Corruption Is Trump’s Greatest Political Liability

While all eyes remain on the Russiagate investigation, a lengthy piece in New York Magazine lays out why Trump's corruption and monetizing of his position in the White House may end up being what takes him down politically.  It also proposes a road map for Democrats to build a strong anti-Trump, anti-Republican narrative that looks at the rapaciousness of the Trump/Pence regime and the Republican majorities in Congress that have either looked the other way when corruption appears or who have outright enabled and abetted the corruption and transfers of wealth to the wealthiest Americans or huge corporations which are not reinvesting in America as Trump/the GOP promised.  Here are opening highlights (read the entire piece):

“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” declared Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.” To the extent that Trump’s candidacy offered any positive appeal, as opposed to simple loathing for his opponent, this was it.

Since Trump took office, his pledge to ignore his own interests has been almost forgotten, lost in a disorienting hurricane of endless news. It is not just a morbid joke but a legitimate problem for the opposition that all the bad news about Trump keeps getting obscured by other bad news about Trump. Perhaps the extraordinary civic unrest his presidency has provoked will be enough to give Democrats a historic win in the midterms this fall, but it is easy to be worried.

As the races pick up in earnest, some kind of narrative focus is going to be necessary to frame the case against Trump. Here, what appears to be an embarrassment of riches for Democrats may in fact be a collection of distractions. It is depressingly likely that several of Trump’s most outrageous characteristics will fail to move the needle in the states and districts where the needle needs moving. His racism and misogyny motivate the Democratic base, but both were perfectly apparent in 2016 and did not dissuade enough voters to abandon him.

Trump’s core proposition to the public was a business deal: If he became president, he would work to make them rich. Of course, the fact that Trump was able to reduce the presidency to such a crass exchange, forsaking such niceties as simple decency and respect for the rule of law, exposed terrifying weaknesses in the fabric of American democracy. But the shortest path to resolving this crisis is first to remove Trump’s party — and it is Trump’s party — from full control of the government in 2018, and then to remove Trump from the White House in 2020.

The clearest way to do that is to demonstrate that Trump is failing to uphold his end of the deal. After all, the students at Trump University once constituted some of the biggest Trump fans in America. Until they realized Trump had conned them. Then they sued to get their money back.

Historically, corruption — specifically, the use of power for personal gain — has played a central and even dominant role in American political discourse. In the 1870s, revelations that public officials were caught lining their pockets with millions of dollars from alcohol taxes (the Whiskey Ring) and inflated railroad costs (Crédit Mobilier) exploded into spectacular scandals. One of the triumphs of the Progressive Era was establishing rules and norms of professionalism in government so that public officials would not be tempted to sell their favors.

There is a reason Trump labeled his opponent “Crooked Hillary,” and it stems from a law of American politics Democrats would be wise to remember: To be out for yourself is probably the single most disqualifying flaw a politician can have.

The sheer breadth of direct self-enrichment Trump has unleashed in office defies the most cynical predictions. It may not be a surprise that he continues to hold on to his business empire and uses his power in office to direct profits its way, from overseas building deals down to printing the presidential seal on golf markers at the course near Mar-a-Lago. It is certainly not a surprise that Trump has refused to disclose his tax returns. What’s truly shocking is how much petty graft has sprung up across his administration. Trump’s Cabinet members and other senior officials have been living in style at taxpayer expense, . . . Not since the Harding administration, and probably the Gilded Age, has the presidency conducted itself in so venal a fashion.

It is hardly a coincidence that so many greedy people have filled the administration’s ranks. Trump’s ostentatious crudeness and misogyny are a kind of human-resources strategy. Radiating personal and professional sleaze lets him quickly and easily identify individuals who have any kind of public ethics and to sort them out. . . . . Trump is legitimately excellent at cultivating an inner circle unburdened by legal or moral scruples. These are the only kind of people who want to work for Trump, and the only kind Trump wants to work for him.

It should take very little work — and be a very big priority — for Democratic candidates to stitch all the administration’s misdeeds together into a tale of unchecked greed. . . . . Having burned enough American banks throughout his career that he could not obtain capital through conventional, legitimate channels, Trump turned to Russian sources, who typically have an ulterior political motive. Just what these various sources got in return for their investment in Trump is a matter for Robert Mueller’s investigators to determine. But Trump’s interest in them is perfectly obvious.

Trump’s campaign followed his patented human-resources strategy, filling its ranks with other rapacious and financially precarious men. Paul Manafort was deeply in debt to a Russian oligarch when he popped up on Trump’s doorstep. Michael Flynn was selling his credentials to Russian and Turkish dictators while advising Trump. Jared Kushner was flailing about in an effort to make good on a massive loan he took out on a white-elephant Manhattan building . . .

The virtue of bribery is a subject of genuine conviction for Trump, whose entrée to politics came via transactional relationships with New York politicians as well as Mafia figures. Trump once called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars American corporations from engaging in bribery, a “ridiculous” and “horrible” law. Enforcement of this law has plummeted under his administration.

[Trump] and his inner circle feel most comfortable in the company of the wealthy and corrupt. They have built closer ties to Russia, the Gulf States, and China, all of which are ruled by oligarchs who recognize in Trump a like-minded soul. They share the belief that — to revise a favorite Trump saying — if you don’t steal, you don’t have a country.

Trump’s behavior runs directly contrary to his most important promises. “Draining the swamp” was not supposed to mean simply kicking out Democrats and competent public officials. He made speeches promising good-government reforms: a ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and stricter rules on what lobbying meant; campaign-finance reform to prevent foreign companies from raising money for American candidates; a ban on lobbying by former senior government officials on behalf of foreign governments.

Not only has Trump made no effort to raise ethical standards but he and his administration have flamboyantly violated the existing guidelines. Lobbyists are seeded in every agency, “regulating” their former employers and designing rules that favor bosses over employees and business owners over consumers.

[I]n Trump’s case, the smaller and larger scandals reinforce each other. Why is Trump giving rich people and corporations a huge tax cut? Why has he been threatening to take away your health insurance? Why is he letting Wall Street and Big Oil write their own rules? Above all, if Trump supposedly believed that “if I become president, I couldn’t care less about my company — it’s peanuts,” why are his children still running it? For the same reason he has let his Cabinet secretaries run up large travel expenses, and why his son-in-law met with oligarchs in China and the Gulf States whose money he was trying to get his hands on.

Rather than sit back and allow Trump to take credit for a recovery he inherited, Democrats can press the point that he and his allies are doing little more than skimming off the top of it.

Somebody persuaded corporations, fattened by a trillion-dollar tax windfall, to publicize the same raises and bonuses they had been handing out for years as a special dividend of the Trump tax cuts. If Democrats win control of a chamber of Congress and thus the ability to hold hearings, they should investigate whatever coordination yielded this nexus of self-interest.

A Democratic House or Senate could also compel disclosure of Trump’s tax returns, and both the documents themselves and any drama surrounding them would attract more attention to the administration’s commitment to self-enrichment.

But that can happen only if the Democrats win the midterms, and the best way to do that is to tell a very simple story. Trump represented himself as a rich man feared by the business elite. He had spent much of his life buying off politicians and exploiting the system, so he knew how the system worked and could exploit that knowledge on behalf of the people. In fact, his experiences with bribery opened his eyes to what further extortion might be possible. Trump was never looking to blow up the system. He was simply casing the joint.

Donald Trump's Business Busts and Countless Victims

While much of the news media remains fixated on Donald trump's "pussy gate" scandal, there remain many who will blindly vote for Trump because they say he is a good businessman.  A very long and scathing piece in Newsweek suggests that Trump is akin to vulture capitalist, Mitt Romney, and in fact has left a trail of business busts and victimized people and localities in his wake.  He'd have made more money merely investing in the stock market and leaving his investments untouched.  And when it comes to putting his name on buildings, the article correctly notes that there are no hospitals, museums or other charitable facilities bearing Trump's name. The one constant in the story line is Trump saving himself while leaving others to crash and burn and face financial hardship or ruin. In short, the myth that Trump could best handle America's economy is a myth and fairy tale.  Here are article highlights:

Dust swirled and jackhammers pounded outside the Bonwit Teller building in Manhattan as undocumented immigrants tore apart the façade. It was June 5, 1980, and a sense of bitterness hung over the work site that afternoon; paychecks were often weeks late, but since the Poles didn’t have legal status in the United States, there was little they could do about it.

The exterior they were destroying was an architectural masterpiece—bronze, platinum, hammered aluminum, glazed ceramic and tinted glass that shimmered like jewelry. Many New Yorkers had hoped the grandest portion would survive; curators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art had asked the developer to carefully remove the two bas-relief sculpture panels so they could be restored and put on public display. But that afternoon, the laborers, acting on orders from the developer, smashed the 50-year-old art deco panels into a rubble of stone, pebble and dirt.

The desecration horrified Manhattan’s art community, but the developer, a brash 34-year-old named Donald Trump, dismissed the criticism—pretending to be his own spokesman, “John Barron,” as he talked to reporters by phone. Saving the panels would have cost him $32,000 each, he said, and delayed work for a few days on his $100 million project, Trump Tower. Besides, he declared, he knew more than the curators—the panels had no artistic merit and little financial value.

This incident from long before Trump became a household name is an ideal exemplar for his business career, in which he has repeatedly left bitterness and ruin in his wake. His destructive behavior—spurred by recklessness, arrogance and an unslakable thirst for vengeance—has victimized cities, businesses, investors, partners, even members of his family.

Trump is now completing his biggest and most astonishing demolition: tearing down the Republican Party. . . . . He now speaks of vast conspiracies against him involving bankers, the media and politicians, while raging against Republicans who have pulled away from his toxic campaign, ripping open chasms between his zealous supporters and the GOP. Win or lose on November 8, Trump, whose campaign did not respond to Newsweek requests for comment about this article, will leave the Republican Party as damaged as those art deco panels were 36 years ago.

To anyone who has watched Trump over the past four decades, none of this is a surprise. His presidential campaign is built on the claim that he’s a brilliant businessman worth $10 billion who turns every challenge into success, but Trump is none of those things. Instead, he was born into an exceedingly wealthy family and tried to build upon his father’s success with ever-riskier ventures, and by any rational measure, he failed again and again.

He’d have done better if he’d never gone into business. . . . . . [If] Trump had never done any deals and instead sold all of his assets back in 1982 and invested them in a fund based on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. With dividends reinvested, he would have increased his wealth to $535 million by 1985. By 2004, his personal wealth would have increased to $5.9 billion. And three years ago, he would have exceeded what he claims to be worth now by more than $1 billion.

In other words, if the Republican nominee had done nothing but mow his lawn for the past 35 years, he would be a dramatically wealthier man than he is today. The huge bonus in that scenario: Thousands of people would not have been ridiculed, ripped off or otherwise have suffered from encounters with Donald J. Trump.

Donald Trump loves to put his name on buildings, but there are no hospital wings named for him. No museums have a piece of artwork with a plaque reading “A Gift of Donald J. Trump.” No buildings at the University of Pennsylvania bear his name, even though he constantly cites his graduation from its Wharton School as a sign of his intelligence. (Contrary to Trump’s suggestion, he attended the school for only two years as an undergraduate and did not obtain a degree from Wharton’s far more prestigious graduate business program.)

Trump bears little resemblance to prominent billionaires such as Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bloomberg or Charles Francis Feeney, who have dedicated huge sums of their wealth to aiding the less fortunate. There is no evidence that Trump has done much of anything to make the world a better place; what he has left behind is some buildings, along with a lot of wreckage and rancor.

[O]ne of Trump’s greatest skills : bullying, threatening and suing anyone who criticizes him and cowing most of them into silence.

He showed his willingness to harm others for his personal benefit early in his career. Using those undocumented Polish workers in 1980 for the razing of the Bonwit Teller building, for example, was deemed part of a civil conspiracy to defraud a union pension fund, a federal judge in New York later ruled.

Another example emerged the following year. Trump purchased an old hotel and adjacent apartment building for redevelopment on Central Park South, one of the toniest streets in Manhattan. A little more than 100 tenants occupied the rent-controlled apartments, but Trump launched a campaign to drive them out, according to court documents filed by city and state officials. He filed a barrage of what the city called “nuisance suits” against the residents. He cut off their heat and hot water. He tried to move homeless people into empty apartments to annoy or even frighten the residents. He decreased security for the building, and over those 18 months, the number of burglaries in the building skyrocketed.

Trump scoffed at complaints from residents and the government, publicly disparaging occupants of the apartments as pampered millionaires—a claim he made with no information to back it up. Instead, the court proceedings showed that many of the residents were elderly or middle class. In 1986, with the legal proceedings dragging on, Trump finally abandoned his plans to tear down the apartment building, and the residents were allowed to remain.

“I love to have enemies,” Trump once said. “I fight my enemies. I like beating my enemies to the ground.”

He uttered these words in 1989, about the same time he was in a series of pointless battles: with other billionaires, with midlevel executives, with nobodies whose lives he destroyed just because he could.

In 1990, Marvin Roffman was a little-known analyst working at second-tier investment company called Janney Montgomery Scott. He specialized in appraising the financial prospects of the Atlantic City gaming industry. That spring, Trump’s biggest and by far most expensive casino, the Trump Taj Mahal, was set to open, and The Wall Street Journal examined its prospects. It called Roffman, who said the Taj would benefit from the publicity surrounding its opening but predicted it would struggle afterward. “Once the cold winds blow from October to February, it won't make it,” Roffman told the paper. “The market just isn't there.” 

Pressured by his company, Roffman faxed Trump a letter of apology the next day, saying the Journal had taken his words out of context. But after thinking about it overnight, he sent another letter retracting his apology. One day later, the investment company fired Roffman.

Not satisfied, Trump continued to publicly berate Roffman. He told the New York Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Barron’s, Fortune and others that Roffman was untalented. He also told the Inquirer that he had saved Roffman’s job six months earlier. Trump delivered the worst—and a false—accusation to Vanity Fair, accusing Roffman of blackmail and fraud, claiming the analyst used to beg him to purchase securities through him, “with the implication that if I'd buy stock he'd give me positive comments.”

In the end, however, it was Trump who looked like the fool. Before launching the Taj, he should have consulted Roffman, who later confidentially settled his lawsuit against Trump and won a $750,000 judgment against Janney Montgomery Scott. And Roffman was right about the Taj: In November 1990—one month after Roffman had predicted Trump’s casino would start to struggle—the Taj filed for bankruptcy. And with that collapse, brought about by Trump’s hubris and incompetence, he destroyed the jobs of far more people than just one smart industry analyst.

In November 1988, Trump gave the public a chance to let him wipe out their savings when he offered $675 million in junk bonds sold through Merrill Lynch. He raised the money to buy the Taj from Resorts International and rebuild it; despite his promise to use only bank borrowings, the lenders would not hand over enough cash. Investors wouldn’t either, unless Trump paid a lot of interest. So to sell his bonds, Trump agreed to a rate of 14 percent, far higher than the 9 percent yield at the time on investment-grade corporate bonds.

Even that was not enough to pay for the crazy casino of Trump’s dreams. The bond prospectus estimated the cost of building and operating the Taj over the next 15 months was $805 million, covered with a $75 million cash contribution from Trump; the rest of the money would come from a Trump credit line and other loans. Trump did not disclose in the filing that he was also guaranteeing hundreds of millions of dollars of loans on real estate properties, which might undermine his ability to tap into his credit. And he spent money on a fight with homeowners whose land he wanted so he could build a larger parking lot for the casino.

Trump knew the success of the Taj and the gambling houses he had previously built—the Trump Castle and the Trump Plaza—could mean the difference between Atlantic City’s rebirth or destruction. He also knew that lots of people would suffer along the way. “People will spend a tremendous amount of money in casinos, money that they would normally spend on buying a refrigerator or a new car,” Trump said. “Local businesses will suffer because they’ll lose dollars to the casino.” He was right. As he built his casinos, Atlantic City was ripped apart. Unemployment soared, hundreds of restaurants went out of business, and dry cleaners and specialty shops disappeared.

With the future of the city, its residents and investors at stake—and with Trump’s finances spread perilously thin—the market reasonably believed that he, like any smart businessman, would focus on stabilizing his gaming empire. Instead, Trump dashed headlong into other businesses he knew nothing about, borrowing another $380 million to buy the Eastern Shuttle (renamed the Trump Shuttle), taking a run at purchasing a department store chain and even announcing a $7.5 billion takeover bid for American Airlines.

When his three top casino executives died in a freak helicopter crash in late 1989, Trump took over direct management of that business. A short time later, the value of his junk bonds tanked, and Wall Street firms such as Salomon Brothers put “sell” recommendations on them. The many people who had purchased Trump’s bonds on his breezy assurances were losing fortunes.

With the financial condition of his casinos getting steadily worse, Trump launched a purge of executives, replacing some of them with people who were clearly unqualified for their new jobs. Trump then publicly ripped the top officers he’d axed and refused to honor some of their severance agreements. Other executives decided to quit; they were no longer willing to tolerate Trump’s erratic leadership. The chief financial officer of the Taj, Donald Wood, was taken from the building in a stretcher after suffering from exhaustion and dehydration in April 1990; Trump fired him two days later.

In June 1990, the firings continued. Trump turned over the assets of the airline to his banks, putting more than 500 people out of work, according to court records. The banks also forced Trump to sell his yacht and put him on a budget. The Queens-born mogul stiffed contractors for the Taj whom he owed $35 million but insisted the disaster would only make the public love his brand more. “I think it has greatly enhanced it,” he said.

In November 1990, the Taj went bankrupt. The bondholders who had been promised high interest were forced to swap a large portion of their investment for half of the equity in the casino—a far riskier holding. Trump, however, walked away relatively unscathed. Banks let him borrow another $65 million and forgave his personal guarantees on loans, all to avoid a complete implosion of the Trump empire, one that would have taken many of his lenders down with him.

The entire Trump casino empire then tumbled into bankruptcy court. Trump slashed more jobs, investors lost more money, and the economy in Atlantic City worsened as unemployment surged.

By 1992, enough of the wreckage had been cleared away that some of the outstanding bonds began to recover, climbing to about 70 percent of their original value. Delighted, Trump telephoned financial reporters to brag that his investors’ losses weren’t as terrible as they had seemed. “These prices just prove people love me,” he told The New York Times . “People love Donald Trump.”

Three years later, Trump sold stock in his newly formed Trump Hotel and Casino Resorts, which owned all three of his Atlantic City casinos and another casino he had started in Indiana. He insisted the stock trade under the ticker DJT—his initials. As chairman of the company, Trump maintained a 41 percent stake, which was worth about $400 million when the stock hit its all-time high of $29.25 a share—less than a year after going public.

Under Trump’s leadership, however, the company was unprofitable every year, and by the end of his time as chairman, it had lost more than $1 billion. By 2004, the stock was selling for 65 cents a share, and the company fell into bankruptcy; people who had put their faith in the Trump name lost more than 90 percent of their investment. During the same time, those who owned funds based on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index more than doubled their money. Even in the greatest stock market ever, and in a business regularly described as a license to print money, Trump left only wreckage in his wake. And investors in Trump hotels saw nothing but losses.

On the other hand, Trump did just fine for himself. Even as his company’s stock price was collapsing and annual losses were piling up, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that during his years as chairman, more than $60 million poured from the public company into Trump’s pockets.

This is the dirty secret behind Trump’s allegedly miraculous financial recovery. What he told the public was a fable: that he had fought his way back with perseverance and skill. In truth, he did it by snatching huge fistfuls of cash from a company that was wiping out the savings of millions of people.

By then, most of the smart money had given up on Trump. To get a new personal credit line, he could no longer rely on handshake deals or personal guarantees with Chase Manhattan, as he once had. Instead, financial records obtained by Newsweek show, in 2003 he turned to the Cayman Islands’ branch of UBS, the Swiss bank. For that loan, however, he had to put up a large number of assets as security, including a portion of his interest in Trump World Tower, all of his investments in a Paine Webber brokerage account, mortgage notes and numerous other securities and property.

Soon almost all financial institutions were passing on his deals, other than Deutsche Bank—and in a few years, he would default on a $640 million construction loan from it. The stock and bond markets, where every investor who had ever placed faith in Trump lost money, were closed to him. A fund financed by the billionaire George Soros agreed to invest in a Trump development once — but only once. A private equity firm, Colony Capital, backed out of a Trump project, forcing the Trump Organization to self-finance. Wall Street and financial institutions worldwide all knew that, as a businessman, Trump was a disaster.

So Trump went in another direction , rebuilding his reputation on television. Beginning in 2004, around when his public company fell into bankruptcy, Trump began playing the role of a successful businessman on the NBC reality show The Apprentice. Unless it read the financial news religiously, the public could not know that this portrayal of Trump was a farce.

The success of The Apprentice gave new credibility to Trump, which appealed to people looking to buy apartments and even products. That’s why Trump got into the business of selling his brand, letting other companies and developers use his name on their products for a substantial fee. The Trump steaks, the Trump water, the vodka, the chocolates, the mortgage company—all were attempts by Trump to make money off his name because he had few other financial options. In 2004, he also decided to launch Trump University, a for-profit education company that collapsed amid allegations it had defrauded thousands of people. Two class actions by former Trump University students are proceeding in California; a third case has been brought in New York by the state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman.

Trump’s career has been much of the same kind of scam. He demands applause and annihilates those who refuse to give it. He preens about successes he obtained only by destroying the wealth, careers and reputations of other people. He takes credit for the victories of others and denies any blame for his many failures. In his impulsive pursuit of self-aggrandizement, his victims are legion.

And now he vows to do to America what he did to them.

New York AG Opens "Inquiry" into Trump Foundation

In the wake of a growing number of improper political donations by the Trump Foundation and stories of Donald Trump using foundation funds for his own uses, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an inquiry into the Trump Foundation, investigating possible wrongdoing and/or violation of restrictions applicable to charitable foundations.  Schneiderman is already involved in litigation involving Trump's alleged scam operation, "Trump University."The inquiry further spotlights Trump's history of questionable activities that skirt the letter of law and violate ethical business practices.  A piece in Politico looks at this new boil on Trump's wide ass.  Here are highlights:

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an investigation into the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York," he said Tuesday.

A source familiar with the matter confirmed Schneiderman’s remark and said the New York Attorney General’s office “has opened an inquiry into the Trump Foundation based on troubling transactions that have recently come to light.”

Schneiderman — who for months has tangled with Trump over a fraud lawsuit his office filed against Trump University, the Manhattan billionaire’s real estate seminar program — told CNN’s “The Lead” that the GOP nominee’s charitable foundation is also under scrutiny.

“My interest in this issue really is in my capacity as regulator of nonprofits in New York state. And we have been concerned that the Trump Foundation may have engaged in some impropriety from that point of view,” Schneiderman told host Jake Tapper. “And we’ve inquired into it, and we’ve had correspondence with them.

Trump’s charity has faced growing questions in the wake of a damaging series of stories by The Washington Post and The Associated Press. A Post story published over the weekend cited tax records showing that Trump had not donated to his own foundation since 2008, and had, among other allegations, "spent $20,000 of money earmarked for charitable purposes to buy a six-foot-tall painting of himself."

The foundation also made an illegal donation of $25,000 to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2013 as she was considering joining Schneiderman in pursuing a fraud case against Trump University. Bondi and Trump have denied any connection between the money and her office's decision not to pursue an investigation, though Trump paid a $2,500 penalty to the IRS for making a political donation through his charitable foundation. Although Schneiderman, a Democrat who supports Hillary Clinton, has said that his suit against Trump University is not politically motivated, the New York attorney general has not shied away from publicly discussing the case.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, are calling on Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate the Trump Foundation's donation to Bondi.

In a letter signed by all Democratic members on the committee and sent to Lynch, they cited the reports by the AP and Post, which they said "indicates that these payments may have influenced Mrs. Bondi’s official decision not to participate in litigation against Mr. Trump."

"A number of criminal statutes would appear to be implicated by this course of conduct," the Democrats wrote, pointing to bribery and tax laws governing nonprofit organizations.

They also noted comments Trump made at a rally last January in Iowa, in which he boasted of his donations to politicians: “I’ve given to everybody. Because that was my job. I gotta give to them. ... Because when I want something, I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass.”

Donald Trump gives sleazy a whole new meaning.

Trump’s Mind-Boggling History of Corruption

One of the most maddening things about much of the news media is that it has become merely an echo chamber for what political candidates say without ever bothering to verify whether the statements are true or not.  Similarly, in the quest for false equivalency, the actual past and/or behavior of a candidate gets glossed over.  A case in point is Donald trump, a man with a sleazy history of corruption, what amount to political bribes, and business practices that in anyone else would be condemned as unethical and best and outright dishonest in fact.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the idiocy of the meme that Hillary Clinton is corrupt while Trump continues to get somewhat of a pass on his shady background.  Here are excerpts:

In the heat of a presidential campaign, you’d think that a story about one party’s nominee giving a large contribution to a state attorney general who promptly shut down an inquiry into that nominee’s scam “university” would be enormous news. But we continue to hear almost nothing about what happened between Donald Trump and Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.

I raised this issue last week, but it’s worth an update as well as some contextualization. The story re-emerged last week when The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold reported that Trump paid a penalty to the IRS after his foundation made an illegal contribution to Bondi’s PAC. While the Trump organization characterizes that as a bureaucratic oversight, the basic facts are that Bondi’s office had received multiple complaints from Floridians who said they were cheated by Trump University; while they were looking into it and considering whether to join a lawsuit over Trump University filed by the attorney general of New York State, Bondi called Trump and asked him for a $25,000 donation; shortly after getting the check, Bondi’s office dropped the inquiry. At this point we should note that everything here may be completely innocent. Perhaps Bondi didn’t realize her office was looking into Trump University. Perhaps the fact that Trump’s foundation made the contribution (which, to repeat, is illegal) was just a mix-up. Perhaps when Trump reimbursed the foundation from his personal account, he didn’t realize that’s not how the law works (the foundation would have to get its money back from Bondi’s PAC; he could then make a personal donation if he wanted). Perhaps Bondi’s decision not to pursue the case against Trump was perfectly reasonable.

But here’s the thing: We don’t know the answers to those questions, because almost nobody seems to be pursuing them.

[T]he comparison with stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails or the Clinton Foundation is extremely instructive. Whenever we get some new development in any of those Clinton stories, you see blanket coverage — every cable network, every network news program, every newspaper investigates it at length. And even when the new information serves to exonerate Clinton rather than implicate her in wrongdoing, the coverage still emphasizes that the whole thing just “raises questions” about her integrity.The big difference is that there are an enormous number of reporters who get assigned to write stories about those issues regarding Clinton.

When it comes to Trump, on the other hand, we’ve seen a very different pattern. Here’s what happens: A story about some kind of corrupt dealing emerges, usually from the dogged efforts of one or a few journalists; it gets discussed for a couple of days; and then it disappears. Someone might mention it now and again, but the news organizations don’t assign a squad of reporters to look into every aspect of it, so no new facts are brought to light and no new stories get written.

The end result of this process is that because of all that repeated examination of Clinton’s affairs, people become convinced that she must be corrupt to the core. It’s not that there isn’t plenty of negative coverage of Trump, because of course there is, but it’s focused mostly on the crazy things he says on any given day.

But the truth is that you’d have to work incredibly hard to find a politician who has the kind of history of corruption, double-dealing, and fraud that Donald Trump has. The number of stories which could potentially deserve hundreds and hundreds of articles is absolutely staggering. Here’s a partial list:

• Trump’s casino bankruptcies, which left investors holding the bag while he skedaddled with their money
•  Trump’s habit of refusing to pay contractors who had done work for him, many of whom are struggling small businesses
• Trump University, which includes not only the people who got scammed and the Florida investigation, but also a similar story from Texas where the investigation into Trump U was quashed.
• The Trump Institute, another get-rich-quick scheme in which Trump allowed a couple of grifters to use his name to bilk people out of their money
•  The Trump Network, a multi-level marketing venture (a.k.a. pyramid scheme) that involved customers mailing in a urine sample which would be analyzed to produce for them a specially formulated package of multivitamins
• Trump Model Management, which reportedly had foreign models lie to customs officials and work in the U.S. illegally, and kept them in squalid conditions while they earned almost nothing for the work they did
• ·Trump’s employment of foreign guest workers at his resorts, which involves a claim that he can’t find Americans to do the work
• ·Trump’s use of hundreds of undocumented workers from Poland in the 1980s, who were paid a pittance for their illegal work
•  Trump’s history of being charged with housing discrimination
•  Trump’s connections to mafia figures involved in New York construction
• ·The time Trump paid the Federal Trade Commission $750,000 over charges that he violated anti-trust laws when trying to take over a rival casino company
• ·The fact that Trump is now being advised by Roger Ailes, who was forced out as Fox News chief when dozens of women came forward to charge him with sexual harassment. 

To repeat, the point is not that these stories have never been covered, because they have. The point is that they get covered briefly, then everyone in the media moves on. If any of these kinds of stories involved Clinton, news organizations would rush to assign multiple reporters to them, those reporters would start asking questions, and we’d learn more about all of them.

[I]t means that to a great extent, for all the controversy he has caused and all the unflattering stories in the press about him, Trump is still being let off the hook.

Will Trump's Overt Racism Drive Away Moderate Whites?

Donald Trump may have locked up the white Christofascists and white supremacist (in my view, the two are nearly synonymous) vote through blatant racism, but some research suggests that moderate whites may be turned off by Trump's odious racism.  True, what voters do in the secrecy of the voting booth may differ from research results, but the findings are encouraging and suggest that whites as a whole are less racist than Trump believes.  Salon has a piece that looks at this issue.  Here are excerpts: 

Over the past few weeks, there has been been renewed discussion about Donald Trump’s past racism and the racism that has persisted throughout his campaign. Trump and his father were sued twice by the Department of Justice for refusing to rent apartments to black people. He has said, in private, that he believes, “Laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is; I believe that.” He also publicly called for the execution of the Central Park Five, all of whom were later declared innocent (afterwards, he said they were “no angels.” During his campaign, Trump has regularly engaged in racist rhetoric. He engaged in a racist attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the judge overseeing the lawsuit against Trump University. Trump has retweeted racists and accounts connected to the “white genocide” hashtag (a white supremacist hashtag). He has frequently referred to Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas.”

[M]any have dismissed the idea that Trump’s racism will do anything other than help him among whites. However, my analysis of ANES 2016 suggests that Trump’s racism may be extreme enough to alienate not just voters of color, but also moderate whites.

Many commentators have correctly noted that Trump’s racist comments hurt him among people of color. Latinos and Asian Americans have widely rejected Trump, and in one Ohio poll, Trump had 0% support among African-Americans. Among harder-to-poll Spanish-speaking Latinos, Trump’s support is less than 11 percent. Trump may well win an even smaller share of the non-white vote than Republicans normally win (Romney won just 17% of the non-white vote). However, there are several reasons to believe that some whites who would happily cast a vote for a Reagan, Romney or McCain would hesitate to vote for Trump. Why? Because Americans are very aware of more glaring forms of racism, like racial stereotyping. As legal scholar Ian Haney Lopez argues, the Republicans have had electoral success by using dog-whistles, rather than explicit racial appeals.  We find that Trump support among white Independents is very low among respondents with racial resentment of .5 or less (the scale goes from 0 to 1 and the mean resentment for whites is slightly above .6). Trump support among white Independents and white Republicans is indistinguishable at both low and high levels of resentment, but at the levels of resentment towards the middle (.4 to .8), white Independents are significantly less likely to support Trump than white Republicans. At around average (middle) levels of resentment, there is a higher probability of Clinton support among Independents, compared to Trump.

While the results are significant, there is a good deal of uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the effect. However, the results do suggest that Trump’s racism could alienate some white and racially liberal Independents. It’s also likely he will be hurt more when his past racism is more widely discussed in the media.

The Right Wing Media's Civil War

In the past the right wing media from Fox News to blogs like Red State have provided a monolithic noise machine attacking Democrats and progressive policies while basically brainwashing its listeners.  It one of the reasons that much of the Republican Party base is so ill informed on so many issues even as the base reacts to the propaganda like Pavlov's dog.  Now, Donald Trump has thrown a wrench in the smooth running operation as some on the right find it impossible to support a serial liar and con-artist who is utterly unprepared and unfit to occupy the White House.  True, most of the right wing media continue to spin lies, but the cracks in the facade are growing as a piece in Salon examines.  Long term, this could be a very good thing for America.  Here are some column highlights:

What good is having a right-wing echo chamber if it’s not cranked up and blaring out a disciplined message during the presidential campaign? The conservative movement continues to grapple with that propaganda question in the wake of Donald Trump clinching the nomination, which has created deep fissures within the right-wing media and its historically united front.

For decades, conservatives have taken pride in their media bubble that not only keeps Republican fans selectively informed about breaking news, but also bashes away at all political foes. In full-fledged campaign mode, the right-wing media can effectively serve as a battering ram that Republicans use to attack their enemies or fend off in-coming volleys.

But Trump has scrambled that long-held equation. Embracing positions that often fall outside the orthodoxy of modern-day conservatism, while simultaneously rolling out non-stop insults, Trump has presented conservative pundits with a monumental headache: How do you defend a creation like Trump? Or as one National Review Trump headline lamented last month, “What’s a Conservative to Do?” 

That riddle is especially tricky when Trump puts would-be allies in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the truly indefensible, like the widening scandal surrounding Trump University, the presumptive nominee’s former real estate seminar business. Over the years the dubious venture has been the subject of several ongoing fraud investigations and lawsuits, including one by the state of New York on behalf of 5,000 alleged victims.
 The strange part? Some key conservative voices agree with the Democrat’s legal assessment. That’s why back in February, a National Review writer denounced the Trump seminars as “a massive scam.” And last month,The Weekly Standard warned that Trump U. represented a “political time bomb” that could doom the candidate’s November chances: “Democrats will see to that.” 

 [W]atching the conservative media this campaign season: It’s been completely knocked off its game. Known for its regimented messaging and willingness to almost robotically defend any Republican front-runner and nominee, Trump is finding only a smattering of defenders when it comes to damning allegations about his scam seminars.

And when Trump recently escalated the Trump U. story by attacking Judge Gonzalo Curiel and insisted he couldn’t be impartial because of his “Mexican heritage,” the presumptive nominee found himself even further isolated within the conservative movement.
 As The Atlantic noted after reviewing previously secret training materials for Trump U., “the playbook focuses on the seminars’ real purpose: to browbeat attendees into purchasing expensive Trump University course packages.” According to an affidavit from former student Richard Hewson, he and his wife “concluded that we had paid over $20,000 for nothing, based on our belief in Donald Trump and the promises made at the free seminar and three-day workshop.” . . . . The con appeared to touch every aspect of the real estate selling events. 

Even Trump’s fiercest media defender, Breitbart.com, has taken a timid approach to the Trump U. fraud story, with the site refusing to offer up a full-throated defense of the alleged scam.

The ferocious conservative echo chamber isn’t built for nuance and it’s not designed for internal debate. But by sparking so much general dissention and by putting conservatives in the position of having to defend something as noxious as Trump U., the nominee is helping to mute the right-wing media voice this campaign season.

Why Closet Racist Republicans Won’t Renounce Trump

When I left the Republican Party many years ago at this point, I had several motivations: (i) the GOP's fusing fundamentalist religious belief with the civil laws, and (ii) the hypocrisy of Republicans who publicly pretended to condemn bigots and homophobes, yet actually silently applauded them. Nowadays, these problems have only worsened, especially as blatant outward racism has become accepted with little or no condemnation from party officials. Enter Donald Trump as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and there is little room to hide without being labeled as condoning Trump's ugly bigotry.  The result is that we are seeing half-efforts from Republicans such as Paul Ryan to seemingly condemn Trump's statements without renouncing their self-prostitution to the man and his foul views.  An op-ed in the New York Times looks at this phenomenon of far too many Republicans actually quietly agreeing with Trump's misogyny.  Here are excerpts:

When Donald Trump attacked a federal judge whose parents were born in Mexico, Hispanic Americans were outraged. Other minority groups saw a pattern of bigotry. Democrats had a hard time concealing their glee. Republican leaders pretended they disapproved.

Well, to be fair, they did disapprove in a way — not because Trump believes the things he says, but because he says them so directly.

Far too many Republicans share this kind of racism and have for a long time. Trump has just dispensed with dog whistles and revels in his bigotry instead. But this is the party the Republicans have been deliberately and assiduously building for many decades, the party of division and intolerance. 

Today’s Republicans have stymied every effort at reforming immigration, at achieving true equality for women, at ending the scourge of racist drug laws and criminal sentencing rules. The Republican Party has generated a wave of laws designed to make it harder for black Americans and other minorities to vote. It’s not that Republicans don’t want to deport millions of Mexicans and ban Muslims from our shores. They just don’t like to talk about it in the open.

So when Donald Trump started to attack Mexicans, Muslims and anyone else who popped into his head, Republican leaders may have thought it was bad tactics. But all that talk this year about the “Republican establishment” being aghast at Trump for his outlandish ideas was nonsense.

What really bothers Republicans is that Trump is not a member of their club and did not observe party discipline by saving his disdain for Democrats.

Asked about one right-wing blogger who said Republicans were backing a racist candidate, McConnell simpered that what matters is winning the White House. “The right-of-center world needs to respect the fact that the primary voters have spoken,” he said.  Yes, in favor of blatant intolerance.

Given the cowardice of his fellow members of the party of Lincoln, Trump is, naturally, doubling down on running for racist in chief.

On Monday, Bloomberg Politics reported that Trump told campaign surrogates in a conference call to keep up the attack on Judge Curiel. And on Tuesday, he said in a statement, “It is unfortunate that my comments have been misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage.” His evidence for his tolerance was, as usual, that he has lots of Mexican-Americans working for him.

[H]he [Trump] obviously plans to go on riding this tiger — because he thinks it will take him into the White House; because he is engaged in a creepy act of self destruction to avoid actually having to be president, which is hard work; or simply because he enjoys making bigoted comments.

Supporters of Bernie Sanders who talk about voting for Trump instead of Clinton if their candidate finally decides to drop out should consider this latest episode, and Trump’s larger pattern, carefully. They should know they would be voting for a racist.

New York State Sues Donald Trump and "Trump University" for Fraud

In my opinion, Donald Trump is among the most detestable, ego-maniacal, blow hard s one will ever find.  He is in a tempestuous love affair with himself and knows no limits in pomposity.  And, now New York State has accused him of marketing a fraudulent scheme called "Trump University" that defrauded the gullible out of money.  I sincerely hope that the State of New York wins the case.  Trump, not surprisingly, claims that the lawsuit is politically motivated.  Anything to distract and blow a smoke screen.  Here are highlights from a piece in the Washington Post:

New York’s attorney general sued Donald Trump for $40 million Saturday, saying the real estate mogul helped run a phony “Trump University” that promised to make students rich but instead steered them into expensive and mostly useless seminars, and even failed to deliver promised apprenticeships.

Trump shot back that the Democrat’s lawsuit is false and politically motivated.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says many of the 5,000 students who paid up to $35,000 thought they would at least meet Trump but instead all they got was their picture taken in front of a life-size picture of “The Apprentice” TV star.

“Trump University engaged in deception at every stage of consumers’ advancement through costly programs and caused real financial harm,” Schneiderman said. “Trump University, with Donald Trump’s knowledge and participation, relied on Trump’s name recognition and celebrity status to take advantage of consumers who believed in the Trump brand.”

The lawsuit says many of the wannabe moguls were unable to land even one real estate deal and were left far worse off than before the lessons, facing thousands of dollars in debt for the seminar program once billed as a top quality university with Trump’s “hand-picked” instructors.

Schneiderman is suing the program, Trump as the university chairman, and the former president of the university in a case to be handled in state Supreme Court in Manhattan. He accuses them of engaging in persistent fraud, illegal and deceptive conduct and violating federal consumer protection law. The $40 million he seeks is mostly to pay restitution to consumers.  He dismissed Trump’s claim of a political motive.

Schneiderman’s lawsuit covers complaints dating to 2005 through 2011. Students paid between $1,495 and $35,000 to learn from the Manhattan mogul who wrote the best seller, “Art of the Deal” a decade ago followed by “How to Get Rich” and “Think Like a Billionaire.”
 
At the seminars, consumers were told about “Trump Elite” mentorships that cost $10,000 to $35,000. Students were promised individual instruction until they made their first deal. Schneiderman said participants were urged to extend the limit on their credit cards for real estate deals, but then used the credit to pay for the Trump Elite programs. The attorney general said the program also failed to promptly cancel memberships as promised.

While Trump's program is higher profile than many of these real estate "universities" and "boot camps," there are a plethora of these programs that charge thousands of dollars but deliver little or nothing of substance and disseminate "expert prepared" forms that are mediocre at best.    The only one who gets rich from these programs are those putting on the supposedly educational programs.