Trump 25: Stephen King’s Next Horror Story

[fraurosena]

17 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

The entry in his Sleeze Resume that I particularly love is that he admitted to going into the dressing rooms of teenage girls during beauty pageants and was gleeful about how much he enjoyed it. He has a strong obsession with young girls himself.

Wasn't there a lawsuit last year from a thirteen(?) year old who alleged he had taken part in Epstein's parties and raped her? Or something to that effect, I'm not sure about the details. Whatever happened to that lawsuit anyway?

[GrumpyGran]

4 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Wasn't there a lawsuit last year from a thirteen(?) year old who alleged he had taken part in Epstein's parties and raped her? Or something to that effect, I'm not sure about the details. Whatever happened to that lawsuit anyway?

It was scheduled to be in December 2016 but magically after he was elected, it went away. Poof, just gone. Possible she got a huge settlement that came with a non-disclosure clause. Or she may have literally disappeared. We'll never know.

[Rachel333]

3 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Wasn't there a lawsuit last year from a thirteen(?) year old who alleged he had taken part in Epstein's parties and raped her? Or something to that effect, I'm not sure about the details. Whatever happened to that lawsuit anyway?

Yes, and according to her attorneys she withdrew it because she was getting a lot of threats.

The incident where Trump brutally raped Ivana is well-documented. Ivana later said she didn't consider it rape in a legal sense but that it did happen as she described. Trump's lawyer's defense was that you can't rape your wife, which unfortunately was a legally valid argument in parts of the country back then but not, from what I understand, in New York.

[fraurosena]

What?! Have I entered the twilight zone? The presidunce tweeted something I'm actually happy with! 

 

Oh. It just couldn't last, could it? In the very next tweet he brings me back down to reality again. 

 

I hope his trophy decision will remain on hold indefinitely (definitely not holding my breath though). 
And that last tweet is really rich, as per usual. Who's the one who can't stop bashing and accusing? Yeah, it isn't Hillary, sweetums, it's you.

[Howl]

Trump is just such a Mean Girl. 

[onekidanddone]

She can't stop doing what? Can't stop ignoring you? What a fucking shit wad. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trumpettes" -- my eyes rolled so violently, I think they are stuck: "Mar-a-Lago’s new winter season: The Red Cross Ball is out, the Trumpettes are in"

Spoiler

In years past, the Mar-a-Lago Club’s White and Gold Ballroom hosted some of the finest events of Palm Beach’s gilded winter season. $750-a-plate charity luncheons. Quartets playing Mozart. Ambassadors in white tie and tails at the Red Cross Ball.

In years past.

Last week — as a new season began at the private club in Florida owned by President Trump — a speaker on the ballroom stage was talking up far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

“I’m watching Alex Jones non-stop!” Joy Villa said, according to a video she posted of the event.

Villa — a pro-Trump Internet celebrity — was speaking to a group of Young Republicans. “We are populist. We are nationalist,” she said, as waiters served brunch. “We put America first and we’re not afraid!”

This week, Trump returns to Mar-a-Lago for the first time since April. He will confront a changed social scene.

During the summer, 19 charities that had events scheduled this season at Mar-a-Lago abruptly quit after Trump defended participants in a violent rally in Charlottesville organized by white supremacists.

In their place, the club is turning to a different kind of customer.

Republican groups. Televangelist Pat Robertson, who started a gala in order to hold it at Mar-a-Lago. And a group called “Trumpettes USA,” which is planning a dinner in January that costs $300 per person. They intend for Mar-a-Lago to keep most — or all — of the money they take in.

Once a retreat from the divisive business of politics, the Palm Beach landmark is now a place defined by those divisions — a dynamic the club is monetizing by booking events with Trump’s political allies.

Mar-a-Lago is still hosting weddings and members for meals on the dining terrace. But the center of Palm Beach’s traditional social scene has shifted to The Breakers, a club that Trump once mocked for getting his “leftovers.”

“People will still put on their dancing shoes, and pay big money for their tickets, and go out of the night. [But] instead of going to Mar-a-Lago, they’ll be going to The Breakers,” said Shannon Donnelly, the society editor for the Palm Beach Daily News.

Before now, Donnelly said, Mar-a-Lago “wasn’t political.”

“Now,” she said, “Donald is political.”

Officials with Mar-a-Lago and the Trump Organization did not respond to questions about the new season. Last month, the club’s general manager told the Palm Beach Post, “we are really doing fine. It will be a good season.”

The Washington Post asked the White House if Trump himself had any contact with those now flocking to hold events at Mar-a-Lago.

“We have nothing to do with coordinating events. The idea that the President has time for event planning at [Mar-a-Lago] is insulting,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote in an email.

Trump has given up day-to-day control of his real estate and hotel businesses. But he still owns them, including Mar-a-Lago — an old estate that Trump transformed into a private club in the 1990s. Back then, Mar-a-Lago was Palm Beach’s progressive club. It was open to Jewish members.

This year, in Trump’s words, it became the “winter White House.”

For a few months this spring, it was a splendid sort of bubble. The glamour of the presidency flowed in, but the country’s curdled politics did not.

Trump visited seven times. Initiation fees doubled, according to a CNBC report. Charities held galas and couples held weddings, and Trump dropped in on both. He mixed his new job with his old job — the table-hopping host of Palm Beach’s elite.

“Big night, Shannon. Big night,” Trump said one evening in April, when he stopped by Donnelly’s table to chat.

Donnelly didn’t understand. She only knew it was Prime Rib night. Later, she learned Trump was talking about launching cruise-missile strikes against Syria.

There were some warnings this winter season could be disrupted by the presidency. Earlier this year, seven charities decided to move their events, some blaming the security delays that came with a party in the president’s house.

But there were still 25 big events on the schedule.

Then: Charlottesville, and the president’s comments that there were “very fine people” in the crowd. In Palm Beach and around the country, his remarks roused a backlash.

Suddenly, Trump’s charity clients found themselves under pressure from donors and strangers alike. Online, anti-Trump groups asked their members to contact charities and urge them to move. Even local Palm Beach officials jumped into the fray.

“Can you honestly say having an event at Mar-a-Lago, given all that has transpired, is the best stewardship of your efforts?” Laurel Baker, executive director of the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce, said in August. “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.” [Days later, another chamber official apologized to Mar-a-Lago for her remarks].

Some members of Mar-a-Lago found that their friends didn’t want to be invited to galas there anymore.

“‘If it’s at Mar-a-Lago, then we’re not going,” one former Mar-a-Lago member said he was recently told by a friend. The member quit recently, and asked that his name not be used, to protect his friendships in Palm Beach. “It’s not the charity that matters anymore. It’s the venue.”

Mar-a-Lago’s 25 previously identified bookings fell to six, according to a Post survey of town-issued permits, public social calendars and interviews with charities. One of the groups that stuck with Trump was the Palm Beach County GOP, which has held its Lincoln Day dinner at Mar-a-Lago since 2013. Before this year, it appeared to be the club’s only overtly partisan gala.

Among those that left: the Red Cross, which canceled its Palm Beach gala outright, ending a 60-year tradition.

Another charity, Leaders in Furthering Education, switched to a new date at the Breakers resort, and wound up in a fight with crooner Paul Anka, who couldn’t make the new day and wouldn’t return their $75,000 deposit.

“They need to eat it,” Anka, who sang the 1959 hit “Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” told the New York Post.

The news was better for the Bethesda Hospital Foundation, which moved its Nov. 9 luncheon to a club in Boca Raton and had room for 100 more guests than it could fit at Mar-a-Lago. The lunch raised enough to buy a new physician-training tool: the Victoria S2200, a $60,000 robot woman who gives birth to a robot baby.

At the same time, Mar-a-Lago’s calendar has also begun to refill.

The Republican Attorneys General Association booked Mar-a-Lago’s Teahouse dining room last weekend, for a dinner where some state attorneys general dined with top donors.

How did they choose the president’s club, out of all the dining rooms in south Florida?

“It is a historic venue very close to where the AGs were staying,” said spokesman Zack Roday. He said the group did not get a discount for being Republicans.

The Young Republican National Federation, which hosted Villa in the White and Gold Ballroom, had never held an event at Mar-a-Lago before. Why now? “He’s the leader of the Republican Party,” said Matthew Thomas Oberly, press secretary for the Young Republican National Federation.

The Christian Broadcasting Network — whose chairman is Pat Robertson, a strong supporter of Trump — decided earlier this year to hold its first Palm Beach fundraiser gala for its charity Orphan’s Promise.

And not just anywhere in Palm Beach.

This event was meant for Trump’s club.

... < excerpt from contract >

“Secure event date at private, exclusive Palm Beach ‘winter White House,’ ” the charity instructed its event planner, according to documents filed with the town of Palm Beach. This event will be one of the biggest of any season at Mar-a-Lago: The town was told to expect 700 people.

The network said “a group of major donors” chose Mar-a-Lago as a venue. Through a spokesman, Robertson declined to be interviewed.

In two other cases, individual Trump supporters have come up with their own new events for Mar-a-Lago, with an aim of benefiting Trump.

Florida conservative activist Steven M. Alembik, for instance, is planning a 700-person “Truth About Israel Gala” at Mar-a-Lago in February. He plans to charge $600 a seat. He expects Mar-a-Lago will keep most of it, and that’s fine.

“We’re supporting our president, who supports Israel,” Alembik said.

The “Trumpettes USA” — they add the “USA” because “Trumpette” is a brand of baby socks — are led by Toni Holt Kramer, a Mar-a-Lago member who has turned part of her home into a sort of shrine to Trump.

She has planned a dinner for Jan. 18. First, it was 700 people. Now, it’s 800, she says. Two ballrooms. $300 per seat.

If there’s money left over, Kramer says, it will go to a police charity. But she doesn’t expect to have money left over, after paying Mar-a-Lago for the room and the food. And that’s fine.

“I don’t think any president has ever had such a rough nine months,” Kramer said. She said event, called “A Red, White, and Blue Celebration for We the People,” is drawing Trump fans from around the country and the world. When they sold out the first ballroom, she posted a photo of herself hugging the group’s mascot: her poodle, Caviar Deux.

In recent days, Mar-a-Lago got another bit of good news.

Big Dog Ranch Rescue — an animal charity that had canceled its Mar-a-Lago booking in August — decided to come back to the venue. One of the co-chairs of the event is Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife.

To explain its reversal, the charity published a letter in the Palm Beach Daily News. It detailed how the politicization of Mar-a-Lago had torn its members apart.

The letter was written in the voice of a dog.

“My furry companions loved . . . The Mar-a-Lago Club and said they would only support us if we returned to our favorite yard,” the fake dog wrote.

The fake dog called for a return to more tranquil times at Mar-a-Lago, when charities that did business with Trump’s club didn’t have to answer for Trump’s politics.

“Arrffturall,” the fake dog wrote, “charity and politics should never be mixed.”

 

[GrumpyGran]

17 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trumpettes" -- my eyes rolled so violently, I think they are stuck: "Mar-a-Lago’s new winter season: The Red Cross Ball is out, the Trumpettes are in"

  Reveal hidden contents

In years past, the Mar-a-Lago Club’s White and Gold Ballroom hosted some of the finest events of Palm Beach’s gilded winter season. $750-a-plate charity luncheons. Quartets playing Mozart. Ambassadors in white tie and tails at the Red Cross Ball.

In years past.

Last week — as a new season began at the private club in Florida owned by President Trump — a speaker on the ballroom stage was talking up far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

“I’m watching Alex Jones non-stop!” Joy Villa said, according to a video she posted of the event.

Villa — a pro-Trump Internet celebrity — was speaking to a group of Young Republicans. “We are populist. We are nationalist,” she said, as waiters served brunch. “We put America first and we’re not afraid!”

This week, Trump returns to Mar-a-Lago for the first time since April. He will confront a changed social scene.

During the summer, 19 charities that had events scheduled this season at Mar-a-Lago abruptly quit after Trump defended participants in a violent rally in Charlottesville organized by white supremacists.

In their place, the club is turning to a different kind of customer.

Republican groups. Televangelist Pat Robertson, who started a gala in order to hold it at Mar-a-Lago. And a group called “Trumpettes USA,” which is planning a dinner in January that costs $300 per person. They intend for Mar-a-Lago to keep most — or all — of the money they take in.

Once a retreat from the divisive business of politics, the Palm Beach landmark is now a place defined by those divisions — a dynamic the club is monetizing by booking events with Trump’s political allies.

Mar-a-Lago is still hosting weddings and members for meals on the dining terrace. But the center of Palm Beach’s traditional social scene has shifted to The Breakers, a club that Trump once mocked for getting his “leftovers.”

“People will still put on their dancing shoes, and pay big money for their tickets, and go out of the night. [But] instead of going to Mar-a-Lago, they’ll be going to The Breakers,” said Shannon Donnelly, the society editor for the Palm Beach Daily News.

Before now, Donnelly said, Mar-a-Lago “wasn’t political.”

“Now,” she said, “Donald is political.”

Officials with Mar-a-Lago and the Trump Organization did not respond to questions about the new season. Last month, the club’s general manager told the Palm Beach Post, “we are really doing fine. It will be a good season.”

The Washington Post asked the White House if Trump himself had any contact with those now flocking to hold events at Mar-a-Lago.

“We have nothing to do with coordinating events. The idea that the President has time for event planning at [Mar-a-Lago] is insulting,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote in an email.

Trump has given up day-to-day control of his real estate and hotel businesses. But he still owns them, including Mar-a-Lago — an old estate that Trump transformed into a private club in the 1990s. Back then, Mar-a-Lago was Palm Beach’s progressive club. It was open to Jewish members.

This year, in Trump’s words, it became the “winter White House.”

For a few months this spring, it was a splendid sort of bubble. The glamour of the presidency flowed in, but the country’s curdled politics did not.

Trump visited seven times. Initiation fees doubled, according to a CNBC report. Charities held galas and couples held weddings, and Trump dropped in on both. He mixed his new job with his old job — the table-hopping host of Palm Beach’s elite.

“Big night, Shannon. Big night,” Trump said one evening in April, when he stopped by Donnelly’s table to chat.

Donnelly didn’t understand. She only knew it was Prime Rib night. Later, she learned Trump was talking about launching cruise-missile strikes against Syria.

There were some warnings this winter season could be disrupted by the presidency. Earlier this year, seven charities decided to move their events, some blaming the security delays that came with a party in the president’s house.

But there were still 25 big events on the schedule.

Then: Charlottesville, and the president’s comments that there were “very fine people” in the crowd. In Palm Beach and around the country, his remarks roused a backlash.

Suddenly, Trump’s charity clients found themselves under pressure from donors and strangers alike. Online, anti-Trump groups asked their members to contact charities and urge them to move. Even local Palm Beach officials jumped into the fray.

“Can you honestly say having an event at Mar-a-Lago, given all that has transpired, is the best stewardship of your efforts?” Laurel Baker, executive director of the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce, said in August. “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.” [Days later, another chamber official apologized to Mar-a-Lago for her remarks].

Some members of Mar-a-Lago found that their friends didn’t want to be invited to galas there anymore.

“‘If it’s at Mar-a-Lago, then we’re not going,” one former Mar-a-Lago member said he was recently told by a friend. The member quit recently, and asked that his name not be used, to protect his friendships in Palm Beach. “It’s not the charity that matters anymore. It’s the venue.”

Mar-a-Lago’s 25 previously identified bookings fell to six, according to a Post survey of town-issued permits, public social calendars and interviews with charities. One of the groups that stuck with Trump was the Palm Beach County GOP, which has held its Lincoln Day dinner at Mar-a-Lago since 2013. Before this year, it appeared to be the club’s only overtly partisan gala.

Among those that left: the Red Cross, which canceled its Palm Beach gala outright, ending a 60-year tradition.

Another charity, Leaders in Furthering Education, switched to a new date at the Breakers resort, and wound up in a fight with crooner Paul Anka, who couldn’t make the new day and wouldn’t return their $75,000 deposit.

“They need to eat it,” Anka, who sang the 1959 hit “Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” told the New York Post.

The news was better for the Bethesda Hospital Foundation, which moved its Nov. 9 luncheon to a club in Boca Raton and had room for 100 more guests than it could fit at Mar-a-Lago. The lunch raised enough to buy a new physician-training tool: the Victoria S2200, a $60,000 robot woman who gives birth to a robot baby.

At the same time, Mar-a-Lago’s calendar has also begun to refill.

The Republican Attorneys General Association booked Mar-a-Lago’s Teahouse dining room last weekend, for a dinner where some state attorneys general dined with top donors.

How did they choose the president’s club, out of all the dining rooms in south Florida?

“It is a historic venue very close to where the AGs were staying,” said spokesman Zack Roday. He said the group did not get a discount for being Republicans.

The Young Republican National Federation, which hosted Villa in the White and Gold Ballroom, had never held an event at Mar-a-Lago before. Why now? “He’s the leader of the Republican Party,” said Matthew Thomas Oberly, press secretary for the Young Republican National Federation.

The Christian Broadcasting Network — whose chairman is Pat Robertson, a strong supporter of Trump — decided earlier this year to hold its first Palm Beach fundraiser gala for its charity Orphan’s Promise.

And not just anywhere in Palm Beach.

This event was meant for Trump’s club.

... < excerpt from contract >

“Secure event date at private, exclusive Palm Beach ‘winter White House,’ ” the charity instructed its event planner, according to documents filed with the town of Palm Beach. This event will be one of the biggest of any season at Mar-a-Lago: The town was told to expect 700 people.

The network said “a group of major donors” chose Mar-a-Lago as a venue. Through a spokesman, Robertson declined to be interviewed.

In two other cases, individual Trump supporters have come up with their own new events for Mar-a-Lago, with an aim of benefiting Trump.

Florida conservative activist Steven M. Alembik, for instance, is planning a 700-person “Truth About Israel Gala” at Mar-a-Lago in February. He plans to charge $600 a seat. He expects Mar-a-Lago will keep most of it, and that’s fine.

“We’re supporting our president, who supports Israel,” Alembik said.

The “Trumpettes USA” — they add the “USA” because “Trumpette” is a brand of baby socks — are led by Toni Holt Kramer, a Mar-a-Lago member who has turned part of her home into a sort of shrine to Trump.

She has planned a dinner for Jan. 18. First, it was 700 people. Now, it’s 800, she says. Two ballrooms. $300 per seat.

If there’s money left over, Kramer says, it will go to a police charity. But she doesn’t expect to have money left over, after paying Mar-a-Lago for the room and the food. And that’s fine.

“I don’t think any president has ever had such a rough nine months,” Kramer said. She said event, called “A Red, White, and Blue Celebration for We the People,” is drawing Trump fans from around the country and the world. When they sold out the first ballroom, she posted a photo of herself hugging the group’s mascot: her poodle, Caviar Deux.

In recent days, Mar-a-Lago got another bit of good news.

Big Dog Ranch Rescue — an animal charity that had canceled its Mar-a-Lago booking in August — decided to come back to the venue. One of the co-chairs of the event is Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife.

To explain its reversal, the charity published a letter in the Palm Beach Daily News. It detailed how the politicization of Mar-a-Lago had torn its members apart.

The letter was written in the voice of a dog.

“My furry companions loved . . . The Mar-a-Lago Club and said they would only support us if we returned to our favorite yard,” the fake dog wrote.

The fake dog called for a return to more tranquil times at Mar-a-Lago, when charities that did business with Trump’s club didn’t have to answer for Trump’s politics.

“Arrffturall,” the fake dog wrote, “charity and politics should never be mixed.”

 

If these idiots want to stuff money into Dumpy's pockets, well, I guess that's their right. I can't understand millionaires giving money to another millionaire. It can't be that great of an experience.

Shame the NRA can't have a gala there. Although I sure wouldn't care if the SS rules were suspended for them. Except it would end up being some SS agent who got shot. By someone who thought the waiter was a terrorist because of his foreign accent.

[47of74]

Man Baby is mad because the father of one of the ULCA players isn't kissing orange ass and calling it ice fornicating cream.

Quote

“Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail!” Trump tweeted. 
The players subsequently held a press conference last week in which they apologized for the incident and thanked Trump.

ESPN on Friday asked LaVar Ball about Trump’s role in bringing his son back to the United States.

"Who?" Ball responded. "What was he over there for? Don't tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out."

Yeah that's the level of his concern for the citizens of the United States traveling overseas.  Most people who go overseas know to behave ourselves overseas, but even if we do absolutely everything right what if we have problems.  If it was me, I'd just as soon my family tell Man Baby to go fornicate himself if that's how he feels.

[GrumpyGran]

4 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Man Baby is mad because the father of one of the ULCA players isn't kissing orange ass and calling it ice fornicating cream.

Yeah that's the level of his concern for the citizens of the United States traveling overseas.  Most people who go overseas know to behave ourselves overseas, but even if we do absolutely everything right what if we have problems.  If it was me, I'd just as soon my family tell Man Baby to go fornicate himself if that's how he feels.

Such a whiny baby. I'm sorry, all of the people who claim he was so great to work for have to be lying. There is no way this narcissist could be gracious and even-handed. I can't imagine the level of adoration  required to stay on his good side in a work situation. 

[Cartmann99]

21 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The “Trumpettes USA” — they add the “USA” because “Trumpette” is a brand of baby socks — are led by Toni Holt Kramer, a Mar-a-Lago member who has turned part of her home into a sort of shrine to Trump.

She has planned a dinner for Jan. 18. First, it was 700 people. Now, it’s 800, she says. Two ballrooms. $300 per seat.

If there’s money left over, Kramer says, it will go to a police charity. But she doesn’t expect to have money left over, after paying Mar-a-Lago for the room and the food. And that’s fine.

The only people still supporting Trump and Moore are too entrenched to get offended by anything either man does, and nobody decent is ever going to support either man in the future anyway, so why isn't Trump doing a "fundraiser" like this for Moore? What sort of grifter leaves money on the table like that?

[Rachel333]

I'm not sure what he's trying to say here. What's the horror show? If he's calling big game hunting in Africa a horror show then I would kind of agree with him, but that's probably not what he means.

[OtterRuletheWorld]

Joy Villa is a Scientologist. Whenever I see her mentioned, I feel that is important to note.

[GreyhoundFan]

Cue the tantrum: "Trump Family Business Is Way Smaller Than The President Has Touted"

Spoiler

Donald Trump has an inflated view of his assets. The president’s family business is worth about one-tenth of the value he has claimed, according to an analysis of the latest figures he has filed with the federal government.

Some of the discrepancy is due to a downturn in business, but the rest is credited to an overheated imagination, according to Crain’s New York Business reporter Aaron Elstein, who examined the numbers.

Elstein told NPR he feels a bit like he was played.

In 2016 the Trump Organization reported nearly $9.5 billion in sales. But recent public filings by the president indicate that the company’s actual revenue that year was only as much as $700 million, Crain’s said.

Crain’s determined Trump has been reporting inflated revenue since at least 2010. After examining the latest figures Trump has filed, Crain’s this month bounced the Trump Organization from the No. 3 spot on its list of largest privately held New York City companies down to No. 40.

“It was obviously very important to Donald to have his company on the top of the list ... but the numbers that he presented are just flagrantly untrue,” Elstein told NPR. Crain’s said the $9.5 billion in revenue looks “preposterous in light of federal filings made by the president in the past year.”  

Trump’s properties aren’t doing so well, even though it’s “halcyon days” for real estate developers, according to Crain’s. Not only are the Trump Organization’s plans to develop a Scion hotel in Manhattan apparently dead in the water,  but “prices are slumping for condos at Trump Tower and the Trump International Hotel and Tower,” Crain’s said.

The average price per square foot for condos at Trump Tower has fallen by 23 percent since 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported, while prices at other midtown developments have remained steady. At Trump’s International Hotel and Tower on Central Park, the average price per square foot is down 24 percent.

And revenue is down on the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point in the Bronx, falling by more than $1.1 million in the past two years, to $5.7 million, Crain’s reported.

Trump also toppled on another list, down an astonishing 92 places (to No. 248), in Forbes’ rankings of richest men in America. But Trump remains a billionaire on the Forbes list, where he clocks in at $3.1 billion in total assets. He also took a dive on Bloomberg’s Billionaires index, but is credited with still having a total $2.9 billion in assets, as far as Bloomberg knows.

In 2015 Trump boasted: “My massive net worth is in excess of $10 billion.” 

Net worth is a subjective “feeling,” Trump said in a 2006 deposition when he sued author Timothy O’Brien, who wrote Trump Nation, a book that was critical of him. “My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings,” he said then.

Since Trump hasn’t released his tax returns, as presidents typically do, his income and information about holdings is murky.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is currently suing Trump for failing to put his business interests into a blind trust.

I bet he'll cry "fake news".

[neurogirl]

Hi- have we talked about the tax bill yet??? It was passed by the House last week and is going to the Senate after Thanksgiving.

In case you haven't heard, besides lowering taxes for corporations and doing a bunch of other stuff, the tax bill would also make tuition stipends taxable income for graduate students. I make 30k as a graduate student in neuroscience in california. It's a living wage certainly, but not extravagant by any means. My rent is almost 40% of my income and I have two roommates. I'm doing fine, but I need to budget carefully. Anyway, my yearly tuition stipend is 17k, so my courses are paid for (not that i'm really taking courses anymore but working in a lab full-time) but i don't see a cent of that money. Under the new tax bill, I would pay taxes on 47k a year. And I would be one of the luckiest students. 

I count as a CA resident at a public university. Out of state grad students make 30k but would be taxed at 60k income. For grad students at a private institution, they could be taxed at almost 80k. This would be CRIPPLING to many grad students, and make higher education even more out-of-reach for low-income families, which of course are also disproportionately URM. I know that Trump and many of the Republicans in Congress don't give a shit about low-income people and minorities (and...and...and) but this tax bill is making me angry about something else too. If we do want to be a big player on the international stage, as republicans seem to want, we have to keep up with education and technology. We are already falling behind. A tax bill that could quadruple taxes for grad students in some cases would absolutely shrink the number of graduate students. Which would shrink the number of professionals who need that training. Which would make America fall more behind.

I don't know if this ramble is making any sense but I am furious and dumbfounded. Grad students contribute SO MUCH to the American university system. Yes we are called students but we do the bulk of the hands-on, everyday work. We teach. We mentor. We publish. And requiring us to pay more taxes on what is already a modest income would just shoot America in the foot in the longterm. I don't think my emotion is coming through enough here but GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR ARGGGGGGGGGG. I knew Congress was racist/misogynistic/transphobic/etc but I didn't think they were being stupid for the sake of malice. End rant. Please contact your senators if this angers you too.

[GrumpyGran]

29 minutes ago, neurogirl said:

the tax bill would also make tuition stipends taxable income for graduate students.

Remember, these people, meaning Trump, his rabid followers and Republicans in Congress do not particularly like educated people. It makes it harder for them to lie, when the audience can think and analyze what is said. And Trump's followers don't care at all about this country's ability to compete on an international stage. Trump only cares because of his business interests.

Talking to my representatives would be like talking to a wall. This people are bought and paid for. Their bosses expect that huge return in the form of huge tax breaks. So the people who don't fund their expensive campaigns will be the ones who are thrown under the bus.

This doesn't help, they will do almost anything to get this tax bill passed, they have to. The only solution is for us to get them out.

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, neurogirl said:

Hi- have we talked about the tax bill yet??? It was passed by the House last week and is going to the Senate after Thanksgiving.

I've brought it up a few times in the congress thread. It's a crappy bill that gives a zillion dollars to billionaires and corporations, all while screwing over the middle class and working poor. My senators and house rep are all against it. Passage in the senate isn't a given, particularly if they keep in the strikes against the ACA. Hopefully Susan Collins and a couple more Rs will have a conscience and vote no. Here's a great WaPo article that encourages Rs who are on the fence to vote no.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump golf course reimbursed President Trump’s charity amid ongoing investigation into the foundation"

Spoiler

One of President Trump’s golf courses paid back more than $158,000 to Trump’s charitable foundation this year, reimbursing the charity for money that had been used to settle a lawsuit against the club, according to a new tax filing.

The March 2017 payment came after New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, launched an investigation into how the Donald J. Trump Foundation collects and disburses funds. The inquiry is ongoing.

The Washington Post reported last year that Trump had used the charity for questionable purposes, including to make a political contribution, to settle legal matters involving his for-profit companies and to buy a large portrait of himself that he hung at one of his golf resorts.

Amanda Miller, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, said Monday that Trump’s foundation is cooperating with the investigation. During the probe, the foundation cannot raise money or give it away.

The charity confirmed in its new filing what Trump said last December — that he plans to shut down the foundation once the attorney general’s probe is complete.

The reimbursement by Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, N.Y., was detailed in the foundation’s 2016 tax filing, which was released Monday by the nonprofit-tracking site GuideStar. Along with that payment, the foundation received another $62,184 in reimbursements from unidentified sources, the document shows.

The filing “definitely reflects an effort to get the house in order, so to speak, before shutting down,” said Marcus S. Owens, a former IRS official who once headed the agency’s nonprofits division.

The filing, which covers the 2016 calendar year, listed Trump as the charity’s president, noting that he worked 0.5 hours per week on charity business. His children Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric were listed as directors.

The reimbursement from the golf course relates to payment the Trump Foundation made to settle a lawsuit against the Westchester club.

The case began in 2010, when a man named Martin Greenberg was playing in a charity tournament at the course. There was a $1 million prize for a hole-in-one on the 13th hole.

Greenberg aced the hole. Then, after a celebration, he was told he couldn’t claim the prize. The rules said the hole had to be a certain length. Trump’s club had allegedly made it too short.

Greenberg sued the golf club. The parties settled. On the day that the parties informed the court they had settled their case, a $158,000 donation was sent to the Martin Greenberg Foundation.

That money came from the Trump Foundation, according to the tax filings of both Trump’s and Greenberg’s foundations.

Tax experts said the incident raised questions about “self-dealing” — a practice prohibited in charities, where a charity’s leaders use nonprofit money to help themselves or their businesses.

In its latest tax filing, the Trump Foundation said the golf course had raised the $158,000 largely by auctioning off a membership. After raising that money, it routed the payment through the Trump Foundation.

The foundation said in the filing that the golf course had repaid the money with interest, adding that Trump himself had been unaware “that making the payment . . . would have even the possibility of being incorrect.”

Of the additional reimbursements, it appears that $25,000 relates to a payment that the Trump Foundation made in 2013 to a Florida political committee called “And Justice For All.” The committee supported state Attorney General Pam Bondi (R).

Charities are not allowed to give to political committees.

After The Post reported the gift to Bondi’s group last year, Trump repaid the money and paid a $2,500 penalty tax to the IRS.

The sources of the remaining $37,184 in reimbursements received by the foundation in 2016 were not disclosed in the filing.

Miller, the Trump Organization spokeswoman, did not respond to a question about the payments Monday.

Owens said the Trump Foundation’s filing leaves other questions unanswered. Nonprofits are prohibited from participating in political campaigns. But the most prominent thing the Trump Foundation did in 2016 was to take part in a TV event advertised by Trump’s political campaign, in which Trump held a fundraiser for veterans while skipping a Fox News-run GOP debate.

Trump brought in more than $2 million to his foundation at that event, and gave some of the proceeds away during his presidential campaign rallies.

The Trump Foundation’s tax return deals with that issue only obliquely, noting that the fundraiser was “held by a candidate for public office.” It does not mention that this candidate was Trump himself, the foundation’s founder and namesake.

Trump “used the foundation as a prop in the political campaign,” Owen said. “They don’t say anything about it.”

The filing shows the Trump Foundation took in $2,865,683 in donations during 2016, mostly through that fundraiser. The biggest donors were Phil Ruffin, a casino magnate who is Trump’s partner in a Las Vegas hotel, and Laura Perlmutter, wife of Marvel Entertainment Chairman Ike Perlmutter. Both gave $1 million.

At the end of 2016, the tax filing says, the Trump Foundation’s remaining assets were $970,246. Trump wants to “distribute its remaining funds to highly qualified and important” charities, the filing said, as soon as authorities will let him.

I guess it's safe to assume that Planned Parenthood won't be one of the charities they'll be giving money to.

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "There is something truly historic about Trump"

Spoiler

President Trump is making history at a historic level. He tells us this himself.

“Good morning,” he said at the start of his Cabinet meeting Monday. “We just returned from a historic, 12-day trip to Asia.”

We knew the trip would be historic because the White House announced in advance that it would be “very historic.” And the day after the president returned, he himself affirmed that it had indeed been “historic.”

This is not surprising, because, in Trump’s telling, his first trip was historic, too. He said so before the trip (“a trip with historic significance”), during the trip (“historic and unprecedented . . . very historic . . . a truly historic week for our country”) and after (“full of historic and unprecedented achievements . . . it was truly historic”).

Technically, either trip could be categorized as historical, in the sense that both occurred in the past. But in the sense of being moments of great and lasting importance? Well, consider that on his latest voyage, the president arguably got the most attention when he called the nuclear-armed leader of North Korea short and fat. Nixon-goes-to-China it wasn’t.

Yet there is something truly historic about Trump — his histrionics. He surely has no rival in trying to assert the historic nature of everything he does. A search of the White House website finds that the president and his team have declared their actions historic nearly 400 times in their first 10 months in office.

Trump has always asserted that he is the best and the greatest, but his attempts to write himself into the history books have truly been history-making.

Among the things Trump has called “historic”: His initiative on women’s entrepreneurship. Pulling out of the Paris climate-change agreement. Executive orders on whistleblowers, financial services and the Antiquities Act. His apprenticeship initiative. The Clemson football team’s 2016 season. And the launch of a ship named for Gerald Ford.

In his inaugural address, Trump declared his election the work “of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.” In his first address to Congress, he announced “a historic effort” to deregulate and said he would introduce “historic tax reform.” After 11 weeks on the job, Trump reported that he had “achieved historic progress.” At the 100-day mark, his “historic progress” included “historic steps to secure our border.”

He predicted that his first Cabinet meeting would be “a historic Cabinet meeting” — and it was, as measured by the volume of praise heaped on him by his subordinates. He boasted in June that he had secured “historic increases in military spending.” (He hadn’t.) At his last Cabinet meeting before Monday’s, he declared that his “historic tax plan” would have a “historic cut.” (It didn’t.) He announced “a historic immigration bill.” (We’re still waiting.)

Some things are more historic than others. When Congress missed its “historic” chance to repeal Obamacare, Trump’s executive order to undermine Obamacare was “truly historic.”

His approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and his executive action on energy were just plain historic, as were his historic actions on trade and his historic tax overhaul, and both the nomination and swearing in of Neil Gorsuch. But his executive orders on trade and his work for veterans were both “very historic.” Also “very historic” was his effort to “modernize critical IT systems.” But “there’s never been anything so historic” as the recent hurricanes, the handling of which earned Trump high grades — from himself.

Vice President Pence is making even more historic strides to see historic occasions everywhere. He labeled a roundtable discussion on health care “historic.” So was the swearing in of the labor secretary, the confirmation of the education secretary, the swearing in of the ambassador to Israel, Trump’s meetings with the Indian prime minister and the pope, Trump’s air traffic control proposals and events such as the National Summit on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, the “Northern Triangle Conference” and the “Adriatic Charter Summit.” Pence even knows that Trump’s yet-to-be-announced infrastructure spending “will be historic.”

Other White House officials have given “historic” designations to things such as the Congressional Picnic; HR 1004, the Regulatory Integrity Act of 2017; and HR 1009, the OIRA Insight, Reform and Accountability Act.

“Historic pace.” “Historic accomplishments.” “Historic visit.” “Historic gathering.” “Historic day.” “Historic act.” “Historic event.” “Historic speech.”

What actually is historic about this first year of the Trump presidency will be left to the historians. But so far, Trump’s actual achievements have been few. What seems most historic about this moment:

Trump’s hysterics.

You know what is historic? My year-long migraine that has been caused by the TT and his ilk.

[JMarie]

On 11/18/2017 at 7:23 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

The “Trumpettes USA” — they add the “USA” because “Trumpette” is a brand of baby socks — are led by Toni Holt Kramer, a Mar-a-Lago member who has turned part of her home into a sort of shrine to Trump.

She has planned a dinner for Jan. 18. First, it was 700 people. Now, it’s 800, she says. Two ballrooms. $300 per seat.

If there’s money left over, Kramer says, it will go to a police charity. But she doesn’t expect to have money left over, after paying Mar-a-Lago for the room and the food. And that’s fine.

$300 per person seems kind of low, if you think about it.  The dinner will be prepared by a well-known (maybe even celebrity) chef, with fancy ingredients.  Top shelf hooch at the bar.  Floral arrangements.  Band/orchestra.  The Mar-a-Lago fee.  And some other stuff I can't think of, since I don't frequent events at the Winter White House.

Sounds like Kramer's gonna have to kick in some money of her own.  Not that she'll mind.  She's a Trumpette! (though I got the Trumpettes confused with the USA Freedom Kids, who sued Trump after he refused to pay them for performing at some of his events)

[JMarie]

And, oh, today's going to be a busy day for Trump!  He's pardoning the turkeys this afternoon!  I hope the turkeys are Democrats, and have some choice words for him.

[Rachel333]

You can buy a Christmas MAGA hat for just $45!

[Cartmann99]

@neurogirl, I ranted like a crazy woman when I heard about their plans to screw over graduate students.  I can't believe these people! 

-----------------------------------------

My heart hurts for the Johnson family:

In that television interview, Mrs. Johnson said she wasn't allowed to look in the casket, and didn't know for sure that La David was even in there . 

[onekidanddone]

10 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

You can buy a Christmas MAGA hat for just $45!

On sale next week in the over stock bin 5.99.

[Gobsmacked]

When did TT rape someone? I can well believe it. Obnoxious creep.