Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Kaleredar]

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1...633587719?s=19

Admit I did not read the article. Does seem to me that Trump accomplished what he set out to do. He should be able to setup some type of media and profit off it.

Would Trump ever vanquish Fox News. Likely not. Fox is basically an institution now and Trump crazier from right. I guess it's Trump and he could destroy it.

Now people will talk about his crippling debts and legal matters. As a pessimist I can see this pretty much nothing but an inconvenience. As far as debts, if he can establish his media, the banks might settle for cents on the dollar. Him again being President might keep most of the legal problems away. No confidence from Biden pressing actions.

Biden doesn’t have to pursue any sort of action; the DOJ can act without him, as can the various states waiting to nail trump on all kinds of financial charges.

[Blur4stuff]

Right now I feel like Trump's last two months are going to play out one of two ways. He either does some really stupid, violent shit or becomes extra lazy and does one last smash-n-grab.

I'm leaning towards the second. He's gonna play a lot of golf. Leech whatever money he still can by going to his own properties. Sell some pardons. And who knows what else.

[Breccia]

Admit I did not read the article

This is what you pay me for.

Trump’s tax records show signs of financial distress, he claims to have lost out on billions of dollars in income while in office and his eldest sons say the family business has forfeited dozens of potential deals across the globe.

Now, denied a second term by voters, Mr. Trump may seek to return to a once-lucrative career in television, this time with a decidedly political bent. His family business will also be free to make up for lost time by once again looking overseas, where hotels and golf clubs helped drive its growth before his election in 2016.

Eric Trump and a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization did not respond on Saturday to requests for comment on the business’s post-White-House plans. The president put out a statement disputing the outcome of the election, indicating that he did not believe he had lost.

After winning the presidency four years ago, Mr. Trump declined to sell off his stake in the Trump Organization, and instead adopted a plan that he said would eliminate conflicts of interest. Among other things, the Trump Organization pledged to forgo new deals outside the United States and hired an ethics adviser to screen certain domestic ventures.

Democrats and others argued that the restrictions were half-measures at best, and indeed the approach did little to prevent the president from turning his resorts and hotels into a hub of favor seeking for lobbyists, donors and corporate chiefs, as The New York Times reported in October.

Still, the presidency took a toll on the privately owned family business, which has not closed a new hotel deal since Mr. Trump entered the White House. The company shelved a proposed chain of budget-friendly hotels last year, and Mr. Trump’s financial disclosure statements showed that his top cash-generating properties had largely gone sideways. Without offering evidence, Mr. Trump claimed last year that being president was “probably costing me from $3 to $5 billion.”

The ban on new foreign deals probably dealt the biggest blow. Before the presidency, the company was eyeing a major expansion in China; it would even maintain a Chinese bank account and keep an inactive office in Shanghai during the presidency. It had also done exploratory work on new business partnerships in Colombia, Brazil and Turkey.

No longer constrained by its self-imposed ethics plan, the Trump Organization is now expected to seek hotel deals and other business, according to several people close to the company. Even so, there will be numerous obstacles to a rebound, including the coronavirus pandemic, law enforcement investigations into the company and a deeply divided view of Mr. Trump among the American public. Additionally, if Mr. Trump made another run for the White House in 2024, he might need to avoid new foreign entanglements that could provide ammunition for political rivals.

As Mr. Trump is poised to once again become a private citizen, here is the landscape for his family business.

Mr. Trump may begin selling his name again.
The fastest way for the Trump Organization to raise money is to flip the switch on its international deal machine, licensing the Trump name to real estate projects like hotels and residential towers.

When Mr. Trump entered the White House in 2017, Trump Organization executives said the company had left behind more than two dozen such branding deals, including in China, Israel and across South America. As Mr. Trump leaves office, he is popular in some countries, and his brand is widely recognized.

The branding deals are largely risk-free for the company because they do not require capital investments and generally make between $500,000 and $1 million a year, at least initially. The payments often decline after units in residential buildings are sold, unless the Trump Organization makes parallel agreements to manage the properties.

His company, however, still faces legal scrutiny.
While Congress may no longer be as focused on Mr. Trump’s business activities, prosecutors in New York will continue their investigations.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is investigating Mr. Trump and his company for an array of potential financial crimes and is seeking his tax returns. The New York State attorney general’s office is conducting a separate civil inquiry into suspicions that the company misstated its assets, possibly to reduce taxes or obtain loans.

The company has denied any wrongdoing, but it may be reluctant to provide the investigators with additional deals to scrutinize. Eric Trump, who runs the company with his brother Donald Jr., last year cited scrutiny from Democrats and the media as a major reason for suspending plans to open a new line of hotels.

The investigations could also lead to negative publicity as the company is looking to expand.

A new stream of business partners may emerge with Mr. Trump out of the spotlight.
Over the past four years, Bobby R. Burchfield, a Washington lawyer, served as the Trump Organization’s ethics adviser, scrutinizing potential deals and business partners. The examinations made it difficult for some to pass muster, while others were scared off by the public attention.

That scrutiny will now fall away, opening a pipeline of new partners.

And with more than $300 million in debt coming due that the president has personally guaranteed, there may be some urgency for the Trump Organization to line up new deals. In addition, an adverse ruling in an audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service could cost him more than $100 million, The Times reported in September.

A polarized country and the pandemic could hamper a rebound.
Some of Mr. Trump’s most lucrative properties are in Democratic strongholds, like New York and Chicago, where he remains deeply unpopular. And his biggest revenue-generator, his Doral golf resort in Florida, has suffered from a drop-off in conference revenue as some big companies and organizations stayed away because of his divisiveness.

As president, Mr. Trump has tried to fill the gap, at least in part, through events booked at his properties by groups connected to him and Republican politics. The Trump International Hotel near the White House was often brimming with partisan allies.

It is unclear if that patronage will continue, or if Mr. Trump’s detractors will return to his properties once he leaves office. Additionally, it has been a tough year for the hospitality industry because of the pandemic, and the headwinds have hit commercial real estate, too. Both are central to Mr. Trump’s business portfolio.

There may be another presidential act for Mr. Trump or his children.
Mr. Trump, as of late, has privately raised the idea of running again in 2024. And the possibility of another Trump presidential run could have a chilling effect on his business in the intervening years, at least in countries like China, where a thicket of ethical and legal conflicts could arise.

The president also may not be the last Trump to run for elected office.

Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump may hold future political aspirations, and that could curb some plans for growth. The risks are greatest on the international front, where potential for conflicts of interest abound.

Finally, there is Mr. Trump’s love for television.
During his time in the White House, Mr. Trump put his eldest sons in charge of his company along with a team of other executives. But even before that, he had receded somewhat from scouting deals, letting his children take the lead.

Where and how Mr. Trump will reassert himself in the family business will be one of the intriguing questions surrounding his return to private life. A onetime reality TV star, he may instead return to television as a political pundit or in another role, those around him say.

There have been preliminary discussions about acquiring or starting a Trump-branded network, for example. His work on “The Apprentice,” tax records show, brought him new sources of cash and furthered a myth that would help propel him to the White House, The Times reported in September. Paid speeches and a book deal could also await him.

[Paranoid Android]

This is what you pay me for.

Thanks. This is from my phone so can't break each point down.

Again shows how stupid they are if they try to stay in the hotel business. He is debt, every bank should be scared now and don't want the scrutiny.

Selling his name is what he basically did anyways. For me his name is not bleep. But hey alot Trumpkins are sucker enough. Again in my first post he could make a good living off this, minus his financial and legal problems.

Oh him trying the hotels would/should be a failure.

TV seems almost easy if he get financial backers. New TV is not easy to and I say Fox News is strong.

Trump is a fuck-up. So in something where odds should be in his favor, he could set anything easy on fire.

[ati87]

And what will you say in 2024 if god forbid, cultist votes are 70-75million, while the non cultist votes drop down to Hillary Clintons voting level? "woops, well shit"? The cult has been whipped to a frenzy the past 4 years. What guarantees do you have that they intend on giving up now, rather than keep on self radicalizing, much like they did during Obamas tenure?

Short point is: democrats are far less reliable voters than cultists are. It might cost the very next election already.

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Extremely ironic that it was Trump who was being injected and treated with "murdered babies". Just one more thing that's complete projection on their part. Also, it's the death of any pro-lifer excuses for being in it for the babies, rather than against womens rights. It's the most definitive nail on that coffin. Not a single "pro-lifer" could support Trump after, if they weren't lying about their agenda.

Now your having a hypothetical discussion that you can speculate all you want and still not get anywhere.
We at this time know two things: The limit of Republican voters
That Democrats can still achieve growth in terms of expending there voters.

Trump managed to get where he is because he doesn't have any shame and he is an idiot. A Tucker Carlson or a Ted Cruz might have no shame however both aren't idiots, at this point it's hard to imagine if they can achieve what Trump has.

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Biden doesn’t have to pursue any sort of action; the DOJ can act without him, as can the various states waiting to nail trump on all kinds of financial charges.

Frankly Biden himself should stay out of it there is no point in him involving himself in any of this.
His DOJ however should have an investigation as open as possible to look in the dealings of Trump and co, there needs to be a general cleanup of all the horrible shit the Trump admin has done and DOJ should be part of that cleanup.

[Paranoid Android]

Trump administration plans "flood" of sanctions on Iran by Jan. 20



Well, he's not bombing them. Iran can just wait it out while Trump flips the table.

Petty shit so if Biden reverses it they can yell "Biden soft on Iran".

[passingthrew]

Right now I feel like Trump's last two months are going to play out one of two ways. He either does some really stupid, violent shit or becomes extra lazy and does one last smash-n-grab.

I'm leaning towards the second. He's gonna play a lot of golf. Leech whatever money he still can by going to his own properties. Sell some pardons. And who knows what else.

I agree, and I think that's what the lawsuits are all about to be honest. Its the last grift as he tells his base he did everything he could but the deep state got him.

[Antiganon]

I mean, you say that after this whole Clinton's "deplorables" catch-phrase thing? That's rich.

The blue side hardly has the moral superiority there. I think you guys and gals need to do a bit of soul searching there and figure out just where it really went wrong and how to fix this, instead of having this silly wheel of gloating going rotating every 4 years.

Who in 2020 gives a flying fuck about what Hillary Clinton said in 2016?

She was never elected president. She holds no office. She has no political power. She has no special platform beyond that available to any other extremely wealthy person and Twitter.

I am not responsible for Hillary calling half of Trump supporters "the basket of deplorables". Nor am I responsible for all the Trump supporters deciding that they were in the deplorable half, and not there other, presumably non-deplorable, half.

GTFO with this nonsense.

[Breccia]

Who in 2020 gives a flying fuck about what Hillary Clinton said in 2016?

He's trying to handwave the behavior of Trump, and Trump's rabid fanbase, by saying "Clinton called them a name once".

[Odinfrost]

He's trying to handwave the behavior of Trump, and Trump's rabid fanbase, by saying "Clinton called them a name once".

The fact that anyone is even thinking of shaming someone, who is not Trump, for name calling when Trump is involved is absolutely hillarious, and I would eat all the popcorn if I had some.

[D Luniz]

This is what you pay me for.

But CAN he actually find buyers.

Remember, about 6 months into his term, hotels were removing his name, and I doubt they are going to want to change their mind. And without him being president, what can he offer them of value?

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The fact that anyone is even thinking of shaming someone, who is not Trump, for name calling when Trump is involved is absolutely hillarious, and I would eat all the popcorn if I had some.

well, Im still waiting for him to say which of the groups Hilary called "deplorable" arent.

[Breccia]

But CAN he actually find buyers.

Yes.

Let's meet in the middle: can he find buyers willing to offer what he wants? Remember, everyone knows he's broke. Someone could troll him with a 25% offer and say "your call, I hear Deutsche Bank coming up the stairs. Oh shit, is that food poisoning?"

[Benggaul]

Preface: I'm heading back to work at a reduced capacity starting this week as I continue to recover from the broken femur. It's only going to be half-days for several weeks at least but it'll mean less time for research and I'm probably going to be a wreck when I get back home. The bottom line is I might be restructuring how I do these updates to save me a bit of time, especially given that with the huge increase in cases there's been much more for me to sift through the past month or so. Might be shifting to a top-10 list as opposed to every state over 1k and then just list states that broke records. Might try a few different iterations this week and see what I like. Moving on...

102,726 new cases, around 26k more than last Sunday. This is the 5th straight day of 100k+ numbers and it looks like that'll be the case for a long while. That's a million new cases every 10 days or less.

Illinois: 10,009 new cases; 50 deaths
Fuck Florida.
Texas: 6,584 new cases; 39 deaths
Minnesota: 5,908 new cases (new record); 31 deaths
Missouri: 5,571 new cases (new record); 24 deaths
California: 4,975 new cases; 14 deaths
Indiana: 4,652 new cases; 39 deaths
Ohio: 4,541 new cases; 11 deaths
Wisconsin: 4,280 new cases; 11 deaths
Tennessee: 3,636 new cases; 5 deaths
Iowa: 3,368 new cases; 12 deaths
New York: 3,351 new cases; 20 deaths
Colorado: 3,017 new cases; 5 deaths
Pennsylvania: 2,580 new cases; 4 deaths
Utah: 2,386 new cases; 1 death
New Jersey: 2,236 new cases; 4 deaths
North Carolina: 2,094 new cases; 2 deaths
Arizona: 1,880 new cases; 17 deaths
Massachusetts: 1,823 new cases; 20 deaths
Georgia: 1,439 new cases; 1 death
South Dakota: 1,426 new cases; 13 deaths
Virginia: 1,302 new cases; 3 deaths
Nevada: 1,276 new cases; 1 death
Louisiana: 1,266 new cases; 20 deaths
New Mexico: 1,210 new cases; 14 deaths
Alabama: 1,205 new cases; 2 deaths
Washington: 1,193 new cases; 1 death
Kentucky: 1,177 new cases; 4 deaths
North Dakota: 1,101 new cases; 11 deaths
Maryland: 1,081 new cases; 11 deaths
Arkansas: 1,038 new cases; 17 deaths

Michigan, Oklahoma and Nebraska all failed to report on time but do normally report on Sundays, so the actual total is most likely several thousand more. Not too many records listed but also not many expected given that it's a Sunday. There's very little to report other than the trends of the past couple weeks appear to be holding--everything's going up everywhere and it appears to be happening at an accelerated rate. I'm actually a bit disappointed but not surprised that testing has not become more consistent across the weekends. It really should be a 24/7 thing at this stage but of course we're still in the TRUMP SHITSHOW so I doubt there are any resources allocated to make it happen. We're still nowhere near the 200 million tests per month we should be executing.

512 deaths is a little over a hundred more than last Sunday and brings the total to 243,768. Numbers for Sunday and Monday remain unreliable at best but the last time we passed 500 on a Sunday was mid-August.

Related news:

New York coronavirus positive test rate soars over 2% and records most daily cases in six months--New York was one of the few states still hanging on as this outbreak started but it's starting to get squirrely. 2% isn't terrible (the max recommended for keeping things open is 5%), but they'd held below 1% for a long time.

Texas records over 1 million coronavirus cases--I reported this a few days ago but other sources like Johns Hopkins have caught up. California is probably a week out from also hitting 1 million.

Stay safe, folks.

[Waniou]

He's trying to handwave the behavior of Trump, and Trump's rabid fanbase, by saying "Clinton called them a name once".

Also, as someone already pointed out, Clinton didn't call Trump's supporters deplorable. She called the racist, sexist, bigoted part of his supporters deplorable. AND THEY ARE. And then the rest of his supporters decided that they wanted to be labeled with that too which really says a lot.

[Ursus]

The Washington Nationals have invited President-elect Biden to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day in April next year.

That's gonna be some nice salt in Trump's wound, because you know he obsesses over shit like this and he's still steamed about Dr. Fauci getting to throw out a first pitch back in the summer.

[Kaleredar]

The Washington Nationals have invited President-elect Biden to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day in April next year.

That's gonna be some nice salt in Trump's wound, because you know he obsesses over shit like this and he's still steamed about Dr. Fauci getting to throw out a first pitch back in the summer.

Speaking of which, I wonder what Fauci's fate will be in all this. At least cursorily, he seems like a pretty upstanding dude just trying to do his job and keep people safe while his boss tells him constantly to shut up and people to not listen to him.

Perhaps Biden can integrate him into his response team.

[Zan15]

Speaking of which, I wonder what Fauci's fate will be in all this. At least cursorily, he seems like a pretty upstanding dude just trying to do his job and keep people safe while his boss tells him constantly to shut up and people to not listen to him.

Perhaps Biden can integrate him into his response team.

Biden would be better off getting rid of all the trump stink even if a few good people like Fauci have to go.

It just makes him a thorn in bidens side having to deal with the leftover stank on his hang low

[s_bushido]

Biden would be better off getting rid of all the trump stink even if a few good people like Fauci have to go.

It just makes him a thorn in bidens side having to deal with the leftover stank on his hang low

Fauci has been advising politicians on this stuff for decades. There's no reason to get rid of an invaluable resource like that just because Trump was a dumbass who refused to even pretend to listen.

[Omega10]

Biden would be better off getting rid of all the trump stink even if a few good people like Fauci have to go.

It just makes him a thorn in bidens side having to deal with the leftover stank on his hang low

I would definitely make an exception for Fauci. If anything, elevate his stature as he knows more about fighting the pandemic than just about anyone. And he fought with Trump more than anyone on earth should have to.

[Kaleredar]

Biden would be better off getting rid of all the trump stink even if a few good people like Fauci have to go.

It just makes him a thorn in bidens side having to deal with the leftover stank on his hang low

The only people that seem to have any sort of "prejudice" against Fauci are the Trump supporters who hate him for disagreeing with Trump. Most everyone else seems to recognize the role he's been trying to play. I really don't think he carries any real baggage with him.