President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Senate, governor debates canceled in Ohio after GOP opts out

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...762b08-4287-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html

But Trump was so competent in conning me that, until 35 years later, I did not know I’d been conned. Instead, I have gone through my career in national media with a misinformed sense of satisfaction that, as a perceptive young journalist, I called Trump on his lies and gave Forbes readers who used the Rich List as a barometer of private wealth a more accurate picture of his finances than the one he was selling.

The joke was on me — and everyone else. Trump’s fabrications provided the basis for a vastly inflated wealth assessment for the Forbes 400 that would give him cachet for decades as a triumphant businessman.

In truth, almost nobody had a clear picture of Trump’s books. In 1990, Trump brought in Steve Bollenbach as a new chief financial officer to respond to lender concerns about his crippling debt. “When Bollenbach began delving into the organization’s finances, he got a surprise,” The Washington Post’s Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher write in “Trump Revealed,” their comprehensive 2016 biography. “The small staff on the twenty-sixth floor of Trump Tower included three accountants. Each knew about pieces of the fraying empire — the casinos, for instance, or the condos. But no one knew the overall picture; there were no consolidated financial reports.”

In the absence of a functioning balance sheet, the list didn’t just make Trump feel like a winner, according to O’Brien; it may have provided some of the documentation he needed to borrow reckless sums of money — vast loans that he used, for years, to actually make him a winner. “The more often Forbes mentioned him, the more credible Donald’s claim to vast wealth became,” O’Brien said, arguing that Trump and the list were “mutually reinforcing”: “The more credible his claim to vast wealth became, the easier it was for him to get on the Forbes 400 — which became the standard that other media, and apparently some of the country’s biggest banks, used when judging Donald’s riches.”

 

Gonna be a trend. Trumpists are proud of their ignorance. It serves them well in the klan-only phase of the campaign. Probably doesn't play as well in the general, and debates tend to display ignorance to a larger swath of the electorate. They'll opt out of debates, claim they can't win a game rigged by libruhl media and take their chances on TV advertising.

 

I'm no fancypants lawyer but he got his ass kicked today. And it's still coming in.

 

House passes election law overhaul in response to Jan. 6

 

good

 

Two of the three were appointed by the Lord and Savior, aka Plaintiff-Appellee. Damned libruhls.

 

I don't really understand how the initial ruling hampered the DOJ. Im sure they had pictures of the docs and had already dusted them for prints. Tmyhey know whether they are classified or not - my guess is that since the DOJ knows it won't indict Trump until after the election it just gives the public assurance that the DOJ is still actively pursuing the case and not sitting on its hands.

 

I have no doubt he pulled the wool over many a journalist's eyes. (And, to be clear, I cast no asparagus here ... I'm sure I'd be as vulnerable as anybody.) My doubts have to do with the degree to which the fruit of such influenced banks' decisions. Maybe it mattered a lot. But I doubt it. "Don't believe your own press releases" is good advice ... particularly if you're a journalist.

 

So you're saying if Trump hadn't appointed any of 'em, the vote would have been 5-0?

 

I want asparagus casted on to me, too. So my pee can stink.