President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

They're just grabbing him by the penis. He lets them.

 

According to Stormy Daniels, there's not much to grab there either.

 

Remind me again how much he pays in taxes?

Every loan he gets in a fucked up manner means the small guy trying to get an honest loan gets fucked.

Fuck Trump. He’s a blowhard who said he has billions upon billions. He fucked around and now he’s finally finding out.

 

Can the media quit calling her a "porn star"? I'd never heard of her before this imbroglio.

 

From what I've read, most of the potential lenders wanted full collateral, preferably cash. This is where his history of not paying his debts bites him in the ass. Nobody is interested in lending out half a billion dollars and hoping to get it back. I suspect that the previous $90m bond ate a big chunk of his available cash. He owns a ton of real estate, but most of it is highly leveraged. Any potential buyer knows that the market is soft and that Trump's under extreme pressure to sell. They'll lowball him. Add that he really really does not want to sell Mar A Lago, Bedminster, or his golf courses, because his ego is tied up in those.

There *may* be one or two properties he owns free and clear, but most of them are mortgaged, and so are not free and clear assets he can use for collateral. Something else that I don't often hear mentioned about Trump selling real estate to pay his fines is that in doing so he's going to get hit with capital gains taxes, both state and federal. Those are guesstimated to run thirty to forty percent, and he still has to pay off the mortgage holder as well. He's not wrong to cry about how big a bath he's going to take if he has to sell.

OTOH, I don't think Tish James is going to worry too much about that.

 

Can we talk about how not everyone who does porn is a "star"?

Wikipedia tells me she is in the AVN Hall of Fame though, which is also something I learned existed from Wikipedia.

 

She had pretty much retired and had made a successful transition to directing when the story broke, per the recent article. She did the strip club tour afterwards in an attempt to cash in on her sudden "fame" with limited success.

 

Trump's tax bill is a separate issue. If you invest in real estate paying taxes are basically optional until you completely cash out. I don't defend that but it has been true for a long time.

I am also not defending Trump, I agree with your characterization of him as a person. But a half billion dollar penalty is excessive.

 

I guess I'm a bad person if I contemplate the potential consequences of the amount of stress he's under as a morbidly obese 77 year old who is facing 90 felony charges, half a billion in fines, and running a presidential campaign.

 

I don't disagree. I was just responding to the idea that real estate can't be used as collateral.

I think his history of not paying debts combined with complex structuring of his real estate holdings to shift risk away from him personally and heavy debt on a lot of the properties are what's making it hard for him to post the collateral. Also, because golf courses are a bitch to sell (and likely headed for a long-term dip as Boomers age out and Millennials & Zoomers have other interests) they're not going to be attractive to the surety companies.

His residential properties would be the most attractive (assuming they are free of debt or not leveraged to the hilt) because they're the easiest to sell right now. But my understanding is a lot of those are just licensing the Trump brand and not actually owned by the Trump Org.

 

If you don't want to face huge fines, be forced to sell off stuff, and take a bath on the costs... don't commit crimes.