Trump says trophy wives don't work out too well

 

That bit at the end talking about the guy who went to construction sites and picked up every dropped nail to use the next day - I believe that's a story I read about Trump's own father sending Donald out to do that when he was a teenager.  

UPDATE 07:49 pm:

You’re Boy Scouts, but you know life. You know life.

So look at you. Who would think this is the Boy Scouts, right? So he had a very, very interesting life, and the company that bought his company was a big conglomerate, and they didn’t know anything about building homes, and they didn’t know anything about picking up the nails and the sawdust and selling it, and the scraps of wood. This was a big conglomerate based in New York City.

And after about a 10-year period, there were losing a lot with it. It didn’t mean anything to them. And they couldn’t sell it. So they called William Levitt up, and they said, would you like to buy back your company, and he said, yes, I would. He so badly wanted it. He got bored with this life of yachts, and sailing, and all of the things he did in the south of France and other places. You won’t get bored, right? You know, truthfully, you’re workers. You’ll get bored too, believe me. Of course having a few good years like that isn’t so bad.

But what happened is he bought back his company, and he bought back a lot of empty land, and he worked hard at getting zoning, and he worked hard on starting to develop, and in the end he failed, and he failed badly, lost all of his money. He went personally bankrupt, and he was now much older. And I saw him at a cocktail party. And it was very sad because the hottest people in New York were at this party. It was the party of Steve Ross — Steve Ross, who was one of the great people. He came up and discovered, really founded Time Warner, and he was a great guy. He had a lot of successful people at the party.

And I was doing well, so I got invited to the party. I was very young. And I go in, but I’m in the real estate business, and I see a hundred people, some of whom I recognize, and they’re big in the entertainment business. And I see sitting in the corner was a little old man who was all by himself. Nobody was talking to him. I immediately recognized that that man was the once great William Levitt, of Levittown, and I immediately went over. I wanted to talk to him more than the Hollywood, show business, communications people.

So I went over and talked to him, and I said, “Mr. Levitt, I’m Donald Trump.” He said, “I know.” I said, “Mr. Levitt, how are you doing?” He goes, “Not well, not well at all.” And I knew that. But he said, “Not well at all.” And he explained what was happening and how bad it’s been and how hard it’s been. And I said, “What exactly happened? Why did this happen to you? You’re one of the greats ever in our industry. Why did this happen to you?” And he said, “Donald, I lost my momentum. I lost my momentum.” A word you never hear when you’re talking about success when some of these guys that never made 10 cents, they’re on television giving you things about how you’re going to be successful, and the only thing they ever did was a book and a tape. But I tell you — I’ll tell you, it was very sad, and I never forgot that moment. And I thought about it, and it’s exactly true. He lost his momentum, meaning he took this period of time off, long, years, and then when he got back, he didn’t have that same momentum.

In life, I always tell this to people, you have to know whether or not you continue to have the momentum. And if you don’t have it, that’s OK. Because you’re going to go on, and you’re going to learn and you’re going to do things that are great. But you have to know about the word “momentum.”

  Time

That was in 2017. To the Boy Scouts! And then he went on and on about winning the presidency, the fake polls, and the fake news, and being able to say merry Christmas again. He hasn't necessarily gotten worse.

I'm beginning to sense a pattern

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

He's gonna have to sue the Post again

“Over the last long period of time, you have an average of 36,000 people dying” a year, the president said, gesturing toward National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony S. Fauci, who nodded confirmation.

Trump continued: “I never heard those numbers. I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve said, ‘Does anybody die from the flu? I didn’t know people died from the flu.’ … And again, you had a couple of years where it was over a 100,000 people died from the flu.”

[...]

Seasonal influenza has killed 12,000 to 61,000 people in the United States every year since 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There have been several years where more than 100,000 Americans were killed by particularly nasty influenza strains.

One of those episodes was the 1958 pandemic, which killed 116,000 in the United States.

Another was 1918.

That is the year Trump’s paternal grandfather died.

He died of the flu.

  WaPo

What does Trump know about his ancestry? Other than they were all geniuses, of course.

In 1918, Friedrich Trump was a successful, 49-year-old businessman, husband and father of three living in Queens, according to Gwenda Blair in her 2001 book “The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire.” One day in May, he came home from a stroll feeling sick. He died almost immediately.

He was a victim of the first wave of the Spanish flu pandemic.

[...]

Friedrich’s eldest son, Frederick, was only 12 when his father died, but he and his mother would pick up the family business. It would be another 28 years before Fred and his wife would have their fourth child, a boy they named Donald.

[...]

In his 20s, Friedrich Trump made his way to the Pacific Northwest, where he made his fortune opening taverns, restaurants and hotels, usually in red-light districts, in Gold Rush-era mining towns.

He also attempted a return to Germany in his 30s but was deported because he had avoided the military draft as a teenager.

And if that handshake produced anything, Trump may have another thing in common with the grandfather whose cause of death he doesn't seem to know.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree

Old Lardass is going to be on a rampage about the New York Times (again).

More than a half-century ago, the folk singer Woody Guthrie signed a lease in an apartment complex in Brooklyn. He soon had bitter words for his landlord: Donald J. Trump’s father, Fred C. Trump.

Mr. Guthrie, in writings uncovered by a scholar working on a book, invoked “Old Man Trump” while suggesting that blacks were unwelcome as tenants in the Trump apartment complex, near Coney Island.

“He thought that Fred Trump was one who stirs up racial hate, and implicitly profits from it,” the scholar, Will Kaufman, a professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire in Britain, said in an interview.

[...]

In December 1950, Mr. Guthrie signed a lease at the Beach Haven apartment complex, Mr. Kaufman wrote in his piece. Soon, Mr. Guthrie was “lamenting the bigotry that pervaded his new, lily-white neighborhood,” he wrote, with words like these:

I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family projectMr. Guthrie even reworked his song “I Ain’t Got No Home” into a critique of Fred Trump, according to Mr. Kaufman:

Beach Haven ain’t my home!
I just can’t pay this rent!
My money’s down the drain!
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven looks like heaven
Where no black ones come to roam!
No, no, no! Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!

Mr. Guthrie died in 1967, and in the 1970s, the Justice Department sued the Trumps, accusing them of discriminating against blacks. (A settlement was eventually reached; at the time, Trump Management noted the agreement did not constitute an admission of guilt.)

  NYT

Just like His Lardship's $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet wasn't an admission of guilt.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Wonder what Junior has to say about this Pulitzer

In case you missed it, it's here.

And the YWA post about it is here.

It's the whole family

President Trump’s older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has retired as a federal appellate judge, ending an investigation into whether she violated judicial conduct rules by participating in fraudulent tax schemes with her siblings.

The court inquiry stemmed from complaints filed last October, after an investigation by The New York Times found that the Trumps had engaged in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the inherited wealth of Mr. Trump and his siblings. Judge Barry not only benefited financially from most of those tax schemes, The Times found; she was also in a position to influence the actions taken by her family.

[...]

In a letter dated Feb. 1, a court official notified the four individuals who had filed the complaints that the investigation was “receiving the full attention” of a judicial conduct council. Ten days later, Judge Barry filed her retirement papers.

The status change rendered the investigation moot, since retired judges are not subject to the conduct rules. The people who filed the complaints were notified last week that the matter had been dropped without a finding on the merits of the allegations.

[...]

Judicial council reviews can result in the censure or reprimand of federal judges, and in extremely rare cases, a referral to the House of Representatives for impeachment. In retirement, Judge Barry is entitled to receive annually the salary she earned when she last met certain workload requirements. Though the exact figure was not immediately available, it appears to be between $184,500 and $217,600.

[...]

The Times investigation focused on how the profits and ownership of the real estate empire built by the president’s father, Fred C. Trump, were transferred to Donald J. Trump and his siblings, often in ways designed to dodge gift and estate taxes.

A lawyer for the president, Charles J. Harder, said last fall, “The New York Times’s allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory.”

  NYT

Which is why Judge Maryanne retired so quickly, right?

Judge Barry had been a co-owner of a shell company — All County Building Supply & Maintenance — created by the family to siphon cash from their father’s empire by marking up purchases already made by his employees, The Times investigation found. Judge Barry, her siblings and a cousin split the markup, free of gift and estate taxes, which at the time were levied at a much higher rate than income taxes.

[...]

The family also used the padded invoices to justify higher rent increases in rent-regulated buildings, artificially inflating the rents of thousands of tenants. Former prosecutors told The Times that if the authorities had discovered at the time how the Trumps were using All County, their actions would have warranted a criminal investigation for defrauding tenants, tax fraud and filing false documents.

[...]

For years, [Barry] attended regular briefings at her brother’s offices in Trump Tower to hear updates on the real estate portfolio and to collect her share of the profits. When the siblings sold off their father’s empire, between 2004 and 2006, her share of the windfall was $182.5 million, The Times found.

[...]

In February 2017, shortly after her brother’s inauguration, she notified the court that she would stop hearing cases and give up her staff and chambers. She was then considered a senior inactive judge, a status that did not entitle her to salary increases, but that left her still subject to conduct inquiries. Judge Barry did not announce a reason for the change at the time.

Let me take a stab: she figured his presidency meant increased family scrutiny.

Under court rules, all complaints are reviewed by a judge, and those with an allegation of misconduct or disability are generally referred to a panel of judges for investigation.

Unless you're Brett Kavanaugh and get yourself on the Supreme Court before the allegations can be investigated.

Scott Shuchart, a lawyer who filed one of the complaints, said he had done so as a concerned member of the legal profession. He said he found it “galling” that Judge Barry, while still receiving her federal pension, was now immune from judicial misconduct proceedings “just because she changed from one form of retired status to another.”

Surely the State of New York could find reason to take up the cause.

The New York Times exposé.

Senile liar

Oh, we didn't think of that, did we?

Appropo of nothing:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

SHS responds to the NYT Trump tax fraud story

1) The Times did not apologize for anything about its 2016 election reporting
2) New York is checking into the tax fraud claims
3) There's no denial of tax fraud in that statement

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Uh-oh

How handy that The Times has done all their work for them.

"The Failing New York Times" is asking for it now

The president has long sold himself as a self-made billionaire, but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s.

  NYT

Hey! That just makes him smart!

President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

[...]

The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.

[...]

[Trump] and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show.

That reminds me of being a young child and signing checks to be deposited in my parents' bank account. I'm sure now they were avoiding the tax man. Poor, small-time farmers, they weren't getting by with millions; not even thousands, I wouldn't think. But it was still very much tax avoidance.  And I'm also pretty sure it's a common practice.

Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

And I'm pretty sure this is also a very common tactic. Not to excuse the Trumps, but I doubt it will have any negative impact on his base. It will just make The Times more objectionable in their eyes.

The line between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion is often murky, and it is constantly being stretched by inventive tax lawyers. There is no shortage of clever tax avoidance tricks that have been blessed by either the courts or the I.R.S. itself. The richest Americans almost never pay anything close to full freight. But tax experts briefed on The Times’s findings said the Trumps appeared to have done more than exploit legal loopholes.

[...]

The most overt fraud was All County Building Supply & Maintenance, a company formed by the Trump family in 1992. All County’s ostensible purpose was to be the purchasing agent for Fred Trump’s buildings, buying everything from boilers to cleaning supplies. It did no such thing, records and interviews show. Instead All County siphoned millions of dollars from Fred Trump’s empire by simply marking up purchases already made by his employees. Those millions, effectively untaxed gifts, then flowed to All County’s owners — Donald Trump, his siblings and a cousin. Fred Trump then used the padded All County receipts to justify bigger rent increases for thousands of tenants.

[...]

The president’s parents, Fred and Mary Trump, transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances.

The Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show.

[...]

The president declined repeated requests over several weeks to comment for this article. But a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Charles J. Harder, provided a written statement on Monday, one day after The Times sent a detailed description of its findings. “The New York Times’s allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory,” Mr. Harder said. “There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which The Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate.”

Yeah, yeah. No fraud. No tax evasion. I'd be interested in knowing, if people knew they couldn't get in trouble, what percentage of Americans would admit to some tax evasion.

Mr. Harder sought to distance Mr. Trump from the tax strategies used by his family, saying the president had delegated those tasks to relatives and tax professionals. “President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters,” he said. “The affairs were handled by other Trump family members who were not experts themselves and therefore relied entirely upon the aforementioned licensed professionals to ensure full compliance with the law.”

It wasn't me. It was my ignorant family and their no good accountants.

The president’s brother, Robert Trump, issued a statement on behalf of the Trump family:

“Our dear father, Fred C. Trump, passed away in June 1999. Our beloved mother, Mary Anne Trump, passed away in August 2000. All appropriate gift and estate tax returns were filed, and the required taxes were paid. Our father’s estate was closed in 2001 by both the Internal Revenue Service and the New York State tax authorities, and our mother’s estate was closed in 2004. Our family has no other comment on these matters that happened some 20 years ago, and would appreciate your respecting the privacy of our deceased parents, may God rest their souls.”

Saints, I tell you. Saints.

According to tax experts, it is unlikely that Mr. Trump would be vulnerable to criminal prosecution for helping his parents evade taxes, because the acts happened too long ago and are past the statute of limitations. There is no time limit, however, on civil fines for tax fraud.

The findings are based on interviews with Fred Trump’s former employees and advisers and more than 100,000 pages of documents describing the inner workings and immense profitability of his empire. They include documents culled from public sources — mortgages and deeds, probate records, financial disclosure reports, regulatory records and civil court files.

The investigation also draws on tens of thousands of pages of confidential records — bank statements, financial audits, accounting ledgers, cash disbursement reports, invoices and canceled checks. Most notably, the documents include more than 200 tax returns from Fred Trump, his companies and various Trump partnerships and trusts.

Investigative heroics. God, what a job that must have been.

What emerges from this body of evidence is a financial biography of the 45th president fundamentally at odds with the story Mr. Trump has sold in his books, his TV shows and his political life. In Mr. Trump’s version of how he got rich, he was the master dealmaker who broke free of his father’s “tiny” outer-borough operation and parlayed a single $1 million loan from his father (“I had to pay him back with interest!”) into a $10 billion empire that would slap the Trump name on hotels, high-rises, casinos, airlines and golf courses the world over. In Mr. Trump’s version, it was always his guts and gumption that overcame setbacks. Fred Trump was simply a cheerleader.

Not to mention, as Forbes tells us today, his fortune was nowhere near $10 billion. Oh, but I forget: his organization is worth whatever he thinks it's worth.

[I]n every era of Mr. Trump’s life, his finances were deeply intertwined with, and dependent on, his father’s wealth.

By age 3, Mr. Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire. He was a millionaire by age 8. By the time he was 17, his father had given him part ownership of a 52-unit apartment building. Soon after Mr. Trump graduated from college, he was receiving the equivalent of $1 million a year from his father. The money increased with the years, to more than $5 million annually in his 40s and 50s.

[...]

Fred Trump was relentless and creative in finding ways to channel this wealth to his children. He made Donald not just his salaried employee but also his property manager, landlord, banker and consultant. He gave him loan after loan, many never repaid. He provided money for his car, money for his employees, money to buy stocks, money for his first Manhattan offices and money to renovate those offices. He gave him three trust funds. He gave him shares in multiple partnerships. He gave him $10,000 Christmas checks. He gave him laundry revenue from his buildings.

Much of his giving was structured to sidestep gift and inheritance taxes using methods tax experts described to The Times as improper or possibly illegal. Although Fred Trump became wealthy with help from federal housing subsidies, he insisted that it was manifestly unfair for the government to tax his fortune as it passed to his children. When he was in his 80s and beginning to slide into dementia, evading gift and estate taxes became a family affair, with Donald Trump playing a crucial role.

[...]

All told, The Times documented 295 streams of revenue that Fred Trump created over five decades to enrich his son. In most cases his four other children benefited equally. But over time, as Donald Trump careened from one financial disaster to the next, his father found ways to give him substantially more money, records show. Even so, in 1990, according to previously secret depositions, Mr. Trump tried to have his father’s will rewritten in a way that Fred Trump, alarmed and angered, feared could result in his empire’s being used to bail out his son’s failing businesses.

Now THAT's gonna get the Times a tweet-bollocking.

According to the rest of the article, Fred did indeed bail out his son's failing businesses, over and over and over, and not always in legal ways. Nonetheless, they were apparently tightly connected partners in swindling and fraud.

Mr. Harder, the president’s lawyer, disputed The Times’s reporting: “Should The Times state or imply that President Trump participated in fraud, tax evasion or any other crime, it will be exposing itself to substantial liability and damages for defamation.”

The ubiquitous Trump threat of a lawsuit.

Continue reading. It's a very lengthy article, with lots of mind-numbing details of fraudulent financial behavior that are sure to make His Lardship bust a vessel. Maybe even calculated to do so.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



UPDATE:



He makes the best deals.

And the dynamite, she go boom! From The New York Times.

  Charles P Pierce

LOL. P.S. I wonder how long The Times has been working on this story.

UPDATE 10/3:



UPDATE 4/11/19:  Trump's sister got busted from this Times report.  He's going to have to stay president for life if he doesn't want to be busted as well.

UPDATE 4/15/19:  The Times has won a Pulitzer for this reporting.