Donald Trump and the Deathly Fallout (Part 15)

[VixenToast]

Sycophantic Spice is giving a press briefing... but everyone had to turn their cameras off, even the news. Fucking weird. I'm flipping between Faux and CNN.

[sawasdee]

A press conference with no cameras? WTF?

What the hell is the reasoning behind this? Too easy to tell Spicey is lying when he's on camera?

 

[onekidanddone]

12 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

A press conference with no cameras? WTF?

What the hell is the reasoning behind this? Too easy to tell Spicey is lying when he's on camera?

 

Spicey must be lying, he knows nothing else.

I see it not just me who thinks Agent did this as some stunt to get good press.  How can he not understand these children killed are the same scary brown children he called possible terrorists and blocked them from getting refugee status?  Well D'oh! Shit stain is implacable of critical or complex thought.  Fucking Fuck stick fuck wit hypocrite.  In 2013 he blasts Obama practically commands him not to take action in Syria.   Yea, as if he shit stain knows anything about things beyond his golden tower.  He screams at Obama (oh lord I miss that man) TO GET CONCENT OF CONGRESS before he takes any military moves.  And what does Orange Julius Caesar do? Goes and bombs the fuck out Syria with no idea what the ramifications might be. No planning just, "Hey, my popularity is falling.  I need to some some bigly thing".  Did ever  tell you how much I have this fucking fuck stick?

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

And now Gorsuch is in the SC so I can't wait to see so much get overturned cause maga

I keep thinking about Gorsuch's stance in the "frozen trucker" case and sighing.

For those who missed this during Gorsuch's confirmation hearing, here you go:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/21/opinions/judge-gorsuch-the-frozen-truck-driver-opinion-callan/index.html

 

[formergothardite]

2 hours ago, VixenToast said:

Sycophantic Spice is giving a press briefing... but everyone had to turn their cameras off, even the news. Fucking weird.

That is weird. What could be the reason behind that? What didn't they want people to see? 

Strange things keep happening. 

[Jane M.]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4391096/PIERS-MORGAN-Trump-right-bomb-Assad.html

First pic. Something needs to be done to stop this. What? Who? I don't know but my heart is broken in a billion pieces. Those poor innocent children. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This title pretty much says it all: "The Coming Incompetence Crisis"

Quote

I just read that the Trump administration has filled only 22 of the 553 key positions that require Senate confirmation. This makes me worry that the administration will not have enough manpower to produce the same volume and standard of incompetence that we’ve come to expect so far.

Granted, in its first few months the administration has produced an impressive amount of ineptitude with very few people.

On his worst days Sean Spicer can produce more errors than 10 normal men on their best days. Kellyanne Conway can flail her way through television confrontations 24/7 and still have the stamina to lose to the Teletubbies on Saturday morning.

The White House staffing system is successfully answering the question, How many scorpions can you fit in a bottle? And in general, the personnel process has been so rigorous in its selection of inexperience that those who were hired on the basis of mere nepotism look like Dean Acheson by comparison.

But still, I worry that at the current pace the Trump administration is going to run out of failure. So far, we’ve lived in a golden age of malfunction. Every major Trump initiative has been blocked or has collapsed, relationships with Congress are disastrous, the president’s approval ratings are at cataclysmic lows.

But can this last? By midsummer, during the high vacation and indictment season, we could see empty hallways in the West Wing and a disorienting incompetence shortage emanating from Washington.

The executive branch could simply go dark. CNN’s ratings will plummet. Columnists will wither and die. Liberals will have to go without the delicious current of schadenfreude and their daily ritual baths of moral superiority.

Now I’m not underestimating the president’s own capacity for carrying on in an incompetent manner almost indefinitely. I don’t think we’ve reached peak Trump.

The normal incompetent person flails and stammers and is embarrassed about it. But the true genius at incompetence like our president flails and founders and is too incompetent to recognize his own incompetence. He mistakes his catastrophes for successes and so accelerates his pace toward oblivion. Those who ignore history are condemned to retweet it.

Trump’s greatest achievements are in the field of ignorance. Up until this period I had always thought of ignorance as a void, as an absence of knowledge. But Trump’s ignorance is not just an absence; it is a rich, intricate and entirely separate universe of negative information, a sort of fertile intellectual antimatter with its own gravitational pull.

It’s not so much that he isn’t well informed; it’s that he is prodigiously learned in the sort of knowledge that doesn’t accord with the facts of our current dimension.

It is in its own way a privilege to be alive at the same time as a man who is the Albert Einstein of confirmation bias, a man whose most impressive wall is the one between himself and evidence, a man who doesn’t need to go off in search of enemies because he is already his own worst one.

But even Trump will eventually hit the limits of human endurance. I know what it is like to be profoundly incompetent, and it is exhausting.

...

So I hope the Trump team learns to delegate — carelessness in one office, backbiting in another. I hope the president continues to play golf (I don’t get those progressive critics who say Trump is ruining the world and then they complain because he takes time off). I hope his team continues to take advantage of the fact that it takes only one inexperienced stooge to undo the accomplishments of 100 normal workers.

And I hope it continues to negatively surpass all expectations. I remain a full-fledged member in the community of the agog.

One of the things I’ve learned about incompetence over the past few months is that it is radically nonlinear. Competent people go in one of a few directions. But incompetence is infinite.

The human imagination is not capacious enough to comprehend all the many ways the Trumpians can find to screw this thing up.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Hmm, Mr. "I NEVER settle lawsuits" has just settled another lawsuit: "Trump Organization settles restaurant suit with chef José Andrés"

Quote

President Trump’s company and D.C. chef José Andrés have settled a nearly two-year-old legal dispute stemming from the chef’s decision to shelve plans to open a restaurant in Trump’s D.C. hotel following Trump’s controversial immigration rhetoric.

The Trump Organization, now run by Trump’s adult sons Donald Jr. and Eric, issued a joint statement with the chef’s firm, ThinkFoodGroup, Friday morning. Terms were not disclosed and spokespersons for both companies declined to comment.

“I am glad that we are able to put this matter behind us and move forward as friends,” Donald Trump Jr. said in the release. “Since opening in September 2016, Trump International Hotel, Washington, D.C. has been an incredible success and our entire team has great respect for the accomplishments of both José and TFG. Without question, this is a ‘win-win’ for both of our companies.”

The dispute began after Andrés pulled out of a lease to open a restaurant in Trump’s hotel in the summer of 2015. An immigrant from Spain, Andrés took offense when the then-candidate railed against Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists on the campaign trail. Trump sued him for $10 million.

...

Trump famously says he never settles lawsuits although he has done so repeatedly, including when he agreed to pay a $25 million settlement to end fraud cases against his Trump University seminar program last fall. Trump has resigned from active positions with the company while in office, though he continues to own it.

The settlement ends a distraction for Trump that, two weeks before entering office, required him to sit for a legal deposition in Trump Tower. The Trump Organization made no comment on a similar suit with chef Geoffrey Zakarian. In that case, the court has scheduled a May hearing and an August mediation session.

...

 

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

It is in its own way a privilege to be alive at the same time as a man who is the Albert Einstein of confirmation bias,

This whole article was sublime! Thanks for this one @GreyhoundFan ! 

[fraurosena]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The human imagination is not capacious enough to comprehend all the many ways the Trumpians can find to screw this thing up.

I just had to quote this because it is so true, and needs to be said twice.

[sawasdee]

With regard to the Syria missiles, I have this horrid feeling that this a cynical attempt to boost his polling - I was in the UK when Maggie had the lowest poll ratings ever, and then - voila! War with Argentina over the Falklands and suddenly her polls soared. Same with Bush. I don't think he gives a fuck about Syrian children dying - not letting in child refugees, is he? -  and the lack of runway damage, and the only damage being easily replaced (by Russia) planes - also makes me think it coordinated with his pal Putin. And just to make it look good, Putin throws a hissy fit  and halts the hotline stopping US/Russian planes and groundstaff being in open conflict.

Both Maggie and Bush won their next elections,despite historically low polling before their military excursions. I'm sure there are people in tRump's administration who know this. Plus he has (again) directly contradicted his previous position. He said that for Obama to intervene would be wrong. And Hillary was the warmonger?

I hate this man so much - no ethics, no morals, no principles - only self aggrandisement and self enrichment.

[Fascinated]

I'm suspicious, too.  Wag the dog?  Anyway, I just want to tell you guys that I read the best Trump name yet: Comrade Feltersnatch.  You're welcome.

[JMarie]

Now we're doing something in North Korea.  Maybe Jared can head over there, ride around in a helicopter (like he did in Jared Goes To Iraq!), and pretend he's in a reboot of MASH.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump Fires Warning Shot in Battle Between Bannon and Kushner"

Quote

As he grappled on Thursday with his first major decision involving military action, a fed-up and frustrated President Trump turned to his two top aides and told them he had had enough of their incessant knife-fights in the media.

“Work this out,” Mr. Trump said, according to two people briefed on the exchange. The admonition was aimed at Stephen K. Bannon, the tempestuous chief strategist, and Reince Priebus, the mild-mannered chief of staff, over a series of dust-ups with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and the top economic adviser, Gary D. Cohn.

But they may not be able to.

The president is said to be aware that a meaningful reconciliation will take work to achieve between Mr. Bannon, who sees himself as the keeper of Mr. Trump’s campaign promises, and the competing ideologies of Mr. Kushner and Mr. Cohn, a longtime Wall Street executive and a Democrat. And he is considering a shake-up of his senior staff, according to four people with direct knowledge of the process.

Whether he acts on it remains to be seen. Mr. Trump has often pondered making changes for several weeks or even months before making them, if he does at all. He has a high tolerance for chaos, and a unique gift for creating it — and, despite his famous “You’re fired!” tagline from the show “The Apprentice,” an aversion to dismissing people.

But this past week, one that some of his aides considered the best of his presidency, was marred by fits, starts and self-inflicted wounds — and the constant churn of news accounts of a White House at war with itself finally wore the president out. And notice of a possible shake-up was a warning shot to his team to make adjustments.

...

But two people who have spoken with Mr. Trump said he recognized that the continuing state of drama was unsustainable.

No changes are imminent, they said. But the president is considering a range of options, including a shift in role for Mr. Bannon, who has become increasingly isolated in the White House as other power centers have grown, as well as additional senior staff.

Mr. Priebus has been a source of contention for a number of Mr. Trump’s former advisers, with the president pushing back on criticism with the response that the former chairman of the Republican National Committee is a “nice guy.”

Mr. Bannon, a hard-charging, fast-talking confidant of the president’s whose roving job in the White House has given him influence over policy and hiring decisions, now finds himself in the undesirable position of being caught between the president and his family. That is a position that others have not survived, most notably Corey Lewandowski, the first of the president’s three campaign managers.

Mr. Bannon, whose portfolio is broad but vague as a chief strategist, has told people he believes Mr. Kushner’s allies have undermined him, that he has no plans to quit and is digging in for a fight. One option being discussed is moving Mr. Bannon to a different role. His allies at an outside group supporting him run by his main benefactor, the investor Rebekah Mercer, have also discussed him joining them to provide strategy.

Mr. Kushner, 36, a government neophyte who has taken on a much larger portfolio as a top West Wing aide and foreign envoy, was said to be displeased after hearing that Mr. Bannon made critical remarks about him to other aides and Trump associates while he was in Iraq recently. Mr. Bannon has told confidants that he believes Mr. Kushner’s contact with Russians, and his expected testimony before Congress on the subject, will become a major distraction for the White House.

Kushner allies have also raised the issue with the president of the increasingly unflattering coverage that Mr. Kushner is receiving from Breitbart News, the right-wing website that Mr. Bannon used to run.

But Mr. Bannon has his own core of supporters outside the White House. And he has argued that Mr. Kushner’s efforts to pull his father-in-law more to the center on issues like immigration would poison him with the conservative base — a hopeless position to be in because Mr. Bannon believes so few Democrats would ever consider supporting Mr. Trump.

In the White House blame game, no one is safe. Mr. Bannon’s team is blamed for the contested and controversial travel bans. Mr. Priebus was damaged by the failure of health care legislation. Mr. Kushner has yet to show he can master his own portfolio, and his role is so large that miscues will be magnified.

Mr. Trump does not like any staff member gaining too much attention, including those who are related to him. He had three campaign shake-ups in the 2016 cycle, and he tends to make changes based on instinct. As he learns the job of a president, his allies say, he was destined to make such changes.

...

Awww, he doesn't like when other people get attention...

[fraurosena]

This is not what you think it is.

For so long I thought Donald Trump could do no wrong – but he's lost my support after these Syrian air strikes

I'm not going to quote, as that would spoil it.  You'll have to read it yourself. But please do, you won't regret it.

----------

We know the GOP goes low. Here's another example:

The Republicans are using the airstrikes on Syria to get email addresses

Quote

The GOP are seemingly using the US airstrikes against Syria as a hook to gain email addresses for its mailing list.

Trump responded to chemical attacks in Syria, that Bashar al-Assad allegedly carried out against his own citizens, by firing US missiles at an airbase in the war-torn country. 

Journalist Nicholas Thompson screenshotted the offending ad, which says “Do you support Trump’s missile launch?”.

Under the “yes and “no” tick boxes is a form for your name and email address.

Complete with a picture of one of the missiles being launched from a battleship.

The article contains the aforementioned screenshot. 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

This is not what you think it is.

For so long I thought Donald Trump could do no wrong – but he's lost my support after these Syrian air strikes

I'm not going to quote, as that would spoil it.  You'll have to read it yourself. But please do, you won't regret it.

What left me speechless are the comments. They didn't get it, like at all.

[fraurosena]

4 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

What left me speechless are the comments. They didn't get it, like at all.

I know. SAD, isn't it?

[47of74]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I know. SAD, isn't it?

Yeah I don't usually bother with the comments section any more with news articles because they're full of single brain-celled idiots proving to the world that they are single brain-celled idiots.

[fraurosena]

I absolutely love this delightfully derisive article from the Daily Beast:

The Trouble With Trump’s White House Is Donald Trump

A few choice quotes:

Quote

[...] the political crisis consuming his White House as his staff and family have become warring factions seeking his favor so that the story has become not about the president’s goals, policies, or accomplishments, but a group of people around him who make the Borgias look like the Brady Bunch.

Trump is faced with terrible options when it comes to rearranging the deck chairs on the SS White House, and those of us who warned you this was inevitable are ordering popcorn. The cancer in the presidency isn’t his staff—though they reflect his shoddy intellect, his shallow impulsiveness, his loose grasp of reality, and Chinese-menu ideology. The problem is Trump himself, and nothing and no one can change that.

[...] the leader of the Pepe Army sleeper cell at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Steve Bannon. [...]

What about Jared Kushner, the new golden child of the Celebrity White House? Elevating his son-in-law to Ambassador Plenipotentiary for Everything and Czar of All U.S. Government Programs is already straining credulity. [...]

Replacing Reince Priebus, a process-driven, mainline conservative before he sipped the sweet, sweet Kool-Aid of Trumpism, is another option. The chief of staff may stay. The chief of staff may go. The question is, would anyone notice?

What about some of the other ideas in play? Might a D.C. Wise Man/Usual Suspect of the old school right this ship? This too is a path where Trump can’t win. First, it’s an instant way to alienate his base of fervent “burn down da gubbmint and let Trump be King” morons. [...]

The last scenario that will also cause an explosion in the Trump base is if the president who blasted Goldman Sachs relentlessly allows the Vampire Squid’s friendly takeover of the Oval Office to come to fruition. With Gary Cohn as a widely discussed replacement for Priebus, and with a host of Goldman alumni staffing senior positions, Trump will have a circle of advisers who are more liberal, more (ahem) globalist, more comfortable with regulation and crony capitalism, and who believe that what’s Good for Goldman Is Good for America. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how this will play with Trump’s lower-middle class base of the economically fragile, to say nothing of the conspiracy media.[...]

You’ll note I’ve left off hapless non-factor Kellyanne Conway from this piece. She’s already in Siberia, chewing shoe leather to survive the political winter, and it’s unlikely she can make it back into Trump’s good graces after becoming a national laughingstock with her relentlessly post-fact spin. She’s five minutes away from a well-paid sinecure as a Fox News contributor.

 

[47of74]

27 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

I absolutely love this delightfully derisive article from the Daily Beast:

The Trouble With Trump’s White House Is Donald Trump

A few choice quotes:

 

Well, Agent Orange is old enough to be Mrs. Orange's father so that's some-what Borgia like.  Of  course to be a real Borgia (and I know I'm straying into horrible mental image territory here) Agent Orange would have to be bedding someone young enough to be his grand-daughter or great-granddaughter.  (Yeah, I know, ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww).

If Agent Orange is Borgia, then who in this context would be Giuliano della Rovere?   

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, 47of74 said:

If Agent Orange is Borgia, then who in this context would be Giuliano della Rovere? 

Ah, if only we knew!  Just imagine, the next president of the US the father of an illegitimate daughter and a gay* to boot... oh how the fundies will howl ! 

 

(base slander, I know... but still, rumors persist )

[fraurosena]

Good article in the HuffPo about the Syrian airstrikes:

Trump Is About To Find Out Why Obama Avoided Military Intervention In Syria

Quote

On Thursday night, President Donald Trump authorized the military to launch several dozen cruise missiles from the Mediterranean Sea at a Syrian airfield. The strike was meant to punish Syria’s President Bashar Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons to attack his own citizens.

It was a dramatic reversal, not only from Trump’s own pledges to limit U.S. involvement in Syria but from his predecessor, who for years resisted growing calls to intervene militarily against the Assad regime. President Barack Obama’s decision to refrain from engagement in 2013 was criticized as feckless at the time and is cited now as one of the reasons that Trump was forced to act. But a revisiting of the arguments and calculations that led Obama to make his decision ― from the fear that it would not be a deterrent to the concerns over how the U.S. would respond to future attacks on civilians ― provides an important blueprint for the major hurdles that Trump will now have to confront. [...]

Whereas Obama has been faulted for overthinking matters to the point of crippling inaction, critics of the current president say his weakness is his apparent lack of interest in planning.  “I have no confidence these guys have any plan whatsoever,” [ Ilan Goldenberg, a former State Department official during the Obama administration] said.  

Moreover, all of the concerns that made the Obama administration second-guess military action in Syria are still relevant today. If anything, the situation there is messier now than in 2013. The Islamic State militant group controls parts of Syria and Iraq. The U.S. air war against the group depends, in large part on Syria staying out of the way. Meanwhile, Russia has entered the Syrian civil war as a staunch defender of the Assad regime, providing air support to the embattled dictator. The crowded airspace is managed by a fragile deconfliction pact between the U.S. and Russia. [...]

[...] the speed with which Trump flipped positions and ordered military action based on his newfound distaste for the Assad regime risks doing exactly what Obama feared in 2013: sparking a series of unforeseen consequences. It is unclear whether the strikes will have any meaningful impact on the Assad regime. Hours after the U.S. attack, Reuters reported that Syrian warplanes took off from the base hit by American cruise missiles. On Friday and Saturday, Khan Sheikhoun, the opposition-held site of the chemical weapons attack earlier in the week, was hit by more airstrikes.  [...]

“I’m worried about whether they did enough of their homework given how quickly decisions were made,” said Eric Pelofsky, a former National Security Council official in the Obama administration. “ What happens if the Assad regime targets our aircraft as they are continuing to prosecute the war on ISIS inside Syrian airspace?  Are we prepared to take down their air defenses ― and for the consequences of doing that?” continued Pelofsky, who is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Even some who criticized Obama’s inaction worried that Trump’s impulsive decision-making process could backfire. “Horrible as the Khan Sheikhoun attack was, the Assad government has used chemical weapons dozens and dozens of times, and has committed numerous other war crimes,” Kori Schake, a former Bush administration official, wrote Friday. “The indiscipline that has characterized the Trump’s actions may lead him to emotional reactions without corresponding strategy.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

An interesting take: "Democrats have a new strategy to keep up the pressure on Trump. It might work."

Quote

The Republican Congress has essentially built a protective wall around President Trump — and at times, this can make efforts to bring transparency or accountability to his unprecedented conflicts of interest and serial shredding of democratic and governing norms appear hopeless.

But now Democrats have a new opening to try to chip away at that protective wall: the debate over tax reform.

This will come at a critical moment — with the White House struggling to regain its footing amid Trump’s sliding approval numbers and the fallout from the health-care debacle, tax reform is the next big shot at a legislative win. What’s more, the White House is planning to sell Trump’s first 100 days as a success in part by emphasizing his alleged draining of the swamp in Washington, which will be crying out for a major reality check, and this could help in that regard.

The New York Times reports that Democrats are coalescing around a strategy that would use the White House’s desire for tax reform to try to leverage more transparency about Trump’s business holdings. The basic idea — which your humble blogger suggested back in January — is that tax reform is particularly ripe for conflicts of interest, given Trump’s refusal to divest from those holdings. So Democrats can use the reform measures the White House pushes to demand that he reveal the specific ways in which his holdings might benefit from those measures, while using the broader attention to the issue — which impacts the tax bills of millions of voters — to renew the demand that Trump generally release his returns.

...

 

 

[fraurosena]

Hey guys, did you know?

The Parasitic Presidunce Loves Signing Things

 

Quote

Trump appears to enjoy the act of signing executive orders and bills more than any of his recent predecessors. While other presidents have also ceremoniously signed documents, Trump regularly holds up his work for photo opportunities.

Although...

Quote

None of them have been legislative accomplishments.

... it doesn't deter him from showing off his handywork. No less than 12 (twelve!) photo's of him holding up his signature 'grace' this article.

[GreyhoundFan]

Not directly about Agent Orange, but I was glad to see this: "Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold wins Pulitzer Prize for dogged reporting of Trump’s philanthropy"

Quote

Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold remembers being struck by Donald Trump’s pledge to donate $6 million, including $1 million of his personal funds, to veteran groups during a televised fundraiser before the Iowa caucuses early last year. Did Trump follow through, he wondered? So, weeks after the event, Fahrenthold started asking questions.

For several months, he found, the answer was no, despite assurances to the contrary from Trump’s campaign. When Trump finally made the donation in late May the reporter set off on a broader inquiry. In a detailed series of articles, he found that many of Trump’s philanthropic claims over the years had been exaggerated, and often weren’t truly charitable activities at all.

On Monday, Fahrenthold’s investigative digging was rewarded with the Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s most prestigious award. His work documenting the future president’s charitable practices won the award for national reporting.

Fahrenthold’s Pulitzer-winning package of stories also included his article disclosing that Trump had made crude comments and bragged about groping women during an unaired portion of an interview on “Access Hollywood” in 2005.

The story, a result of an anonymous tip, proved to be one of the most consequential and widest read in the history of campaign reporting; it led to calls for Trump to drop out of the race just weeks before Election Day. The article and accompanying video also prompted two apologies from Trump — who called his comments “locker-room banter” — and inspired some of the themes of worldwide women’s protest marches that drew millions the day after Trump was inaugurated in January.

...

Fahrenthold’s prizewinning reporting was a follow-the-money tale that combined dogged reporting — he personally called 450 charitable organizations to ask them whether Trump had ever donated funds — with the creative use of social media, especially Twitter, to “crowdsource” the public’s collective knowledge of people and events.

In the process, Post editor Martin Baron said Fahrenthold, 39, “reimagined” investigative reporting. Traditionally, Baron noted, reporters have kept their work “secret and guarded” until they’ve developed enough information to publish. Fahrenthold instead shared his progress on stories via Twitter and openly asked readers for tips and information that guided his work. Baron noted that this process now has a name: “the Fahrenthold method.”

In one of several memorable examples, Fahrenthold, who joined The Post as an intern in 2000, posted images of the handwritten list of charities he’d contacted to ask whether Trump had ever contributed to them (almost none said he had). He asked readers for names of other likely recipients, receiving dozens of suggestions.

With the assistance of Post researcher Alice Crites, Fahrenthold found that Trump hadn’t donated any of his own money to the Donald J. Trump Foundation since 2008. Instead, he had solicited funds from others. He further discovered that the foundation wasn’t registered to make such solicitations, as required by New York state law. The revelation prompted authorities in New York to order the foundation to suspend further fundraising.

He also found several instances in which the future president had spent funds from the foundation to buy things for himself and his for-profit companies, potentially violating laws against “self dealing” by a charitable entity.

...

I hope he continues his great work. Too bad the Branch Trumpvidians don't care that Agent Orange is a fraud.