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👑 Portrait of a President

He can’t spell.

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Wow.

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Go to 5:40 to hear Barbara Res, a former executive with T Org discuss what she thinks goes on in T’s mind…vis a vis - why is he invoking executive privilege now?

Continuing on with Barbara on this interview I think the really interesting part continues when Ari Melber asks Barbara, what is it that T will do to persuade the Rosensteins, the Barr’s to conform to what T wants. She responds and says a few reasons possibly. I am incredulous, but it makes sense.

*T has a pied piper effect - (even an architect who T sued wanted to vote for him.)

*T could be holding something over them (Rosenstein did NOT want to be fired)

*T could be offering them something they want (The IRS position went to a friend)

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What we’ve always known about T always confirms our worst fear - that he is a con man preoccupied with impulsive choices, making ‘big’ deals that may sound ‘good,’ but have not thought behind them and yes, that he’s a fraud and an “emperor wearing no clothes.”

It enrages me to see this confirmed time and time again…but here it is. Our fool.

I tend to see my time with him — the first part of it, anyway, before things started going bad in a hurry — as his “King Midas” period. I never said this to him; if I had, he probably would have thought I was suggesting he enter the muffler business. But there was a stretch of months when everything he touched turned into a deal. The banks seemed to accept the version of him depicted in his first book, “The Art of the Deal,” which we now know from his previous ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, was entirely invented. They believed it over what they saw on his balance sheets or heard coming out of his mouth, and they never said no to his requests for more money. Often they came up with things he could say yes to before he could think of them himself. As a result, a failing real estate developer who had little idea of what he was doing and less interest in doing it once he’d held the all-important press conference wound up owning three New Jersey hotel-casinos, the Plaza Hotel, the Eastern Airlines Shuttle and a 281-foot yacht.

A real go-getter, right? But Trump’s portfolio did not jibe with what I saw each day — which to a surprisingly large extent was him looking at fabric swatches. Indeed, flipping through fabric swatches seemed at times to be his main occupation. Some days he would do it for hours, then take me in what he always called his “French military helicopter” to Atlantic City — where he looked at more fabric swatches or sometimes small samples of wood paneling. It was true that the carpets and drapes at his properties needed to be refreshed frequently, and the seats on the renamed Trump Shuttle required occasional reupholstering. But the main thing about fabric swatches was that they were within his comfort zone — whereas, for example, the management of hotels and airlines clearly wasn’t. One of his aides once told me that every room at the Plaza could be filled at the “rack rate” (list price) every night, and the revenue still wouldn’t cover the monthly payment of the loan he’d taken out to buy the place. In other words, he’d made a ridiculous deal. Neither he nor the banks had done the math beforehand.

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-the-billiondollar-loser-his-ghostwriter-recalls-the-king-midas-years-090000640.html

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The fabric swatches obsession is so pathetic – and so believable. :clown_face:

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Thx. @Keaton_James for freeing up this space to break my 3-in-a-row…(by commenting)

fabric swatches…yeah, all for show.

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Post away. This thread is actually becoming pretty funny.

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The word ‘nitwit’ among others stands out to me.
:exploding_head:

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The fact that T must stay in his own properties has just blown up in his face - diplomatically speaking. The Irish will not partake in this arrangement and call it ‘unseemly.’ to stay at a T-owned property.

President Donald Trump’s obsession with staying at his own resorts isn’t just costing American taxpayers anymore, it’s straining diplomatic relations. CNN reports that the White House is pushing for a June meeting with Ireland’s head of state take place at the president’s golf course in Doonbeg. The Irish government isn’t pleased:

An Irish government source with knowledge of ongoing discussions told CNN that the White House is insisting the Irish prime minister, or taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, come to the President’s golf course in Doonbeg to host a meeting between the two leaders.

According to the source, “The Irish government feel that protocol dictates that any event theyhost for President Trump should be at a venue of their choosing and certainly not at an hotel owned by Trump.”

“It is a bit unseemly to demand that the taoiseach host President Trump at his hotel,” the source said.

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These are truths about T’s Lying. Chatles Blow boils some of it down to ‘fear fibbing’ - from this Nyt opinion piece which is reminding us that none of this is normal because he gets a pass from his loyal R base.

NYTimes:
An Ode to ‘Desperate Don’

Last month, The Washington Post’s fact-checker column announced that Trump had reached the ignominious marker of having told more than 10,000 false and misleading claims as president. And, the pace has quickened from the early periods of his presidency, in what The Post called a “tsunami of untruths.”

Trump lies about everything and for every reason. He lies to brag. He lies to deflect. He lies to inflate. He lies to defame. He lies to praise. He sometimes seems to lie just for the sport of it.

He is being trained, right before our eyes, to see that there is no cost for this deceit among the people who support him. He can lie at a rally, right to their faces, and they will still cheer. He can lie in public proclamations, and the Republican cowards in Congress will find a way to defend, rationalize or forgive it.
We occasionally get a glorious glimpse of this fear fibbing. It’s like the time he held the bracing news conference in Trump Tower to defend his both-sides-ism on Charlottesville. It’s like the time he told the deer-in-the-headlights lie on Air Force One about not knowing about hush money payments to women alleging to have had sexual encounters with him (while he was married, by the way). It is in the police-interrogation-room-like correction that he didn’t mean to side with Russia — and deny our intelligence community — while standing next to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

In all those moments, he simply reeks of dread and trepidation. In those moments, we are reminded that Trump knows what other thinking people know: In a world not blinded and numbed by racial tribalism, demographic fears and cultural panic, these issues that barely nick him would cut him smooth and deep.

It is in those moments that we are reminded of what normal felt like, when an apology or explanation was compelled, and politicians confronted their foibles with some degree of contrition.

https://nyti.ms/2VA9nqM

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An excellent summary of Trump’s lies about his taxes:

The lies:

  • Trump promised the nation more than 16 times that he would release his taxes. And he didn’t just say he intended to, he said he would “absolutely” release them.

  • Trump weaponized his tax returns saying he would release them when Obama released his birth certificate and Clinton released her emails.

  • Being under audit is no excuse. Nixon released his while he was under audit.

  • There’s no way that all Trump’s recent tax returns are under audit. The former and current head of the IRS have gone on record saying the IRS never audits a person year after year. Also, Michael Cohen testified he was sure Trump was not under audit in 2016.

  • Trump says people don’t care, but they do. In 2017, 74% of Americans said that he should release his tax returns.

What he might be hiding:

  • May not be as rich as he claims to be.

  • May be paying much less in taxes than middle class Americans.

  • May be hiding undisclosed sources of overseas income which could reveal foreign entanglements.

  • Fear of tax experts exposing his dubious or perhaps even illegal financial maneuvers to avoid taxes.

And here’s a more in depth look from Mother Jones:

The main point here is that while Trump was campaigning he promised he would release his tax returns after the election. This reassured a huge number of voters that anything in Trump’s taxes couldn’t be that bad if he’s willing to release them later so they went ahead and voted for him – whereas if he had been saying at that time that he would never release his taxes, those voters would not have voted for him. So now Trump is flat out lying when he says that people knew they couldn’t see his taxes and they didn’t care and voted for him anyway. B.S.! They did care and they (foolishly) took him at his word that he would release his taxes after the election when he never had any intention of doing so.

“Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didn’t. And they elected him anyway,” Trump’s chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said last month…

Lie. Lie. Lie. Trump conned voters into voting for him by reassuring them he would release his taxes later.

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The answer is all of the above. :joy:

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Appropos of well…the past 854 days perhaps. NOT

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This line stands out to me from the most recent Quinnipiac Poll 5.21.19

President Trump begins his reelection campaign in a deep hole as 54 percent of American voters say they “definitely” will not vote for him,

Excerpt

But American voters give President Donald Trump a negative 38 - 57 percent approval rating, compared to a negative 41 - 55 percent approval in a May 2 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University National Poll.

American voters give Trump mixed grades for his handling of the economy as 48 percent approve and 45 percent disapprove. He gets negative grades for handling other issues:

  • 37 - 58 percent for handling foreign policy;
  • 39 - 53 percent for handling trade;
  • 40 - 50 percent for handling the nation’s policy toward China;
  • 37 - 47 percent for handling the nation’s policy toward Iran.

Voters say 48 - 40 percent the president’s trade policies are bad for the U.S. economy, and say 44 - 36 percent that these policies are bad for their personal financial situation.

“The nation’s economy is pretty darn good and President Donald Trump’s approval numbers are pretty darn awful,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "So what to make of the good news, bad news mashup and how to correct it?

“For the moment, the disparity leaves the president on shaky re-election ground.”

President Trump begins his reelection campaign in a deep hole as 54 percent of American voters say they “definitely” will not vote for him, compared to 52 percent in an April 30 Quinnipiac University National Poll. Today, 31 percent say they “definitely” will vote for Trump and 12 percent say they will “consider voting for him.”

Definitely voting for Trump are 76 percent of Republicans, 3 percent of Democrats and 21 percent of independent voters.

Definitely not voting for Trump are 10 percent of Republicans, 94 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independent voters.

American voters give Trump a negative 38 - 57 percent favorability rating.

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Must read character piece.

During international flights, Trump typically remains in the front cabin. He does four things, the current and former aides said: eats, watches television or reads newspapers, talks with staff and calls friends and allies back home as he zips away into foreign skies.

Trump will spend hours reviewing cable news coverage recorded on a TiVo-like device or sifting through cardboard boxes of newspapers and magazines that have been lugged aboard. He’ll summon sleeping staffers to his office at moments the rest of the plane is dark, impatient to discuss his upcoming meetings or devise a response to something he saw in the media.

Trump has long insisted that he is treated unfairly by the news media, and if he sees something on television that bothers him – “which he invariably will,” one official quipped – he instructs his staff to fix it, no matter if they are at the White House or flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Often, instead of looking over his remarks for upcoming bilateral meetings or paging through a briefing book, the President will fixate on the negative headline that day, griping that none of his predecessors has been through such treatment.

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And that’s why he’s always so ill-prepared – serving himself rather than the nation he was elected to serve.

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His bully tactics extend into marriages and pre-nups. I believe Marla Maples is the source for a few tax return leaks WTF

But before marrying, Trump needed Maples to sign a prenup. His divorce with Ivana had been a legal war. (In March 1990, Ivana sued Trump for $2.5 billion to nullify a revised version of the prenup that Trump’s lawyer, Roy Cohn, had drafted back in 1977.) Ultimately, Trump and Ivana settled for $14 million. (Ivana took the deal because her team worried Trump was going bankrupt.) In addition, Trump gave Ivana their Greenwich estate and agreed to pay $650,000 annually to support Ivanka, Eric, and Don. Jr. Trump wanted to make sure Maples couldn’t come after his money.

Convincing her wasn’t easy. “This was the big battle all along,” Maples told Vanity Fair at the time. But Trump persisted and Maples relented, telling a journalist that she would renegotiate the agreement in five years. Trump hired the lawyer Stan Lotwin to draw up terms. Maples was represented by the New York lawyer Sharon Stein. Maples tried to hold out for better terms, but Trump utterly refused to budge, the source told me. He held the line up their wedding day at the Plaza, said the source. “Marla was under duress. Donald’s position was: without the prenup he wasn’t going to get married.” With 24 hours to go before a thousand guests arrived, Maples caved.

The stringent agreement Maples signed reflected the degree of leverage Trump had over the Georgia-born beauty queen whose most valuable asset was the $250,000 engagement ring Trump bought her. “What was she going to do? She would have taken whatever he said,” Felder told me. According to the prenup, Maples surrendered any claim to Trump’s future income and inheritances. The $1 million award Trump would pay her was it. (There would be no alimony.)

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This says it all…small minded man hell bent on featuring his pomposity in lieu of heartfelt patriotism.

How small he is! Small in spirit, in valor, in dignity, in statecraft, this American president who knows nothing of history and cares still less and now bestrides Europe with his family in tow like some tin-pot dictator with a terrified entourage.

To have Donald Trump — the bone-spur evader of the Vietnam draft, the coddler of autocrats, the would-be destroyer of the European Union, the pay-up-now denigrator of NATO, the apologist for the white supremacists of Charlottesville — commemorate the boys from Kansas City and St. Paul who gave their lives for freedom is to understand the word impostor. You can’t make a sculpture from rotten wood.

It’s worth saying again. If Europe is whole and free and at peace, it’s because of NATO and the European Union; it’s because the United States became a European power after World War II; **it’s because America’s word was a solemn pledge; **it’s because that word cemented alliances that were not zero-sum games but the foundation for stability and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic.

Of this, Trump understands nothing. Therefore he cannot comprehend the sacrifice at Omaha Beach 75 years ago. He cannot see that the postwar trans-Atlantic achievement — undergirded by the institutions and alliances he tramples upon with such crass truculence — was in fact the vindication of those young men who gave everything.

…

My impression here is that Europe has gotten used to Trump to the point that it is no longer strange that the American president is a stranger. In less than two and a half years Trump has stripped his office of dignity, authority and values.

,

There is something so disturbing about a very small man like Trump impugning the height of the mayor of the great international city he is visiting that even 28 months of progressive inurement to his outrages feels inadequate.

America is much better than this, much better than an American president who, as the cartoonist Dave Granlund suggested, probably thinks the D in D-Day stands for Donald and spends the night of the commemoration trashing Bette Midler on Twitter.

As for the Republican Party, don’t get me started. To recover its bearings the G.O.P. would do well to recall one of its own, Eisenhower, who in that same 20th-anniversary interview said that America and its allies stormed the Normandy beaches “for one purpose only.”

It was not to “fulfill any ambitions that America had for conquest.” No, it was “just to preserve freedom, systems of self-government in the world.” It was an act, in other words, consistent with the highest ideals of the American idea that Trump and his Republican enablers seem so intent on eviscerating.

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At some point there’s just not much left to say about Trump. He’s unfit for office, disloyal to the nation, and violates his oath right in front of us over and over again. You either care enough to do something about it or you don’t.

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5 June 2019

After three people were killed in London in the space of 24 hours, Trump retweeted a tweet from right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins and said that the UK capital needed a new mayor and that Khan was “a disaster”.


Donald J. Trump :heavy_check_mark: @realDonaldTrump

LONDON needs a new mayor ASAP. Khan is a disaster - will only get worse!


Katie Hopkins :heavy_check_mark: @KTHopkins
20 hours in Stab-City UPDATE
2 stabbed to death
1 shot dead
Three stabbed - but not dead.
Wandsworth & Tower Hamlets
This is Khan’s Londonistan.
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1139967706424369152)

Several hours later he tweeted again, saying that Khan was ‘destroying the City of London.”

Khan is the reason I don’t feel like visiting London anytime soon.
(https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1140035545738989569)

A spokesman for the mayor said that Khan’s thoughts were “with the victims’ families. He is not going to waste his time responding to this sort of tweet.”

Just to enlighten Trump. New York and London have about the same population - just over 8 million people. The number of homicides in New York in 2017 was 290 the lowest number in years. The number of homicides in London in 2018 was 132, that was the highest its been in years.

I don’t think it is anything to do with the risk of being killed that would keep him from visiting London again.

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