Trump 43: King of Chaos

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Losses deepen at Trump’s Scotland properties, new financial reports show "

Spoiler

The Trump Organization’s two Scottish golf courses lost $14.3 million in 2018, extending a multiyear string of losses that have intensified since Donald Trump took office, according to annual financial reports released this month. 

The results add further pressure to two of President Trump’s key overseas investments at a time when the company faces backlashes on many fronts, including customers who shun the president’s family business for political reasons and golf course neighbors upset by the company’s plans to build hundreds of new homes on bucolic farmland. 

The losses at the two Scotland courses — the Turnberry resort along the southwestern coast and another seaside course near Aberdeen in the northeast — were detailed in documents filed by the Trump Organization with the British government and posted online in recent days. 

These two courses are among 14 properties Trump bought without loans between 2006 and 2014, an all-cash spending binge that topped $400 million.

Turnberry is the larger and more famous of the two courses. Trump bought the historic links course — the site of four British Opens — in 2014 and has spent more than $200 million to buy and renovate the property and sustain its losses. 

In its filing, the Trump Organization touted Turnberry’s “tremendous success” in the company’s fifth full year operating the resort. The company said revenue in 2018, $22.5 million, was higher than any year in the course’s history. But the company also lost $13 million for the year, more than tripling its 2017 loss of $4.1 million. Turnberry has not turned a profit since Trump has owned it. 

Many people who live around the resort are happy with how the Trump Organization has pumped money into the property to rebuild the hilltop hotel, with its vast ballroom full of chandeliers, and renovate the seaside lighthouse that is open to the public.

“It’s never been better,” said Sonya Brown, who owns the nearby Wildings Hotel and Restaurant and regularly attends parties and events at Turnberry. “He’s revamped everything.” 

But the Trump Organization has also faced criticism at Turnberry for mixing politics and business. U.S. Air Force crews on layovers at the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport have spent nearly $200,000 at the hotel over the past two years. Some residents also oppose the company’s plans to expand into residential development on nearby farmland. 

Trump’s other Scottish course, along the blustery northeastern coast near Aberdeen, also struggled, losing $1.3 million in 2018, its seventh consecutive year of losses, according to financial disclosures. In 2017, the Aberdeen course lost $1.5 million.

In Aberdeen, the Trump Organization is now trying to bolster its golf revenue by becoming a residential home builder. Last month, the company won approval from a local council to build up to 550 houses and a second golf course in the area. 

That proposal has prompted widespread opposition around Balmedie, the nearest village. More than 3,000 people wrote to the Aberdeenshire Council to criticize the plan. In the past, the company had pledged to build a large hotel on the site. That has not been built, and some doubt the Trump Organization will follow through on its home-building ambitions. 

“If it goes ahead, and that is a very big if, it will destroy the life of Balmedie as a village,” said David Milne, who lives near the Aberdeen course and has long opposed the Trump Organization.

Since Trump became president, his company has lost hotels in Panama, Toronto and New York’s SoHo neighborhood, as the building owners severed ties with the brand.

I guess the RNC needs to start pumping more money into his DC property to make up for the losses.

Edited October 8, 2019 by GreyhoundFan

[fraurosena]

Fun Fact: America is one of the countries who's not paying. 

Don't take my word for it:

U.N. members owe $2 billion in debt to peacekeeping, U.S. owes a third

From the article:

Quote

[...]  The United States is responsible for 22 percent of the $5.4 billion regular budget for 2018 and 2019 and more than 28 percent of the $6.7 billion peacekeeping budget for the year to June 30.

The United States owed $381 million to the regular budget as of Jan. 1 and some $776 million to the peacekeeping budget, U.N. officials said, figures the U.S. mission to the U.N. confirmed.

President Donald Trump says Washington is shouldering an unfair burden of the cost of the United Nations and pushed for the world body to reform operations. [...]

 

[fraurosena]

As reports come in that the Turkish military is preparing to invade Syria and commit genocide, Trump is feeling a little defensive.

No matter how loud you scream, no matter what you say, you will always have the blood of your allies on your hands. 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

It was not a transcript. Not even with a capital T. It was a [...] memo, as it's clearly stated in the footnotes. You see, unlike you, people actually read these things.

So I dare you to release the complete verbatim transcript. Then we'll talk again...

[WiseGirl]

This blood is on your hands 45. I'm sick about this.

This sums up my thoughts perfectly. 

[fraurosena]

I'm sure this sounded good in his head...

 

[AnywhereButHere]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/render-to-god-and-trump-ralph-reed-calls-for-2020-obedience-to-trump/ar-AAIuNzA?ocid=ientp

Quote

One of Donald Trump’s most prominent Christian supporters will argue in a book due out before the 2020 general election that American evangelicals “have a moral obligation to enthusiastically back” the president.

The book’s author, Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed, became a loyal foot soldier for Trump immediately after he nabbed the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 — commanding hordes of white evangelical voters from his perch on the candidate’s religious advisory board to trust that the New York businessman would grow the economy, defend religious freedom and dismantle federal protections for abortion, if elected.

According to the book's description, obtained by POLITICO, the original title for the book was “Render to God and Trump,” a reference to the well-known biblical verse, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” The message from Jesus in Matthew 22 has been used in contemporary politics to justify obedience to government — or in the case of Reed’s book, to Trump.

Regnery Publishing confirmed the book’s existence but said the title is “For God and Country: The Christian case for Trump.” The publisher declined to comment on the reason for the title change.

In his book, Reed will “persuasively” argue evangelicals have a duty to defend the incumbent Republican leader against “the stridently anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and pro-abortion agenda of the progressive left,” according to the description.

He will also rebut claims by religious and nonreligious critics that white evangelical Protestants “revealed themselves to be political prostitutes and hypocrites” by overwhelmingly backing Trump, a twice-divorced, admitted philanderer, in 2016.

“Critics charge that evangelical Trump supporters … have so thoroughly compromised their witness that they are now disqualified from speaking out on moral issues in the future,” the description reads.

Reed, who once said Trump’s comments about women in the leaked “Access Hollywood” tape were low on his “hierarchy of concerns,” belongs to an informal group of evangelical leaders — including Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr., Robert Jeffress and Paula White — who have become some of the president’s most devoted fans and vocal defenders since he took office. They have cast his foray into politics as divinely inspired; equated him to biblical figures such as Esther, an Old Testament heroine; and frequently cited Scripture to rationalize his most controversial policies — actions that other religious scholars and leaders have found particularly cringeworthy.

“I think evangelical efforts would be far better spent critiquing their own shortcomings than sanctifying a president,” said Matthew Rowley, a research associate with the Cambridge Institute on Religion and International Studies at Clare College.

 

Great. This guy is marshalling the armies of God to push Fucknut's reelection. Hopefully they are louder than they are organized.

[fraurosena]

I love this. I hope they do it over al his properties and especially from his DC Hotel, where he'll be sure to see it with his own eyes. And if it can't be done with banners, then a beamer projection will do nicely.

 

[fraurosena]

Joe Biden is finally on the attack.

 

[Ozlsn]

On 10/9/2019 at 2:40 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

 

I would encourage any venue the Trump campaign is booking to quote them double the price (including the security etc) and get half upfront before the booking is confirmed.

[fraurosena]

Why thanks, Trump! Just what we need here in Europe, ISIS terrorists out to forcibly and violently convert us all to Islam. You sure know how to care for your allies, don’t you? Your pal Putin is loving this: the more disruption on the global stage, the better. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue’ presidency: Trump turns to schoolyard taunts in impeachment battle"

Spoiler

After House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, the Oval Office occupant countered with a creative offer of his own: Impeach me? No, impeach you!

And so it was that Trump suggested, in a series of tweets, that perhaps the two California Democrats leading the effort against him — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam B. Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee — should be impeached instead.

“Must all be immediately Impeached!” wrote Trump, who, in a separate missive, also debuted an “#IMPEACH­­MITT­ROMNEY” hashtag, after Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) criticized him for calling on both Ukraine and China to investigate a political rival.

Left unsaid was the pesky fact for the president that lawmakers cannot, in fact, be impeached. But the schoolyard taunt offered another window into Trump’s “I’m rubber, you’re glue” approach to the impeachment inquiry now consuming his administration.

Though the White House has yet to launch an official war room to fight the Democratic investigation, it is putting forth something of a one-man platoon in the form of the president himself — in the role of playground bully, wielding his shamelessness like a weaponized rubber kickball, ready to pummel into the mud anyone who dares to level a charge against him.

The tactic epitomizes Trump’s “I know you are but what am I?” presidency, a long-held strategy in which Trump turns an accusation back forcefully on his accuser, regardless of how outlandish or fallacious the countercharge may be.

“Trump’s approach to turning his opponents’ attacks back on them is part branding, part trolling and part relentless, disciplined messaging,” said Cliff Sims, a former White House aide and author of “Team of Vipers,” about his time working in the Trump administration. “It’s proven to be extraordinarily effective. But it’s not even replicable because no one else is audacious enough to pull it off.”

An early, indelible example of this Trump gambit came during the 2016 presidential campaign, during the third and final debate with his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. At one point, after Clinton asserted that Russian President Vladi­mir Putin had praised Trump because “he’d rather have a puppet as president of the United States,” Trump cut her off.

“No puppet! No puppet!” Trump asserted. “You’re the puppet.”

More recently, Trump turned accusations of racism back on the same minority lawmakers whom he had offended. After sending a racist tweet, for instance, in which he urged the four Democratic congresswomen — known as “the Squad” — to “go back” to the countries they came from, Trump described them in another message as “a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart.” And after Trump described the majority-black district of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), who is also black and chairs the House Oversight Committee, as a “rat and rodent infested mess,” the president twice accused his Democratic critics of playing “the race card” and called Cummings “racist” in a tweet. 

Even some of his loyal defenders are unsure whether to applaud or condemn his sheer brazenness. 

“On the one hand, I’m like: ‘That’s brilliant. That’s really effective,’ ” said a former White House aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment of the president. “And on the other hand, I’m like . . . ‘Do the ends always justify the means?’ I’m very conflicted about it.” 

Now, facing one of the biggest political fights of his presidency, Trump is deploying the same battle plan. 

After a July phone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for “a favor” to help dig up dirt on possible 2020 political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter, the president found himself facing an impeachment inquiry into whether he was attempting to use a foreign power to improperly influence the election.

And so on Tuesday, the White House counsel released a letter to congressional Democrats effectively accusing them of the same misdeed — trying to improperly influence the 2020 presidential contest. 

“Many Democrats now apparently view impeachment not only as a means to undo the democratic results of the last election, but as a strategy to influence the next election, which is barely more than a year away,” the letter read.

The president has publicly called for China and Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, and on Wednesday, he and his campaign used Twitter and a TV ad to suggest with scant evidence that it is the Bidens, not him, who are guilty of wrongdoing.

Going back a bit further, Trump has frequently cast doubt on the assessment of his own intelligence community’s findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential elections with the goal of helping elect him president. But now, he is turning the charge back on his political foes, espousing an unfounded conspiracy theory that a foreign government did interfere in the 2016 contest — but that it was Ukraine, with the goal of helping Democrats. 

“President Trump is a better counterpuncher than Floyd Mayweather, and it starts with his ability to turn a perceived weakness into a position of strength,” said Jason Miller, a senior adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign. “It’s unorthodox, it confuses political opponents, and it works.” 

Many of the allegations against the president boil down to the notion that he is abusing his power — another charge Trump regularly lobs at Democrats.

He has, for instance, repeatedly accused Democrats of “obstruction,” even while actively stonewalling two congressional investigations himself: The first a congressional inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election and now the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. 

And standing accused of overstepping the bounds of his executive authority, Trump on Wednesday took to Twitter to make clear that he believes former president Barack Obama is guilty of the same abuse. 

“President Obama said that he did not have the right to sign DACA, that it will never hold up in court,” Trump tweeted, an apparent reference to the Supreme Court’s plans this term to take up the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has allowed hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants, known as “dreamers,” to remain in the country without the threat of deportation.

“If the Supreme Court upholds DACA, it gives the President extraordinary powers, far greater than ever thought,” he continued. 

Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser in the Obama White House and a co-host of the “Pod Save America” podcast, said Trump and his allies are operating under a philosophy of “whataboutism” — deflecting from his flaws and problems by trying to accuse his opponents of similar misdeeds. 

“Trump’s strategy is based on the idea that down deep, he is never going to be able to convince people he’s good, but he might be able to convince people that everyone is as bad as he is,” Pfeiffer said. “Trump’s lies and Trump’s conduct are indefensible, so they don’t try to defend it — they just try to say everyone else is more like Trump than you think.”

The sheer shamelessness of this approach leads to a type of asymmetrical warfare that is tough to counterprogram, he added.

“This,” Pfeiffer said, “keeps Democrats up at night.”

 

[Ozlsn]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Why thanks, Trump! Just what we need here in Europe, ISIS terrorists out to forcibly and violently convert us all to Islam. You sure know how to care for your allies, don’t you? Your pal Putin is loving this: the more disruption on the global stage, the better. 

 

Unless they head in the direction of Chechnya, Dagestan, any of the rest of the Islamic-majority Russian republics that is.

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

Unless they head in the direction of Chechnya, Dagestan, any of the rest of the Islamic-majority Russian republics that is.

If ISIS were simply fanatical muslims who want to carve out their own little state to live in peace with like-minded people, they might. But that is not what ISIS is. It is a terrorist organization, who's sole existence is to bring terror, ostensibly to those not of the same religion -- except religion is the pretext they hide behind. They are funded by Iran and Russia to sow discord in the Middle East, and when they do decide to flee to Europe, as Trump suggests, they will not be coming in peace. And somehow I don't think Putin will be telling them to come to Russia... 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

33 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

It is a terrorist organization, who's sole existence is to bring terror, ostensibly to those not of the same religion

But their religion isn't Islam, their religion is tyranny and death. They have killed many more Muslims than people belonging to any other religion.

[fraurosena]

50 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

But their religion isn't Islam, their religion is tyranny and death. They have killed many more Muslims than people belonging to any other religion.

True. That’s why I said ‘ostensibly’. It’s not about religion at all. That’s just their pretext.

[Howl]

So get this. Trump is facing growing support for impeachment.  True, there's no Republican support for impeachment in the Senate, but in this situation, he decides to withdraw support for the Kurds, leaving them to be slaughtered, and it seems to be the ONE THING he's done that has elicited vocal condemnation from Republicans INCLUDING MISS LINDSEY, helping people understand what an astounding and horrific betrayal this is.  

It's also important to remember that there are hundreds of thousands of Christian Kurds throughout the various Kurdish regions. 

[Howl]

For those non-twitterti, I'm adding this Unroll of the thread above, because it speaks to the fear that Republicans have of Donald Trump and his enforcers.  When Rick sees a tweet about a Republican criticizing Trump withdrawing support for the Kurds, he checks to see if the tweet tags  @RealDonaldTrump.   

For those not on Twitter, if you send a tweet and want to make sure that the tweet ends up in a specific person's twitter feed, you tag them  "@" and their twitter handle.  

Click here for Unroll: 

1/ All these GOP types posting "this is a bad decision" tweets about the Kurds are missing one key thing, aren't they?

 

[AmazonGrace]

I thought you have to be smart to be an evil overlord .

 

[fraurosena]

42 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

I thought you have to be smart to be an evil overlord .

 

I wonder if there were any Drumpf’s fighting in Normandy. And for which side...

[fraurosena]

Guess who's upset that Fox News isn't completely filled with sycophantic propagandists?

Oh well, I'm President!... 

Good grief. 

[AnywhereButHere]

The WTF icon has really gotten a workout these past few years. I'm surprised there isn't a sort of virtual indentation at it's spot on my computer screen.  I'm giving the Rufus Bless icon a shot at sort of an eyeroll, because damn, this administration incurs a lot of those!

[fraurosena]

Contrary (of course!) to what Trump said...