If someone asked me to name the worst things about the political version of Trump, I don’t know where I’d start. The mental illness? The way he’s enabled the Republican Party to turn itself into a fascist operation? The way he gave the party base permission to act like lawless thugs, racists, xenophobes, homophobes, misogynists, bigots and so on? The way he’s teamed up with foreign fascist powers to work against Americans and America? I get breathless even thinking about it.
But maybe I’d have to start with a life of criminality dating back before he got into electoral politics. That’s where the NY Times went Sunday: A Lifetime Of Scandals. Peter Baker wrote that Señor T “has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate, much less president, in the life of the republic. Not only survived but thrived. He has turned them on their head, making allegations against him into an argument for him by casting himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator. His persecution defense, the notion that he gets in so much trouble only because everyone is out to get him, resonates at this rallies where he says ‘they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in the way.’ But that of course belies a record of scandal stretching across his 78 years starting long before politics. Whether in his personal life or his public life, he has been accused of so many acts of wrongdoing, investigated by so many prosecutors and agencies, sued by so many plaintiffs and claimants that it requires a scorecard just to remember them all.”
Baker noted that “His businesses went bankrupt repeatedly and multiple others failed. He was taken to court for stiffing his vendors, stiffing his bankers and even stiffing his own family. He avoided the draft during the Vietnam War and avoided paying any income taxes for years. He was forced to shell out tens of millions of dollars to students who accused him of scamming them, found liable for wide-scale business fraud and had his real estate firm convicted in criminal court of tax crimes. He has boasted of grabbing women by their private parts, been reported to have cheated on all three of his wives and been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, including one whose account was validated by a jury that found him liable for sexual abuse after a civil trial. He is the only president in American history impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, the only president ever indicted on criminal charges and the only president to be convicted of a felony (34, in fact). He used the authority of his office to punish his adversaries and tried to hold onto power on the basis of a brazen lie... He has moved from one furor to the next without any of them sinking into the body politic enough to end his career. The unrelenting pace of scandals may in its own way help him by keeping any single one of them from dominating the national conversation and eroding his standing with his base of supporters. He even turned that mug shot into a marketing tool, selling T-shirts, posters, bumper stickers, coffee mugs and even beverage coolers with the image and the slogan ‘NEVER SURRENDER.’ And victory next month may yet help him escape the biggest threat of all— potentially prison.”
Trump got an early start learning how to cut corners. As a high school student at New York Military Academy, he knowingly borrowed a friend’s dress jacket with a dozen medals attached to wear for his yearbook photo, in effect appropriating medals that he did not win himself, according to a new book, Lucky Loser, by Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig of the New York Times.
He likewise cheated to get into college, according to his estranged niece, Mary Trump. The future president paid a friend to take the SAT for him, Trump asserted in her own book, earning a score that later helped him transfer to Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania, a credential he has boasted about ever since…
After graduating from Pennsylvania in 1968, however, the former military academy cadet had no interest in serving in the real military and risked being sent to fight in Vietnam. He managed to avoid the draft with a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels— a diagnosis that evidently was obtained as a favor from a podiatrist in Queens who rented his office from Trump’s father, Fred Trump. Two daughters of the podiatrist, who died in 2007, have said that he often told them about saving the younger Trump from Vietnam as a courtesy to his landlord.
Freed from military obligations, Trump went into the family business, helping run his father’s empire of rental apartment buildings in the outer boroughs. Even in those early days, he came under suspicion of misconduct. In 1973, the Justice Department sued the Trump family company for racial discrimination in renting apartments. Applications from Black applicants were marked C for ‘colored.’ Trump fought the matter in court but ultimately agreed to a settlement that the Justice Department at the time called “one of the most far-reaching ever negotiated.”
His business career vaulted him to fame, and he had notable successes, perhaps most prominently the rehabilitation of the Commodore Hotel and the construction of Trump Tower. But he often reached further than he was able to deliver. His record in business was pockmarked with plenty of failures.
The Trump Shuttle airline? Failure. His dreams of building a Television City in Manhattan? Failure. A United States Football League franchise? Failure. The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump Taj Mahal, Trump’s Castle Casino Resort, Trump Mortgage, Trump Vodka, Trump University, Trump Steaks, GoTrump.com? All failures.
His most spectacular flameouts came in the gambling mecca of Atlantic City, where he overextended himself building or buying three casinos that ultimately cannibalized each other’s clientele as he failed to keep up with enormous debt payments. He filed bankruptcy for the Taj Mahal in 1991 and then for the two other casinos in 1992. He also filed bankruptcy in 1992 for the Plaza Hotel.
Even after recovering from that debacle, Trump failed again. His casino company filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and then again in 2009, for his sixth trip into that process. In his various bankruptcies, he was compelled to sell assets, and creditors were forced to write off some of his debt. But Trump has boasted that he still made money in Atlantic City even after leaving a trail of losses for nearly everyone else involved, including workers who lost jobs.
Trump played the game along the edge, and sometimes over the line, of propriety. To grease his path, he would hire a governor’s son or a federal prosecutor’s brother. Along the way, he was investigated time and time again. Federal, state and local authorities looked into his ties with the Mafia, found violations of money laundering laws and penalized him for skirting stock trading rules.
At one point when Trump was strapped for cash to make an interest payment, his father sent a lawyer to one of the son’s casinos to buy $3.5 million in chips without placing a bet. New Jersey’s casino regulators imposed a $65,000 fine for what amounted to an illegal loan.
But Trump makes a point of not admitting misdeeds or mistakes. Even his failures he portrays as triumphs. “I made a lot of money in Atlantic City,” he once said, “and I’m very proud of it.”
For years, Trump’s personal life was full of scandal, too, enough to make him a frequent topic of the gossip columns of the era. He did not mind. There was almost no headline too scandalous for him. “There’s no bad press unless you’re a pedophile,” he said in front of his campaign manager later in life.
You can read pages of it here, or you might want to take a look at the first installment of the New Republic’s rated list of the 100 worst things Trumpanzee has done since descending the escalator. They start with number 81 and work up to 100.
People who think we survived Trump I and we can survive Trump II need to think about what Trump and the Republicans can do to Social Security if it all goes wrong in two weeks. His campaign pledges would hasten the program’s insolvency and “lead to a 33% across-the-board cut to all benefits, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). The group's report, released Monday, is based on Trump's vow to eliminate income taxes on Social Security benefits, overtime pay and tipped income, as well as his proposal to slap tariffs on all imports and deport millions of immigrants, many of whom currently pay Social Security taxes… Under Trump's plans, Social Security's trust fund would become insolvent in 2031, which is three years earlier than currently projected by the Congressional Budget Office. At that point, the program would need to cut benefits by 33%, a steeper decrease than the 23% reduction forecast by the CBO in August.”
The report concludes that “A cut of that size would mean that the typical monthly benefit check of $1,907 in 2024 would be reduced by $629 per month, leaving recipients with average payments of $1,278. Social Security currently pays out more in benefits than it takes in through payroll taxes. As a result, the program is dipping into its trust fund to make full payments. But experts warn it is at risk of running out of funds, which could lead to the benefit cuts. To be sure, Trump's pledge to cut income taxes on Social Security benefits could appeal to the roughly 40% of recipients who pay federal income taxes on their checks. But the CRFB concludes that Trump's plan would ultimately undermine the financial health of the retirement program at a time when it's already facing funding strains.”
This surreptitious attack on Social Security is part of a broader historical Republican pattern. From the beginning, they labeled Social Security as “Communism” and have repeatedly sought to undermine it. Now, Trump is pushing policies that would gut a program relied on by millions. Make no mistake: the GOP’s long war against Social Security endangers the very financial security of America’s elderly, and Trump's presidency could be the death blow… which would come to fruition after he was dead, in prison or in a home for the criminally insane.
The idea of abolishing taxes of Social Security is actually great— but it needs to be paired with an end to the cap that allows the richest Americans to pay just a pittance. Abolishing the cap on Social Security payroll taxes, which limits the amount of income subject to the tax, would bring in a significant amount of additional revenue for the Social Security trust fund, something like $150 billion a year. Trump would never go there— and I doubt Kamala would either. It’s the kind transformative policy Republicans hate a mediocre Democrats fea, although it would ensure long-term solvency of the program while making it more equitable. Currently, only wages up to $160,200 are taxed for Social Security. This means that someone making $1 million annually pays Social Security taxes on just 16% of their income, while a worker earning $50,000 pays on 100% of their earnings. This regressive system unfairly burdens middle- and lower-income workers, while allowing the wealthiest Americans to contribute a proportionally smaller share.
By abolishing the cap, high earners would pay into Social Security on all their income, just like everyone else, which would immediately strengthen the trust fund. The additional $150 billion per year, could ensure Social Security’s solvency and would allow for meaningful improvements to the program, such as increased benefits and— Trump’s hollow campaign promise of eliminating the tax on benefits. What we would be looking at instead of insolvency would be bolstering the program's ability to meet the needs of a growing elderly population.
The ONLY thing I really hate about trump is that he gets. away. with. everything. NOBODY ever held him accountable for crimes or being a despicable pos. That's the ONLY reason you all have him to fear and loathe. Any healthy society would have removed him forever from itself a loooong time ago. We made him a deity.
Kamala has to win first. She then needs to get some real Bernie chutzpah. Why not tax fairly and save social security - what’s the downside other than rich people not liking it? The rest of us, and that’s a huge majority of wage earners, would be fine with it.