Donald Trump presidency discussion thread V

Danzy

Quin_Dub wrote: »

Sadly , you're not wrong , as long as the economy holds it's Trumps to lose for now.

He recently hit his highest ever approval rating - A staggering 46% approval. with almost no undecideds his disapproval rating is just over 50%.

91% approval among Republicans which has been fairly steady over the last multiple polls, however the big change was an increase from 4% support among Democrat voters to 10% in the latest polls, which is significant. Independents went from 33% to 39%

With the economy the way it is any other President would be comfortably north of 60% support , but he is so utterly divisive he is where he is..

I really don't think that there is anything that could come out from the house investigations that will shift the GOP voter number , but the other groups could shift significantly depending on the news..

However , if the economy stalls , he is utterly goosed.

Link to poll info

The investigation will be the same dead end was when the GOP did it with Clinton and just as counter productive.

The Dems will run with it because it is easy, generates headlines, gives an outward focus away from internal divisions and mistakes.

Gbear

Danzy wrote: »

The investigation will be the same dead end was when the GOP did it with Clinton and just as counter productive.

The Dems will run with it because it is easy, generates headlines, gives an outward focus away from internal divisions and mistakes.

Other than the bit where it and offshoot investigations found that Trump committed numerous felonies.

If the US had a functional system of government, Trump would already have been removed and awaiting trial for federal crimes, even before any further financial crimes he might have committed have been examined.

TomOnBoard

Quin_Dub wrote: »

So off to the courts we go - They are claiming Executive privilege on stuff that they waived privilege on already for Mueller , hard to see how that stands up in court.

I reckon that the Administration is on fairly firm ground here.

It claimed that it facilitated the Mueller investigation (which was a criminal investigation after all) by allowing McGahn to provide documents and to answer questions, without invoking any Executive Privilege. Now that Mueller has reported, it can claim to have 'done its duty' and has no continued obligation to provide the same courtesy to the the House Committee, and therefore invokes its EP in respect of McGahn and the documents. Regardless of Congressional oversight rights, the Administration, as a co-equal branch of Government is entitled to confidentiality in its internal deliberations and operations, particularly where one of the other co-equal branches has demonstrated a clear animus towards it.

The House has legitimate rights in terms of its focus on Barr; however, as I see it, its legitimacy in respect of its focus on McGahn is much less clear. As to subpoenaing McGahn himself where the Administration forbids his working with the Ctte, I think the Courts would side with the Administration that the President 'owns' McGahn's work product and can exercise EP over it

Just my 2 cents. I will be interested to see how it unfolds.

Quin_Dub

TomOnBoard wrote: »

I reckon that the Administration is on fairly firm ground here.

It claimed that it facilitated the Mueller investigation (which was a criminal investigation after all) by allowing McGahn to provide documents and to answer questions, without invoking any Executive Privilege. Now that Mueller has reported, it can claim to have 'done its duty' and has no continued obligation to provide the same courtesy to the the House Committee, and therefore invokes its EP in respect of McGahn and the documents. Regardless of Congressional oversight rights, the Administration, as a co-equal branch of Government is entitled to confidentiality in its internal deliberations and operations, particularly where one of the other co-equal branches has demonstrated a clear animus towards it.

The House has legitimate rights in terms of its focus on Barr; however, as I see it, its legitimacy in respect of its focus on McGahn is much less clear. As to subpoenaing McGahn himself where the Administration forbids his working with the Ctte, I think the Courts would side with the Administration that the President 'owns' McGahn's work product and can exercise EP over it

Just my 2 cents. I will be interested to see how it unfolds.

I see where you are coming from but I cannot see how they can decide that the same information is subject to Executive privilege for one group and not to another.

If the courts were to support the argument as you put it that "Regardless of Congressional oversight rights, the Administration, as a co-equal branch of Government is entitled to confidentiality in its internal deliberations and operations, particularly where one of the other co-equal branches has demonstrated a clear animus towards it." , then that is a massive impact to the constitution.

That would effectively mean that any and all future branches of Government could tell any other to go and whistle for anything just because "they have shown Animus towards them"

It would blow the whole concept of oversight out of the water.

This is a much much bigger legal argument than just the right here and right now of Trump et al.

duploelabs

FBI head Wray disputes Barr's assertion that the Trump campaign was spyed upon

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/fbi-chief-wray-says-spying-didn-t-occur-trump-campaign-n1002806?cid=public-rss_20190507

TomOnBoard

Quin_Dub wrote: »

If the courts were to support the argument as you put it that "Regardless of Congressional oversight rights, the Administration, as a co-equal branch of Government is entitled to confidentiality in its internal deliberations and operations, particularly where one of the other co-equal branches has demonstrated a clear animus towards it." , then that is a massive impact to the constitution.

Obviously, the argument as I put it is loose as it is just framed as part of discussion forum response, and cannot be considered to be part of a comprehensive legal argument. That said, its thrust is that

a) the Administration claims it fully acceded to all access and document requests from Mueller's team;
b) that access was not blocked by invoking EP at any point;
c) that access was granted in the context of Mueller's team having been set up as part of a Special Counsel criminal investigation;
d) following full access having been granted, Mueller's team received all the information it required/was entitled to;
e) Mueller finally produced his report, and the criminal investigation of those elements not handed off to other prosecutors/investigations is now complete;
f) Mueller presented his confidential report to the AG, in line with the law;
g) the A.G. chose to make certain parts of Mueller's report available to Congress and the public;
h) the Democratic-led House, having been given access to the redacted report, has decided that it wishes to go underneath the redacted report in a variety of ways, and within that process, it has asked for a witness to the Mueller investigation who, for all we know had to give testimony before a Grand Jury, to appear before it;
i) in doing so, the House Ctte. is becoming involved in the depths of a Criminal investigation that was undertaken by the FBI/DoJ, which is,by definition, a confidential process, unless testimony is subsequently used by either the prosecution or defense within a court of law;
j) becoming involved in a criminal case in this way goes waaaay beyond any Congressional oversight powers, and serves no legislative purpose to/for the House;
k) The 2019 Democratic House has, time and again, demonstrated clear animus towards the Administration, as has the Administration towards it. That animus is clearly irrelevant to the expression of any right of Congress to information from the Administration and/or access to its people that serves Congress's oversight or legislative roles. However, when it seeks information and/or witnesses that do not further those legislative/ oversight responsibilities, but involve a re- examination of a criminal investigation, the animus becomes hugely important. In this case, the House Ctte. is basically becoming a hostile non- independent investigation, with no legal rights (in that capacity) and the target of its investigation has every right to not assist it in any way in its biased actions.

All of the above apply to how the House deals with McGahn. None of it applies to how the House deals with Barr. His actions relate to what he did with the Confidential report that Mueller gave him. Investigation by the House as to what he did and how he did it have nothing to do with the Mueller investigation itself; rather, those actions fall firmly within the realm of matters over which Congress has full oversight rights and responsibilities.

All of those points I make in respect of McGahn become irrelevant if the House conducts an investigation on its own, as part of a formal Impeachment process. In that case, it will have the right to subpoena whom it wishes, and the President's invoking of EP would have waaaay much less weight. So, if the House wants to re- investigate the substance of Mueller's investigation, it will have to formally launch its own Impeachment investigation.

All IMHO of course...

Edit: Clarify in respect of Impeachment.

Quin_Dub wrote: »

This is a much much bigger legal argument than just the right here and right now of Trump et al.

Absolutely... Which is why it is so important..

Carry

Ah, well, now we know why Trump is so afraid to publish his tax returns.

Turns out that he is the biggest loser in the business world (and beyond) "in history" (as he likes to say so himself).

The New York Times obtained printouts from President Trump’s official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts for the years 1985 to 1994, and found that the president’s businesses lost more than $1 billion:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/07/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes.html?emc=edit_na_20190507&nl=breaking-news&nlid=58869593ing-news&ref=cta

That was the time he published his "Art of the Deal" thingy.

So a man who spun his claim of fame as being the most successful self-made (!) businessman "in history" (I love his sense of history...) is actually the biggest loser ever (probably "in history").

It doesn't matter if he made the losses as part of a taxfraud or by mere ineptitude. Probably a combination of both.
Fact remains that he is apparently neither a billionaire nor a successful businessman. Claimed losses of more than $1 billion don't read as successful.

And don't tell me, that all big earners claim massive losses to avoid tax.

In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer

Maybe he thinks that being successful means to screw everyone else.
Well at least in this regard he is very successful.

FreudianSlippers

Igotadose wrote: »

There's a recent editorial @ time.com by one of Spiro Agnews defense team. Basically the AG made it up to protect Nixon. Later, it was modified to allow Clinton to be questioned about pre-presidential activity. Said lawyer says Trump could and should be charged with crimes

There's a huge danger there given Trump has stacked he Supreme Court - think about it - someone indicts Trump, he relies on OLC opinion to say he can't be indicted, takes it to Supreme Court who rule in his favour and then the OLC opinion is law for potentially decades to come.

Impeachment is the best outcome I think and then indict the living hell out of him when he's not president any more.

Leroy42

At what point will Trump supporters accept that they have been duped?

It always strikes me that rather than defend the position of Trump during the campaign, his supporters now simply claim that he is doing a fantastic job. In effect they have already accepted that he pulled a fast one on the entire country but it worked out (according to them) so the end justifies the means.

But the natural extension of that is that there really is no point in campaigns, no point in looking at anything in the past. Simply give whomever promises the best goodies the job in the hope that it might, somehow, work out.

I fully expect the same rationale to be used when the next campaign is underway. Harris looks like she wants the job, so why no simply let her have a go and see what happens?

Wanderer78

Leroy42 wrote:

At what point will Trump supporters accept that they have been duped?

Many won't, ever, he might just get a second term also, partially because of this

everlast75

Leroy42 wrote: »

At what point will Trump supporters accept that they have been duped?

It always strikes me that rather than defend the position of Trump during the campaign, his supporters now simply claim that he is doing a fantastic job. In effect they have already accepted that he pulled a fast one on the entire country but it worked out (according to them) so the end justifies the means.

But the natural extension of that is that there really is no point in campaigns, no point in looking at anything in the past. Simply give whomever promises the best goodies the job in the hope that it might, somehow, work out.

I fully expect the same rationale to be used when the next campaign is underway. Harris looks like she wants the job, so why no simply let her have a go and see what happens?

They took a punt on him, gave him the benefit of the doubt and believed his promises.

He has now shown himself not to be deserving of any such benefit.

He has now shown that he is a prolific liar.

It is now abundantly contrary to logic to place any merit in what he says. The minds of those people who chose to anyway cannot be changed. They represent 35% roughly.

What Trump knows is that *all* of his financial information will come out. All of it. One way or the other. And he will be exposed as the snakeoil salesman he always was.

And the more he tries to fight it the more guilty he looks, the worse it looks for Republicans who try to defend him. That won't affect his base, but it will affect independents.

Things are only heading in one direction for him - worse not better. It's taking an excruciatingly amount of time. Its exhausting.

But as Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

spacecoyote

https://twitter.com/matthewamiller/status/1125962269408542720

This is craziness really...its so transparently corrupt

everlast75

spacecoyote wrote: »

https://twitter.com/matthewamiller/status/1125962269408542720

This is craziness really...its so transparently corrupt

Vote is happening today. Nadler is not backing down.

kilns

The crazy thing is Trump wants impeachment, he knows it will never pass in the Senate and it will galvanise his support even more and show the Dems are only interested in one thing to the determent of the country and are a threat to the "great" ecomony.

Any reasonable person knows he does not want his taxes handed over and the DB files to be handed over because he has so much to hide, maybe not something that will incriminate him but something that will hurt his ego and show that in fact he is not really a billionaire

ancapailldorcha

Leroy42 wrote: »

At what point will Trump supporters accept that they have been duped?

It always strikes me that rather than defend the position of Trump during the campaign, his supporters now simply claim that he is doing a fantastic job. In effect they have already accepted that he pulled a fast one on the entire country but it worked out (according to them) so the end justifies the means.

But the natural extension of that is that there really is no point in campaigns, no point in looking at anything in the past. Simply give whomever promises the best goodies the job in the hope that it might, somehow, work out.

I fully expect the same rationale to be used when the next campaign is underway. Harris looks like she wants the job, so why no simply let her have a go and see what happens?

They won't. Ever.

The reluctance to lose face is built into us as human beings. The bigger the flop, the more effort will be expended into avoiding that realization. It can be witnessed all over the place if you look. Even people who pre-order expensive videogames which turn out to be buggy and awful will defend their purchases to the hilt because they were preordered it.

The crazy thing is that the Mueller report is being presented as some sort of perverse triumph. When you need to defend your champion and your primary argument is that he didn't collude with a hostile foreign entity to win an election then you have little if any reasonable basis for your position.

Walter Bishop

I can recommend Mistakes Were Made (But not by me!) if you want to read more on how people will continue to justify terrible decisions in the face of all the evidence, and then start doubling down more and more evidence is presented.

amandstu

kilns wrote: »

The crazy thing is Trump wants impeachment, he knows it will never pass in the Senate and it will galvanise his support even more and show the Dems are only interested in one thing to the determent of the country and are a threat to the "great" ecomony.

Any reasonable person knows he does not want his taxes handed over and the DB files to be handed over because he has so much to hide, maybe not something that will incriminate him but something that will hurt his ego and show that in fact he is not really a billionaire

Has that horse bolted with the latest findings that he had losses of a billion dollars?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/us/trump-tax-figures.html

Or might there be more to come of a different nature?

duploelabs

(copied from Reddit but definitely pertinent)
Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out. This is how he made a come back

► Trump was first compromised by the Russians back in the 80s. (https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/) . In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money and it continued for decades. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/is-there-a-case-for-trump-putin-collaboration-years-before-the-campaign/2018/08/16/00578f1e-9440-11e8-80e1-00e80e1fdf43_story.html?utm_term=.0d75420f749e) In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.

► In 1984, David Bogatin — a Russian mobster, convicted gasoline bootlegger, and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992 https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/30/nyregion/entrepreneur-who-left-us-is-back-awaiting-sentence.html)

► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.

► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.

► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years, that many of them have owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties, that they were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel. (Mogilevich's role today is unclear).

► One of the most important things that is often overlooked is that the Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. that is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.

► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighbourhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."

► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower. (https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate)

► According to a Bloomberg investigation (March 16, 2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”

► In July 2008, the height of the recession, Donald Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.

► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. In addition to card games, they operated illegal gambling websites, ran a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.

► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive under his tenure in the Southern District and Mayor. And now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties tot he Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.

► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnel got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.

► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."

► Eric Trump told James Dodson, a golf reporter, in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”


So definitely a "Russia Hoax"

EltonJohn69

Did Trump just tweet that he considers cheating on his taxes a sport ?

duploelabs

EltonJohn69 wrote: »

Did Trump just tweet that he considers cheating on his taxes a sport ?

Certainly looks like it,

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1126078423816921092?s=09

Stallingrad

duploelabs wrote: »

So definitely a "Russia Hoax"

Goes a long way to explaining his body language whenever he meets the Boss.

EltonJohn69

EltonJohn69 wrote: »

Did Trump just tweet that he considers cheating on his taxes a sport ?

One of the Trump supporters here a few weeks ago was saying this was no big deal. But if you or I were to stop paying taxes or less tax than we are supposed to, and we told revenue it was just a game or a bit of sport, how do you think that would go. Why should Trump get a pass?

kilns

EltonJohn69 wrote: »

Did Trump just tweet that he considers cheating on his taxes a sport ?

I interpretated it as re-negotiating with the banks as sport, based on him posting loses in his tax returns.

B0jangles

Did he actually explain that it was just good and intelligent business practice AND also fake news and not true?

How does that work?

oscarBravo

B0jangles wrote: »

Did he actually explain that it was just good and intelligent business practice AND also fake news and not true?

How does that work?

It's a low-grade Gish gallop.

EltonJohn69

Having losses of over one billion over 10 years is highly unusual. So at some point After 1994 he must have started getting a big cash influx because those losses are not sustainable. I would say his more recent tax returns would have some very interesting information.
He was either in a huge financial hole and desperate or he was operating a gigantic tax evasion scheme

check_six

B0jangles wrote: »

Did he actually explain that it was just good and intelligent business practice AND also fake news and not true?

How does that work?

Well "good and intelligent business practices" wouldn't be something I would associate with him. Telling the truth isn't either. So, with those two filters in place it's either not "good and intelligent business practice", or not fake news, or not both.

B0jangles

He can now give two completely opposite explanations of the same thing within the space of a tweet and his followers don't even blink.

duploelabs

EltonJohn69 wrote: »

Having losses of over one billion over 10 years is highly unusual. So at some point After 1994 he must have started getting a big cash influx because those losses are not sustainable. I would say his more recent tax returns would have some very interesting information.
He was either in a huge financial hole and desperate or he was operating a gigantic tax evasion scheme

It's detailed in my post above. His whole empire that he built before is now a massive money laundering scheme for the Russian mob

EltonJohn69

duploelabs wrote: »

It's detailed in my post above. His whole empire that he built before is now a massive money laundering scheme for the Russian mob

The fact that he is now suing his bank and accounting firm to stop them being released, not to mention fighting congress, suggests you might be right.