The Donald Trump Score Card

I don’t believe that. I hate the GOP. They are just as corruptable as the Democrats. Occasionally they’ll have better rhetoric, but over all they are two heads on the same beast. There have been some republicans (and even democrats) who are better than the rest. But they are far and few as most politicians have a pack mentality.

Like all politicians, they neglect most of their campaign promises. If he botches this one, he will lose a lot of his original support. Sure, the remainder of the dying Neocons might support him. But that won’t be enough to keep going.

 

6

LOL oh I think we have worked out you are much further to the right and even more delusional than even the Republican Party is - but you do have one thing in common you both seem unable to defend your stance from valid criticisms.

To me Trump is a symptom of the same political madness in the US that you partly personify.

 

The US Attorney who obtained the search warrant for Cohen's stuff was appointed by Trump and was a cohort of Guliani's. There must really be some stinky stuff for that warrant to be approved by a Republican judge........

Here's Chris Christie on the warrant.......
“We’re looking at the U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who I know well,” Christie said, referring to Geoffrey Berman, the official who would have had to have signed off on the raid. “This is a good guy… he’s a Boy Scout. He’ll do the right thing.”

 

The "deep state" is a largely (though not entirely) a figment of the imaginations of conspiracy theorists, Steve Bannon, Breitbart, and Trump supporters.
How the “deep state” conspiracy theory went mainstream
Washington Post: Breaking News, World, US, DC News & Analysis
Why Steve Bannon Wants You to Believe in the Deep State
Trump's Allies Keep Talking About the 'Deep State.' What's That?

Do you have evidence that there is one? And if there is, how would you know what it wants?

 

And a Republican Trump appointee, as I recall. He needed to show probable cause for the warrant.

 

Sure, and I’m actually a Russian hacker who’s real name is Ivan Jerkinov

 

6

I knew Ivan Jerkinov, Ivan Jerkinov was a friend of mine and six you're no Ivan Jerkinov

LOL

 

Yeah, we knew that...

 

Yep, and Afghanistan is for control over pipelines entering India and China.

 

I still think he has a shot of beating all these charges. 20 years ago lying about oral sex meant you lacked the moral character to be president. Now sex with a porn star and numerous lies means nothing. He's a celebrity first and a politician second. If Michal Jackson was a plumber no one would doubt he touched kids. But he made Thriller so people did. Same idea.

 

I think he's shit out of lawyers!

 

Did you all see Trump's body language during that last set of questions from the press? Is there a body language expert in the house?

 

Trump Has the White House He Always Wanted
And it looks a lot like the 26th floor of Trump Tower.
By GWENDA BLAIR
April 05, 2018

Trump Has the White House He Always Wanted

From the article:

"Today, the hub-and-spokes model is facing its ultimate test. It was arguably sufficient for the Trump Organization, which currently has 22,000 people on its payroll, but as president, Trump is now the ultimate boss for 2.7 million people, a 122-fold increase. For him to rely on little more than his own gut instincts, maybe (or maybe not) modified by the last person he spoke to or by whatever a Fox News commentator just said, is a high-risk strategy.

And it gets still more risky when his hiring policy esteems loyalty over resume, a priority that seems unduly reckless even to some of his appointees. Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, Trump’s White House physician, has been nominated to head up the Veteran’s Administration, not because he has years of management experience (he doesn’t), but more likely because he pronounced the president to be “in excellent health.” Even Jackson apparently hesitated at the prospect of heading up a famously challenging agency with 274,000 employees. But Trump likes the way he looks: “He’s like central casting—like. Hollywood star,” Trump said during a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser in February, according to CNN.

And there’s another problem with this managerial style. Although it seems that the administration would love to privatize as much of the federal government as possible, the business methods that the Trump Organization regularly employed—no-bid contracts, ruthless cost-cutting, partial or sometimes no payment to vendors, and, ultimately, corporate bankruptcy—are not options available to the White House."

 

Trump International Hotel in Panama has become the centerpiece of a battle that has expanded to include the governments of Panama and the U.S. and a bilateral investment treaty that the Trump lawyers have implicated.


Trump’s company is now threatening the president of Panama
The Trump Organization demanded that he intervene in a private business dispute — or pay the consequences.
By Zeeshan Aleem
Apr 9, 2018, 6:40pm EDT

Trump’s company is now threatening the president of Panama

Excerpt:

"According to the Associated Press, lawyers at the firm Britton & Iglesias, which represents the Trump Organization in Panama, asked Varela to help them out in a bitter legal dispute over a hotel management contract between Trump’s company and a wealthy Cypriot businessman.

In February, Orestes Fintiklis, the majority owner of a luxury waterfront hotel in Panama City, attempted to fire a Trump Organization management team that was running his hotel. The Trump Organization pushed back against the move as a violation of its contract, but Panamanian courts ruled in favor of Fintiklis on March 5, and the Trump Organization staff was then kicked out, according to the AP.

Trump Organization lawyers then sent an aggressively worded letter to Varela on March 22, writing that they “URGENTLY request your influence in relation to a commercial dispute involving Trump Hotel aired before Panama’s judiciary.” The letter was copied to, among others, Varela’s cabinet officials and the heads of the supreme court and the National Assembly.

But the letter appears to be more than just a request — it also seems to be a thinly veiled threat. The lawyers wrote that the Panamanian court’s ruling violates a bilateral investment treaty between the US and Panama and hinted that Varela’s response could affect US-Panamanian relations more broadly."

 

In his post-raid rant, Trump bashed Sessions, Rosenstein, and Berman, the people he selected.


Preet Bharara: Cohen raid approved by people 'handpicked by Donald Trump'
Jasmine Lee
By Jasmine Lee, CNN
Updated 12:46 AM ET, Tue April 10, 2018

Preet Bharara: Raid approved by people 'handpicked by Donald Trump' - CNNPolitics

"If the reporting is true, particularly the part about this being approved by the Southern District of New York Attorney's Office which I used to lead, are all people who are Republican, and all people who have basically been handpicked by Donald Trump," Bharara, now a senior CNN legal analyst, said on "The Situation Room."

 

Like U.S. farmers and DACA recipients, Taiwan is now on the list of pawns being used by Trump.


Taiwan: a pawn in Donald Trump’s plan for US-China battles on anything and everything
The US president has declared a new era of open competition between the world’s two largest economies – Taipei should beware of collateral damage
By Cary Huang
25 Mar 2018


Taiwan: a pawn in Trump’s plan to take on China in everything

 

A 2017 year-in-review summary of the worlds notable authoritarians. Trump has embraced most of them, including Putin, Jinping, Duterte, and Erdogan, and Prince Mohammad bin Salman, while he has alienated U.S. allies.


Trump, Putin and Xi: a year of tough-guy leaders and foolish brinkmanship
Simon Tisdall
Mon 25 Dec 2017 16.00 EST
Last modified on Fri 9 Feb 2018 13.35 EST

Trump, Putin and Xi: a year of tough-guy leaders and foolish brinkmanship

"It was the year of the hard man – the tough-guy leader with a ruthless streak and a big ego. In Moscow, Vladimir Putin, a role model for the genre, strengthened his harsh grip on domestic politics while intensifying Russia’s cyber-digital “war of influence” with the west. In Beijing, China’s president, Xi Jinping, attained a kind of immortality when his unoriginal thoughts were enshrined in the Communist party constitution. In Washington, Donald Trump enacted a charlatan parody of the US presidency, blending power and ignorance to an alarming degree.

The heavy mob attracted a cohort of emulators and imitators – “little big men” such as Kim Jong-un, the inexperienced, nuclear-armed North Korean dictator and Rodrigo Duterte, the homicidal president of the Philippines. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s choleric president, worked assiduously to dismantle his country’s secular democratic tradition, using a failed 2016 coup as a pretext. Saudi Arabia’s uncrowned leader and ostensible reformer, the youthful Prince Mohammad bin Salman, made a series of clumsy regional power plays.

The corollary to the rise of the hard man was a sense of debilitating weakness among western democracies and of a crumbling postwar international strategic and legal order. The rising power of one-party China, spreading authoritarianism in general, and divisive, populist and nationalistic regressions within Europe highlighted the dilemma. The west’s difficulties were compounded by uncertainty over how to handle Trump and navigate a disorientating new era of weakening American global leadership."

 

Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, reportedly created an LLC in Delaware to transfer the payment to Stormy Daniels.

Trump has his two businesses in Egypt, Trump Marks Egypt and Trump Marks Egypt LLC. They are registered as "National Registered Agents, Inc." in Dover, Delaware.

Delaware has unusual tax laws and regulations.


How Delaware Thrives as a Corporate Tax Haven
By LESLIE WAYNE
JUNE 30, 2012

How Delaware Thrives as a Corporate Tax Haven

Excerpt:

"Big corporations, small-time businesses, rogues, scoundrels and worse — all have turned up at Delaware addresses in hopes of minimizing taxes, skirting regulations, plying friendly courts or, when needed, covering their tracks. Federal authorities worry that, in addition to the legitimate businesses flocking here, drug traffickers, embezzlers and money launderers are increasingly heading to Delaware, too. It’s easy to set up shell companies here, no questions asked.

“Shells are the No. 1 vehicle for laundering illicit money and criminal proceeds,” said Lanny A. Breuer, assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the Justice Department. “It’s an enormous criminal justice problem. It’s ridiculously easy for a criminal to set up a shell corporation and use the banking system, and we have to stop it.”"

 

The colateral risks of the excess baggage that Trump brought with him into the White House, such as his alleged affairs he has had with women, have already manifested themselves as the raid on Cohen. Now that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of NY is involved, it gives Mueller an advantage because whatever SDNY may uncover that is within the scope of the Russia investigation can be used by Mueller.

It also puts Trump and his associates at a greater risk because convictions that are violations of state criminal, state civil, or federal civil laws can't be pardoned by a President. They would need to be pardoned by the governor of the state. Presidential pardons apply to federal criminal acts against the U.S. A federal district court of a state may uncover criminal violations of state laws.

Mueller is using all of the classic techniques of a prosecutor. He started on the periphery of the issue by investigating the inexperienced Papadopoulos and worked his way inward toward Trump. Mueller has cut off as many potential escape routes as possible for Trump by convincing Trump's associates to cooperate with him. Mueller has played a low key to give the impression to Trump that it was not that serious when in fact it may be very serious. In an attempt to calm him, Trump's White House lawyers unwittingly played into this when they continued to assure Trump that the investigation would end soon.


"Trump’s Moment of Truth”: Will Mueller Flip Cohen?
by Abigail Tracy
April 10, 2018 3:47 pm

“Trump’s Moment of Truth”: Will Mueller Flip Michael Cohen?

Excerpt:

"It also establishes a protective barrier between Mueller and one of the seedier Trump scandals. “It is wise that Mueller and Rosenstein avoided the fatal mistake of Ken Starr when he decided to expand his jurisdiction to the Monica Lewinsky matter, a tawdry subject, but not highly serious to the welfare and security of the American people,” William Jeffress, a white-collar defense attorney who worked on the Valerie Plame leak case, told me. “There are several possible crimes that might have been committed by the circumstances of the hush money, but these are appropriately investigated by a U.S. attorney, not by special counsel appointed to investigate Russian interference in the election.”

Mueller, of course, has an ace up his sleeve, since anything the Southern District team uncovers that relates to Russia would be referred back to the special counsel’s office anyway. In short, Mueller is outsourcing the work, protecting himself from some of the fallout, and will likely receive the same results as he would have searching through Cohen’s documents himself."

 

Trump just can't keep his mouth shut, especially while being in a euphoric state after a praise-fest like the one he did in West Virignia when he started talking about Stormy.


How Stormy Daniels and her brash lawyer cornered President Trump and Michael Cohen
Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY
Published 5:09 p.m. ET April 10, 2018
Updated 6:40 p.m. ET April 10, 2018

How Stormy Daniels and her brash lawyer cornered President Trump and Michael Cohen

Excerpt:

"The legal battle has spurred Cohen and Trump to make public statements that are “quite incriminating,”said David Super, a Georgetown University law professor.

Among them: Trump's comments to reporters last week, denying knowledge of the Daniels payment or the source of the hush money. "You'll have to ask Michael Cohen" why the payment was made, the president told reporters on Air Force One.

If Cohen acted on his own to pay Daniels, Super said, "then there's no attorney-client privilege, which may have made (the FBI) more comfortable doing this raid."

Trump's statements "have exacerbated his problems severely," Super added. "If he had taken the usual lawyers' advice to clients and referred all questions to the lawyers and declined comment, I don't think we would have seen this raid and I don't think this lawsuit would be any big deal.""