Trump 33: Making Norman Bates Look Like a Choir Boy

[AmazonGrace]

 

Even when he walks back he walks back his walkback 

400 pound guy, you're not off the hook

[AmazonGrace]

 That time that I agreed with Bill Oh Really

 

Why doesn't everyone love me unconditionally.

[IrishCarrie]

I thought you guys might like to see the headline on one of the main Irish newspapers today - just out of interest to see how this is playing out in the rest of the world...

[fraurosena]

Like WaPo's motto: Democracy Dies in Darkness

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[fraurosena]

Word.

 

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

No one is tougher on Russia

He needs notes on "No collusion!" 

 

Honey, you can scribble whatever nonsense you want in your little coloring book, but I'd bet my house that our intelligence folks were listening to your little chat with Putin.

Sleep well, Donnie.

[GreyhoundFan]

From the incomparable Alexandra Petri: "President Trump does a great job and doesn’t let America down at all"

Spoiler

Better to serve in Helsinki than reign in heaven, or however the saying goes.

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met on Monday in Helsinki because we are trapped in this timeline. It went unexpectedly well! Trump did not embarrass America on the world stage. He was able to get a useful answer about Russian meddling in the election, and he did not throw his wholehearted support behind an autocrat instead of the U.S. intelligence apparatus.

No, I am kidding, of course. It went exactly the way you would think: slightly worse than you expected.

I don’t know what Trump was thinking going in. He tweeted that “if I was given the great city of Moscow as retribution for all the sins and evils committed by Russia over the years, I would return to criticism that it wasn’t good enough,” which sounded like he thought he might be handed Moscow. This did not happen.

Instead, this did.

Putin: Thank you for being here. Although can we truly say that anyone is anywhere? I, personally, choose to believe that nothing exists, which means that I can regard all of this with an amused detachment. If any of this were real or had any meaning, you would be awash in despair, and I would not be able to answer for my crimes. But it is all an empty farce. Speaking of which, here is Donald Trump, the president of the United States.

Trump: You must understand that, like, a week ago, Russia and the United States had a worse relationship than they had ever had. I assume ever. If there is any history between these beautiful nations, do not tell me! I have not gotten to it yet, and I would hate to hear any spoilers. But this morning we fixed it. The next time we meet, maybe Vladimir Putin will give me Moscow.

Putin: Sure. Sure. Why not? Why should I not give him Moscow? What is Moscow? What is anything?

Question: If you were upset at Russia right now, President Trump, why would that be?

Trump: I’m not upset at Russia. Mostly, I am disappointed … in America. Most of the blame for our relationship with Russia is that America until now has acted as though we were some sort of special place with higher standards than the rest of the world, where we claimed to believe in democracy and the rule of law, which just means you cannot torture people or have a really good parade, and the media often says mean things about you based in fact. None of that is good.

Putin: Imagine if any of this were really happening!

Question: President Putin, why should we believe you did not intervene in the election?

Trump: Before he says anything, I would like to specify that there was no collusion — and not for want of trying! I didn’t know this man, and I didn’t have anybody to collude with.

Putin: I don’t ask anyone to believe me. Trust no one, because trust makes you weak, and trust implies a belief in the existence of a shared reality which I do not share. Can you say for certain that you exist and that the sights and sounds you claim add up to facts are not the productions of a demon bent on tricking you? By what means can you verify that the knowledge you possess is true knowledge rather than false knowledge? Is not all knowledge like a series of birds flying about inside the cage of your mind, and only by catching hold of what is true can you determine that you have hold of what is false?

Question: So every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did interfere in the election, but President Putin says no. What do you think, President Trump?

Trump: Look, on the one hand, my director of national intelligence says that Russia did this. On the other hand, Vladimir Putin claims that he did not. Who can I believe?

Everyone in the Room: Seems like maybe the director of the national intelligence, definitely. Am I missing something?

Trump: I can’t see any reason Russia would have done this, except to help elect me, an outcome Vladimir Putin just said that he wanted. But who wouldn’t want to elect me, objectively? I am not female.

Putin: Would you believe me if I told you he was just doing all of this spontaneously and we were not even holding compromising material on him?

Trump: Some people are insinuating that I truckle and scrape before Putin because of some sort of romantic relationship or love between us. This is erroneous. Love implies the recognition of oneself in another, the capacity to glimpse the reality of another human soul, and anyone who attributes this to me has not been paying attention.

Question: I guess I should ask: Does Russia have any compromising material on Donald Trump?

(awkward pause)

Putin: No. We didn’t get any compromising material on Trump during his time in Russia because when he was in Russia we literally had no idea who he was! We only pay attention to the important billionaires, whereas everyone knows that Donald Trump is not a real billionaire, as I am sure you have seen in his tax returns, which in your system you traditionally have revealed to you, and I am sure you did not just sort of hand-wave.

Trump: Please, I was worthy of notice, I promise! Do you want me to just tell you some compromising things that happened during that time period? I just want to feel like I was being watched. I will forward you some pictures later of me doing things that would be blackmail-worthy, just so we are clear that I am important enough to blackmail, all right? I will follow up.

Putin: If any of this were real, all of our minds would break but mine.

After this stunning pronouncement, Anderson Cooper tore his desk in half and threw it on the ground, and for several hours Republicans forgot what they were supposed to be doing and actually denounced the president’s behavior. Paul Ryan emerged from a sarcophagus where he has been hiding from the news for the past several months and said he was disappointed in the president’s performance and he needed to do better, as did several other Republicans who had been cryogenically frozen for months so as not to have to offer any comment on the Trump regime, including but not limited to Bob Corker, and Marco Rubio, kind of, while Fox News was not afraid to observe that The Media Has A Lot Of Criticism For Trump’s Helsinki Performance. But then again, maybe everything is an illusion and nothing matters!

 

[mamallama]

Is it just me? but even if I were to buy his explanation that he left out the word not accidentally he's the man with the nuclear codes for Christ's sake!  He shouldn't get a "woopsie, my bad".

[GreyhoundFan]

5 minutes ago, mamallama said:

Is it just me? but even if I were to buy his explanation that he left out the word not accidentally he's the man with the nuclear codes for Christ's sake!  He shouldn't get a "woopsie, my bad".

I agree. Attention to detail should be a job requirement.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump has just composed the most elaborate thank-you note in history"

Spoiler

In the run-up to the Trump-Putin summit, many wondered how the Mueller investigation’s latest indictment would impact the outcome. After all, the language of the indictment was very specific and very detailed. Russian intelligence officers were mentioned by name. More to the point, the indictment revealed that Russian hackers were inside the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee for far longer than we knew. They had access to the DNC’s analytics, their data on voters and opponents.

Russians certainly would have used that data to run their own online campaigns, using the fake social media accounts that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III revealed in a previous indictment. It is very possible that they gave that same data to people working for Donald Trump, perhaps even to one of those who are already in prison or under indictment — Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, George Papadopoulos — for their contacts with the Russian government in 2016.

In the wake of this indictment, journalists, members of Congress and others demanded that President Trump “bring this up” at the summit, that he push back, that he sanction Russia further. Some even thought the summit should be canceled.

But what if everyone has misunderstood Trump and his intentions? After all, what Mueller has just proved, beyond any doubt, is that the Russian hacking and social media operations on Trump’s behalf were far more extensive, and far more important, than we knew. There is no further room to doubt that Vladimir Putin definitely helped him win the election.

From Trump’s point of view, the purpose of this summit, therefore, was to thank the Russian president for his assistance.

Listen to the American president’s language. There was equivocating, “blame America first” language: “I think that the United States has been foolish, I think we’ve all been foolish. … We’re all to blame.” There was denial of any personal or Russian responsibility for election interference: “zero collusion.” Trump attacked “Democrats who want to do nothing but resist and obstruct” and the Mueller “probe,” which he said was ruining the U.S.-Russia relationship. In front of the world’s media, he attacked the FBI, allegedly for not investigating “the server” and “Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 emails.” By contrast, he flattered Putin, first by staging the event and holding a one-on-one, no-advisers-present conversation, and second by going out of his way, over and over again, to stress Putin’s importance and significance — he was “extremely strong and powerful in his denial” — language that will be used, in Russia, to reinforce his claim to power.

Trump has just composed the most elaborate thank-you note in history. As millions watched around the world, he said it out loud: Thank you, Vladimir Putin, for helping me win my campaign!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[AmazonGrace]

A must read video thread with Tucker Carlson and Trump. Yeah he didn't mean a single word of his walkback, he feels beholden to Russia. And he wants out of NATO 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Is that the devil behind him

[AmazonGrace]

I guess he could just resign and rebuke him himself. Sorry I meant couldn't

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

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[AmazonGrace]

 

How the devil did a man so dumb get elected president of the USA 

I have underestimated Putin

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Colusion, it says

[Howl]

Oh. Mah. Gawd!  Did I even have a life before twitter?  But anyway, the Queen throwing some very, very subtle shade:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘It’s just not wise’: In past year, Trump’s company repeatedly paid property taxes late"

Spoiler

President Trump’s company missed deadlines to pay property-tax bills in five states over the past year — and those delays cost the company $61,800 extra in penalties, interest and missed discounts, according to government records and local officials.

This spate of missed deadlines was out of character for the Trump Organization, which receives hundreds of property-tax bills every year. Previously, records show, it had a good record of paying them on time.

But records show that between last November and this April, Trump’s company failed to pay property taxes on time in New Jersey, New York, Illinois and California.

In Florida, the company also missed a Nov. 30 deadline to pay its taxes early and claim a 4 percent discount. For the first time in at least nine years, the company waited until January to pay taxes on the Mar-a-Lago Club, two mansions and three golf courses. That wait increased the company’s bills by $23,500, records show.

In one case — involving Trump’s hotel and condominium tower in Chicago — the reason for the missed deadline seems to have been a clerical error by Trump’s company, a problem compounded by the company’s late response to the error.

But in the other cases, the cause was unclear. The Trump Organization did not provide any explanations. A spokeswoman for the company denied that any payments had been made late at all.

“We have always paid our real estate taxes on a timely basis, and to say otherwise is totally disingenuous,” a spokeswoman for the company wrote. She did not elaborate.

The Trump Organization is still owned by President Trump, but last year he said he had handed operational control to his sons Donald Jr. and Eric.

The missed deadlines puzzled real estate experts, who said that for a long-established property company such as the Trump Organization, paying property taxes should be a routine task. The bills arrive for predictable sums of money, at predictable times, with predictable penalties for lateness in paying.

Many companies use computer programs to track upcoming bills and flag them long before they become overdue.

“If you’re a professional organization, you’re typically not late on property-tax bills,” said Matthew L. Cypher , a former real estate executive who runs a real estate center at Georgetown University’s business school. He said the Trump Organization did not seem to have saved itself any significant amount of money by delaying the payments; in fact, it did the opposite.

“It’s just not wise from a business standpoint,” Cypher said. “Because you’re just wasting money.”

This year, in the midst of other reporting, The Washington Post learned of late tax payments at Trump properties in Chicago and California. To see whether late property tax payments were more widespread, The Post checked public records and inquired with local officials, examining more than 500 individual tax parcels owned by the company. These parcels included properties as big as Mar-a-Lago and as small as tiny storage spaces in Manhattan high-rises.

The Post’s search found little evidence of deadlines missed by the Trump Organization before 2017, beyond one set of late payments at the Chicago tower in 2015.

But then, late last year, it missed a number of deadlines, in several states — even while it continued to pay some of its bills on time.

There was little obvious pattern to when and where the Trump Organization paid on time — and when and where it did not. In some cases this spring, the company faced deadlines on multiple parcels on the same day, and paid some while letting others go overdue.

In California, for instance, the company made the tax deadline for only five-eighths of its golf course.

The course sits on the Pacific Ocean south of Los Angeles. For tax purposes, Los Angeles County divides the property into eight parcels and sends eight bills.

Last year, all eight bills were due by Dec. 10 to avoid fines.

But Trump’s company paid only five. The other three bills — which totaled about $21,800 — were not paid by the due date, according to county officials.

The company paid two of the outstanding bills in January. It did not pay the last one, which includes the golf course’s driving range, until April 13, according to Keith Knox of the Los Angeles County treasurer and tax collector’s office. By that time, the Trump Organization had also missed the April 10 deadline for the next tax bill on the same driving range.

All together, missing these deadlines in Los Angeles County cost Trump’s company $4,075. One debt remains unsettled: a $1,700 penalty that was triggered by the late payment in April. Because of that unpaid bill, Knox said, Los Angeles County recently placed Trump’s driving range on its “defaulted tax roll.” In theory, the county can force a sale of the parcel if the debt remains unpaid for three years.

The Trump Organization next missed a deadline on Jan. 31, 2018. On that day, Trump’s Seven Springs estate was supposed to pay $150,000 in school taxes to three townships in Westchester County, N.Y.

But those bills were not paid until late February or early March, county records show. That resulted in $15,000 worth of penalties.

In one of the three townships, the tax collector said the late bill had been paid by an escrow account at Royal Bank of Pennsylvania, which holds a mortgage on Trump’s property. The bank, which was recently acquired by Bryn Mawr Bank Corp., declined to comment.

On Feb. 1, another deadline was missed: The Trump Organization did not pay $155,000 in taxes due for its golf club in Colts Neck, N.J. Instead, the payments arrived Feb. 21, according to township records. Trump’s company paid an extra $1,400 in interest charges, the records show.

In Chicago, Trump’s company faced a March 1 deadline to pay $1.2 million in property taxes on 326 parcels it owns — commercial units, condominiums and parking spaces — in the Trump-branded skyscraper on Chicago’s riverfront.

Trump’s company wired the payment on Feb. 26, said Thomas Corfman, a spokesman for the Cook County Treasurer’s Office. But there was a mistake, he said: the Trump Organization had left off a required ID number, despite multiple reminders that the ID number was needed. The number was needed to match the company’s payment with the proper parcels.

Corfman said the Trump Organization’s bank was notified of the rejection that day, leaving the company three business days to correct the mistake and pay the bill on time. But payment did not arrive until March 14, he said.

That required the Trump Organization to pay $17,800 in interest.

 

[Howl]

Is this the right place to note that Comey has gone full on "Vote for Democrats" in November; I guess Helsinki was the last straw.  This doesn't make up for what he did to screw Hillary in the last election, but it's a baby step. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

There is nothing that Trump will not say some not true things about