Trump 53: Orange Florida Man Awaiting Indictment

[WiseGirl]

54 minutes ago, thoughtful said:

A Truman Show-type environment

Can we lock them up in a bubble? 

Another casino? Fools who want to be parted from their money will flock there.

[Dandruff]

3 hours ago, thoughtful said:

I have no idea if Markle has any skills in this area, or whether she is actually thinking of entering politics. But I'd love to see Trump, MTG, Boebert, Hawley, Cruz, Gaetz, Ron the Racist Johnson, Jordan, and other "Look at me - I'm in office! Isn't it coooool?" people shifted over to a pageant/reality show version of elections, where they can do no harm.

Just persuade them they are actually running for something. A Truman Show-type environment may need to be built (where is the Star Trek holodeck when you really need it?).

I don't suppose MItch McConnell is stupid enough to fall for the ruse.

Turtle could be one of the judges...but we know who he'd vote for.

Should there be a swimsuit competition or hell no?

[GreyhoundFan]

"At Trump’s Chicago tower, employees got vaccinated early — thanks to a hospital whose COO lives in the building"

Quote

Employees at former president Donald Trump’s Chicago tower got special early access to coronavirus vaccines, arranged by a hospital whose chief operating officer owns a $2.7 million condo in Trump’s building, city officials said Wednesday.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) said she was “disappointed” that 72 employees of Trump’s hotel and condo tower had been vaccinated on March 10 and 11 — despite city guidelines saying that hotel employees would not be eligible until March 29.

“We have a finite amount of vaccine in the city. We’ve been really, really careful to make sure that we’re using it in a way that prioritizes the most vulnerable people who are most at risk and most at risk of spreading it,” Lightfoot said in a news conference Wednesday. She added: “We just can’t have something like this happen again.”

Lightfoot said the city had asked for more details about the Trump tower vaccination event from its organizer, Loretto Hospital. The small hospital is located in a majority-Black neighborhood nine miles from Trump’s downtown tower and says its mission is to provide vaccines to the “minority communities hardest hit” by the pandemic.

The hospital did not respond to questions from The Washington Post on Wednesday. A day earlier, it had issued a statement saying that hospital executives had been “mistaken” about when hotel employees were eligible to be vaccinated.

The vaccinations at Trump’s Chicago tower — and the connection between that building and Loretto Hospital’s COO, Anosh Ahmed — were first reported by the news site Block Club Chicago.

Ahmed, 37, bought a 43rd-floor condominium in the Trump building last October for $2.7 million, according to real estate records. He did not buy the condo from Trump, but — as a condo owner — he likely pays management fees to Trump’s company.

Block Club Chicago also reported that Ahmed told acquaintances that he had vaccinated Eric Trump, the former president’s son and a top executive at the Trump Organization. Ahmed also sent to others a photo of himself posing with Eric Trump. At the time of the vaccinations, Chicago’s guidelines limited them to very vulnerable populations, including people over 65, prisoners, teachers and first responders.

Neither Ahmed nor Eric Trump responded to requests for comment from The Washington Post on Wednesday. On March 13, Eric Trump tweeted two photographs of the Chicago tower and the city’s skyline.

Loretto Hospital’s statement said its chief executive, George Miller, had authorized the vaccinations. Miller said that the 72 vaccinated Trump employees were “predominantly Black and brown,” and that the event was requested by Trump employees who live on Chicago’s West Side, near the hospital.

“We were, at the time, under the impression that restaurant and other front line hospitality industry workers were considered ‘essential’ under the City of Chicago’s 1B eligibility requirements,” Miller said in his statement. ‘I now understand, after subsequent conversations with the Chicago Department of Public Health, that we were mistaken.”

Failson2 even jumped the line.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

12 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"At Trump’s Chicago tower, employees got vaccinated early — thanks to a hospital whose COO lives in the building"

Failson2 even jumped the line.

When a Chicago politician can call you out on your corruption you know it's bad.  

[47of74]

Hahahahaha 

 

[fraurosena]

32 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Hahahahaha 

 

That wax figure doesn't even remotely look like Trump. It's too lean, the hair is all wrong, the eyebrows too thick, the face isn't orange, the mouth isn't pouty, his vagina-neck is absent and the hands are much too big.

Still, there is no doubt it's supposed to be Trump. Who else would have two thumbs up standing between Putin and Kim?

[thoughtful]

Ooooh, I wonder if the Biblewalk museum in Ohio can use it!

Hmmmm. . . who could they turn it into? Nebuchadnezzar? The rich man who spurned Lazarus?

[GreyhoundFan]

15 minutes ago, thoughtful said:

Ooooh, I wonder if the Biblewalk museum in Ohio can use it!

Hmmmm. . . who could they turn it into? Nebuchadnezzar? The rich man who spurned Lazarus?

I was thinking they could lease it to farmers to use as a scarecrow.

[AnywhereButHere]

I feel like they're missing an opportunity here. They could make some serious money off this thing. Set it up in its own room and charge people $5 a pop to punch it. 

[church_of_dog]

9 hours ago, thoughtful said:

Ooooh, I wonder if the Biblewalk museum in Ohio can use it!

Hmmmm. . . who could they turn it into? Nebuchadnezzar? The rich man who spurned Lazarus?

 

Could it be...   ...SATAN?

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, AnywhereButHere said:

I feel like they're missing an opportunity here. They could make some serious money off this thing. Set it up in its own room and charge people $5 a pop to punch it. 

Or they could sell it to John Oliver. He did such a great job with the wax presidents he bought a few years ago:

 

[church_of_dog]

That is especially funny to me because I've been reading books about the 1920s recently, including one about the 1920 election which put Harding in office and another one about the Teapot Dome scandal.  Warren G. Harding and his escapades are fresh in my mind! 

[Smee]

I’m another foreigner (British-born, living in Aus) who finds the American flag thing weird. Houses here don’t have flagpoles. Occasionally someone might pull out a flag to hang off a balcony or in a window for Australia Day, but even that gets partisan side eye these days because lots of us on the left think we shouldn’t have a patriotic holiday on the anniversary of the invasion, while our First Nations people commemorate it as a day of mourning. Flags are flown on government buildings and schools - usually 2 or 3 flagpoles next to each other because it’s common to fly the Aboriginal flag and (more recently) Torres Strait Islander flag as well as the national one.  

School kids pledging “allegiance” to the flag is odd to me too. I’m sure the US isn’t the only country with this kind of nationalism, but as someone who only ever vaguely feels patriotic during international sporting events (world cup football) I’ve never understood it.

[47of74]

Good. 

Quote

It is "very unlikely" that former president Donald Trump will be the Republican Party's 2024 nominee or make a bid to return to the White House as a candidate of a third opposition party, a political academic has said.

The claim comes from Allan Lichtman, a Distinguished Professor of History at American University known for his predictive model that has accurately forecast the winner of seven of the last eight U.S. presidential elections.

"He's got $400 million-plus in loans coming due. His brand is failing. His businesses are failing. He has a huge IRS audit. He doesn't hold office anymore. He's lost his Twitter. That's a lot of baggage for somebody to run for president," Lichtman told the Miami Heraldnewspaper columnist Andrés Oppenheimer, in reference to Trump.

Lichtman co-created a system called "The Keys to the White House" in 1981 alongside Russian geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok. The only time it failed was in 2000, when the academics had falsely predicted Al Gore would become president.

Not to mention he’s got done criming to answer for. 

[church_of_dog]

CNN has an article about Trump's supposed social media network in development:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/21/media/donald-trump-social-media-network/index.html

I can't quite believe that Trump is actually doing this, though.  We know he's got extensive experience in lawsuits -- could he possibly actually not recognize that at least one of the reasons existing social media networks and platforms enforce their "no threats, hate speech, etc" rules by cancelling or freezing accounts, is to avoid liability when participants do hateful violence in real life?

Hmm, upon further thought, maybe this is a great idea.  It's yet another avenue by which he might be brought down legally, if the current lawsuits fail to do so.

Side note, @47of74 -- I am chuckling over imagining you getting caught up in the moment and using "criming" as a verb during a courtroom argument...

[47of74]

35 minutes ago, church_of_dog said:

Side note, @47of74 -- I am chuckling over imagining you getting caught up in the moment and using "criming" as a verb during a courtroom argument...

I may very well have to. Especially if I wind up practicing in front of one Judge Jeffrey Middleton. 

[WiseGirl]

Thanks George for finding the bright side. Still I hope it never happens.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club partially closed after staff infected with coronavirus"

Quote

Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida has been partially closed after some of its employees were infected with the coronavirus, according to an email sent to club members Friday afternoon.

“As some of our staff have recently tested positive for COVID-19, we will be temporarily suspending service at the Beach Club and à la carte Dining Room,” club management said, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post.

“Banquet and Event services remain open,” the email said.

The Trump Organization declined to say how many workers were affected. The Palm Beach club — which includes the former president’s home as well as restaurants and banquet facilities — has dozens of employees during the winter season.

“Out of an abundance of caution we have quarantined some of the workers and partially closed a section of the club for a short period of time,” a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization said in a statement to The Post.

Lee Lipton, a member at the club, said he received a phone call Friday saying his dinner reservations were canceled for Friday and Saturday nights. “But they said the car show was going on Sunday, and the hotel rooms are fine,” he said.

The partial closure of the club was first reported by the Associated Press.

Palm Beach County, which includes the club, still requires that all guests wear masks, except while “actively consuming food and beverage.”

Last weekend, Mar-a-Lago hosted two large fundraisers for a charity called Big Dog Ranch Rescue, including one event at which Trump appeared, praising the group.

Photos from those events show that few attendees were wearing masks. Trump, who had covid-19 in the fall and was vaccinated earlier this year, also did not wear a mask.

Two people familiar with the club said that Mar-a-Lago waiters wore masks during the events. A spokesperson for the charity declined to comment about the event.

The club has not forced members to adhere to a mask policy, though they have suggested masks be worn and provided them to guests, according to people who have visited.

In January, a Florida state representative asked the county to shut down Mar-a-Lago after photos from a New Year’s Eve event showed that many guests were not wearing masks. In response, Palm Beach County sent the club a formal warning letter, saying that Mar-a-Lago had violated county code and could faces fines up to $15,000 if there was another violation.

Patrick Rutter, assistant Palm Beach County administrator, who oversees the county’s covid enforcement efforts, said he hadn’t heard of Mar-a-Lago partially closing, but that it would be up to the club’s leadership to decide whether to close in case of an outbreak.

“Businesses would make their own decisions of that was the case,” Rutter said.

Omari Hardy, the state representative who had asked for Mar-a-Lago to be closed down, said workers were paying the price of the club’s lax mask policy.

“No one around the president wears a mask. The guests at Mar-a-Lago have photographed themselves partying and carousing not wearing masks,” said Hardy, whose district includes a town just a few miles from Mar-a-Lago that is home to many essential workers who staff the clubs and restaurants on Palm Beach. “Now the workers, who can least afford to get sick, are paying for it with their health.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The former guy's continuing stupidity:

 

[47of74]

The reaction to OFM’s announcement about building his own social media site was met with an overwhelming response. 

Quote

What does a former U.S. president do when he’s been kicked off of mainstream social media platforms? Start his own, apparently.  

The news that former president Donald Trump was building his own social media business was revealed on Sunday by his advisor Jason Miller, who told Fox News that his boss would return in two to three months with “his own platform.”

But word of the major move landed with a thud in the most pro-Trump corners of the internet, and the announcement was met with silence, if not outright derision.

“The idea of [a] Trump social media platform sounds as viable as Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump Casino Atlantic City. How long can one discuss ‘Her emails’ or ‘Voter Fraud’?” tweeted Clint Watts, a national security analyst at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University.

Plus good luck getting a reputable company to host that flaming bag of manure. 

[Cartmann99]

3 hours ago, 47of74 said:

The reaction to OFM’s announcement about building his own social media site was met with an overwhelming response. 

Plus good luck getting a reputable company to host that flaming bag of manure. 

If by some miracle Trump and and Mike Lindell both end up with their own social media sites, watching them go after each other would be highly entertaining.

[onekidanddone]

6 hours ago, 47of74 said:

The reaction to OFM’s announcement about building his own social media site was met with an overwhelming response. 

Plus good luck getting a reputable company to host that flaming bag of manure. 

Just like his beautiful health care plan and infrastructure week it will be beautiful. Like nobody has ever seen before. Well of course nobody has ever seen it! One can not see something that does not exist 

[47of74]

4 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

If by some miracle Trump and and Mike Lindell both end up with their own social media sites, watching them go after each other would be highly entertaining.

Or watching them butter each other up would be entertaining and disgusting all at the same time.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good take from Paul Waldman: "Trump considers adding a social media network to his list of failures"

Quote

Donald Trump is a man adrift — out of power, without his Twitter account, and watching as his influence over the Republican Party begins a slow and steady decline. So what’s a former president to do? This, apparently:

A top Trump adviser confirmed the former president is building his own social network after major tech companies suspended his accounts in the fallout of the Jan. 6 Capitol attacks.

“I do think that we’re going to see President Trump returning to social media in probably about two or three months here, with his own platform,” Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told Fox News on Sunday. “And this is something that I think will be the hottest ticket in social media, it’s going to completely redefine the game, and everybody is going to be waiting and watching to see what exactly President Trump does.”

It’s of course possible that Trumpbook, or Trmpr, or whatever it might be called, will turn out to be as much a figment of the imagination as the spectacular health-care plan Trump kept promising as president. But let’s assume for the moment that this actually comes to pass.

I for one look forward to watching it fail miserably.

Is that just petty schadenfreude? Sure. But after all he put us through, I think we deserve to periodically remind ourselves for the next few years that Trump is a loser and nobody knows it more than he does.

But if he actually thinks a personality-driven, ideologically limited social network can succeed, he understands a lot less about contemporary media than we thought.

For years, we heard that Trump might try to form his own media company, a cable network that would be everything Fox News is, but Trumpier. It never happened, probably because as soon as he started to consider what would be involved, he realized it was just too daunting a challenge.

It would certainly be simpler to start a social media platform, but it’s not something he has any experience in. For him to succeed in a new line of commerce he’d never been involved in before, he’d have to bring around him some smart, competent people who knew a lot about the technical and business aspects of this endeavor.

And his track record on hiring leaves something to be desired. His White House was without doubt the most incompetent in modern times: It leaked like a sieve, it could barely issue a news release that wasn’t full of typos, and he went through four chiefs of staff and seven communications directors.

So who’s going to create and run Trmpr? Jared Kushner? Good luck with that.

Next you have this problem: As much as Trump might revel in the adulation of his fans, what he has always craved most is the attention and acknowledgment of the broader public (and the elites, whom he derides while simultaneously seeking their acceptance).

That’s why Twitter worked so well for him: Because it’s the place where journalists congregate (along with a few hundred million other people), he could leverage it to achieve much wider attention than simply speaking to the like-minded people who followed him there.

But a platform solely populated by his supporters will probably suffer the same problem sites such as Parler had: With only conservatives in attendance, even those who went there enthusiastically at the beginning didn’t find it all that compelling. If you own the libs on your social media site but no libs are there to hear it, have the libs actually been owned?

I’d also question whether even Trump’s supporters feel like they desperately need to hear more from him. He pops up from time to time on Fox News, and now that they’ve detoxified from the daily Trumpian deluge, they might find that they don’t really need to get his thoughts on a minute-to-minute basis.

There are still lots of conservative media outlets Trump loyalists can get their news from, and if they want to talk to each other, Facebook is still the same sewer of right-wing misinformation they know and love.

But you can see why Trump would be batting about an idea like this one. His business is suffering, and he’s besieged by lawsuits and investigations. His brand is forever tarnished — if you were a developer in Panama or Malaysia, would you want to pay him millions of dollars for the rights to slap the Trump name on your hotel? He’s going to need every income stream he can get.

So maybe his ambitions are modest. Rather than starting a platform that will succeed so spectacularly it will drive Twitter out of business and restore Trump to gold-plated glory, he may just want to grab whatever he can get while he can. A bottom-feeding operation meant to squeeze as much money as possible from his most gullible supporters would be completely in character.

He can put it alongside Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, the Tour de Trump, and all the other genius ideas that he milked for a few bucks before they crashed and burned. It’s no consolation for the real damage he did in lives, suffering and the debasement of our nation’s politics, but at least we’ll have another reason to laugh at him a little.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump hotels have been dropped by a major luxury travel agency network"

Quote

Virtuoso, a global network of luxury travel agencies, no longer considers Trump Hotels a preferred partner.

The Texas-based company, which includes 20,000 luxury travel advisers, said the change was effective March 8; it applies to the six Trump hotels that were considered partners.

“Trump Hotels are no longer part of the Virtuoso network,” spokeswoman Misty Belles said in a statement. “We consider many variables when reviewing both existing and new network participation. Out of respect for all involved parties, and as a general policy, we do not share comments regarding our non-renewal and exit decisions.”

The split, which was first reported by Zenger News, means the hotels are not listed on Virtuoso’s website, and the network’s advisers will no longer be able to access previously negotiated benefits for travelers.

Travelers may turn to advisers to take advantage of preferred hotel rates, perks, VIP treatment and special access, or just to get expert help with planning where to go and what to do on a vacation. Virtuoso promises to connect clients to “carefully curated travel providers.”

In April 2016, Virtuoso touted its affiliation with the soon-to-open Trump International Hotel in D.C. An announcement said only guests who reserved a stay with a Virtuoso travel adviser would get “exclusive benefits” including a room upgrade; daily full breakfast for two; $100 spa credit; welcome amenity; early check-in and late checkout.

“Trump International Hotel, Washington, D.C. will soon take its place among the most esteemed landmarks of our nation’s capital,” the announcement said.

An agency that is part of Virtuoso’s network can still book a client at a Trump-branded hotel through other channels, said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group. But they won’t get the privileges that comes with preferred partners because Virtuoso no longer has a direct relationship with the hotels.

“It’s a big deal because Virtuoso is very well-respected in the industry,” Harteveldt said. “It serves a very elite base of customers and its actions are often studied by others. With Virtuoso doing this, some travel agencies that may have been debating whether or not to do it could decide well, if Virtuoso has done this, we too will end our professional relationship with the Trump hotels.”

It was not clear if any other travel agencies had cut ties with the company; several declined to comment or did not respond to questions. Representatives for Trump Hotels could not be reached for comment.

Since Jan. 6 — when former president Donald Trump encouraged a mob of his supporters that later attacked the U.S. Capitol — a number of Trump’s former business partners and clients have cut ties with his company. These have included lenders, bankers, insurers, lawyers and the PGA of America, which canceled a major golf tournament planned at one of Trump’s courses.

In some cases, these former clients or lenders explicitly cited the Jan. 6 riot as the reason for their decision. Others, such as Virtuoso, have declined to give a reason.

Whatever the cause, experts say the loss of Virtuoso’s affiliation could be bad news for the hotel company. It was already wounded by the pandemic and earlier by a backlash to Trump’s political moves.

Chekitan Dev, a professor of marketing and branding at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, said in an email that Virtuoso is “one of the largest, best known, and influential third-party channels of distribution, especially for luxury hotels.”

He said hotels face a challenge in finding ways to fill their rooms at the highest possible rate — which can be where travel agents come in.

“Getting fired by Virtuoso is a very big deal because the hotels or hotel brands lose exposure to a vast network of agents who are very skilled at booking business for their most discriminating and high-net worth customers who are typically also frequent travelers,” Dev said.