the failure of your president

fuse · August 22, 2020, 6:55am

More excerpts from the U.S. Senate counterintelligence investigation.

Konstantine Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer
kilimnik_ru_intelligence[1].png

Evidence Kilimnik may have had a role in the GRU’s hack and leak operation is redacted
Kilimnik_hack&dump[1].png

Evidence Manafort was involved in the hack-and-leak operations against the Democrats.
But the report cites two redacted pieces of information that “raise the possibility of Manafort’s potential connection”
manafort_hack&dump[1].png

fuse · August 22, 2020, 6:59am

Manafort, Gates, and Kilimnik used code words, maintained furtive communications, covered-up and erased communications when possible
foldering[1].png

Manafort shared internal campaign polling data with Kilimnik
polling_data[1].png

It’s unclear the specificity of the polling Manafort shared with Kilimnik, according to the Senate. But if it included a state-by-state breakdown, then Moscow was quite aware of where Clinton was most vulnerable. This can have then easily informed IRA social media targeting.
internal_polling_data[1].png

fuse · August 22, 2020, 7:06am

Manafort connected to indicted Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash.
Firtash’s “translators” were Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman,
the two indicted campaign finance fraudsters who worked with Rudy Giuliani, working for Trump
firtash_parnas_fruman[1].jpg

More campaign connections to Russian intelligence
ru_govt_connections[1].png

fuse · October 4, 2020, 8:46pm

“Trump’s Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Income Tax Avoidance”
nytimes.com/interactive/202 … taxes.html

One week ago, the New York Times published a massive story with specific details of the last two decades of Trump’s federal tax returns. NYT are purportedly in possession of Trump’s tax returns. The article(s) include many specific numbers and details which are important for this discussion.

Possibilities:

Trump is cheating on his taxes. Using his business properties as personal residences to abuse certain tax benefits; deducting personal expenses as business expenses; paying his daughter bogus $$ as an unnamed third-party contractor to Trump orgs while she also earns salary as a Trump org executive; claiming millions of dollars in tax refund that depended on his giving up all stake in the ailing Taj Mahal Casino venture while still earning from a 5% share of ownership.
Trump is a particularly bad business man. His core business properties have been legitimately losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, for years, pre-pandemic, such that he is able to use the losses to wipe out his federal income tax burden every year for the past 15 or so years. Trump’s finances showed the same pattern throughout the 90s. He is currently over $400 million in debt, much of which is coming due in a few years.

Or Both.

I considered the possibility that he’s neither cheating on his taxes nor a bad business man, but that Trump is making use of loopholes or favorable gaps in a very badly conceived tax code to consistently eliminate his federal income tax burden, while remaining a billionaire with sustainable income from assets that aren’t publicly known. This may certainly be the case in conjunction with one or both of the above cases, but I can’t understand how chronic losses from core businesses in the hundreds of millions, that wipe out all profit, plus $400 million in debt, soon to be due, aren’t disqualifying of “successful” business person status. In other words, based on the NYT findings, I think the pure tax loophole theory (no explicit law breaking) must still also admit that (2) is a likely possibility, i.e. Trump is not a successful business man.

Other possibilities?

fuse · October 6, 2020, 6:40am

theatlantic.com/ideas/archi … ds/616570/

Across decades, Trump honed a simple, devious strategy. He borrowed lots of money, lost it on failed investments, and took huge deductions on interest, depreciation, and operating expenses, which drove down his federal income tax. Very often, he would declare bankruptcy or otherwise renegotiate the terms of the original loan to avoid paying it back in full.

What’s so wrong—or deviously clever—about all that? Well, Trump’s trick, according to Steve Rosenthal of the Tax Policy Center, is all about what he did after the bank wrote down his debt. “So Trump would borrow money from banks, spend it all, and go back to his creditors and find a way to avoid paying the whole loan back,” said Rosenthal. “But when a bank writes off your debt, the discharged debt is income. You have to report it as taxable income. Trump never did.”

Instead, Trump repeatedly ducked his obligations to lenders and the IRS, perfecting the same playbook—borrow, spend, deduct, and walk away. Eventually, American lenders caught on to the gambit and stopped giving him money, forcing him to seek other sources of revenue, such as Deutsche Bank and international plutocrats.

[…]

It gets even weirder. All those golf properties look like horrendous businesses, having declared losses of more than $315 million since 2000, according to Trump’s tax records. In short, Trump is pouring a mysteriously large amount of money into opaque businesses suffering mysteriously high losses.

None of the tax experts I talked with said: “Yep, that’s clearly an illegal scheme.” But several told me that when companies, such as golf courses or restaurants, that seem to be losing lots of money nevertheless continue in operation for many years, prosecutors might become interested in investigating money laundering.

[…]

If Trump’s golf courses and other properties were serving as money-laundering enterprises for (let’s say) Russian oligarchs, we would expect to see three things: mountains of cash materializing from basically nowhere, several large money-losing enterprises, and a disinclination to abandon those failing properties. We’re seeing all of that.

Brian galle, a tax professor at Georgetown University, told me that my three explanations aren’t mutually exclusive. “There is a relationship between your interpretations one, two, and three,” he said. “If you’re a naturally successful businessperson, there is less pressure to maintain your wealth with tax-evasive maneuvers, or to engage in full-fledged money laundering.”

fuse · October 6, 2020, 9:31pm

WendyDarling:

Fixed Cross, as well as other people, have made posts listing numerous successes by Trump to improve the lives of the American people. Trump lowered taxes of the middle class. Got us out of one-sided trade deals. Strengthened our borders. Cut job and progress killing regulations. Got us out of numerous agreements in which the USA was the only country paying their fair share. Got us out of defense pacts that did not defend American interests. Refunded our military. Enabled legislation to keep petty criminals out of long prison sentences. He’s defended the first amendment and the second amendment in speech and actions. He’s actually done more for the country he loves and kept more campaign promises than any other president, ever. He’s made more improvements to our nation, I’ve only listed a few.

Trump lowered taxes, but the results for most people were mixed and small. Lower and middle class income families saw trivial benefits, if any at all. High income families and corporations saw the most benefit. The argument that the Trump tax cuts were responsible for the the booming economy is weak. The stock market and unemployment rates were already in a good place and trending in the right direction, for years before Trump took office. The entire TCJA law is based on the same old “trickle down economics” story. Corporations and the rich benefit the most, and they do create jobs, but they also take in more profits. They are not likely to sacrifice their own profits to create jobs, so effectively the tax cuts pump up their profits while creating a disproportionate and disappointing amount of high quality jobs.

On top of this, the federal deficit grew significantly. Pre-pandemic as well as post-pandemic.

Trump’s trade deals have had pretty mixed results. Hard to say we’re a lot better off, and it’s possible we’re worse off because of them. Moreover, the U.S.'s declining credibility in international relations owes a lot to Trump.
Trump was never able to fund his border wall. He added a scant few miles to the wall and has mostly repaired the deteriorating border wall that already existed. He hasn’t built or funded the wall he campaigned on. Mexico certainly did not pay for it. Even Americans who wanted to pay for it and who donated millions to Stephen Bannon’s “We build the wall” fundraiser didn’t pay for it because the fundraiser turned out to be a massive scam for which Bannon and others were indicted.

"[url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/20/trumps-border-wall-questions-and-answers-its-status/3403811001/:

Questions and answers on status of Trump’s border wall[/url]"]Nearly all construction under Trump’s watch has been to replace old and much shorter barriers with steel poles up to 30 feet high and filled with concrete. Barriers covered 658 miles as of mid-July. That’s about a third of the border and little changed from when Trump took office.

Trump said repeatedly during the campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall, but that has not happened. The administration says it has received about $5 billion from congressional appropriations. In addition, Trump has moved nearly $10 billion from the Defense Department to pay for the wall, a move that has so far survived legal challenges.

Trump immigration policy:

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"[url=https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-08-17/trump-biden-immigration-policy:

Trump and Biden on immigration[/url]"]One of Trump’s favorite targets has been asylum, which he calls “a hoax.” He suggests that because most pass the first step — a credible-fear screening, set by Congress to be a low bar — but ultimately only about 25% win asylum, that means most claims are fraudulent.

In reality, Trump and his officials have waged war on the asylum system because they are trying to bar primarily Central Americans fleeing countries ravaged by corruption, violence, poverty and climate change, who once at the border are by the design of U.S. law difficult to kick out.

U.S. law grants migrants the right to seek asylum, regardless of how they enter the United States. The federal statutes center on “non-refoulement” — not sending people back to countries where they’d probably be persecuted, harmed or killed, based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or particular social group.

Trump’s policies to end asylum have been consistently met by court challenges. These tactics have included separating families or making them wait for U.S. immigration court appearances in dangerous Mexican border cities; indefinitely detaining others with no chance of bail or parole despite having broken no laws; and in the name of “public health,” rapidly “expelling” nearly every migrant, including unaccompanied minors, with no chance to seek asylum, no coronavirus testing and no way to track what happened to them.

Trump’s executive actions leave perhaps the biggest bureaucratic tangle a Biden administration would be left to undo, with a backlogged immigration court system and inevitable future spikes in migration.

[…]

“What do we want Haitians here for? Why do we want all these people from Africa here? Why do we want all these people from shithole countries?”

He added, “We should have people from places like Norway”

[…]

On family separation, Trump issued an executive order in 2018 to stop the policy his officials still maintain was not a policy amid worldwide outcry, just before a judge ordered an end to the practice and ultimately required the government to reunite families. And yet, authorities continue to separate families.

[…]

The administration has also implemented new “wealth test” policies to keep out poor migrants, rejecting those who might use, or whose U.S. citizen children might use, public benefits.

[…]

Research shows that immigrants strengthen the economy and typically don’t compete with U.S.-born workers for jobs or lower their wages, and many of the affected industries, as well as Trump officials themselves, have advocated for more immigration, not less.

The administration has sought to restrict citizenship, raising fees for naturalizations and slowing processing

[/tab]

Trump did make a point of killing regulations, but this has not been done in an especially thoughtful way and mostly benefits corporations at the expense of the public interest. Did some burdensome and poorly implemented regulations exist? Yes. But a numbers game of restricting outgoing regulation in arbitrary proportion to deregulation, just to be able to point to numbers on paper, is not an especially smart or robust plan. Even those who support massive deregulation and an overhaul of the regulatory system admit that Trump has not accomplished much.

Worst of all, the Trump administration has massively lowered standards for clean air and water, and other environmental safeguards.

The military was not underfunded when Trump took office. Yes, Trump increased funding relative to Obama’s second term, but this was less than military funding under Obama’s first term.

Trump’s net effect on these specific points has been neutral, at best. I think much worse. He certainly hasn’t done more for the country than any president ever. Did he ever do anything of lasting good, probably. I’ve pointed out a few positive things in the past. But there has been little of great consequence. Probably the greatest success of the Trump administration, in coordination with McConnell’s Republican majority Senate, was packing the courts.

The worst aspects of Trump’s presidency have far outweighed any of the debatable positives. He lies and misinforms the public all the time; he has flouted conflict of interest oversight and tried very hard to extract personal benefit from his office; Americans have less trust in their government than before; the non-partisan, professional civil service core has been gutted and replaced by Trump sycophants and loyalists; U.S. international credibility is at a low; Trump served his personal interests at the expense of his oath of office; he undermined U.S. intelligence and expertise to serve his personal agenda; he’s been a particularly large asset for Putin, but also for other hostile foreign interests; he mislead the public, muzzled our best experts, and failed to lead when a national response was required for the pandemic. He has 215,000+ American deaths on his record. The damage has and will continue to have incalculable and lasting effects, I’ve only touched the surface.

WendyDarling · November 24, 2020, 2:36am

Fuse, I need to go through your evidence and I will but I have a hard time regarding NYT articles as evidence since the MSM represents fake news and erroneous facts.

Mr_Reasonable · November 24, 2020, 3:16am

to a cult member even a failure to lead isnt seen as a failure when its their leader

Mr_Reasonable · November 24, 2020, 3:17am

Gloominary · November 24, 2020, 3:49am

The MSM is funded by wall street…it is wall street.
If you don’t take it with a gallon of salt, you need to give your head a shake.
I’m not saying the media that’s pro-Trump is 100% either, it’s not as simple as, whatever A or B media says is the truth and nothing but, you’ve got to read in between the lines, think for yourself.

There’s no tangible evidence Trump conspired, or colluded with Russia to steal, or win the election, or they would’ve found it, it’s a conspiracy theory.
Unlike Obama, the Bushs, the Clintons and Reagan, Trump hasn’t started any new wars.
Russia and some other 2nd and 3rd world countries are able to expand their sphere of influence a bit in America’s relative military absence, which’s why they tend to be pro-Trump, but so what?
Over the last few decades, the US has completely failed to bring order and stability to the world, instead it’s brought nothing but death and destruction.
It needs to withdraw and let other countries sort their affairs.
Trump has the right idea, America first, stop policing the world, that’s one of the real reasons why the MSM/wall street generally dislike him so much.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFV-oOMxjzc[/youtube]

Gloominary · November 24, 2020, 4:36pm

Trump is relatively anti-war.

President Trump has received a third nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

According to Sky News Australia, four Australian law professors recently nominated the president for the high honor, with one of them, David Flint, citing his recent role in helping broker relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“He went ahead and negotiated against all advice, but he did it with common sense. He negotiated directly with the Arab states concerned and Israel and brought them together,” Flint said.

The law professor also pointed to an idea he referred to as the “Trump Doctrine” in his comments explaining the recent nomination to the news agency on Sunday.

“What he has done with the Trump Doctrine is that he has decided he would no longer have America in endless wars, wars which achieve nothing but the killing of thousands of young Americans,” Flint said.

“So, he’s reducing America’s tendency to get involved in any and every war,” he continued adding: “The states are lining up, Arab and Middle-Eastern, to join that network of peace which will dominate the Middle-East.”

“He is really producing peace in the world in a way in a which none of his predecessors did, and he fully deserves the Nobel Peace Prize,” he said.

According to an official website detailing the process behind nominations for the award, university professors, professors emeriti and associate professors of subjects spanning history, social sciences, law and others are able to submit nominations, in addition to members of national governments and assemblies.

Trump also received a nomination for the award from a member of the Swedish Parliament and a member of the Norwegian Parliament earlier this month.

Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member the conservative-leaning Progress Party in Norway who also serves chairman of the Norwegian delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and was the first to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize this month, also cited his efforts in helping broker relations between Israel and UAE in recent weeks as reason behind the nomination.

“For his merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” he said in reference to Trump in an interview with Fox News then.

Tybring-Gjedde, who nominated the president for the award last year, also heaped praised on this president in his nomination letter earlier this month for his decision to withdraw troops from the Middle East.

“Indeed, Trump has broken a 39-year-old streak of American Presidents either starting a war or bringing the United States into an international armed conflict. The last president to avoid doing so was Peace Prize laureate Jimmy Carter,” he said in the letter.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/518842-trump-nominated-a-third-time-for-nobel-peace-prize

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPXB0h_eBV4[/youtube]

Mr_Reasonable · November 25, 2020, 2:07am

fuse the maga dont believe the bipartisan reports from the committees in congress who have access to the intelligence. everything bad about trump is fake new. only oan and brietbart and the federalist are real news

Mr_Reasonable · November 25, 2020, 2:09am

like for 3 weeks not the segment of the population which is illiterate about how the courts work have been legit sitting back just waiting for these ridiculous cases to magically go to scotus when anyone with a set of eyes or who reads the briefs or the court transcripts just sees a the same clown show that the judges are seeing as theyve thrown out the cases one by one

fuse · December 1, 2020, 8:53am

A bipartisan U.S. Senate Intelligence report on “Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election” finds that Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign Manager, Paul Manafort, was secretly passing internal campaign polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, “a Russian Intelligence officer”. Wonder why.

Evidence Kilimnik may have had a role in the GRU’s hack and leak operation is redacted. Evidence that “raise[s] the possibility of Manafort’s potential connection” to the hack and leak operations is also redacted. Manafort, Gates, and Kilimnik used code words, maintained furtive communications, covered-up and erased communications when possible. They used a technique called foldering to communicate via email drafts without actually sending emails. Manafort is also connected to indicted Russian-backed, Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash. Firtash’s “translators” were Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, the two indicted campaign finance fraudsters who worked with Rudy Giuliani, all working for Trump.

Source:
intelligence.senate.gov/sit … olume5.pdf

Urwrongx1000 · December 1, 2020, 9:40am

Go look at Hunter’s laptop, and cry more about Trump.

obsrvr524 · December 1, 2020, 8:43pm

Mr_Reasonable · December 2, 2020, 2:40am

show it to us

fuse · December 2, 2020, 3:11am

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH9FnY0qvNI[/youtube]

fuse · December 2, 2020, 3:14am

In reality, the place for election disputes is in the courts. Trump and surrogates have been free to pursue legal challenges to the election results. So far they have been unable to make arguments of legal merit or to meet evidentiary standards to prove any of the unverified, debunked, or conspiratorial claims touted on social media and in farcical press conferences.

U.S. District Judge:

“In this action, the Trump Campaign and the Individual Plaintiffs (collectively, the “Plaintiffs”) seek to discard millions of votes legally cast by Pennsylvanians from all corners – from Greene County to Pike County, and everywhere in between. In other words, Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens. That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more. At bottom, Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Therefore, I grant Defendants’ motions and dismiss Plaintiffs’ action with prejudice.”

-United States District Judge, Matthew Brann, Pennsylvania, Republican, former Federalist Society member

Urwrongx1000 · December 2, 2020, 3:44am

I saw it, I don’t think I can post child pornography on here though. Nice slippery suggestion to get me banned though.