I suppose we could be doing a lot worse in this country; after Vladimir Putin announced a “partial” mobilization of reservists in an attempt to bail himself out of the mistake of invading Ukraine, there were the first significant anti-war protests across Russia. Of course in Russia protesting the war will land you in prison; I captured a snippet of the live stream from Moscow with protesters being arrested:
Then again, this could be Florida, where such protests could get you arrested to. But then again, if you are a Trumpist, you can just go ahead and ransack the Capitol Building with the blessing of your Fuhrer thinking that he is going to "protect" you.
Meanwhile, it has not been a good past week for Donald Trump himself, all of it due to his foolhardy, arrogant, narcissistic nature. The special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, is a New York Republican, appointed to determine the nature of the documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago. Like Robert Mueller, he isn't a great fan of Trump, and has indicated that he is going to treat documents marked as “classified” as such and illegally taken unless Trump can prove that he went through a proper procedure to declassify them—which is apparently why Trump’s lawyers belatedly tried to stop their own request, because in order to please Trump they would have to lie to justify why he had them, and thus put themselves in legal jeopardy.
Then there was the Youngstown, Ohio rally which will probably be very useful for sound bites against him if Trump decides to run in 2024. Laced with QAnon conspiracies that we thought were only the purview of the truly demented like Marjorie Taylor Greene, his supporters seem to showcase Trump’s own version of a Nazi salute here:
Trump's entire speech was two-hours of non-stop fascist nationalism, justifications for his crimes against America, and attacks against the forces of law boxing him in a corner. He continuously used terms that had no relation to reality. Even though there are issues with the economy at the moment, his claims of disaster are simply not what the vast majority of Americans are experiencing; “Surging food, energy and electricity prices are busting family budgets, crushing small businesses and causing shortages, suffering, mayhem and despair.” Trump doesn’t give Americans any credit for being resourceful and getting by just fine, which is what most Americans are doing in fact.
Only a crazed fascist with mental stability issues who hates America enough to lie or exaggerate beyond what even what most of his even his most extremist supporters believe makes patently false assertions as “Murder, shooting, stabbings, rapes, carjackings are skyrocketing. Blood thirsty criminals are laying waste to Democrat run cities. The southern border has been completely erased. We no longer have a border.” Trump’s racist fascination with brown-skinned people was peppered here, there and everywhere in the speech:
Our country is being invaded. It’s an invasion by millions of illegal aliens from all over the planet and left wings sickos pumping toxic anti-American propaganda into the minds of our beautiful youth. They’re destroying our youth. The choice this November is simple. If you want to continue this national catastrophe, vote for the radical left Democrat. Let’s do it, go ahead. You won’t have a country left.
It is Democrats, not Republicans, who have been seen as the champions of the working class. But after Republicans politicians backed by their corporate paymasters crushed the unions, who are working people going to blame? Republicans? An alleged “billionaire” like Trump who cheated and swindled contractors out of what they were owed for doing work for him? Or those business partners and investors who lost millions when Trump filed for his numerous bankruptcies? Oh, no, it is the fault of
…a vile group of corrupt power, hungry globalists, socialists and liberal extremists in Washington has been waging war on the hardworking people of Ohio. They sold off your factories, shut down your coal mines, closed up your steel mill, shipped away your jobs, sacrifice your energy industry through open your borders and trampled on your values.
Trump then claimed that a poll showed him 18-points ahead of Joe Biden; according to FiveThirtyEight, only one Harris Poll in the past month gives him a few percentage point lead; both Biden and Trump, however, have similar approval/disapproval polling. Trump then claimed he left the life of luxury to enter the political life; we know that he never expected to be elected, and his presidency was little more than a demonized clown show, like Pennywise from the Stephen King story. Not living the life of “luxury”? He never had so much power to abuse, and his bills were paid for by taxpayers. Not only that he took full of advantage of “presidential immunity” to commit unlawful and unethical acts. He never had it so good.
Trump then again refers to his attempt to blackmail Volodymyr Zelenskyy into finding dirt to help him win the 2020 election as a “perfect call.” What’s so “perfect” about it when Zelenskyy apparently doesn’t like or trust him enough to cave in to this, when he probably knows that Trump had no authority to block the aid package? Trump then launched into another attack on Hispanic immigrants, this time lying about where those “gangs” came from:
Our great, I call them soldiers because that’s really what they were. ICE, ICE, they would go into these gangs in Long Island that came out of the toughest parts of South America, the toughest gangs in the world. They used knives, not guns because it’s more painful. They want pain.
No, that is not what is going on; those people were bred on gang culture right here in this country, and those who were deportable went to Central America where those "parts" became “tough” courtesy of the U.S., and now people in those countries are even more likely to migrate here, you blooming idiots.
Of course only an idiot who hates America thinks that “our MAGA movement, make America great again, is by far the greatest political movement in the history of our country.” Trump is clearly talking about himself, not “the people,” as he heads into QAnon territory here:
Together we are standing up against some of the most menacing forces, entrenched interests and vicious opponents our people have ever, ever, ever seen. Despite great outside dangers, our biggest threat remains the sick, sinister and evil people from within our country. And you people deal with them all the time. They’re sick people. There’s something wrong with them.
Oh, wait, he isn’t quite done with his speech yet:
And a Department of Justice that refuses to investigate egregious acts of voting irregularities and fraud. And we have a president who is cognitively impaired and in no condition to lead our country, which may end up in World War 3. We’re a nation that no longer has a free press and has no fair press any longer. Fake news is all you get, and they are truly the enemy of the people. We are a nation where free speech is no longer allowed, where crime is rampant like never before, where the economy has been collapsing, where more people died of COVID in 2021 than in 2020.
Are people really buying this? Wasn't Trump the one who told us not to worry, COVID would disappear in a few days if we did nothing? Yeah, prices are going up, but that just means I stay within a budget and don’t do impulse purchasing for things that just take up space and end-up not understanding why I bought it in the first place. Trump then finally finishes up bragging about his foreign “achievements” when his incompetence and ignorance is largely to blame for what is happening in Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan.
There was plenty of stunned responses and outrage over Trump’s speech (more like one continuous discharge of vomit), but predictably only a muted response from Republicans, even the few who are afraid this kind of won't bode well for November.
Today added to
Trump’s self-inflicted troubles, when New York’s Attorney General, Letitia
James, released a 222-page civil lawsuit against Trump, his businesses, his three
adult children (Jared Kushner was not named), Allen Weisellberg and a few
others
who engaged in numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation in the preparation of Mr. Trump’s annual statements of financial condition (“Statements of Financial Condition” or “Statements”) covering at least the years 2011 through 2021. 2. These acts of fraud and misrepresentation were similar in nature, were committed by upper management at the Trump Organization as part of a common endeavor for each annual Statement, and were approved at the highest levels of the Trump Organization—including by Mr. Trump himself.
Furthermore.
These acts of fraud and misrepresentation grossly inflated Mr. Trump’s personal net worth as reported in the Statements by billions of dollars and conveyed false and misleading impressions to financial counterparties about how the Statements were prepared. Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization used these false and misleading Statements repeatedly and persistently to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms… These misrepresentations also violated a host of state criminal laws, constituting repeated and persistent illegality in violation of Executive Law.
Mr. Trump and his stooges relied “on objectively false numbers to calculate property values. For example, Mr. Trump’s own triplex apartment in Trump Tower was valued as being 30,000 square feet when it was 10,996 square feet. As a result, in 2015 the apartment was valued at $327 million in total, or $29,738 per square foot. That price was absurd given the fact that at that point only one apartment in New York City had ever sold for even $100 million, at a price per square foot of less than $10,000.”
What is especially interesting is what these spreadsheets show concerning the value of the Trump National Golf Course Briarcliff and the Trump National Golf Course in Los Angeles, and the undeveloped land around them:
Among the inflationary schemes was to raise the initiation fees for unsold club memberships at one club by 67 percent, artificially adding $12 million to the “value.” On undeveloped land, the “theoretical” number of “units” that could be built on them would be increased, increasing “value” by almost double. More interestingly, the Trump organization stopped using third-party real estate agents, instead employing an internal Trump Organization employee to make the valuations. In 2021, the Trump Organization switched to an outside golf consultant to estimate value, and as can be seen the valuation of the golf courses decreased dramatically. At the Los Angeles location, the Trump Organization maintained vastly inflated value for the undeveloped land for several years after the land was deemed to be undevelopable because is was found to be unstable and subject to landslides.
This isn’t even scratching the surface on what is in the lawsuit. What can be surmised is that Trump used these fraudulent inflation schemes to obtain loans from Deutsch Bank, since no domestic bank was willing to loan money to Trump after many lost money because of his numerous bankruptcies.
So it was not a good week for Trump; we can only hope that this is just an opening salvo that will lead to this very dangerous man to his permanent downfall.
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