Society The Donald J. Trump Show - 4 more years editions

Welcome to our Community
Wanting to join the rest of our members? Feel free to Sign Up today.
Sign up

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,743
Trump inauguration took money from shell companies tied to foreigners
Donald Trump’s inauguration received tens of thousands of dollars from shell companies that masked the involvement of a foreign contributor or others with foreign ties.

The Guardian has identified the creators of three obscure firms that contributed money to Trump’s inaugural committee, which collected a record $107m as he entered the White House in 2017.

The three companies each gave $25,000 to Trump’s inaugural fund. At least one of the contributions was made for a foreign national who appears ineligible to make political donations in the US.
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,743
Erik Prince acknowledges attending 2016 Trump Tower meeting 'to talk about Iran policy'
Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has acknowledged that he was present at a key 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

In an interview on Al Jazeera's "Head to Head" that aired Friday, Prince said he was present at an Aug. 3, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower to "talk about Iran policy."

The New York Times reported last year that Prince organized a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that included Donald Trump Jr. and Lebanese-American businessman George Nader. During that meeting, Nader reportedly said the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia wanted to aid Trump in his bid for the White House.

ADVERTISEMENT
Prince previously testified under oath to the House Intelligence Committee on Nov. 30, 2017, saying at the time that he had "no official" or "really unofficial role" in the Trump campaign and his only involvement in helping was attending fundraisers and placing yard signs.

"Head to Head" host Mehdi Hasan pressed Prince on why his presence at the meeting was apparently not part of his testimony to lawmakers, to which Prince suggested, "they got the transcript wrong," prompting laughter from the audience.

Prince later added, "not all of the discussion that day was transcribed."

The video is just jaw dropping pic.twitter.com/xRMxo1arwf

— Scott Stedman (@ScottMStedman) March 8, 2019
A spokesperson for the House Intelligence Committee chair did not immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment.

Prince's latest comments come as he and Nader have both been asked to cooperate in the House Judiciary Committee's expansive probe for possible abuse of power, obstruction of justice and corruption by Trump and his allies.

Prince said last year that he has been cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller's team, which is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Mueller's team has reportedly probed several 2017 meetings that occurred in Seychelles during the period Prince met with a Russian banker there.

Prince has acknowledged that he traveled to the Seychelles and that he met with a Russian government official while there, but has denied that he was acting on behalf of the Trump administration.

Trump’s Defense Department Reportedly Blew $4.6 Million on Lobster Tails and Crab in One Month
President Donald Trump’s Defense Department blew $4.6 million on crab and lobster tails last September, the same month the agency was required to spend their “use it or lose it” funds, per a report from a government watchdog group.

The transparency organization OpenTheBooks found the federal department spent millions on the luxury crustaceans last September, which was the final month in the government’s fiscal year. In total, the federal government spent $97 billion in September 2018.

“In the final month of the fiscal year, federal agencies scramble to spend what’s left in their annual budget; agencies worry spending less than their budget allows might prompt Congress to appropriate less money in the next fiscal year,” the group stated. “To avoid this, federal agencies choose to embark on an annual shopping spree rather than admit they can operate on less.”

Along with the lobster and crab, OpenTheBooks found the government making other wild purchases with taxpayer money last September:

“The federal government spent money on a wide array of contracts including a Wexford Leather club chair ($9,241), china tableware ($53,004), alcohol ($308,994), golf carts ($673,471), musical equipment including pianos, tubas, and trombones ($1.7 million), lobster tail and crab ($4.6 million), iPhones and iPads ($7.7 million), and workout and recreation equipment ($9.8 million).”

Additionally, the group noted that “use it or lose it” spending has gone up considerably since Trump’s election.

“Between 2015 and 2018, federal spending during the final month of the fiscal year increased by 39 percent,” the study found. “From 2017 to 2018, September spending increased by 16 percent.”
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,743
Bill Shine Resigns as White House Message Chief
Bill Shine, the former Fox News executive who joined the White House staff last summer to manage President Trump’s communications operation, has resigned and will move to the president’s re-election campaign, the White House announced Friday.

Mr. Shine’s abrupt departure came as a surprise to many in the White House and was revealed, as such personnel moves often are in this administration, as the president was on Air Force One leaving Washington.

While described by admiring White House colleagues as a rare adult in the room, Mr. Shine has sometimes been absent during key moments, including the president’s trip last week to Vietnam. Colleagues said he had developed little chemistry with Mr. Trump, and critics increasingly focused on Mr. Shine’s ties to Fox, where he was forced out for his handling of sexual harassment claims.

In a meeting late Friday morning with communications staff members, Mr. Shine told colleagues that he was leaving for two reasons, according to a person familiar with what took place. He said that he lived a solitary existence in Washington and missed his family, who remained in New York. But the second reason, he said, was that he had become a distraction for Mr. Trump and did not see that changing.

The White House sought to present Mr. Shine’s resignation as amicable and issued statements in the name of the president and other officials praising him. But people close to the White House described the campaign job as a way to save face.

“Bill Shine has done an outstanding job working for me and the administration,” Mr. Trump said in his statement. “We will miss him in the White House, but look forward to working together on the 2020 presidential campaign, where he will be totally involved. Thank you to Bill and his wonderful family!”

In the same statement, Mr. Shine was quoted calling his time in the White House an honor and “the most rewarding experience” of his life. “I’m looking forward to working on President Trump’s re-election campaign and spending more time with my family,” he said.

Mr. Shine, who held the title of deputy White House chief of staff, was the sixth person to accept the job to manage communications for the Trump White House, a position that has been problematic given that Mr. Trump prefers to be his own chief spokesman and rarely sticks to a messaging plan that aides seek to establish. The White House gave no indication who will replace Mr. Shine.

Mr. Shine’s presence in the White House was seen as emblematic of how closely Mr. Trump has aligned himself with Fox, a symbiotic relationship that drew a critical appraisal in a much-read New Yorker article published this week. Mr. Trump has given the network about 45 interviews as president, using it to communicate with his most fervent supporters even as he embraces lines of argument that its hosts advance.

Mr. Trump regularly posts messages on Twitter reacting to reports he sees on Fox and has been said to privately talk on the phone with Sean Hannity, the network’s marquee star, many nights after Mr. Hannity’s show.

The line between the White House and Fox grew even blurrier last fall when Mr. Trump invited Mr. Hannity and another host, Jeanine Pirro, to join him onstage for a campaign rally, after which Mr. Shine and Mr. Hannity were seen sharing a high-five. The president routinely praises Fox hosts from the podium during speeches, and according to The New Yorker article, he has privately rated Fox hosts on a scale of 1 to 10 based on their loyalty to him. (Mr. Hannity got a 10.)




Trump claims his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen ‘directly asked me for a pardon’
  • President Donald Trump claimed that his former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen last year “directly asked me for a pardon.”
  • “Bad lawyer and fraudster Michael Cohen said under sworn testimony that he never asked for a Pardon. His lawyers totally contradicted him,” Trump tweeted. “He lied! Additionally, he directly asked me for a pardon. I said NO. He lied again! He also badly wanted to work at the White House. He lied!”
  • Last week, Cohen testified at length under oath before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about Trump. “I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from President Trump,” Cohen testified.
 

BeardOfKnowledge

The Most Consistent Motherfucker You Know
Jul 22, 2015
60,547
56,268
Agreed. Federal budgets that have to give up to yearly quotas that cant be fully fulfilled until the end of the fiscal year is a joke.
I can remember when my brother was doing procurement for DND that it was a thing every year where they were finding shit to by to make sure their budget was used up. Mind you, they weren't buying lobster and jetskis. This also went on regardless of who was the ruling party.
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,743
White House rejects Dem request to interview ex-Trump aide
The White House on Friday rejected a Democratic congressional request to interview a former White House lawyer about hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money payments made by President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone told House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) in a letter obtained by The Hill that the White House has been “cooperative and responsive” to the panel's requests for documents.

ADVERTISEMENT
But Cipollone said that because the Oversight panel wants to interview Trump’s former deputy assistant and deputy counsel Stefan Passantino about things he discussed or advised during his White House tenure, the request needs to be sent to Cipollone’s office — not directly to Passantino.

Passantino left the White House last summer and is now working for the Trump Organization, handling requests from House Democrats like Cummings who have launched multiple investigations into Trump, his family members and allies, and his business dealings.

“In response to your request, given longstanding law and practice, we are not inclined to make the former Deputy Counsel to the President available for a transcribed interview inquiring into his conversations and advice he provided while serving as Deputy Counsel to the President,” Cipollone wrote to Cummings.

The Oversight chairman’s request is separate from the sprawling investigation into Trump’s campaign, administration and business enterprise that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) launched earlier this week. But Passantino, the White house’s former top ethics lawyer, is one of 81 individuals and entities that Nadler is focusing on in that obstruction of justice and public corruption probe.

Cummings had sent a letter to Passantino on Feb. 27 — the day of Cohen’s explosive public testimony before Congress — requesting he appear for a transcribed interview later this month, on March 18, about the payments made to women who alleged before the 2016 election that they had affairs with Trump.

The Oversight chairman has previously raised concerns that Passantino and Sheri Dillon, a private lawyer for Trump, may have provided false information to government ethics officials about the payments. Cummings has also requested a transcribed interview from Dillon about the payments.

Cummings wrote in a Feb. 15 letter to Cipollone that the committee had obtained internal notes from Office of Government Ethics (OGE) officials that described “changing explanations” from Trump’s legal team about the payments.

“It now appears that President Trump’s other attorneys — at the White House and in private practice — may have provided false information about these payments to federal officials,” Cummings wrote. “This raises significant questions about why some of the President’s closest advisers made these false claims and the extent to which they too were acting at the direction of, or in coordination with, the President.”

In the letter Friday, Cipollone accused Cummings of making “unfair accusations maligning the reputations of individual attorneys” and mounting an “unnecessarily antagonistic inquiry.”

“Such unfair assertions are the antithesis of the procedure that you have insisted the Committee should follow,” he wrote.

Cummings’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.

The Oversight chairman could choose to subpoena Passantino to compel his testimony.

Cohen, who last year pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations linked to the payments as well as other charges, is due to report to prison in May to serve a three-year sentence for his crimes.

The former lawyer has implicated Trump in the hush money scheme, detailing the president’s involvement in high-profile testimony before the Oversight and Reform Committee last week. The president, however, has offered shifting explanations about his knowledge of the payments but denied wrongdoing.

“It was not a campaign contribution, and there were no violations of the campaign finance laws by me. Fake News!” Trump tweeted on Thursday.
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,743
Founder of busted Florida massage parlor chain reportedly ran business promising access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago


    • Li "Cindy" Yang, the founder of the Florida massage parlor chain that was busted for alleged prostitution and sex-trafficking along with Patriots founder Robert Kraft, has reportedly been running a business that promises networking opportunities with President Donald Trump.
    • Her and her husband's company, GY US Investments LLC, was reportedly created in 2017, according to Mother Jones.
    • According to archives of the company's website reviewed by Business Insider, the company offered photo opportunities with President Trump and his family at Mar-a-Lago, along with other political networking opportunities.
    • Yang sold the chain 10 years ago, and was not charged in the bust. She has denied knowledge of any illegal activities.
A Florida Massage Parlor Owner Has Been Selling Chinese Execs Access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago
The latest Trump political donor to draw controversy is Li Yang, a 45-year-old Florida entrepreneur from China who founded a chain of spas and massage parlors that included the one where New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft was recently busted for soliciting prostitution. She made the news this week when the Miami Herald reported that last month she had attended a Super Bowl viewing party at Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club and had snapped a selfie with the president during the event. Though Yang no longer owns the spa Kraft allegedly visited, the newspaper noted that other massage parlors her family runs have “gained a reputation for offering sexual services.” (She told the newspaper she has never violated the law.) Beyond this sordid tale, there is another angle to the strange story of Yang: She runs an investment business that has offered to sell Chinese clients access to Trump and his family. And a website for the business—which includes numerous photos of Yang and her purported clients hobnobbing at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach—suggests she had some success in doing so.

Yang, who goes by Cindy, and her husband, Zubin Gong, started GY US Investments LLC in 2017. The company describes itself on its website, which is mostly in Chinese, as an “international business consulting firm that provides public relations services to assist businesses in America to establish and expand their brand image in the modern Chinese marketplace.” But the firm notes that its services also address clients looking to make high-level connections in the United States. On a page displaying a photo of Mar-a-Lago, Yang’s company says its “activities for clients” have included providing them “the opportunity to interact with the president, the [American] Minister of Commerce and other political figures.” The company boasts it has “arranged taking photos with the President” and suggests it can set up a “White House and Capitol Hill Dinner.” (The same day the Herald story about Yang broke, the website stopped functioning.)

The short bio of Yang on the website, identifying her as the founder and CEO of GY US Investments, shows her in a photo with Trump bearing his signature. It says she has been “settled in the United States for more than 20 years” and is a member of the “Presidential Fundraising Committee.” According to the Herald, Yang is a registered Republican, and since 2017 she and her relatives have donated more than $42,000 to a Trump political action committee and more than $16,000 to Trump’s campaign. Her Facebook page, which was taken offline on Friday, was loaded with photos of her posing with GOP notables: Donald Trump Jr., Rep. Matt Gaetz or Florida, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, among others.

On a page displaying a photo of Mar-a-Lago, Yang’s company says its “activities for clients” have included providing them “the opportunity to interact with the president, the [American] Minister of Commerce and other political figures.”
The GY US Investments website lists upcoming events at Mar-a-Lago at which Yang’s clients presumably can mingle with Trump or members of his family. This includes something called the International Leaders Elite Forum, where Trump’s sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau, will supposedly be the featured speaker. Attendees, the site says, will include “Chinese elites from various countries, including the US states, as well as elite leaders from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia, Europe and other countries and regions.” Another event for which Yang’s firm says it can provide access is Trump’s annual New Year’s celebration at Mar-a-Lago. Elsewhere on the website, the firm boasts that “GY Company arranged a number of guests to attend the 2019 New Year’s Eve dinner. All the guests took photos with” members of Trump’s family. This page displays photos of Chinese executives and a Chinese movie star with Donald Trump Jr., suggesting that these pics were arranged by the company, and also includes a photo of Yang with Elizabeth Trump Grau.

Among the Chinese executives who attended that New Year’s event was Huachu Tang, the owner of an electric car company. Tang told Yahoo Finance that he flew 17 hours from Xi’an, China, with his family and an assistant in hopes of meeting with Trump at the party. Though he reportedly speaks almost no English, Tang said he hoped to use a Trump connection to build up his company’s brand before eventually taking it public on the New York Stock Exchange. Trump, however, canceled his trip to Mar-a-Lago due to the government shutdown. Tang and his wife managed to pose for pictures with Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Trump Grau. Tang told Yahoo that he received admission to the New Year’s party through a package offered by a public relations agency—perhaps Yang’s firm. According to Yahoo, the company Tang used declined to reveal the price of the package, citing the confidentiality of the contract.

The GY US Investments website also posted photos of Yang at a White House celebration of the “Asian New Year” in 2018 and at a Chinese New Year dinner celebration that purportedly included Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Transportation Secretary Chao. The firm says it invited 10 guests to the Chinese New Year event and the website shows several of them posing with Chao.

According to the website, the company has offices in Miami; Washington, DC; and Wuhan, China, and is preparing to open an office in Beijing. But the address of its office in the Washington area matches the location of a UPS store.

Yang and her business partners listed on the GY US Investments’ website could not be reached for comment. No one responded to messages left at the number for GY US Investments. A man who answered a phone number listed for Yang hung up. A man who picked up the phone at a number listed for the company’s Washington-area office said, “My English isn’t good,” and hung up. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders and Trump Grau did not respond to requests for comment.

The overall message conveyed by the GY US Investments website seems clear: hire Yang’s company and she can get you close to Trump and his government—at Mar-a-Lago and in Washington. If the posted photos are authentic, she has been able to get Chinese clients at least into the Trump circle for a quick pic. They are a sign that this Chinese immigrant and Trump donor has used her contacts to go from massaging clients to massaging influence.
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,743
Trump administration proposes $7.1 billion funding decrease to Education Department
The Trump administration is looking to decrease the Education Department’s funding by $7.1 billion compared to what it was given last year, as part of next year’s proposed budget.

The budget proposal suggests eliminating 29 programs, including after-school and summer programs for students in high-poverty areas, among other things.

The budget proposal is unlikely to pass through Congress – especially with Democrats in control of the House, however, it is a glimpse into the Trump administration’s priorities going into the next fiscal year.

In a statement on Monday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the proposed cuts show “commitment to spending taxpayer dollars wisely and efficiently by consolidating or eliminating duplicative and ineffective federal programs.”

She also said the “budget at its core is about education freedom,” an apparent nod to the issue of school choice – something DeVos has attempted to champion during her time as head of the department.
Trump Wants to Cut Medicare By 10%
The budget also calls on increased military spending [and] for the first time calls for cutting $845 billion from Medicare, the popular health care program for the elderly that in the past he had largely said he would protect.
 
Last edited:

Sheepdog

Protecting America from excessive stool loitering
Dec 1, 2015
8,912
14,237
It also seems like a weird thing for the media to dwell on.
Initially, yes, the story was nothing, but then Trump made it a newsworthy story. You don"t think another clear example of the President being mentally ill is newsworthy?

Seemingly trivial shit like this actually reveals more than supposed bigger lies. Because all politicians lie. But they don't display pathology like this. A normal person would know it's a harmless incident and just laugh off the gaffe. To lie so insistently when everyone knows your lying about something so trivial speaks to real mental problems.

This is why most of us think you hardcore Trump supporters are basically cultists. The guy is just so clearly fucked in the head but trying to get it across is like trying to tell a Heaven's Gate member that killing yourself won't get you on a magical spaceship.