Trump 55: The Bronze Baron Of Bedminster Wants Back On Twitter And the Forbes 400

[GreyhoundFan]

Continued from here:

 

 

Trump is suing to get back on Twitter because he doesn't understand the difference between Terms of Use and the First Amendment. He's also fallen off the Forbes 400 list of richest people. Oh, and he lost the lawsuit to hold Omarosa to her NDA.

Credit to item shared by @Cartmann99 for the title.

[Howl]

Yes, it's been a glorious week so far for Herr Mango.  Important to remember these are all huge narcissistic injuries.  There's going to be some desperate times at Mar-a-Loco (or is he at Bedminster?); he's gonna need some showtunes and a rally STAT!

There will be bombastic and threatening statements on letterhead with a fake seal from the office of Donald J. Trump!

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

Bronze Baron of Bedminster?  Ha ha haaa a! I'm dead! 

Edited October 7, 2021 by PreciousPantsofDoom

[47of74]

Yeah fuck face is coming tomorrow for a bund meeting rally. 

Quote

Preparations are underway at the Iowa State Fairgrounds ahead of former President Donald Trump’s return to Iowa.

Trump will hold his “Save America” rally on Saturday.

It comes nearly a year after his last speech at the airport.

Ugh I’ll have to stay out of the fairgrounds area tomorrow. 

And of course it’ll be this once again. 

[Cartmann99]

 

[Xan]

Bloviating fool is speaking now.  He's been speaking for maybe five minutes and he's already mentioned that the election was rigged.  And he's saying that elections are now corrupt.  It's a veritable hate-fest.  I don't think I can keep listening.  

He came on late.  They showed a clip of "Patton" right before he came on and then he entered to Lee Greenwood singing "God Bless the USA".  He says that the Biden plan will raise taxes on working families higher than ever before.  Now he's saying that the Biden bill gives incentives for businesses to go to China.

Enough of his lies.  I'll read someone else's synopsis later.  

[47of74]

You know, I have noticed something today.  Mainly that some of the news media here in Iowa that would breathlessly report on fuck knob's every movement (bowel and otherwise) don't seem all that interested in posting about his bund meeting today.  Des Moines news media is reporting on that lump of shit but it doesn't seem like media from other parts of the state aren't all that interested.  Maybe they're getting tired of that orange lump.

[AnywhereButHere]

1 hour ago, Xan said:

Bloviating fool is speaking now.  He's been speaking for maybe five minutes and he's already mentioned that the election was rigged.  And he's saying that elections are now corrupt.  It's a veritable hate-fest.  I don't think I can keep listening.  

I read “election” as “electron”, and the republicans are so batshit crazy these days that it didn’t even seem weird that Fucknut would be politicizing electrons in some way. I was almost disappointed that he was actually on his rigged election rant. I was kind of looking forward to how rigged and corrupt electrons fit into the narrative! 

[thoughtful]

13 hours ago, AnywhereButHere said:

I read “election” as “electron”, and the republicans are so batshit crazy these days that it didn’t even seem weird that Fucknut would be politicizing electrons in some way. I was almost disappointed that he was actually on his rigged election rant. I was kind of looking forward to how rigged and corrupt electrons fit into the narrative! 

Perhaps Venus Flytrap can explain it.

Spoiler

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yeah, no surprise: "White Tiger and Cheetah Furs: A Mess of Trump Gift Exchanges"

Quote

The Saudi royal family showered Donald J. Trump and his entourage on his first trip abroad as president with dozens of presents, including three robes made with white tiger and cheetah fur, and a dagger with a handle that appeared to be ivory.

Little that followed went right.

A White House lawyer determined that possession of the furs and dagger most likely violated the Endangered Species Act, but the Trump administration held onto them and failed to disclose them as gifts received from a foreign government.

On the last full day of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the White House handed them over to the General Services Administration — the wrong agency — rather than the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which seized the gifts this summer.

At that point, there was a surprise.

The furs, from an oil-rich family worth billions of dollars, were fake.

“Wildlife inspectors and special agents determined the linings of the robes were dyed to mimic tiger and cheetah patterns and were not comprised of protected species,” said Tyler Cherry, a spokesman for the Interior Department, which oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Officials at the Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment.

The tale of the furs is but one example of how gift exchanges between the United States and foreign leaders — a highly regulated process intended to shield administrations from questions of impropriety — devolved into sometimes risible shambles during the Trump administration.

The State Department’s inspector general is investigating allegations that Mr. Trump’s political appointees walked off with gift bags worth thousands of dollars that were meant for foreign leaders at the Group of 7 summit planned for Camp David in 2020, which was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. The bags contained dozens of items purchased with government funds, including leather portfolios, pewter trays and marble trinket boxes emblazoned with the presidential seal or the signatures of Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump.

The inspector general continues to pursue the whereabouts of a $5,800 bottle of Japanese whiskey given to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — Mr. Pompeo said he never received it — and a 22-karat gold coin given to another State Department official.

There is also a question about whether the former second lady, Karen Pence, wrongly took two gold-toned place card holders from the prime minister of Singapore without paying for them.

In addition, the Trump administration never disclosed that Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and a top White House adviser, received two swords and a dagger from the Saudis, although he paid $47,920 for them along with three other gifts in February, after he left office.

To be sure, Mr. Trump’s handling of foreign gifts is not at the top of his critics’ list of administration offenses. And there is no evidence that he or Mrs. Trump took any gifts to which they were not entitled.

But ethics experts said the problems reflected larger issues with the Trump presidency.

“Whether this was indifference, sloppiness or the Great Train Robbery, it shows such a cavalier attitude to the law and the regular process of government,” said Stanley M. Brand, a criminal defense lawyer, ethics expert and former top lawyer for the House of Representatives.

The State Department declined to address the specifics of how the Trump administration handled gifts but said in a statement that it “takes seriously its role in reporting the disposition of certain gifts received by U.S. government employees” and that it was “investigating the whereabouts of gifts that are unaccounted for and the circumstances that led to their disappearance.”

This article is based on public documents and others produced by the federal government under the Freedom of Information Act, interviews with current and former government officials, and on-the-record responses to questions from several government departments and agencies. The documents include an index of gifts that Mr. Trump and his family received in Saudi Arabia in 2017 that the National Archives provided to two Democratic senators, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

The details about the missing gifts and the other widespread problems with them have not been previously reported. Politico reported in August that the State Department’s inspector general was investigating some 20 types of missing gifts.

82 Gifts From the Saudis

The nation’s founders were so concerned that European nobility could co-opt U.S. officials with lavish gifts that they included in the Constitution a clause making it illegal for an official to take anything of worth from a foreigner.

In 1966, Congress passed a law detailing how a U.S. official could keep a gift of only relatively minimal value, now capped at $415. Subsequent amendments defined gifts as government property and created a standardized process for how officials were to deal with them.

To add transparency, provisions require administrations to annually disclose the gifts given to U.S. officials by foreigners and their appraised value. The laws have no criminal penalties, although legal experts said that anyone caught taking government property could be prosecuted for theft.

The Trump administration’s gift problems date from the president’s trip in May 2017 to Saudi Arabia, whose leaders were jubilant that Mr. Trump had chosen the kingdom for his first visit abroad and was embracing them after years of tensions with the Obama administration. The Saudis have a history of giving lavish gifts to American presidents, and Mr. Trump and his aides appeared to receive a generous bounty.

The State Department disclosed a list of 82 gifts from the Saudis to Trump administration officials on the May 2017 trip in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed shortly after Mr. Trump returned home. The gifts ranged from ordinary ones like sandals and scarves to expensive ones like furs and daggers.

Nine of the most expensive presents — the three furs, three swords and three daggers — were sent to the White House gifts unit to be assessed and appraised but never appeared on any of the Trump State Department’s legally required annual filings for foreign gifts, according to a review of government documents.

It was not until Jan. 19, 2021, that the White House sent the nine gifts to the General Services Administration, according to a statement from the agency.

After The New York Times inquired this summer about why the agency was in possession of items in violation of the Endangered Species Act, the General Services Administration alerted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which sent an agent in July to collect the furs at a government warehouse in Springfield, Va. The agent also took the dagger, which a visiting Qatari official had given to the Trump White House in Saudi Arabia.

Inspectors examined the items, discovering more problems as they determined that the furs had been dyed and were fake. The dagger’s handle “appears to possibly contain tooth or bone of some variety” — the materials of elephant tusk — “although additional laboratory analysis would be required to identify the species,” the Interior Department said.

It is unclear if the Saudis knew about the fake furs or were deceived by a supplier, but Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on Saudi-U. S. relations, called the gifts highly embarrassing.

“The two most important things for them is to look like they’re aboveboard world actors, and are rich and show their wealth,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump did not return several messages seeking comment.

Disappearing Gift Bags

As Trump political appointees in the State Department’s protocol office packed up their belongings in January, career officers saw their departing colleagues leave with the gift bags meant for foreign leaders at the G7 summit the previous year, the inspector general has learned. The bags had been in storage in a large room at the State Department known as the vault.

Once the Biden administration took over, career officials began to examine the accounting of foreign gifts without Trump officials looking over their shoulders.

At that point, career officials discovered that many of the gift bags were missing, as were more than a dozen additional presents given to Trump officials. The number was unusual: Government documents from the Obama and George W. Bush administrations show no unaccounted gifts given to White House officials, cabinet members or members of the first families.

In the months that followed, The Times located many of the gifts, including a bottle of perfume and a Persian silk carpet that the Qataris had given to Steven Mnuchin, the former Treasury secretary. (His gifts were supposed to have been sent to the General Services Administration for disposal, but they were sitting in storage at the Treasury Department.)

The bottle of whiskey for Mr. Pompeo remains unaccounted for, as does the 22-karat gold coin and a porcelain bowl from Vietnam for John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s third national security adviser, who sent The Times an email exchange with the Trump White House showing that he never took it and did not want it.

One mystery has been solved: When The Times reached out to Mrs. Pence, a lawyer for the family said that she had taken the gold-toned place card holders after a White House ethics lawyer told her she could keep them because they had been appraised at less than the minimal threshold, which was $390 at the time.

But according to the information provided to the State Department by the Trump White House, Mrs. Pence should have paid for the place card holders. Under federal guidelines, if a U.S. official is given multiple gifts in a meeting with a foreign official, the American must pay for them if the total exceeds the minimal threshold. The State Department said the Trump White House reported that Mrs. Pence had received the card holders along with a framed print and a clutch purse, which totaled $1,200.

Richard Cullen, the lawyer for the Pence family, said the State Department was wrong, the gifts had been given at different meetings, and Mrs. Pence had declined to keep the print and clutch. In response to Mr. Cullen’s explanation, a State Department spokesman said it stood by its characterization of Mrs. Pence’s gifts.

 

[Cartmann99]

Spoiler

 

[47of74]

Fuck face's antics coming back to bite him

Quote

A number of high-powered lawyers who have represented Donald Trump in the past are sitting out his latest legal battle, as the former President prepares to assert executive privilege to block congressional investigators from getting information on the January 6 insurrection.

That's left Trump with a relatively small legal team without a lot of experience litigating issues of executive privilege as he readies for a court fight that could test major issues of presidential authority.

Some go-to attorneys have been spooked by Trump's reputation for sometimes not paying as a client, according to several people familiar with conservative legal circles. Others watched closely as lawyers fled Trump's prior teams, frustrated by him as a client or facing their own ethical predicaments. Others still want themselves and their firms to stay far away from Trump's insistence that the election was stolen.

"It's not a 10-foot pole" for law firms distancing themselves from Trump, "it's a 1,000-foot pole," said John Yoo, a University of California at Berkeley law professor who held a senior Justice Department position in the George W. Bush administration.

 

[AnywhereButHere]

3 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

  Hide contents

 

Please, oh please. If they listen to nothing else that falls out of his mouth, may they listen to this. 

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, AnywhereButHere said:

Please, oh please. If they listen to nothing else that falls out of his mouth, may they listen to this. 

Still, the lack of Republican voters will be used as 'evidence' that fraud happened, and many of the Republucan state legislators now have the power to overturn election results. You can be sure they will claim fraud and install the candidate of their choice.

Democracy is at death's door, and it's scary that Americans don't seem aware of it. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Not a surprise: "Committee Uncovers Evidence that Trump Concealed Millions in Losses, Hid Debts, and Received Millions from Foreign Governments at Trump Hotel"

Quote

GSA Documents Raise New Concerns about Trump Hotel Lease and Former President’s Conflicts of Interest

Washington, D.C. (October 8, 2021)—Today, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, the Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, sent a letter to the General Services Administration (GSA) detailing new concerns about former President Trump’s lease for the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., his failure to disclose significant losses and debts in public filings and lease documents, and his conflicts of interest as President.  The Committee’s discoveries were based on documents recently obtained from GSA.

“The documents provided by GSA raise new and troubling questions about former President Trump’s lease with GSA and the agency’s ability to manage the former President’s conflicts of interest during his term in office when he was effectively on both sides of the contract, as landlord and tenant,” the Chairs wrote.

“Specifically, the Committee found that President Trump provided misleading information about the financial situation of the Trump Hotel in his annual financial disclosures; received undisclosed preferential treatment from a foreign bank on a $170 million loan to the hotel that the President personally guaranteed; accepted millions of dollars in emoluments from foreign governments without providing an accounting of the money’s source or purpose; concealed hundreds of millions of dollars in debts from GSA when bidding on the Old Post Office Building lease; and made it impossible for GSA to properly enforce the lease’s conflict-of-interest restrictions by engaging in opaque transactions with other affiliated entities. As discussed in this letter, this new evidence raises many questions that require further investigation and action by the Committee.”

Despite the precedent set by every modern American president, during his term in office, President Trump retained his financial interest in his various business entities, including the Trump Hotel.  The hotel opened to the public in September 2016, just weeks after Mr. Trump accepted the Republican nomination for President.  Throughout President Trump’s term, there were numerous reports about foreign and domestic interests patronizing the Trump Hotel as a way to curry favor with the President.

For more than five years, the Committee has been investigating conflicts of interest related to GSA’s management of the Trump Hotel’s lease.  Under the Trump Administration, GSA failed to substantially comply with the Committee’s requests.  On July 9, 2021, GSA finally produced a subset of requested documents, including the Trump Hotel’s audited financial statements for the years 2014 through 2020, three-years’ worth of President Trump’s statements of financial condition that were submitted to GSA to win the federal lease, and communications between President Trump’s businesses and GSA regarding the lease.

These documents show:
 

• Former President Trump Reported Massive Revenues at the Trump Hotel, Concealing that the Hotel Suffered $70 Million in Net Losses.  On his federally mandated financial disclosures, President Trump reported that the Trump Hotel earned him over $150 million in revenue during his time in office.  However, the records obtained by the Committee show that the Trump Hotel actually incurred net losses of over $70 million, leading the former President’s holding company to inject at least $24 million to aid the struggling hotel.  By filing these misleading public disclosures, President Trump grossly exaggerated the financial health of the Trump Hotel.  He also appears to have concealed potential conflicts of interest stemming not just from his ownership of this failing business but also from his roles as the hotel’s lender and the guarantor of its third-party loans.
   
• While in Office, President Trump Received Preferential Treatment Potentially Worth Millions from a Foreign Bank.  The documents show that in 2018, Deutsche Bank provided President Trump with a significant financial benefit by allowing him to delay making principal payments on the Trump Hotel’s $170 million loan—which Trump had personally guaranteed—for a period of six years.  Without this deferral, the hotel may have needed to pay tens of millions of additional dollars to Deutsche Bank at a time when it was already facing steep losses.  Mr. Trump did not publicly disclose this significant benefit from a foreign bank while he was President.
   
• The Trump Hotel Received Over $3.7 Million from Foreign Governments.  Based on the Committee’s analysis, from 2017 through 2020, the Trump Hotel received an estimated $3.7 million in payments from foreign governments, raising concerns about possible violations of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause.  This amount would have been sufficient to cover over 7,400 nights at the Trump Hotel at the average daily rate.  Former President Trump failed to disclose details about these payments to GSA, and he “donated” to the Treasury only the small portion of these payments that his company determined to be profits.
   
• Former President Trump Concealed Debts When Bidding on Old Post Office Building Lease.  In 2011, when he applied to lease the Old Post Office Building, former President Trump provided GSA with financial information that appeared to conceal certain debts.  Specifically, he provided a 2008 financial statement that reported over $1.1 billion in outstanding loan balances for properties in Chicago, Las Vegas, New York, and San Francisco.  Although these loans remained outstanding in 2009 and 2010, President Trump omitted them from his financial statements for those years, hiding key information.
   
• The Trump Hotel Moved Around Millions of Dollars in Opaque Transactions with Other Trump Businesses.  President Trump transferred millions of dollars in and out of his D.C. Hotel through affiliated entities and opaque transactions, raising questions about GSA’s ability to enforce provisions that prohibited President Trump from taking money out of the business.

In light of these troubling new revelations, Chairwoman Maloney and Chairman Connolly highlighted the need for further investigation and legislative reform. 

The Chairs also requested that GSA provide additional documents, including documents related to the Trump Hotel’s loan from Deutsche Bank, due diligence performed by GSA on the financial records it received from President Trump, foreign government payments to the Trump Hotel, and loans by Trump or his businesses to the Trump Hotel.

The Committee is continuing to seek relevant documents.

Click here to read the Committee’s October 8, 2021, letter to GSA.

To read the documents released by the Committee, click here for Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

 

[Alisamer]

15 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

  Hide contents

 

Please let all of them stay home. All of them. And then let the democrats who are elected move swiftly to eliminate the power grabs the republicans have been putting in place forever that keep them in power no matter who is elected. 

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Not a surprise: "Committee Uncovers Evidence that Trump Concealed Millions in Losses, Hid Debts, and Received Millions from Foreign Governments at Trump Hotel"

 

Trump, a liar and a crook?

*clutches pearls*

I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

 

 

[fraurosena]

Trump showing once more that he really is a bully:

 

[Alisamer]

40 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Trump showing once more that he really is a bully:

 

Everything i've ever seen them send out is manipulative, emotionally abusing and bullying just like this. That's how they tricked people into recurring payments they hadn't meant to make - giving them the choice between something along the lines of "I'm a true patriot, and I stand with Trump!" and "I am abandoning Trump and turning my back on my country" where the tiny print tells you the first option takes money out of your account every month, and the second one is opting out of recurring donations. 

There are some people who really are so gullible, fragile, or unintelligent that they will fall for these tactics. They don't want to be "branded a deserter" and they need to prove that they are not a "traitor" as the first line of the text accuses them of being.

And once they've committed financially they feel stuck. No matter how insane, stupid, or blatantly false Trump's claims become, they're in. They don't want to feel duped, admitting they were wrong will make them feel stupid. They've put in time and money, and have built their identity on being a "true patriot" over the last several years... and now they're getting a text saying they are a traitor and will be branded a deserter if they don't donate more. They either don't see that they are being conned, or are too ashamed to admit it.

I'd almost feel sorry for them if they weren't supporting such evil, and causing so much damage to the country. 

I really feel like it's become a cult, to the point that many people are unable to pull themselves away without real therapy and deprogramming. 

[GreyhoundFan]

I forgot about this incident: "Trump to be questioned next week in N.Y. protest lawsuit, attorney says"

Quote

Former president Donald Trump will be questioned Monday at Trump Tower by attorneys for a group of protesters who claim Trump’s security guards assaulted them on a New York sidewalk in 2015.

Benjamin N. Dictor, one of the attorneys, said the questioning would begin Monday morning.

“I will be conducting the examination of Donald Trump under oath, at Trump Tower,” Dictor said in a written statement. “We look forward to presenting the video record of his testimony to the jury at his trial.”

The questioning is related to a lawsuit in state court in the Bronx, filed by four men of Mexican descent who were protesting outside Trump Tower in 2015. They wore Ku Klux Klan suits and carried signs protesting Trump’s remarks about Latinos during his first presidential campaign.

The men say Trump’s security guards emerged from the building, grabbed their signs and pushed them. One of the plaintiffs says that Trump’s then-head of security, Keith Schiller, struck him in the head with his fist.

Schiller has said that he was trying to clear the sidewalk and that he struck the man only after being grabbed from behind.

Trump was not present during the confrontation. But the plaintiffs sued him anyway, saying that these were his employees — and that his campaign-trail rhetoric gave the impression that they could use force against protesters.

The testimony that Trump gives Monday could be used in a future trial, though no trial date has been set in the case. The case has been delayed by court fights over whether Trump should be forced to testify.

An attorney for Trump did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

 

[Howl]

In a nice big FU, middle finger to Trump, Andy McCabe's pension is restored as settlement for McCabe's lawsuit claiming he was unfairly fired by Jeff Sessions, at Trump's direction. 

He was fired an hour or two before his retirement was set to take effect, which is certainly a signature Trump move. 

 

[Howl]

Excellent Mary L. Trump article:  

The Story Behind Donald’s Bizarre Statement About Republicans Not Voting   The former toddler-in-chief is throwing another temper tantrum, and his party is all too eager to coddle him.

[GreyhoundFan]

He's really gone full on crazy. "Trump asserts his dominance inside GOP, pushing Republicans to embrace his false claims of fraud"

Quote

Former president Donald Trump has in the past week threatened electoral defeat for Republicans who dismiss his election falsehoods, inserted himself into the Virginia governor’s race to the delight of Democrats, and promised to root out disloyal GOP officials in legislative primaries in Arizona and Michigan.

With more than a year to go before the midterm elections, the former president is leaving no corner of the party untouched as he moves to assert his dominance, both in public and behind the scenes. His stepped-up efforts create a conundrum for many of the party’s strategists and lawmakers, who believe they could have a banner election year in 2022 if they keep the focus on President Biden and his agenda.

But Trump has repeatedly turned the focus back onto the 2020 election. He moved into new territory Wednesday when he released a statement threatening the GOP with ballot-box repercussions if candidates do not embrace his false claims that the White House race was rigged.

“If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24,” Trump said, part of a barrage of statements on the election and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack that he sent out this week. “It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do.”

The former president’s threat drew winces among GOP operatives and U.S. senators gathered for a donor retreat for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) in Palm Beach, Fla., this week. Many still blame Trump for the loss of two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia in runoff elections early this year, saying his false claims of fraudulent ballots kept people from coming to the polls.

“It gives everyone cold sweats over the Georgia situation and the prospect he could have some impact again,” said one top party strategist, who like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

Already, many GOP candidates are following Trump’s lead, echoing false allegations that the election results were manipulated and raising the prospect that fraud will taint other elections.

In a private speech at the retreat Thursday, Trump cast himself as the GOP’s savior, saying he had brought the party back from the brink of disaster and helped Republicans hold seats on Capitol Hill — failing to mention that the party lost the White House and control of both the House and Senate under his presidency.

“It was a dying party, I’ll be honest. Now we have a very lively party,” he said, to a room of senators, donors and lobbyists, according to a recording of the event obtained by The Washington Post, before boasting of all the endorsements and telephone town halls he had done in the 2020 cycle.

He then railed against Republicans who had spoken negatively about him — naming Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah) and Ben Sasse (Neb.) at an event paid for by the NRSC — and urged the party to “stick together,” with Trump as the de facto leader.

“They cheat like hell, and they stick together,” Trump said of Democrats. “The Republican Party has to stick together.”

And he reiterated his claims that the 2020 vote was tainted by fraud, praising GOP-controlled states that have passed new voting restrictions since then.

“It’s a terrible thing what they did in Georgia and other states,” he said.

“You look at Texas, you look at a lot of states — they are correcting all the ways we were all abused over the last election . . . last two elections if you think about it,” Trump added.

In a statement Thursday, Trump spokesman Taylor Budo­wich said, “There is no one in the country that does more to increase voter engagement and participation than President Trump. Through his endorsements and massive Save America rallies, President Trump is single-handedly rebuilding the Republican Party at the ballot box.”

Republicans running in competitive general elections, such as Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, have been wary of tying themselves too closely to Trump’s claims about the 2020 election, while trying not to do anything that would spark Trump’s ire and turn off his supporters.

On Wednesday, Trump gave Youngkin a full-throated endorsement when he called in to a small rally for the GOP ticket in Virginia headlined by former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon.

Youngkin did not attend or sponsor the event, which began with the crowd pledging allegiance to a flag that the emcee said had been flown at a rally for Trump on Jan. 6, when his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol.

But Youngkin’s Democratic rival, former Virginia governor ­Terry McAuliffe, nonetheless pounced Thursday, calling on the Republican candidate to publicly denounce the act of pledging allegiance to “a flag that was used to bring down our country.”

“If that is the case, then we shouldn’t pledge allegiance to that flag,” Youngkin said later in response. “I have been so clear: There is no place for violence — none, none — in America today.”

Other Republicans worry that the debates over the 2020 election will bleed into election season next year, in a way that will hurt the GOP.

“Right now, if the party focuses on Afghanistan, inflation, the border, crime — we are going to win big,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who represents a swing district outside Omaha. “If the party wants to make it about the election is rigged, we will lose. Independent voters don’t respond well to that. If we keep the focus right, I think we’re going to win big in 2022.”

But Trump has been unrelenting, sending out a blizzard of statements attacking state and local officials in Arizona and Michigan who he claims have failed to investigate election irregularities.

“Hopefully, each one of these cowardly RINOs, whose names will be identified and forthcoming, will be primaried,” he said in one recent message about Michigan lawmakers, using an acronym for Republicans in Name Only.

He has also increasingly aligned himself with those who took part in the Capitol attack, recording a video this month to wish happy birthday to Ashli Babbitt, the rioter fatally shot by police. Trump called her “a truly incredible person” and called on the Justice Department to reopen its investigation into her death.

The former president has repeatedly raised the idea of the “rigged” election with candidates seeking his endorsement, and has backed a slate of GOP contenders across the country who back his claims.

Earlier this month, Trump threw his support behind a mayoral candidate in Hialeah, Fla., who told the Miami Herald that he believes there was “widespread fraud” in 2020 but that it is “very difficult to prove.”

GOP candidates across the country have been forced to answer questions on the topic. Former vice president Mike Pence, who was threatened by a mob of Trump supporters on Jan. 6, has struggled about what to say about voter fraud since then, according to advisers and allies.

Other potential Republican presidential candidates have tried to thread the needle. In a speech to donors in California this summer, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo tried to nod at voter fraud without fully backing Trump’s claims, according to audio reviewed by The Post.

“It’s hard to figure out the math on that,” Pompeo says, according to the audio, when a donor asks him incredulously how Biden won. “These elections were imperfect. There’s no doubt about that.”

Much of the party’s power structure has given Trump leeway to prosecute his false election case, without explicitly endorsing it. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the House GOP campaign arm, is running ads on Facebook that fully embrace a Trump return to the White House, a clear sign that he commands the support of small-dollar donors.

“Trump won’t run for President unless we take back the House!” some of the spots declare. “There’s NO shot we win without your help.”

Another recent fundraising email from the group threatened donors who had not yet contributed, saying, “You’re a traitor. You abandoned Trump.” The message added that they would “be branded a deserter” unless they contributed to the House effort.

Some Trump advisers were livid about the email, saying the rhetoric was off-putting and could alienate supporters. “The tone was totally inappropriate,” one of them said.

The NRSC, meanwhile, has been offering donors the chance to get “Official Trump Majority Membership,” promising invites to a “closed-door, in-person strategy meeting with Trump” and asking people to add their names to petitions that show support of “Trump’s Social Media site,” even though Trump has not rolled out a new social media site.

“The president is going to headline our fall dinner. He remains the biggest draw in our party and we are happy he is helping our efforts to fire [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi,” NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said Thursday in a call with reporters.

Asked to respond to Trump’s threat against Republicans who don’t embrace his election fraud narrative, Emmer demurred.

“The former president, he’s a private citizen,” Emmer said. “He, of course, is entitled to his own opinion.”

Some Trump allies have encouraged the Republican National Committee and party committees to make election fraud more of an issue in 2024, and the party has stepped up its “election integrity” efforts, hiring people in battleground states across the country. In a presentation to donors earlier this year, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said “election integrity” was one of the party’s top priorities — and that the committee would be creating a program for 2022.

At the NRSC conference in Palm Beach on Thursday, donors and lobbyists were treated to a presentation on polling that showed Republicans were in a strong spot to take back the Senate, and that Biden’s poll numbers had dropped, particularly among independents, according to people familiar with research. The agenda did not include any panels on election fraud, but instead offered donors a golf session with Jack Nicklaus and discussions about how Republicans are performing on digital fundraising, foreign policy and infrastructure.

In Trump’s address, one of the final events of the retreat, the former president focused on re-litigating grievances he has retained since leaving office.

He called Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) “maniacs” and described his presidency as a fight for survival.

“It was all phony s---, okay. All phony stuff,” he said of the Democratic impeachment efforts and the investigation of his ties to Russia.

Unprompted, he brought up an unsubstantiated claim he had interactions with prostitutes in Moscow before he ran for president.

“I’m not into golden showers,” he told the crowd. “You know the great thing, our great first lady — ‘That one,’ she said, ‘I don’t believe that one.’ ”

After extensively praising Chinese President Xi Jinping for his intellect and touting his good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he also returned to his long-standing hatred of windmills, referencing a new plan by the Biden administration to expand the number of offshore wind turbines.

“It’s so sad when you see that they are approving these windmills — worst form of energy, the most expensive,” he said. “You talk about carbon emissions, well they are making them. More goes into the air than if you ran something for 30 years.”

When operating properly, wind turbines do not create carbon emissions as a result of electricity generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Re: golden showers -- he doth protest too much.

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Re: golden showers -- he doth protest too much.

[Cartmann99]

Spoiler

Are they serving burnt steak with ketchup?