Tag: Don the Con

Trump thinks he can bluff his way to victory

AlterNet logoA few weeks ago, in one of his many branding brainstorms during this COVID-19 crisis, President Trump started calling himself a “wartime” president who was valiantly leading the country in the battle against “the invisible enemy.” This was rolled out like a campaign slogan, indicating that it was part of a planned strategy to put Trump at the center of the response to the pandemic.

In remarks obviously prepared by someone else, he evoked World War II and said:

Every generation of Americans has been called to make shared sacrifices for the good of the nation. … Now it’s our time. We must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together, and we will come through together. It’s the invisible enemy. That’s always the toughest enemy, the invisible enemy.

Not bad. This was in mid-March, during the period when he was appearing at the task force briefings and pretending to be in charge, before he realized that everything had gone awry and that he was being blamed for the failures. In fact, it was just a day later that he started passing the buck to the governors for failing to save their states, explaining that the federal government is simply “back-up” and not a “shipping clerk.”

Trump’s company has received at least $970,000 from U.S. taxpayers for room rentals

Washington Post logoThe U.S. government has paid at least $970,000 to President Trump’s company since Trump took office — including payments for more than 1,600 nightly room rentals at Trump’s hotels and clubs, according to federal records obtained by The Washington Post.

Since March, The Post has catalogued an additional $340,000 in such payments. They were almost all related to trips taken by Trump, his family and his top officials. The government is not known to have paid for the rooms for Trump and his family members at his properties but it has paid for staffers and Secret Service agents to accompany the president.

The payments create an unprecedented business relationship between the president’s private company and his government — which began in the first month of Trump’s presidency, and continued into this year, records show. Continue reading.

Chris Hayes Dismantles Donald Trump Campaign’s Biggest Con

“He wants you to believe that he’s strong, but he’s not. He is not a colossus. He’s a con man,” said the MSNBC host.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Monday night shattered the perception that Donald Trump is unbeatable, suggesting the president is much more politically vulnerable than he may realize.

The host of “All In with Chris Hayes” acknowledged there was a “real unmistakable sense of fear among Democrats” that Trump will win reelection in November after the GOP-controlled Senate voted to acquit him on impeachment charges.

Trump’s campaign is keen to project the president as a “colossus” with a “juggernaut” of support behind him, the news anchor noted. Continue reading.

Trump Pushed for a Sweetheart Tax Deal on His First Hotel. It’s Cost New York City $410,068,399 and Counting.

Our latest episode of “Trump, Inc.” looks at how the Trump family has learned “how to turn politics into money.”

In 1975, New York City was run-down and on the verge of bankruptcy. Twenty-nine-year-old Donald Trump saw an opportunity. He wanted to acquire and redevelop the dilapidated Commodore Hotel in midtown Manhattan next to Grand Central Terminal.

Trump had bragged to the executive controlling the sale that he could use his political connections to get tax breaks for the deal.

The executive was skeptical. But the next day, the executive was invited into Trump’s limousine, which ushered him to City Hall. There, he met with Donald’s father Fred and Mayor Abe Beame, to whom the Trumps had given lavishly.

Seth Meyers Dissects Donald Trump’s Long History Of Spreading Conspiracy Theories

“He’s always been a racist, he’s always been a con artist, and he’s always been a conspiracy theorist,” said the “Late Night” host.

Seth Meyers on Monday reminded viewers of President Donald Trump’s yearslong history of spreading unhinged conspiracy theories.

The host of NBC’s “Late Night” picked apart the president’s past dissemination of untruths after Trump used Twitter over the weekend to amplify a baseless claim that tried to link the death of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein with former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Meyers noted how Trump had previously promoted the racist birther conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., and how he has also claimed without evidence since taking office that millions of undocumented immigrants are voting illegally in U.S. elections.

View the complete August 13 article by Lee Moran on the Huffington Post website here.

The 6 essential cons that define Trump’s success

Credit: John Minchillo AP

A playbook of deceit starts with the ‘origin lie’ that made him richer than he was. And it’s still being written.

Nearly four decades ago, Donald Trump deceived me into including him on the first Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. He claimed a net worth of $100 million but was actually worth less than a tenth of that. Last week, President Trump declared a national state of emergency to bypass the constitutional budgeting powers of Congress and divert money to build a wall on the border with Mexico. What do these acts have in common? Only that they are the first and latest entries on the continuum of cons that have defined Trump’s success.

A real estate insider told me back in the 1980s that Trump’s win-at-all-costs father, Fred, “loves a crook and he loves a showman.” Donald Trump has built his extraordinary career by exhibiting the characteristics of both. He is a self-promoter willing to lie, swindle and destroy to advance his insatiable self-interest. I am not the first journalist to observe that for Trump, the “Art of the Deal” has been the art of the con. But as the first journalist to enable the consummate con man’s career-boosting deceptions, I have a completist’s view of the pernicious racket that is his playbook. Here, in roughly chronological order, are the six essential cons around which Trump has built and sustained his success: Continue reading “The 6 essential cons that define Trump’s success”