Know Your Class War: The Trump US Treasury Casino

 

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman tells @ErinBurnett why he thinks Trump’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is a "giant rug pull scam." pic.twitter.com/WsVry8xNvS

— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) March 8, 2025

I really don't have anything to add. Trump is turning a part of the United States' actual wealth into a casino where we are putting down real money for chips other folks are gambling. 

Trump notoriously bankrupted casinos. Some people think this was a kind of money laundering and I am not saying this is wrong, and when I look at this ill-begotten notion?

Why did people vote for a tax fraud, a business fraud, a con artist and cheat? 

The entire Trump presidency is a kind of Nigerian prince scam. He isn't who he represents himself as and people dump money into him hoping someday, he pays off.  I will literally never stop being mad so many people are this absolutely obviously janky person's marks.  

Devin Nunes is Just Asking Questions

 

Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes says he has hundreds of thousands of smaller MAGA investors in Trump Media, and they are calling him asking why the stock is tanking, so he filed a complaint with the SEC and says Biden is conspiring with Wall Street bankers to screw him. pic.twitter.com/ZxTEmxeN0J

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 20, 2024

Something about Truth Social puts me in one of those "can't place where all the emotion is coming from" moods, somewhat akin to when Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Art Laffer. I guess it's my strong feeling that shitty economics threatens livelihoods and personal savings--it isn't a game. Supply-side economics does not work in practice. It's an upwards transfer of wealth that has led to increased income inequality and which holds back growth because there is no incentivization for long-term investment or worker protections. 

Something about Trump, the man, the myth, the legend, is trapped in a 1980s elephantine "greed is good" vision of worshipping sacred golden calves. He's wealthy, so he is supposed to be a job-creator--look at how he created a job for Devin Nunes, a man so intelligent he sued an internet cow for defamation for linking to true stories like a thin-skinned goober who never heard of the "Streisand effect".  

Trump is like an icon of a different time. "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and all that. That time sucked and the people sucked.  Even Trump's rivals kind of sucked. (Everything was the worst.) 

Anyway, Nunes is looking beyond the Trump Media fundamentals, to blaming the "naked short sellers" for the devaluation of the stock he had to answer for when frankly, the business hadn't done anything yet. (And they will do something--they will be a streaming service for stuff you just won't get anywhere else on the internet, which I promise you is not a thing.)

TWGB: The Quality of Mercy is Priced at $2 Million

 

So, lawsuit against Giuliani just got really graphic, and if you want to read the whole thing, I recommend having a sick bag or bucket handy because the parts where he emotionally and physically abuses a female employee is nasty and I wish my read on him didn't feel validated. She says she has texts and emails and even recordings of his abusiveness and more.

But the part I notice is the claim that she can validate that Giuliani was asking $2 million for pardons, because this wasn't new. It's just amazing we have validation now. Also, it appears that as early as 2019, Trump was scared enough of Dark Brandon that he was going to have a plan for losing, but claiming the election was stolen anyway. 

Wow: In *Feb. 2019*, Giuliani had "voter fraud" claim planned if Donald Trump lost the election, according to the complaint.

"Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy that Trump’s team would claim that there was 'voter fraud' and that Trump had actually won the election." pic.twitter.com/qU0pDJUwIK

— Frank G. Runyeon (@frankrunyeon) May 15, 2023

And if that doesn't remind me of anything?   

Yeah. We knew. It was always about fuckery. Undermining democracy. Damaging what makes our democracy effective and unique. 

Prager University is Definitely A Special Place

 

PragerU presenter Karlyn Borysenko has an interesting opinion about the Holocaust! pic.twitter.com/QlCbsfQ8FX

— Gravel Institute (@GravelInstitute) December 6, 2021

So, as you all know, among the luminaries of obviously original thought and deep study who occasionally drop videos at the not even remotely a university thing that Dennis (an entire racist asshole) Prager does, is Candace Owens, who for some wacky reason, thought the real problem with Hitler was trying to franchise fascism.  Because things were just super in Germany, but the daggone fool overextended himself. 

This Tweet is great shades of John Hagee (who endorsed John McCain) having extolled Hitler as a hunter of Jews who drove them into Zion. That was so incredibly disgusting that when unearthed, John McCain, who never did care for the religious zealots, disavowed that support. But you know it hardly matters when Trump openly embraced exactly this kind of antisemitic asshole. You all remember Donald Trump, right? 

You know the President who said maybe some of the people who chanted "Jews Will Not Replace Us" were good people?

So, because I do this, remember the thing of when there was a Let's go Brandon chant at a church? It was John Hagee's church. They got wise to the viper they let into their church I guess.  Which sounds like a very not-acceptable sorry/not-sorry for the antisemitism.

Anyway, Karlyn Borysenko is just the funniest of characters, a supposedly former Democrat who was traumatized by BLM.  She's good friends apparently with anti-CRT grifter Chris Rufo.  I said grifter and I mean it. I would guess this chick is mostly a person we aren't going to hear from again except of course we will because these Prager bots are infinitely recyclable, because this supposed educational institution is about no such thing. It's wingnut welfare for demi-fascists. Who funds this shit, even? (obviously, similar to Koch Bros.)  She'll get paid to read from another script. (Unless she just went rogue like Lara Logan is alleged to, over at Fox News. But wait--there will be a rehabilitation.) 

This is how assholes spread fascistic memes like antisemitism. It isn't subtle to people looking out for it. But it still gets out there, and has an audience. 

This is why Prager U needs to be scattered to the winds. 

TWGB: Hot Accountability Summer?

 

I know, I know. At this point in my blogging about Trump, my expectations should stay low. Of course Trump has been impeached twice and is a one-term wonder, but he never was convicted by the Senate and his staunchest defenders insist his political story is not over. (Indeed, his most looney-tunes defenders maintain he never left office at all and that the Biden Administration itself is a kind of hoax, which, like the moon landing, a round planet, and the existence of birds*, seems pretty hard to pull off without an improbable amount of people in on the gag, but since when do facts persuade the self-deluded of anything?)

But news that indictments against the Trump Organization could happen as soon as next week have me like a child again, full of hope that maybe, the shambolic obscenity that disgraced the presidency for four years will get some measure of reckoning. Maybe an indictment means all his business loans, dubiously obtained at this point in the Trump credit history, are abruptly called to a disastrous effect. Maybe his resorts lose their liquor licenses (would you stay in a Trump property without booze?). Maybe someone with the Trump last name gets perp-walked. 

Sugar-plums dance in one's head and the heart fills with the honeyed yogurt* of schadenfreude. 

Maybe it helps that I subscribe to the rolling snowball theory of karma. A comeuppance starts with a small thing, but then small things lead to a lot. The Fates aren't merely weavers, but the authors of tragedies. They start small--and build. And Trump is a small thing, hoisted upon his own pedestal by so many--but when do they lose faith?

You could wonder about the 500 folks now arrested for the insurrection attempt at the Capitol, and how their hero has little to offer them, now. Or the "Trump train" members who are being sued under the Klan Act. Do they wonder what they were doing it for--how very little return they would get on their emotional investment in their idol? What does it say about the Republican party and its operatives that they engaged in spy shit against Democratic and liberal groups and so reminded us again that Republicans are mostly paranoid assholes representing Big Money when they aren't minging theocratic authoritarian busybodies or exhibitionistly and grandiosely prolix racists*? (I'll bet those emmerdeurs  are actually pretty satisfied with themselves, and of such is life.)

A Landscape Service for All the Right Reasons?

Meanwhile Rudy’s presser is going just great... pic.twitter.com/4vy1Ih3vQh

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) November 7, 2020

I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, a "Suzy Silverlinings", so in the wide-branched tree of my heart, a heavy little bird still sits, cooing over the ways the evil clowns are going to steal my joy. In the meanwhile, they are evil, but they are still clowns, so I might as well laugh at them. And Rudybot throwing a cog at the idea that the networks are calling the election (over the vote totals for Biden being more favorable) before the courts get involved (because so far, they've been throwing out the weaksauce arguments from Team Trump left and right) is pretty on target.

He's in front of the Four Seasons Total Landscape building because, depending on who you ask, it was either in a NE Philly neighborhood where the singing and dancing of happy Democratic voters were unlikely to intrude (situated between the Fantasy Island sex shop, where the patrons are quiet out of habit, and the crematorium, where the patrons are quiet by nature) or Trump wanted the upscale Four Seasons hotel, but couldn't book it. Either reason is hilarious. 

That the campaign still has Giuliani front and center, after peddling dodgy laptops and tucking in his pants on an international moviefilm also resounds with the plop! plop! of massive clown shoes. 

But those clown shoes are still beating the bushes to find better legal counsel and retire the massive campaign debts amongst the faithful, and while I don't see a lot of sense in the legal part of this endeavor, I still see among some of the GOP stalwarts a lot of faith and a willingness to go on tv and do a career-defying high wire act asserting nonexistent fraud and so on--for these clowns. 

It's either because they cannot grasp that all these people, in Atlanta, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C., dancing in the streets, quite legitimately voted against their viciously dumb Trump ticket, or, the part that chills me, they just don't care.

(Because some people do not have voting rights that the GOP feels bound to respect, one hardly needs to add., but I will, for emphasis.)

I'm not ready to dance, exactly. But when Trump is gone, you better believe I'm going to sing.

I Want to Buy Your Rock

What have you got to lose if you take a drug and weren't going to die anyway and then miraculously don't die. and what would anyone else have to gain? (I mean, what do you have to lose except maybe your hair or vision or life or whatever.) The thing with a certain kind of con artistry isn't that the con artist believes everyone is dumb, it's that they know there are always some people who want to believe.

I think it would be great if there was a good, not terribly expensive treatment. It's that I'm hearing a hard sell approach that makes me extra-skeptical (oh, yeah, and the source of the hard sell). But I'm cheesed off at people who say that people urging caution are "fearmongering" or "just don't want it to work". Drugs aren't magic. They also aren't like sports teams--they don't work better if people are rooting for them. That's just weird.

TWGB: Ready Individual One?

One way to set the stage for a busy news Friday is to note that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently sort of read President Trump for filth by saying things that Trump critics don't even find surprising:

“So often, the president would say here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it, and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President I understand what you want to do but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law. It violates treaty,’’ Tillerson said, before reiterating a claim he made before he was ousted on March 13—that “there’s no question” Russia meddled in the 2016 election.

Trump did not take that well, and of course made a Tweet about it. But leaving that specific kind of knee-jerk response to things happening around him, here is a sample of Trump's "Boom" Twitter stylings (the venting Trump seems to do to keep his head from exploding when the pressure is on):

Yeah. I'm not going to bother refuting that hot mess. I'm just pointing it out as a symptom of a person who is not suffering from a case of anything "very legal and very cool" .  This is a person who is actually being sued over his bullshit charity, and over the emoluments clause. New York is also investigating possible tax fraud based on a well-researched report on how Trump got so "rich" (tax evasion, inheritance and super groovy loans!) This is a person who, during the 2016 presidential campaign, settled for millions over Trump University that was an actual scam (a settlement not so long ago approved, by the way).  Even if there is no Trump/Russia collusion, there is the definitely not okay hush money paid to mistresses which are basically illegal campaign donations, and his probably illegal campaign coordination with the NRA. Trump's way of life is experiencing legal jeopardy because of things he does, and then kind of denying that they even happened even though we are looking right at him. It has mostly worked for him, but I don't think he's ever tried to spin so many plates at one time.

Take the response he made to the filings today regarding former lawyer Michael Cohen and former campaign manager Paul Manafort:

I think a Tweet that claims he's totally cleared is pretty weird considering he is basically factually named as "Individual-1" who seems to have suborned perjury and directed campaign fraud, which are crimes. A really good explainer of the Friday filings is laid out at Lawfare. But I'm struck by the idea that  Trump's response to this is a flat-out denial, when we were told by Trump that his lawyer Rudy Giuliani (who apparently occasionally experiences nightmares),  has an 87 page rebuttal to Mueller's claims.  Or, well, maybe there actually isn't anything. 

Tillerson told us Trump doesn't like to read things--is Trump counting on his fan club also not reading the black and white reality that a good part of Trump's 2016 campaign performance was fraudulent and that he really doesn't care what "legal" means even though he gave an oath to uphold the Constitution? 

Well, I guess that is probably close to the truth. As I see it, the unredacted Flynn and Manafort bits of this week's filings are likely disturbing, but the parts that have been made plain as day are well and truly bad enough. And I still think we've only seen the part of the iceberg above water. 

The Bondi Shande

In a uniquely Trumpian fashion, there is word that FL AG Pam Bondi will be taking a position in the Trump White House. The same Pam Bondi who got a $25K donation from the Trump Foundation which was not at all ethical, and coincided with her choosing not to pursue Trump University on behalf of many Floridian claimants? Yeah, really. That very same Pam Bondi.  

Would that also be the same Pam Bondi who has other allegations of corruption surrounding her, to the extent that reptoid in a people suit Rick Scott even threw her under the bus for a bit over postponing an execution because the timing didn't work with her self-promotion.

She is a breath-taking piece of work, and her receipt of a campaign donation from Trump, followed by a White House position, all for the simple non-job of not following up on a consumer complaint, tells us an awful lot about how she will fill whatever role was found for her.

It is:

Outstanding choice, Trump transition! So much obvious naked contempt for even the remotest semblance of rectitude. There are only so many words; I am bereft.

Believing Absurdities

There is a price to pay for bullshit. Voltaire is quoted as saying: "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities". So my mind doesn't exactly boggle when a person who self-selected for bullshit came away with an absurd notion that resulted in arming himself and entering an innocent business to "investigate" or ...to shoot people.

The fake news piece is lurid and unsubstantiated. And people with a surprising amount of responsibility have been sucked in because they, too, have self-selected for bullshit. Threats have been made towards the business in question, businesses in the neighborhood and journalists who have tried to point out that the whole thing is bullshit because this bullshit is so awful that they prefer to believe it.

Think about that. Debunking becomes a nefarious cover-up to a true believer. Trying to unravel lies becomes heresy. And people who believe this kind of nonsense are in the circle of the PEOTUS.

This thing I was saying about how facts matter? This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Don't Rush to Give Trump Credit

There was an amusing story from just the other week where Donald Trump took credit for stopping a Ford plant from moving to Mexico when it never was actually going to go to Mexico. That was a cute way for Trump to telegraph that he was taking no prisoners in his quest to give himself the best possible press for genius deal-making. It doesn't have to be true, it just has to play into his campaign persona.

So, take the Carrier deal as a great example of this: he used Carrier many times in his stump speech about companies draining jobs away from the US. So it was "trumpeted" just recently that he negotiated another of these great deals to keep Carrier--his regular stump speech bogey--operating in Indiana. Well, a portion of the staff. And with a considerable tax break from the governor of that state. Who is the VP-elect, Mike Pence. More details are pending. But some jobs are definitely still going.

Surely, offering local tax deals to any company thinking of leaving the US or willing to say they are mulling it over isn't an especially sustainable method of keeping businesses here. Local municipalities depend upon "ratables"--and when the option to gain revenues from a local business is eliminated, that business is essentially receiving local government services gratis. It's corporate welfare. How many corporations might like a piece of the action where the threat of flight rains down an operational cost-assist? They aren't being cajoled, badgered,  or leveraged into behaving as good citizens of the areas in which they were making their profits--they are being rewarded for having "tried it". I'm not even sure this model disincentivizes "trying it again" to see if better rate-paying can be gained.

What I do know is that this model doesn't promote fair taxation or equitable distribution of social responsibility, which is, in part, what we'd like the relationship of taxpayer to taxing authority to be. Arbitrariness is a lethal trust concern.  Some companies "getting over" is a bad case of cronyism, lather, rinse, repeat. And it sort of betrays the whimsical association Trump makes with the relationship of entities (whether individual or corporate) to government altogether--he has never considered whether government has a point. Ours- the US of A's, has very much a point laid out in the Constitution. I do not know if he has read it--he just burbled some anti-1st Amendment nonsense on the Twitter-machine that should really give us all pause. He considers flag burning to possibly be worthy of losing one's citizenship. Becoming stateless? For what has previously been ruled an exercise of free speech? What can we expect from such a mind regarding unfavorable press?  (Even regarding, perhaps, D-list bloggers?

But among things Trump has tried to take credit for--trying to "apparently" divest from his business holdings while not actually divesting and hoping the world pats him on the back for it  takes the taco. There is a Twitter thread o' snark from the US Government Office of Ethics that uses the term divest to try and shame Trump into admitting that handing his business' reins over to his kids (who seem to also be his gov't advisors) and pretending he will pay no attention to those multi-million dollar assets is just weak-sauce, and leaves plenty of room for conflict-of-interest.

In other words--I feel like the media should wait until they have found the "damn" before they trot out even faint praise.

Meredith McIver is Apparently a Real Person

The speechwriter, who has previously assisted with Donald Trump's books and has apparently worked for the Trump Organization for some time, has been aired as being the culprit who might have accidentally included Michelle Obama's actual text in Melania Trump's speech--which was an admission to the plagiarism that occurred while some Trump spox were still defending the idea that wither the plagiarism didn't matter or wasn't really plagiarism for real, for reasons.

Some people didn't even think she was a real person at first, but I m going to believe in you, Meredith McIver, as not being some weird fake person, like John Miller or John Barron.

I am pretty sure her resignation isn't being accepted for reasons, but those reasons are definitely not because "everyone makes mistakes". No really? They found someone who would take the blame on the third fucking day of a story and publicized it in a way that made us wonder if the person they blamed was real. Yay Trump Squad goals! Gettin'er done in roughly two more days than a professional campaign would!

So, are we really happy with the free publicity? Yes, Team Trump thinks you all did very well. Well done youse! You all doubled down on "incompetent" and called it "winning". Wow.

Also, as a Trump corporate employee, her work for the Trump campaign is all kinds of FEC dodgy. So more "publicity" is to be expected. Thumbs up if you've got them!

So The Trump Family Seriously Did This Again?!

So after the whole damn day was devoted to how the hell a whole paragraph of a Michelle Obama speech ended up in Melania Trump's mouth, no one vetted Donald Trump, Jr's speech to make sure it wasn't substantially lifted from anywhere? Like, there was no competent adult around to ensure that not repeating an easily not-repeatable thing was job one?

Look, we've been ensured by Donald Trump that he has the best words. If that is so, why is his closest kin going next-door to borrow a cup of words from other people? Is this just more signs of the lazy, slap-dash con-jobbery that the Trump famiglia  has been getting away with forever?

This is American presidential politics. These people need to raise their game to a better level if they want to do this on the con. Because we can see you!

The Trump Problem 6: Dan Hominy

Trump source in room tells me Trump made a gen elex map pitch to the group. Mentioned NJ ("right, Chris?!"), CA, PA, MD as in play.

— Ali Vitali (@alivitali) June 9, 2016

I think the Republicans have an interesting problem with Donald Trump in that they want him to be someone he pretty much isn't. They think he is growing and learning.  He will stop being a textbook racist asshat any day now.  Basically, they believe that they can decry the things said by Donald Trump, and still support "Dan Hominy".

"Dan Hominy" is my private name for "The Nominee"--a salt-of the earth independent small government businessman who pleases the evangelical contingent while being strictly acceptable to the Chamber of Commerce folks, and who, when he's up for it, shows a solid grasp of national defense priorities. You know, a "Generic Republican", who, if things were anything but what they are right now, would be just the three-legged-stool sitting SOB to eke out an electoral college win over Hillary Clinton. A guy with no major negatives, a reputation for honesty, and a basic general competence.  I think, despite Donald Trump actually being the person who won the GOP primaries, a lot of Republicans want to mainstream their guy as being this "Dan Hominy"--slogan? "He's got grits!"