Though I am relieved that Governor Holcomb made the right decision by extending the mask mandate, this alone will not be enough to fight against the rising hospitalization and positivity rates and fast approaching winter flu season,” GiaQuinta [House Democratic leader]said. “It’s simply irresponsible to continue maintaining the status quo when numbers are steadily increasing statewide…
https://journalgazette.net/news/local/20201015/no-new-action-taken-to-stop-virus
And the corruption continues.
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As Virus Spread, Reports of Trump Administration’s Private Briefings Fueled Sell-Off
Oct. 14, 2020
A hedge fund consultant’s summary of private presentations by White House economic advisers fanned investor worries.
On the afternoon of Feb. 24, President Trump declared on Twitterthat the coronavirus was “very much under control” in the United States, one of numerous rosy statements that he and his advisers made at the time about the worsening epidemic. He even added an observation for investors: “Stock market starting to look very good to me!”
But hours earlier, senior members of the president’s economic team, privately addressing board members of the conservative Hoover Institution, were less confident…
The president’s aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent.
Interviews with eight people who either received copies of the memo or were briefed on aspects of it as it spread among investors in New York and elsewhere provide a glimpse of how elite traders had access to information from the administration that helped them gain financial advantage during a chaotic three days when global markets were teetering…
Didn’t the Hound of the Bastardviles take place in Moor-a-lago?
“I have no mission and no agenda,” Am Barrett said. “Judges don’t have campaign promises.”
This is NOT why Trump appointed her. Justices, when hoping to be confirmed, will ‘beat around the bush’ and not give direct answers to specific questions. Trump, however, had certain requirements in mind.
“I will appoint judges that will be pro-life, yes,” Trump said in 2016, promising to “protect the sanctity of life” and adding, “I will protect it, and the biggest way you can protect it is through the Supreme Court and putting people in the court.” With these nominees, he said, overturning Roe v. Wade — the ruling that established a right to get an abortion — will happen “automatically.”
Trump expects the nominee to protect him from the “hoax” of mail-in ballots in any potential legal dispute over the upcoming election.
“We need nine justices. You need that,” Trump told reporters on Sept. 23. “With the unsolicited millions of ballots that they’re sending, it’s a scam; it’s a hoax. Everybody knows that. And the Democrats know it better than anybody else. So you’re going to need nine justices up there. I think it’s going to be very important. Because what they’re doing is a hoax, with the ballots.”
Given the history of the Republicans on the Supreme Court, I think you meant “Beat around the Bush”
Beat around the Bush
Is what the Court will do
Result of current push
To get their justus through
“We need nine justices. You need that.” — Donald Trump
Because, as everyone knows, the Supreme Court rules based on unanimity.
Abortion
A pro-life judge
Is what I’ll push
That will not budge
On Gore v Bush
Intercept reported about Eric Branstad (son of a former Iowa Governor) and the Trump swamp annex in China.
Iowa is a toss-up state in the presidential election.