Showing posts with label Donald Trump. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Trump. Show all posts

Saturday 2 June 2018

US President Donald Trump's businesses lost $100 million over the past year


In 2005 Donald J. Trump unsuccessfully sued an author who stated that he was not as rich as he claimed to be.

The author had written that Trump was only worth between $150-$250 million.

Over a decade later and his 2016 claim of a fortune in excess of $10 billion is looking a lot like delusional thinking.

The latest assessment is that Trump's net worth is around $2.8 billion, down from $2.9 billion in 2017.

If he continues to lose money at this rate he will probaly leave office a lot poorer than when he came in.

The New York Post31 May 2018:

President Donald Trump’s businesses lost $100 million over the past year, with revenues sinking at Trump Tower and his golf courses — though he’s still a billionaire with a net worth of roughly $2.8 billion.

The drop, his second in two years, was based on figures compiled by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index from lenders, property records, annual reports, market data and a May 16 financial disclosure, the news service reported.

During the same period, his once-hugely marketable brand has also taken a hit as assorted scandals and controversies prompted the owners of buildings from Manhattan to Toronto and Panama stripped his name from their buildings.

The most recent estimate, down from $2.9 billion last June, is the lowest since Bloomberg began tracking Trump’s wealth in 2015.

The biggest declines, totaling $220 million, came from adjacent buildings in midtown Manhattan — 6 E. 57th St., which had housed a Niketown store, and Trump Tower, where lower occupancy resulted in less income.

The Trump Organization’s 16 golf and resort properties also dropped in value, by $70 million, as revenue fell at some courses and gained at others.

Losers included Trump’s Doral, Palm Beach and Mar-a-Lago clubs in Florida, while his courses in Scotland and Ireland posted revenue gains. Annual reports for those overseas properties, which have historically lost money, are expected later this year and will show whether they were profitable.

Overall, the clubs are now worth about $650 million, based on lower valuations across the industry……

Saturday 26 May 2018

Quotes of the Week


“The Trump administration did not rise, prima facie, like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of our failed democracy. The longer we perpetuate the fiction that we live in a functioning democracy, that Trump and the political mutations around him are somehow an aberrant deviation that can be vanquished in the next election, the more we will hurtle toward tyranny.” [Journalist Chris Hedges, writing in truthdig, 20 May 2018]

“…it is notable that in the past few weeks I've received close to 1,000 representations from local Greenway residents by email, phone and in person regarding the latest reports of systemic abuse in the live animal trade for sheep.”  [Labor MP for Greenway Michelle Rowland, Hansard,  21 May 2018]

“If you were even peripherally aware of history, you’d know that people subjected to lifelong exploitation, forced into a precarious existence or buried under annually compounding debts will, eventually, wheel guillotines into the town square and start taking names.” [Journalist and former Australian senator Scott Ludlam writing in The Guardian, 25 May 2018]

Saturday 5 May 2018

Quote of the Week


One of the distinguishing traits of the troll-style politics that dominates Trump-era conservatism is the utter disregard for any values outside of winning at all costs and, perhaps even more importantly, defeating liberals. Decency, political norms and truth itself are all treated as acceptable casualties in the endless quest to fuck with the left.
But while many of the excesses of the right seem new, the real­ity is that the Trumpian right is just the outgrowth from roots laid years, even decades ago, in the American right. The racism and sexism, the conspiracy theories, the harping about political correctness? All of it goes back decades and is only exploding out of control now because the right wing political infrastructure has let these foul ideologies and stupid ideas flourish for so long.”  [Author Amanda Marcotte, Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself, 2018] 

Tuesday 1 May 2018

In incremental moves Trump is distorting rights and protections in the U.S.


The U.S. Dept. of Justice Manual contains a collection of basic manuals, guidelines, policy statement and procedures that govern the action of U.S. Attorneys working for the department.

The U.S. Attorneys’ Manual having recently been reviewed by the Trump Administration no longer contains this section for the instruction of its law officers – in PUBLIC SAFETY,  PUBLIC TRIALS, PUBLIC SAFETY & MEDIA RELATIONS sections 1-7.112 Need for Free Press and Public Trial.



Friday 27 April 2018

President Donald J. Trump: We need to go after the reporters


"We need to go after the reporters.....They spend a couple of days in jail, make a new friend, and they are ready to talk"  [US President Donald, J. Trump, 14 February 2017]
Finally, an indication of the lengths to which US President Donald J. Trump would go in order to find whistleblowers or silence journalists.
Two excerpts from former FBI Director James Comey's confidential memos supplied to the US Congress last week by the Department of Justice:





BACKGROUND

The New York Times, 7 July 2005, Judy Miller Goes To Jail

Monday 9 April 2018

Donald Trump's callous disregard for the reality of this situation knows no bounds



Trump Tower is a 58 story building containing a mix of residential apartments, business premises, retail stores and restaurants in mid-town Manhattan, New York.

The thirty-four year old building has been the site of two fires this year.

None of the 238 apartments on the 38 residential floors below the three-story Trump penthouse have sprinkler systems installed.


On 8 April 2018 US President Donald Trump tweeted this ……




By the time that tweet was sent the man who died in the fire had been dead at least tweve hours.

Trump called out for untrue personal attack


Fox News pointed out in polite terms that US President Donald J. Trump is telling wall-to-wall lies in his personal attack on the founder of Amazon (an American electronic commerce and cloud computing corporation) and owner of The Washingtom Post, multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos.

It also linked this attack to newspaper's reporting of the the DOJ-FBI investigation into alleged links between the the Trump presidential campaign and Russia's interferrence in the 2016 US national elections.


Perhaps Trump should cast his mind back to the last American president that tried to silence The Washington Post - in that case for it's reporting of the Watergate political scandal.

He might also care to recall that Bezos (the world's 'richest' man in 2018) only holds est. 16 per cent of Amazon shares - there are another 2,447 shareholders of record and est. 60.53 per cent of the share pool is owned by institutional investors, who as representatives of a host of beneficial shareholders won't be happy with Trump's crude attempt to force Amazon share value down. 

Friday 23 March 2018

The president doth protest too much, methinks


On 15 March 2018 the mainstream media reported that the Special Counsel Russia Investigation has served a subpoena on the Trump Organisation.

Since then US President Donald J Trump has removed an FBI deputy-director and tweeted his defiance of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

As usual the only words in Trump's tweets that can be relied on are connecting words like "and", "or" & "but'  - everthing else is bound to be a distortion of fact or a downright lie.



Monday 19 March 2018

Trump brings out the knives in his effort to derail the FBI-Mueller investigation into Russian involvment in his presidential campaign


What occurred.....

Andrew McCabe became acting head of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after the sudden firing of James B. Comey on 9 May 2017 and, as acting head gave evidence before a US Senate committee in which he contradicted the WhiteHouse’s assertion that James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director fired by PresidentTrump...had lost the support of rank-and-file F.B.I. agents.

US President Donald Trump's reaction was hostile across multiple tweets over the following months and he implied that McCabe might be fired before he could retire.  



On 15 March 2018 The New York Times reported:

WASHINGTON — The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has subpoenaed the Trump Organization in recent weeks to turn over documents, including some related to Russia, according to two people briefed on the matter. The order is the first known instance of the special counsel demanding records directly related to President Trump’s businesses, bringing the investigation closer to the president.

Following hard on the heels of the Comey firing Mueller had been appointed to conduct an investigation into Russian links to Trump's 2015- 2016 presidential campaign.

The following day, 16 March, U.S. ABC News reported:

Former FBI deputy director Andy McCabe was fired Friday from the federal government, just two days before he was set to retire, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in a statement late Friday night.

Nearly 24 hours earlier, McCabe was inside the Justice Department making the case to keep his job until Sunday when he officially qualifies for retirement benefits. His firing means his full pension — built after nearly 22 years in government — is in jeopardy.

After formal announcement of the McCabe sacking Trump tweeted this:


That Trump's move against McCabe is a step on the road to firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller might be inferred from the Dowd quote below. 

According to The Daily Beast  on 17 March 2018:

“I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd then wrote.
He told The Daily Beast he was speaking on behalf of the president, in his capacity as the president’s attorney.

McCabe's response.....

Statement released by Andrew McCabe's lawyer - sourced from Twitter

Saturday 17 March 2018

Quote of the Week



“With no clear international achievement to his name, his major accomplishment in foreign policy has been provoking significant global backlash almost across the board.”  [Journalist Andrew Hammond writing about US President Donald J. Trump in The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 March2018]

Monday 5 March 2018

NUCLEAR DETERRENCE 101: “Tell them St Petersburg is armed and ready! Armed and ready with fishing poles and cast nets! We’ll throw a friggin’ mullet at ’em!”


Russia’s favourite arch-enemy and its looney tunes president have been rather quiet lately on the ‘let’s threaten Armageddon’ front.

Kim Jong-un rarely rates a tweet from Donald Trump these days.

So during his own 2018 presidential re-election campaign Vladimir Putin attempted to rattle the United States of America into a response…..


An eminently sensible reply from an ordinary American swiftly followed…..

“Tell them St Petersburg is armed and ready! Armed and ready with fishing poles and cast nets! We’ll throw a friggin’ mullet at ’em!” [The Guardian, 2 March 2018]

US President Donald Trump’s response was somewhat muted…….

[presidential dead silence]

Poor Putin. It’s hard to re-ignite the classic Cold War arch-enemy rhetoric when your American 'puppet' is so determined to publicly avoid criticising Russia.

Though perhaps the sight of Trump running scared on Twitter works just as well on the Russian domestic front.

Tuesday 20 February 2018

US Dept of Justice-FBI investigation of Russian links to Donald Trump's election campaign inexorably rolls on


On 17 May 2017 the probe into Russian influence on US political processes and collusion between the Russian Government and individuals associated with the election campaign of President Donald J Trump became an investigation which would inevitably lead to charges being laid.

To date both President Trump's former campaign manager and campaign deputy-director have been indicted, along with thirteen Russian nationals and three corporations.

Trump's former security adviser, along with a former member of his foreign policy advisory team and an individual who unlawfully supplied US bank accounts to Russians associated with the alleged political interference, have plead guilty to charges.

Current State of Play according to US Dept. of Justice

U.S. v. Internet Research Agency, et al (1:18-cr-32, District of Columbia)
A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment on Feb. 16, 2018, against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities accused of violating U.S. criminal laws in order to interfere with U.S. elections and political processes. The indictment charges all of the defendants with conspiracy to defraud the United States, three defendants with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five defendants with aggravated identity theft.

U.S. v. Richard Pinedo, et al (1:18-cr-24, District of Columbia)
Richard Pinedo, of Santa Paula, Calif., pleaded guilty on Feb. 12, 2018, to identity fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1028.

U.S. v. Michael T. Flynn (1:17-cr-232, District of Columbia)
Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn (Ret.), of Alexandria, Va., pleaded guilty on Dec. 1, 2017, to making false statements to FBI agents, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1001.

U.S. v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr., and Richard W. Gates III (1:17-cr-201, District of Columbia)
Paul J. Manafort, Jr., of Alexandria, Va., and Richard W. Gates III, of Richmond, Va., have been indicted by a federal grand jury on Oct. 27, 2017, in the District of Columbia. The indictment contains 12 counts: conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. The case was unsealed on Oct. 30, 2017, after the defendants were permitted to surrender themselves to the custody of the FBI.

U.S. v. George Papadopoulos (1:17-cr-182, District of Columbia)
George Papadopoulos, of Chicago, Illinois, pleaded guilty on Oct. 5, 2017, to making false statements to FBI agents, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1001. The case was unsealed on Oct. 30, 2017.

UPDATE

U.S. v. Alex van der Zwaan (1:18-cr-31, District of Columbia)
Alex van der Zwaan, of London, pleaded guilty on Feb. 20, 2018, to making false statements to FBI agents, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1001.
Statement of the Offense

U.S. v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr., and Richard W. Gates III (1:18-cr-83, Eastern District of Virginia)
Paul J. Manafort, Jr., of Alexandria, Va., and Richard W. Gates III, of Richmond, Va., were indicted by a federal grand jury on Feb. 22, 2018, in the Eastern District of Virginia. The indictment contains 32 counts: 16 counts related to false individual income tax returns, seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts, five counts of bank fraud conspiracy, and four counts of bank fraud.
Indictment

U.S. v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. (1:17-cr-201, District of Columbia)
A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a superseding indictment on Feb. 23, 2018, against Paul J. Manafort, Jr., 68, of Alexandria, Va. The superseding indictment contains five counts: conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, and false statements.

U.S. v. Richard W. Gates III (1:17-cr-201, District of Columbia)
Richard W. Gates III, 45, of Richmond, Va., pleaded guilty on Feb. 23, 2018, to a superseding criminal information that includes: count one of the indictment, which charges conspiracy against the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 371 (which includes conspiracy to violate 26 U.S.C. 7206(1), 31 U.S.C. 5312 and 5322(b), and 22 U.S.C. 612, 618(a)(1), and 618(a)(2)), and a charge of making false statements to the Special Counsel’s Office and FBI agents, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1001. A status report with regard to sentencing was scheduled for May 14, 2018.

Saturday 17 February 2018

Quotes of the Week


"And so it turns out that not only is Barnaby Joyce a shocking hypocrite, he's also a repulsive cliche."  [Journalist Clementine Ford describing Australian Deputy Prime Minister and MP for New England Barnaby Joyce, The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February 2018]


“Barnaby Joyce has a history of screwing over women.”  [Journalist Kasey Edwards writing about Australia’s deputy prime minister in The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 February 2018]


"During the 2016 presidential campaign and into the White House, Trump and his aides have defended a male aide accused of domestic violence, a male Senate candidate accused of pursuing inappropriate relationships with teens and a male campaign manager accused of assaulting a reporter. In each case, Trump and his top staffers used strikingly similar language to defend the accused, noting that he had denied it, defending his integrity and casting doubt on the women's claims."  [Journalist Ryan Teague Beckwith writing in Time magazine, 8 February 2018]

Sunday 11 February 2018

In the same week Wall Street was finally spooked by the sheer weight of Donald Trump's inadequacies as the 45th US President.....


.....and the Dow Jones Index indicated that financiers and big business might be seriously worried about possibly higher than expected interest ratesrising national debt and the size of the US federal budget deficit Trump created in his first twelve months in office - he also rather unwisely performed in front of the cameras on the subject of treason.

YouTube, Time, 5 February 2018:



CNN, 5 February 2018:

 (CNN)President Donald Trump wasn't -- and, apparently, still isn't -- happy that Democrats in Congress didn't stand to applaud him in his State of the Union address last week.

"They were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, 'treasonous.' I mean, Yeah, I guess why not? Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn't seem to love our country that much."

So, here we are. Again.

Let's quickly define "treason," shall we?

"The offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family."

Trump loyalists will dismiss all of this as much ado over nothing. He was joking! He didn't even say that it was treasonous! He was just agreeing with people who said it was treasonous!

Fine. Also, wrong. And missing the point in a major way.

The point? It's this: Not standing during applause lines for the State of the Union isn't treasonous or un-American. Not even close.

If it was, all of the Republicans in that chamber are treasonous and un-American as well because when former President Barack Obama would tout his accomplishments in office -- as Trump was doing last Tuesday night -- lots and lots of Republican legislators would sit on their hands while the Democratic side of the aisle erupted in cheers. And so on and so forth for every president before him (and after).

The Washington Post, 6 February 2018:

This isn’t the first time Trump has used the T-word as president. Just last month, he accused FBI agent Peter Strzok of treason for sending negative text messages about him during the 2016 election to a lawyer at the FBI who he was having an affair with. “By the way, that’s a treasonous act,” the president told the Wall Street Journal. “What he tweeted to his lover is a treasonous act.”

Saturday 10 February 2018

Now that's a bad hair moment!



Makeup line exposed along with a considerable amount of bald pate....

Saturday 3 February 2018

Quotes of the Week


"The Cozy Bear [Russian] hackers are in a space in a university building near the Red Square. The group's composition varies, usually about ten people are active. The entrance is in a curved hallway. A security camera records who enters and who exits the room. The AIVD hackers manage to gain access to that camera. Not only can the intelligence service now see what the Russians are doing, they can also see who's doing it. Pictures are taken of every visitor. In Zoetermeer, these pictures are analyzed and compared to known Russian spies. Again, they've acquired information that will later prove to be vital."  [De Volkskrant, on the subject of Russian interference in 2016 presidential election, 25 January 2018]

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"The separation of powers doctrine dictates that the judiciary should not be the subject of improper influence by the other branches of government – being the executive and legislature. Comments by Dutton and other Coalition ministers to the effect that members of the judiciary should be selected on the basis of their ideological leanings and ability to deliver "tough" sentences – rather than independently look at all factors and apply the law – seek to undermine this doctrine and unduly influence both the selection process and practices of the judiciary. Dutton's populist political grandstanding may have some members of the public "egging him on", but the reality is that such rhetoric seeks to undermine one of the central pillars of our democracy." 
[Sydney Criminal Lawyers, 23 January 2018]


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No president in history has burned more public money to sustain his personal lifestyle than Donald Trump”  [former George W. Bush staffer David Frum in his book Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic]


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“The events I’ve described in these pages are based on conversations that took place over a period of eighteen months with the president, with most members of his senior staff—some of whom talked to me dozens of times—and with many people who they in turn spoke to. The first interview occurred well before I could have imagined a Trump White House, much less a book about it, in late May 2016 at Trump’s home in Beverly Hills—the then candidate polishing off a pint of Häagen-Dazs vanilla as he happily and idly opined about a range of topics while his aides, Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski, and Jared Kushner, went in and out of the room.
Conversations with members of the campaign’s team continued through the Republican Convention in Cleveland, when it was still hardly possible to conceive of Trumps election. They moved on to Trump Tower with a voluble Steve Bannon—before the election, when he still seemed like an entertaining oddity, and later, after the election, when he seemed like a miracle worker.
Shortly after January 20, I took up something like a semipermanent seat on a couch in the West Wing. Since then I have conducted more than two hundred interviews.” [Author Michael Wolff from his book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” published 5 January 2018]


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Sunday 21 January 2018

United Nations spokesperson calls US President Donald J Trump a racist


Rupert Colville, spokesperson for UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights:

"These are shocking and shameful comments from the President of the United States. I'm sorry, but there's no other word one can use but 'racist'.

"You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as 'shitholes', whose entire populations are not white are therefore not welcome. 

"The positive comment on Norway makes the underlying sentiment very clear.

"Like the earlier comments made vilifying Mexicans and Muslims, the policy proposals targeting entire groups on grounds of nationality or religion, and the reluctance to clearly condemn the antisemitic and racist actions of the white supremacists in Charlottesville, all of these go against the universal values the world has been striving so hard to establish since World War Two and the Holocaust.

"This isn't just a story about vulgar language, it's about opening the door to humanity's worst side.

"It's about validating and encouraging racism and xenophobia that will potentially disrupt and even destroy the lives of many people, and that's perhaps the single most damaging and dangerous consequence of this type of comment by a major political figure."