Donald Trump has learned one big lesson from his time in business and politics. Business is risky, politics is a sure thing.
As a businessman, Trump failed repeatedly. He filed for bankruptcy many times. His casinos failed; Trump Airlines failed; Trump steaks failed; Trump wines failed; Trump University failed. Whatever he started lost money. But then he played the part of a tycoon on “The Apprentice” and used that fame to launch his rub for the Presidency.
After he became President, the money came in like a gusher. Kings and potentates booked suites in the Trump Hotel close to the White House. They curried favor by spending at Trump properties. His second term is even more lucrative. He sued and won damages from ABC and CBS. Middle East leaders have made deals with the Trump Organization. Crypto is a bonanza. Meanwhile he sells a whole line of merch.
And now, as a private person, he and his two sons –Don Jr. and Eric–are suing the IRS and the Treasury Department for $10 billion because a contractor released his tax returns and embarrassed him, causing him grievous reputations harm.
But wait, the contractor leaked the truth, not a false and malicious lie. He leaked that Trump paid minuscule taxes in 2016 and 2017. In one year, $750; in the other, $0.
Trump and his sons claim that this truth was so embarrassing to them that the taxpayers should pay them $10 billion.
Do you think that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will fight his boss in court?
Thom Hartmann wrote about this stunning norm-breaker:
— Trump’s New Grift: A $10 Billion Demand for “Reputational Harm” After his Income Tax Avoidance Was Exposed. Seriously. A man is now serving a 5-year prison sentence for leaking Trump’s tax returns to the press in 2018, and he wasn’t even a federal employee; he worked for a contractor. But Trump still thinks his embarrassment when we learned he’s been a tax cheat most of his life is, Trump says, so severe that the American government must give him and his two oldest boys a massive pile of cash. This family never saw a grift it couldn’t embrace…
Diane Ravitch's blog 
THE KREMLIN KANDIDATE
The British newspaper Daily Mail has just published a deeply researched investigative report that is shocking in its detail and document-supported implication that Putin has long “owned” Trump, even before he ran for president in 2016.
The Mail points out that even without the full release of the Epstein files, the files that have been released “include 1,056 documents naming Russian President Vladimir Putin and 9,629 referring to Moscow. Epstein even seems to have secured audiences with Putin after his 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution.”
Essentially, the files clearly support that Epstein was running a “honey pot” operation on behalf of the KGB/Putin that was designed to lure wealthy and powerful men to Epstein’s New York and Palm Beach mansions and his island where they were secretly filmed having sex with underage girls.
That material was then used for leverage to make them do what Putin wants:
In return for allowing Putin to obtain videos of wealthy, famous men in criminally compromising positions, Putin reportedly arranged for massive amounts of corrupt Russian money to be handed to Epstein to launder in the US.
The money typically came from illicit drug and oil deals, outright theft, sanctions evasions, and Russian organized crime oligarchs — including Putin and his associates — and is frequently laundered in this country using real estate. Real estate is also the Mafia’s favorite way of laundering money in the U.S. because America has the most lax and largely useless real estate transaction laws in the developed world, so a main way to launder such dirty cash is through cash-based real estate transactions — which are illegal in almost every other developed country.
And it is well documented that Trump and his sons, when US and European banks refused to loan him any more money after his many bankruptcies, started taking in enough money to ensure the survival of his little real estate empire — and it was all coming from Russia.
In fact, Donald Trump, Jr. admitted to wealthy attendees at a real-estate conference: “In terms of high-end product influx into the U.S., Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” In plain English: “We are owned by the Russians.”
(Copy this and share it…and read the full Daily Mail report.)
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Oh for pity’s sake what bosch! We all know – and the files prove – that Epstein worked for Israel, not Russian. SMDH. You people are conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs to hate Russia and you have no more idea why than the dogs had about why they salivated at the sound of a bell.
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The latest Epstein file drop demonstrates that he was working for Putin, and accumulating evidence indicates that he worked for BOTH Russia AND Israel –as well as others, such Zimbabwe –so I suggest you look around some more…
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No, he wasn’t working for Putin. He couldn’t even get a Russian visa without help from Peter Mandelson. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/epstein-complained-mandelson-friendship-one-sided-k9hs0qcjj?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqfgT10CzQuraXGzvtEoPFMQuSGuroDJEXx2h1FUnurV47RjLF5dt8UoDa279lQ%3D&gaa_ts=69850eaa&gaa_sig=z1QjohPoTnITQWXvXJrYGtnKnGiuSY4saMM_BWQPFjvPJKvYxlrPGJh3mSaFOP4VJg_fh-RZy_8Jo96xA1vjDw%3D%3D
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“Jeffrey Epstein Was Vladimir Putin’s Wealth Manager, FBI Source Claimed in Newly Released Epstein Files”
https://people.com/jeffrey-epstein-was-vladimir-putin-wealth-manager-fbi-source-claimed-11897555
“Follow the Russian money to the Epstein scandal”
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/09/06/follow-the-russian-money-to-the-epstein-scandal/
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https://x.com/NormalIslandNws/status/2019504543147475396
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“Zimbabwe’s Mugabe latest former African leader to be mentioned in Epstein files”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy59xlez1q5o
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Last July, Senate Finance Committee Ranking Democrat Ron Wyden D-OR called on the DOJ to be involved in investigations of Epstein based on the Epstein files, including:
“3. Investigate the role of sanctioned Russian banks in the financing of Epstein’s sex trafficking activities. The Treasury Department’s Epstein file contains information indicating that Epstein used several now sanctioned Russian banks for hundreds of millions of dollars in wire transfers. It appears that these wire transfers were correlated to the movement of women or girls around the world.”
https://www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/as-trump-sits-on-key-epstein-files-wyden-lays-out-follow-the-money-investigation-for-doj
Money laundering is a concern as well. See “Trump, Epstein & the Money Trail That Protected Them Both”
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trump-epstein-the-money-trail-that-protected-them-both/id1811176978?i=1000735958752
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That’s all very weak sauce . A bunch of anonymous claims and suppositions from the same cast of characters who brought us the Russia gate nonsense all along. Nothing like the dozens of direct connections proven with Mossad and other Israeli leaders. I mean, sure, there are Russian leaders implicated in the files like there are leaders of many other countries implicated. That was the whole point of the operation. But the evidence is showing very clearly that Israel was directing and benefiting from the operation.
Anyway, I won’t bother responding again because you people on this blog are True Believers in your cult and no amount of evidence will ever persuade you to change your minds. Believe me, I’ve tried. The thing about cults is they are impervious to evidence.
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For anyone like me who prefers seeing interviews on YouTube over just hearing them on podcasts, here’s a better link for “Trump, Epstein & the Money Trail That Protected Them Both”
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I’ve read that the Epstein files contain over 6 million pages of documents, images, and videos related to Jeffrey Epstein. Recently, the Justice Department released 3 million pages which were heavily redacted, so of course what we know at this point is going to be sketchy, subject to speculation and not for sure.
Since empirical methods need to be implemented in order to be able to discern truth, considering the people that have hold of the files and who are doing the redacting are “True Believers in your cult,” not objective observers, we may never know much with any certainty.
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LOL, the people doing the redacting are empire managers. We know exactly what their agenda is. Who do you think brought us Russiagate to begin with?
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Dienne,
The “empire managers” protect Putin. So does Trump.
Russiagate was real.
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Exactly, Diane! Most of us never asked to have our democracy turned into an empire with Napoleon managing at the helm. The only good news is how things eventually turned out for that Emperor, so in the end, the French Revolution was not for naught and France has been a democracy virtually ever since (except for when Hitler invaded the country). And the Emperor had to face justice…
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Most dictators and authoritarians come to a bad end.
Trump’s greatest fear is being laughed at. Let’s keep on.
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The empire managers protect Putin. That’s rich, Diane. Is that why U.S. media practically 24/7 blame Putin for everything since the fall of the Garden of Eden? SMDH, how ridiculous. The Epstein files are about Israel.
And I’ve posted dozens of articles over the years debunking nearly every aspect of Russiagate. What little is left is a few Russian troll farms that had no connection to the Russian government posting things like the Buff Bernie coloring book. The whole world, other than western liberals, knows that was a sham. It’s embarrassing that anyone still promotes it.
If you’re really concerned about election interference, try this on for size: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/28/iraq-nouri-al-maliki-denounces-us-interference-trump-election (this is not, incidentally, an isolated incident because Trump – this kind of election interference has been standard U.S. operating procedure for at least a century now).
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Your devotion to Putin is touching.
I remember in 2022 when you insisted he would never invade Ukraine.
Haha.
Now he’s targeting power plants and trying to freeze Ukrainians into submission.
What a guy!
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And there it is! The same tired old saw you pull out every single time you have no argument. Thank you for admitting I’m right and have a blessed evening.
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BTW, if you want to talk about who’s gotten what wrong, you’re the one who said there have only been three genocides in history. And you accused me of using, and I quote, “Soviet propaganda”. LMAO.
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Dienne,
I don’t know to whom this comment is addressed. I never have said “there have only been three genocides in history.” There have been many more than three. I have never taken time to count them; some have undoubtedly been forgotten because no one from the targeted group survived.
Yes, I did say you rely on Soviet propaganda. You prove it every time you defend Putin’s ruthless invasion of Ukraine. Who else would defend the aggressor in a brutal war and blame the victim?
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You absolutely did say it. You said the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide and the Uyghr genocide were the only genocides when I called Gaza a genocide. Don’t make me go look it up
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I never said that there were only 3 genocides in all history. That’s ridiculous. Just in the 20th century, there was the Rwandan genocide, the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, the Soviet genocide of disfavored ethnic groups, the Rohingya genocide, the genocide of Ukrainians by Stalin in the 1930s, and that’s only the most prominent ones.
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Diane, I’ve given up on people like this who deny Russiagate, because they are lost to the lies of Trump and live in his world of “alternative facts” –our contemporary version of George Orwell’s 1984 and “doublespeak”.
They usually adhere to the demands for loyal commitment, blindly following the leader, and only believing what the leader and party say, because they’ve been told they can’t recognize truth since their own eyes and ears lie to them. Sad but all too common today. I have known many like this who are just as stubbornly committed to the cause and their “Emperor”.
Personally, I will never understand why mature adults even need a leader to follow, since we are all blessed with brains and free will, so I believe we should all be able to think for ourselves and make up or own minds most of the time…
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Links between Trump associates and Russian officials – Wikipedia
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People are (intentionally I suspect) conflating being implicated in the Epstein mess vs. controlling and benefiting from the Epstein mess. Israel is in the latter category. Russia is not.
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Like most rabidly anti-Semitic Trump defenders who love Putin, the logic never quite makes sense.
What is the logic above? She is asserting that, Israel – and only Israel -“controlled and benefitted” from Epstein, and apparently Israel used their control to demand that Trump kowtow to Putin! Putin is just benefitting from that!!
Putin is never responsible for the horrors he has caused, in her telling. Putin’s worst actions are always excused. But when it comes to Israel, they are always to blame.
Diane Ravitch has strongly criticized Israel and Israeli policies often. This poster has never strongly criticized Putin, and it bordered on truly weird. I once tried to look up old posts because she claimed she did very strongly criticize Putin, but she’d never just come out and say that Putin is an evil guy who is doing evil things. Similar to her posts about Trump. Terms like “baby killers” were reserved for Dems like HRC. Same thing for Trump – where her criticism was limited to calling Trump an “orange haired oaf” while Trump’s evil far right anti-Democratic policies were ignored or normalized as just a continuation of what the evil Dems had always done.
Supposedly Israel controls Trump via the Epstein files and always has, and that’s why Trump has always kowtowed to Putin? Because Israel made Trump kowtow to Putin. Or something like that. It’s hard to follow the logic.
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I wonder which oligarch pays d______7 to spout pro-kremlin junk spam?
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Folks who have become totally enamored by a self-aggrandizing, egocentric leader who tells them that they (and only those who are like them) are worthy people and that virtually everyone else is subhuman, comes from a s*ithole country and/or are undeserving of civil rights or mercy, are a very serious threat and danger to humanity here and across the world.
History has shown that such followers become so self-inflated and compromised that they lose their ability to distinguish truth from fallacy and right from wrong. They become heartless and incapable of recognizing that it’s actually their leader and his followers (themselves) who are the worst people on the planet, as with Hitler, Nazis and now our current POTUS and his MAGATs…
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