“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.”
Karen McQuillan
This peerless and gripping narrative reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished and exposes how decision making in his administration has been driven by a reflexive logic of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement - but a logic nonetheless. This is the story of how an unparalleled president has scrambled to survive and tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation.
Liz Cheney: There Is Massive Criminal Investigation into if Trump Made ‘Premeditated Effort to Provoke Violence’
Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) said on Sunday’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that there is a “massive criminal investigation underway” into former President Donald Trump’s role in inciting the deadly riot at Capitol Hill on January 6.
When asked if she would vote to convict Trump, Cheney said, “If I was in the Senate, I would listen to the evidence. I think that is the role the Senate has as jurors. I would also point out that the Senate trial is a snapshot. There’s a massive criminal investigation underway. There will be a massive criminal investigation of everything that happened on Jan. 6 and in the days before.”
She continued, “People will want to know exactly what the president was doing. They will want to know, for example, if the tweet he sent out calling Vice President Pence a coward while the attack was underway, whether that tweet, for example, was a premeditated effort to provoke violence. There are a lot of questions that have to be answered, and there will be many, many criminal investigations looking at every aspect of this and everyone who was involved as there should be.”
She added, “We’ve never seen that kind of assault by a president of the United States on another branch of government, and that can never happen again.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
Tony Schwartz: The Truth About Trump | Oxford Union Q&A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxF_CDDJ0YI
Andrea Bernstein: The Trumps, The
Kushners and American Greed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFd7-AbwwBA
Kushner, Inc: Vicky Ward on How Jared and Ivanka’s Greed & Ambition Compromise U.S. Foreign Policy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHzp3MPPGEE
No, It Wasn’t a Coup Attempt. It Was Another
Trump Money Scam.
The president knew he couldn’t prevail in the courts but he understands how to make money by failing. He did it with casinos and he’s doing it again.
President Trump’s post-election machinations are not a bungled coup attempt; they add up to a scam to enrich himself. A coup would require broad collaboration from the courts and, failing that, from the military. The evidence suggests that Trump may not even be serious about election fraud. If he were, he would have recruited serious election law experts in the states he has contested. Instead, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell blanketed the country with a blizzard of lawsuits, offering fever dreams from the dark web as their legal justification and evidence.
The president’s post-election campaign demonstrates his singular talent for taking care of himself even when he loses. It is a momentous historic attack on the democratic process, on the order of Reconstruction. But for Trump, as Michael Corleone put it, “it’s just business.” Ultimately, Trump’s goals are to remain a star, make money, and solidify his clout. The corrosive effects on democracy are collateral damage.
Donald Trump has always craved fame, a drive common to national politicians. But he alone honed his approach to politics through his stint as a reality TV star. That’s where he learned how he could weave a narrative around his personality that tapped into the fantasies of a national audience. His quixotic claim to have won an election that he knows he lost rests entirely on his curated public persona. And as long as he pursues his claims, he is the center of attention instead of an ignored, sad, lame duck.
Trump’s intrigues embody his drive to come out ahead whether he succeeds or fails. His campaign hardly touched on the pandemic, the economy, or even his signature complaints about immigrants. Instead, he offered a narrative about systemic voter fraud and a stolen election. The strategy was smarter than Trump’s consultants and most media understood. It strengthened his connection to Americans who feel vulnerable to powerful shadowy forces beyond their reach, sufficient to drive nearly enough of them to reelect him.
This approach also laid a foundation for Trump to come out on top again, albeit not as president, and monetize the loss. Soon after the polls closed, his campaign announced an “Official Election Defense Fund” to help pay for his election challenges – with much of the proceeds diverted to his personal PAC, Save America. And by mobilizing his millions of true believers around a false narrative that his enemies have cost them their leader, Trump secured an enormous fan base for whatever he does as an ex-president. Millions will pay to attend more rallies or perhaps subscribe to a new Trump streaming service or cable network.
The strategy will give Trump a global stage to spotlight his inevitable grievances with President Joe Biden. It could become a means to mobilize public pressure against ongoing criminal investigations and possible indictments. Even from Mar-a-Lago, he could keep officeholders aligned with his interests, even as an ex-president.
Ensuring that Trump benefits even when he loses—and so never appears to fail – is an approach he has honed over his career. It nearly always involves making himself richer. He forged the strategy in Atlantic City. When he issued $100 million in junk bonds to bail out the failing Trump Plaza casino in 1993 temporarily, he used half of those proceeds to cover his personal debts. When his three casino hotels went bankrupt, he collected $160 million in management fees from the time the hotels declared Chapter 11 to the inevitable moment, years later, when he had to surrender them to his creditors.
Trump had figured out how to win while losing other people’s money. The final collapse of his Atlantic City properties also became personal paydays: He walked away with $916 million in tax losses based on $3.4 billion in defaulted debts owed to the banks and junk bondholders that actually put up the capital. To make it legal, Trump had assumed personal liability for the loans. But that was at the heart of the scam: Since he had not put up his own money, he couldn’t claim the losses without putting himself technically “at-risk” for the loans.
As president, Trump continues to profit from losing other people’s money. He owns 16 golf courses, all financed by accommodating lenders who put up the money to buy and operate them. As any real estate operator knows, golf courses are notorious money losers. Here too, Trump is personally “at-risk” for those loans – because otherwise, he couldn’t write off their annual losses. Based on the tax returns described in the New York Times, he claimed $15.3 million in those tax losses in 2017, his first year in the White House. For that year, he also reported personal income of nearly $14.8 million from branding deals, income tied to his old reality TV show, and revenues from favor seekers joining Mar-A-Lago and taking suites at his hotels. The losses Trump claimed for ventures paid for with other people’s money enabled him, even as president, to avoid paying personal income tax on all of his $14.8 million income.
Winning by failing has been Donald Trump’s signature business strategy, and now it is his political strategy. Since he couldn’t force the Justice Department to arrest Biden or coerce the courts to overturn the election results, he is left to enrich himself and maintain his influence with his fans and GOP elected officials. Thankfully for democracy, Americans now face not a coup d’état but yet another scam from Donald Trump – and probably not his last.
Robert J. Shapiro
Robert J. Shapiro, a Washington Monthly contributing writer, is the chairman of Sonecon and a Senior Fellow at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He previously served as Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs under Bill Clinton and advised senior members of the Obama administration on economic policy.
Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,”
#1 New York Times Bestseller!
Peter Schweizer has been fighting corruption―and winning―for years. In Throw Them All Out, he exposed insider trading by members of Congress, leading to the passage of the STOCK Act. In Extortion, he uncovered how politicians use mafia-like tactics to enrich themselves. And in Clinton Cash, he revealed the Clintons’ massive money machine and sparked an FBI investigation.
Now he explains how a new corruption has taken hold, involving larger sums of money than ever before. Stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a freezer has morphed into multibillion-dollar equity deals done in the dark corners of the world.
An American bank opening in China would be prohibited by US law from hiring a slew of family members of top Chinese politicians. However, a Chinese bank opening in America can hire anyone it wants. It can even invite the friends and families of American politicians to invest in can’t-lose deals.
President Donald Trump’s children have made front pages across the world for their dicey transactions. However, the media has barely looked into questionable deals made by those close to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, and lesser-known politicians who have been in the game longer.
In many parts of the world, the children of powerful political figures go into business and profit handsomely, not necessarily because they are good at it, but because people want to curry favor with their influential parents. This is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. But for relatives of some prominent political families, we may already be talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.
Deeply researched and packed with shocking revelations, Secret Empires identifies public servants who cannot be trusted and provides a path toward a more accountable government.
Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Hardcover – March 19, 2019
· Hardcover: 304 pages
· Publisher: St. Martin's Press (March 19, 2019)
· Language: English
· ISBN-10: 1250185947
· ISBN-13: 978-1250185945
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are the self-styled Prince and Princess of America. Their swift, gilded rise to extraordinary power in Donald Trump’s White House is unprecedented and dangerous. In Kushner, Inc., investigative journalist Vicky Ward digs beneath the myth the couple has created, depicting themselves as the voices of reason in an otherwise crazy presidency, and reveals that Jared and Ivanka are not just the President’s chief enablers: they, like him, appear disdainful of rules, of laws, and of ethics. They are entitled inheritors of the worst kind; their combination of ignorance, arrogance, and an insatiable lust for power has caused havoc all over the world, and may threaten the democracy of the United States.
Ward follows their trajectory from New Jersey and New York City to the White House, where the couple’s many forays into policy-making and national security have mocked long-standing U.S. policy and protocol. They have pursued an agenda that could increase their wealth while their actions have mostly gone unchecked. In Kushner, Inc., Ward holds Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump accountable: she unveils the couple’s self-serving transactional motivations and how those have propelled them into the highest levels of the US government where no one, the President included, has been able to stop them.
ANN COULTER - SWAMP KEEPER DONALD TRUMP AND HIS PARASITIC FAMILY
One cautionary example is President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose ticket into Harvard, according to the 2006 book The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, was his father’s $2.5 million dollar gift to the university. Jared got his Harvard degree, but he has been the butt of social-media taunts precisely because his daddy had to pay a fortune to get the school to admit him. The cost of a brag-worthy degree? Millions. The cost of the right- and left-brain stuff? Priceless.
THE TRUMP FAMILY FOUNDATION SLUSH FUND…. Will they see jail?
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-phony-trump-slush-fund-will-it-put.html
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!.... We know where they live!
“Underwood is a Democrat and is seeking millions of dollars in penalties. She wants Trump and his eldest children barred from running other charities.”
Coulter: All Hail President Javanka!
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/04/10/coulter-all-hail-president-javanka/
ANN COULTER
While other reporters waste their time examining Donald Trump’s public statements, interviewing his high school classmates and poring over legal filings, investigative reporter Vicky Ward has produced the definitive book on our current president.
For example, did you know our president got breast implants in high school (Ivanka claimed she was just “curvy”), bought his way into Harvard (Jared is even dumber than you thought), and together have no books in their New York apartment? (Some dispute that there are no books, citing “a few art books” or “decorator-curated books.”)
Ward’s recently released blockbuster, Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, tells you all this and more about our actual commander in chief: President Javanka.
On the bright side, Jared has stopped rolling his eyes so much about his father-in-law now that Trump is president, er, “president.” Until Trump’s nomination was a virtual lock, Jared was back in New York pretending not to be related to him.
Only after Trump had racked up a slew of primary wins did a lightbulb go on in Jared’s head: Hey! This presidential campaign could be great for business! According to a close associate, Jared viewed the campaign as a terrific “networking opportunity.”
In short order, Jared moved himself in, and moved campaign manager Corey Lewandowski out.
Trump’s loyal campaign manager had been with him through the “Mexican rapists” speech, Macy’s dumping Trump’s ties, the “McCain isn’t a war hero” controversy, the Muslim ban, the “hand size” embarrassment, and on and on and on. But when all was said and done and Trump was still cruising to victory, Jared and Ivanka walked in and delivered an ultimatum to Trump: “It’s Corey or us.”
Jared would later shyly cop to being “[The Man Who] Won Trump the White House,” as a Forbes magazine cover story put it.
And who understood the beating heart of the Trump voter like Jared and Ivanka? With Javanka in charge, the campaign schedule was soon bristling with such items as “women’s empowerment week,” “education week” and “entrepreneur week.”
In no time, Trump was 16 points down and sinking fast. Steve Bannon was brought in, whereupon he promptly threw out all the Working Women’s Intersectional Global Warming weeks and got back to Trump’s issues.
Jared assured Bannon that the campaign had $25 million on hand. That’s when Bannon had to explain “debits” to Kushner. The campaign had $25 million — provided you didn’t count all the unpaid expenses. When those were included, it turned out the campaign was in debt.
As the SAT board had discovered, math wasn’t Jared’s strong suit.
Although it has been well reported that Jared’s Harvard admission was purchased for him by his father, Ward produces a shocking new detail. Of the five tracks at Jared’s high school, he wasn’t at the bottom of track one, perhaps suitable for a lesser Ivy League with solid SAT scores. He wasn’t even in track two. Jared was in track three. But now he has co-opted the Make America Great Again movement for his own personal advancement. I guess that makes him smarter than Trump.
Apart from staging photo-ops, including her “princess moment” at the inaugural ball (her words), Ivanka’s first order of business upon winning the presidency was assigning White House office space. Her map showed a big office for her, a big office for Jared — and also a nice corner office, which was designated “Trump family office.”
Transition officials, Ward reports, “were surprised that the first lady did not appear to have an office. So, too, was Melania Trump, who quickly put an end to Ivanka’s scheming.”
Jared’s BFF, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Muhammad bin Zayed (MBZ), refer to Jared as “the clown prince.” Bone-cutter MBS assured those around him that he had Jared “in my pocket.”
MBS and MBZ derided Jared’s Middle East peace plan as infantile, while using him to achieve their objective: war with Qatar. According to an American businessman’s leaked emails, their attitude was, “Nobody would even waste a cup of coffee on him if it wasn’t for who he is married to.”
As one former top White House official explained: “Jared never understands the details of anything. He’s just impressed by names.”
Following meetings at the White House and also with the Kushners over their 666 Fifth Avenue property, former Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim reported back to the emir that “the people atop the new administration were heavily motivated by personal financial interest.”
After Ivanka’s speech introducing her father at the Republican National Convention — rivaled only by Billy Carter’s introduction of his brother, Jimmy! — she tweeted from her personal account: “Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech.”
After the Trump family was interviewed on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Ivanka’s company emailed out a “style alert” advertising the $10,800 diamond bracelet she’d worn on the show — “available from Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry.”
Ivanka has managed to win a slew of trademarks in China since her father became the Figurehead President, with several approvals being fast-tracked at about the same time Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago.
Instead of “Make America Great Again,” the motto of the Trump presidency is, as one of Trump’s legal spokesmen put it: “The advance team for Jared and Ivanka.”
This is not what anyone voted for.
One cautionary example is President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose ticket into Harvard, according to the 2006 book The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, was his father’s $2.5 million dollar gift to the university. Jared got his Harvard degree, but he has been the butt of social-media taunts precisely because his daddy had to pay a fortune to get the school to admit him. The cost of a brag-worthy degree? Millions. The cost of the right- and left-brain stuff? Priceless.
A VERY STABLE GENIUS
“This taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date.” - Dwight Garner, The New York Times
Read an excerpt:
‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals
THE BOOK
Washington Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners, provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s unique presidency with shocking new reporting and insight into its implications.
“I alone can fix it.” So went Donald J. Trump’s march to the presidency on July 21, 2016, when he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland, promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet over the subsequent years, as he has undertaken the actual work of the commander in chief, it has been hard to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal, investigation, and constant bluster. It would be all too easy to mistake Trump’s first term for one of pure and uninhibited chaos, but there were patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the Trump administration is loyalty - not to the country, but to the president himself - and Trump’s North Star has been the perpetuation of his own power, even when it meant imperiling our shaky and mistrustful democracy.
Leonnig and Rucker, with deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., tell of rages and frenzies but also moments of courage and perseverance. Relying on scores of exclusive new interviews with some of the most senior members of the Trump administration and other firsthand witnesses, the authors reveal the forty-fifth president up close, taking readers inside Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as well as the president’s own haphazard but ultimately successful legal defense. Here for the first time certain officials who have felt honor-bound not to publicly criticize a sitting president or to divulge what they witnessed in a position of trust tell the truth for the benefit of history.
This peerless and gripping narrative reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished and exposes how decision making in his administration has been driven by a reflexive logic of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement - but a logic nonetheless. This is the story of how an unparalleled president has scrambled to survive and tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation.
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