Instead of basking in Hillary's victory, the effects of which may be short-lived, let's follow a few new investigative trails...
The Trump Foundation is looking like pure sleaze.
A new Washington Post report this week presented cases where Trump directed third parties to pay monies owed to him or his businesses directly to the Donald J. Trump Foundation--monies that arguably should have been taxed as income to Trump.
But tax experts interviewed by TPM said the new revelations by the Post include a number of red flags. At best, the practice could be described as sloppy and driven by an extreme ignorance of the law, the experts said. At worst, it fits into a pattern of using the charity as a personal piggy bank. On their own, such allegations could be dealt with a minor slap on the wrist, but coupled with the Post’s previously surfaced examples of Trump using foundation money for his own benefit they fuel major concerns about how Trump’s charity has operated.
One former IRS regulator told TPM that, taken all together, the financial dealings surrounding the foundation would have forced him to “give some serious thought” to recommending a criminal investigation into the foundation’s practices.Lock him up! This "Foundation" looks like just another mechanism for Trump to avoid taxes. Does anyone have any idea why that ticket scalper -- I forget his name -- donated so generously? Any guesses?
We return, once again, to the ancient question: If Trump were really rich, why does he perpetually act like the kind of guy who would dive into the LaBrea Tar Pits to rescue a quarter?
Donald's nose. The sniffling was really, really weird. Howard Dean isn't the only person to suggest that Trump is (or was) a coke-head.
A long time ago, a friend of mine heard Martin Scorcese give a talk, back in the days when Scorcese had a little problem. (He has since cleaned up.) Afterward, my friend would entertain us with merciless impressions of Scorcese, punctuating every half-sentence with a loud SNIFFFF.
As I watched clips of Trump in action, I kept thinking of my friend's impersonation.
We all know that Donald Trump was quite the fan of Studio 54 back in the day. How many people hung out there and avoided coke altogether?
I wish someone could ask Trump's doctor -- under oath -- about the state of Donnie's sinuses.
From Russia with hate. "Foreign" (read: Russian) hackers are going after the phones of Democratic Party officials.
If they were successful, hackers could have been able to acquire a wide range of data from targeted cellphones, including call data, text messages, emails, photos and contact lists, one person with knowledge of the situation said.Trump's denial that the Russians hacked the DNC was very telling, methinks. A man whose usual standard of evidence is "people are saying" is now casting doubt on the findings of the FBI.
"In a sense, your phone is your office brain," said Bruce Schneier, a cyber security expert with Resilient, an IBM company, which is not involved in the investigation. "It's incredibly intimate."
"Anything that's on your phone, if your phone is hacked, the hacker can get it."
Not only that: Russian trolls have tried to game the post-debate spin with the "Trump won" hashtag. We know that 4channers and other lower life forms have bragged about swarming the online snap polls. But what if the job was really done by their comrades overseas?
It's "smart" not to pay taxes. God, did Donnie walk right into that trap or what? His words -- not hers -- left America with the impression that tax avoidance schemes are the real reason why he won't release his tax returns.
Worse, the next day, he denied having said what everyone heard him say. What a delusional dullard! If 9/11 had happened on his watch, he might have announced that the World Trade Center was still standing, if doing so served his purposes.
Even worse than that: He doubled down on his disgusting remarks about Alicia Machado. Even Trump's most blinkered supporters must comprehend the hypocrisy on display here. Doughy Donnie -- a guy who is starting to out-Christie Christie -- has no business fat-shaming anyone.
Throughout the debate, Hillary capitalized on Donnie's great failing: His vanity -- which is to say, his insecurity. Vanity prevents him from ever admitting a failing, no matter how small the sin, no matter how damning the evidence against him.
In politics, humility is the best image. Even if humility doesn't come naturally to you, you have to learn how to fake it for tactical reasons. But Trump won't. Can't. He can't even say "Oops," as Rick Perry did. If Trump had made Perry's mistake, he would have blamed the microphone.
How did such a deeply screwy guy rise so far?
9 comments:
"How did such a deeply screwy guy rise so far?"
Maybe Putin wasn't his first foreign patron, or even his first Russian patron?
some of the coverage today was annoying, but try as they may they can't spin away Donald's HUGE loss. The Miss Housekeeping comments are going to hurt him bigly!
"How did such a deeply screwy guy rise so far?" I dunno Joseph, I just don't know. As a retired educator, I'm feeling like I have personally failed. Then I remember I've only taught in urban schools and I feel much better about myself. ;-)
Glad you are feeling better.
The republican party has a lot to answer for. They are as###e alright but allowing that to be their nominee is a different class of bad. History.
As Trump would tell you, the FBI is seriously compromised or it would have indicted Hildebeast.
I saw today at Hullabaloo that the sniffing is something Trump does all the time and it's akin to a verbal tic. To me it seemed like a nervous cough type of thing. He's fine in front of adoring audiences but in front of Clinton (and Mark Cuban in the audience) - he's a wreck.
I've always wondered though if the "never a drink in my life" thing is true - but I suppose it must be if no pictures have surfaced esp. from Studio 54.
I place the blame for his success on the media's decades-long and successful character assassination of Clinton, the surprising level and intensity of misogyny in our culture, and the fact he has tapped into a real anger people have toward government. The fact his voters want to elect an oligarch to straighten out our gilded-age economy is again, the fault of the media and their corporate overlords.
Any thoughts on Trump and Felix Sater. More here.
Trump seemed nervous for a few minutes at the beginning, after Clinton mentioned how much he'd received from his father to start him off in business. She seemed nervous for a short while too. Which isn't to say that drug-induced sniffing may not have contributed to Trump's nervousness. Don't they say cocaine can make people nervous and jittery, even regardless of anything to do with the nose?
I think my previous comment was supposed to go with your later post.
Post a Comment