Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[postman1782]

He wins the rep nomination if he runs. Its not close atall, amongst republicans he garners as much support as all the other contestants combined.
Ofc he may still lose, but that is not realistic.

As for vip its probably desantis, he already hinted at that.
I agree Pence is out. And not for his hissyfit. Main reason being he is no longer useful, Pence was always a strategical pick.
While now the religious nutter base is already secured for trump; he delivered them exactly what they wanted, roe/wade overturned.

Anyway I think Ronald & Donald sounds lovely.

Guaranteed if he runs, he loses, no matter who is with him.

[s_bushido]

Guaranteed if he runs, he loses, no matter who is with him.

You think so? I’d like to believe that, but if these past 6 years have taught me anything it’s not to take this shit for granted…

Besides, who else would they run? DeSantis is just Trump-lite…not exactly inspiring for the base.

[Levelfive]

You think so? I’d like to believe that, but if these past 6 years have taught me anything it’s not to take this shit for granted…

Besides, who else would they run? DeSantis is just Trump-lite…not exactly inspiring for the base.

DeSantis is pretty popular with the base, in some polls I've seen even beating Trump. Of course he's at least as bad as Trump but somehow has an unwarranted patina of respectability, and supposedly, according to conventional wisdom, has "less baggage." We'll see about that last part, but I can't imagine Trump picking him as VP, either, out of jealousy and spite. I could see him picking Flynn, or anyone who's been sufficiently loyal, traitorous and dangerous to democracy, and Democrats utterly despise. As you note, Trump could win so god help us all.

[Poopymonster]

DeSantis is pretty popular with the base, in some polls I've seen even beating Trump. Of course he's at least as bad as Trump but somehow has an unwarranted patina of respectability, and supposedly, according to conventional wisdom, has "less baggage." We'll see about that last part, but I can't imagine Trump picking him as VP, either, out of jealousy and spite. I could see him picking Flynn, or anyone who's been sufficiently loyal, traitorous and dangerous to democracy, and Democrats utterly despise. As you note, Trump could win so god help us all.

I can imagine the attack ads on DeSatan.
"Hiya folks! Mickey Mouse here, I just wanted to tell you about..."
I could see large companies with shiny tax breaks being wary of him. I mean, if he could try to fuck the House of Mouse, what companies would be safe?
Granted, his attempt will end up being him fucking himself and the population of Florida, but visually it's a Very Bad Thing he did to Mickey.

[Draco-Onis]

DeSantis is pretty popular with the base, in some polls I've seen even beating Trump. Of course he's at least as bad as Trump but somehow has an unwarranted patina of respectability, and supposedly, according to conventional wisdom, has "less baggage." We'll see about that last part, but I can't imagine Trump picking him as VP, either, out of jealousy and spite. I could see him picking Flynn, or anyone who's been sufficiently loyal, traitorous and dangerous to democracy, and Democrats utterly despise. As you note, Trump could win so god help us all.

Trump still has a very large lead over DeSantis with the base at least all the polls I have seen. Trump can definitely win in 2024 let's not forget republicans can now legally throw out votes because they feel like it and they have a supreme court that will rubber stamp the "winner".

[Breccia]

We've seen various thoughts about why those folders were empty. Cohen, for example, thinks Trump split them up and has copies. Federal prosecuter Weissman, damn he's been making the rounds these days, said this:

Two thoughts. So first thought, really revolves around those empty folders. Ever since we learned that there was a search warrant and learned that there were classified documents, what was in the back of everyone's mind was the fear that these didn't all stay at Mar-a-Lago, and was there any dissemination. That is the reason why government documents are supposed to stay with the government, classified documents are supposed to stay in a SCIF and top secret documents, more than that, are highly restricted in terms of who has access. And that is because of the concern that they get into the wrong hands.

And when you see how many folders were empty, that is the thing that causes you to take a deep breath and really be concerned about what happened to them. It is very reason for this investigation and for the Department of Justice to be taking these actions. And the second thing that crossed my mind is we have learned a lot about Mar-a-Lago, that that is not the only place that the former president has a residence. And although he was given a grand jury subpoena that called for him to produce documents wherever located, that was not — we know that was not complied with.

So the second thing in my head is, what steps are being taken to make sure that the government has scooped up everything, especially given the concern about these getting into the wrong hands? You can be sure that our adversaries are looking at this and having a field day, and figuring out how they might be able, if they haven't already, gained access to these documents.

So both subjective experts like Cohen, and objective experts like Weissman, agree that the documents themselves might still be at large.

Another somewhat reassuring option for the empty folders: they were separated by the FBI for cataloguing. Honestly, I hope it's one of the lesser ones, because while Trump is an intentionally ill-informed intentionally incompetent moron and sociopath, I'd rather he had not successfully sold government secrets to our enemies.

But on the Pretty Princess Dress Up angle, there's this:



Yeah, Trump made a bar themed about himself called 45 Wine and Whiskey...which he doesn't drink...and decorated it with various items. I'm still pretty sure the folder itself isn't classified, but it and some of those pictures are probably government property Trump stole.

But since the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, at least we know the stolen property is on its way back to--

"That's not in Mar-a-Lago."

...what?

"That's in Trump Tower."

Wait, so, Trump had evidence of his crimes on display in multiple places? Is this probable cause to raid Trump's other properties?

"It's possible those items were specially cleared, but again, we don't have any evidence either way. We know that you can't just think 'bigly declassified' and it works. There needs to be some kind of record. If Team Trump can prove that list of items, sitting there in public, are all his personal property and not a danger to democracy, that's one thing. But stealing from the WH is a crime, even when Trump does it."

[gondrin]

Hmm, I'll just let the headline speak for itself.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/techn...e249f57c68b129

'I don’t need financing. I’m really rich!': Trump snaps at reports that Truth Social is in trouble

Donald Trump was up early on Saturday morning firing back at reports that his Truth Social platform is in financial straits as he claimed he can self-finance the floundering company.

Two days ago it was reported that the Truth Social app will not be available in the Google store over moderation problems.

According to AFP, "A Google spokesperson said the company notified Truth Social on August 19 that its app violated Play policies and required 'effective systems for moderating user-generated content' in order to be offered on the platform. The app breaks rules barring content that incites physical threats and violence, according to the tech firm."

With that in mind, and other reports that the social media platform is a "disaster," Trump tried to pump up his company on Saturday.

"TRUTH is doing really well," he insisted in a post on the platform. "It has truly become our MAGA VOICE, but also a voice for the RINOs and Radical Left Lunatics. Engagements are far better, more interesting, and spirited than anywhere else. I like it much better than Twitter, which is a complete mess. Sign up on TRUTH now, only getting stronger. Google is coming along nicely (I think?)."

He added, "SEC trying to hurt company doing financing (SPAC). Who knows? In any event, I don’t need financing, 'I’m really rich!' Private company anyone???"

[Poopymonster]

We've seen various thoughts about why those folders were empty. Cohen, for example, thinks Trump split them up and has copies. Federal prosecuter Weissman, damn he's been making the rounds these days, said this:



So both subjective experts like Cohen, and objective experts like Weissman, agree that the documents themselves might still be at large.

Another somewhat reassuring option for the empty folders: they were separated by the FBI for cataloguing. Honestly, I hope it's one of the lesser ones, because while Trump is an intentionally ill-informed intentionally incompetent moron and sociopath, I'd rather he had not successfully sold government secrets to our enemies.

But on the Pretty Princess Dress Up angle, there's this:



Yeah, Trump made a bar themed about himself called 45 Wine and Whiskey...which he doesn't drink...and decorated it with various items. I'm still pretty sure the folder itself isn't classified, but it and some of those pictures are probably government property Trump stole.

But since the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, at least we know the stolen property is on its way back to--

"That's not in Mar-a-Lago."

...what?

"That's in Trump Tower."

Wait, so, Trump had evidence of his crimes on display in multiple places? Is this probable cause to raid Trump's other properties?

"It's possible those items were specially cleared, but again, we don't have any evidence either way. We know that you can't just think 'bigly declassified' and it works. There needs to be some kind of record. If Team Trump can prove that list of items, sitting there in public, are all his personal property and not a danger to democracy, that's one thing. But stealing from the WH is a crime, even when Trump does it."

As I said yesterday, there should be warrants for all his places. And Javanka's. Beavis and Butthead's too.
Anything found, let's see, 2 or more people involved in a crime that was planned...sounds quite conspiratorial to me.
But I'm no lawyer.

[Breccia]

"I don’t need financing. I’m really rich!"

Let's unpack this one line for every speck of information, like we're the FBI.

How rich is Trump, anymore? How much is his social media platform worth?

As always, Forbes has the answer. This April 5 article says Truth Social boosted his net worth by $430 million, whic added to Mar-a-Lago's price increases lifted him up to $3 billion. (He is still not worth TEN BILLION DOLLARS! and he never was)

Trump Media plans to merge with a SPAC that retail traders are buying like crazy, boosting its shares from $10 to more than $50. Based on clues buried in regulatory filings, Trump probably owns at least 50%. We estimated the value of the shares Trump should eventually receive at $10 apiece, reflecting the discounted rate that a handful of smart-money investors recently agreed to pay to jump into the frenzy.

Since the deal hasn’t gone through, Trump can’t sell his presumed shares on the open market today. There are also some doubts about whether the merger will happen at all. Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority are probing the deal. Bottom line: The SPAC is good news for Trump, but it’s not something he should be banking on quite yet.

Gosh. Kind of a lot has happened since then.

Okay, so, what does this mean in current context? Well, CyberTrump 2077 is kind of a money pit. They merged with Rumble (not exactly a media juggernaut) just to stay on the air, they can't sell ads, and they can't pay their bills. We don't even know who works there.

DWAC's stock price hit $25 this week, down about 20% for the month of August. According to these SEC filings, they've lost $6 million just sitting around doing nothing, and they're asking for money just to stay afloat.

Yes, that sounds stupid when mixed with begging to delay the merger which should be happening soon. Like, next week soon. DWAC needs 65% of their paying members to vote "yes" on the extension, or they'll be forced to either buy, or give up and refund their money. Um...they can't do either. The same SEC filings say they have $293 million, and as mentioned before that's down. I could be wrong, but I don't think they have the money to either buy CyberTrump 2077 at their promised price, or to pay back everyone who invested.

Refunding is the smart move. If Trump had a free and clear path to run in 2024, maybe CyberTrump 2077 would turn around. But even with his legal troubles driving the faithful into his wallet, it's not even treading water. It's a bad buy and DWAC should run like the wind. But, if they do buy, they only have $293 million.

Forbes said in April that they thought Trump's shares were worth $430 million. And that's based on Trump owning half or so. If DWAC buys, Trump's net worth drops about $300 million since April.

I think the people setting up Trump's social media platform were hoping for a quick, poorly-thought-out buyout and they barely needed to keep the lights on for a few months. That's objectively not happening. Until DWAC buys them out, which again they don't have to, they're funding it themselves. Also, CyberTrump 2077 can't take on partners or merge. That would be a breach of their SPAC contract, and the SEC (already investigating) would immediately crash down on them like a golden toilet after Taco Tuesday.

So how much would Trump have to pay for all this?

I'll be honest, I have no idea what Trump is paying these people.

"Trump doesn't pay--"

Yeah yeah I know, but, it's been nearly a year. You can't get people to work for an entire year and literally not pay anything. If nothing else, he has to pay the power bill, for example.

Fortunately, I have help: Elon Musk.

Luck is with me, the SEC filings I listed above were filed by everyone else too. Twitter's operating expenses in the last-ish 12 months were $6.275 billion.

Holly fucking tree, that's ridiculous. Twitter's yearly expenses were over two entire Trumps total values.

As I posted earlier, the claim was that Trump's social media platform was worth a billion, and Elon Musk said Twitter was worth $44 billion. Are these correct? Well, not anymore, they're not. But let's use that as a starting point.

Dividing Twitter by 44 gives us operating expenses of...$142 million a year.

Funny story: that upcoming DWAC vote? It's for another year. Therefore, I theorize Trump will have to self-finance $142 million just to keep it afloat. He can't bring on outside investors as I said before, but I suppose he could start a paywall or hosting ads. He will have to do this until DWAC buys or, more and more likely, indefinitely.

Now, as posted above, in a vacuum, Trump could do this for the rest of his life. Problem is, Trump doesn't live in a vacuum, no matter how much he sucks¹. Trump is facing multiple attacks on his wealth, most notably
1) He owes Deutsche Bank and likely others and those debts are coming due soon. As of last year, Forbes had Trump owing $1.3 billion and I haven't seen him selling anything since making a dent in this. If Trump doesn't have the cash, and is facing jail time, oh wait hold on
2) Trump is facing jail time. That alone will drop his "stock value".
1) Banks don't like to give extensions or refinancing to customers who are in jail. Trump will have to pay up, and with the DWAC deal not happening anytime soon (or at all?) he's going to have to sell shit off.
3) NYState hasn't slowed down. I've said repeatedly, NYState and Deutche Bank are going to have to rock-paper-scissors over who gets to name Trump Tower when they become the co-owners. While Weaselberg has not turned on Trump personally, we do he turned on Trump Org as part of his plea deal. Trump Org is the target of the NYState civil proceedings, and at this point, it's pretty assured they have Trump's taxes or newly-released financial records. Also, Cohen. At the minimum, Trump Org is going to have to pay some back taxes and added damages, and once again, Trump isn't bringing in business like he used to when he wasn't in the FBI's crosshairs. And Trump basically refused to help his company out by taking the Fifth 400 times.

Finding out how much Trump Org will have to pay didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped. PBS mentioned that they tripled Trump's penthouse value to $200 million when talking to banks and insurers. Other reports back that same scaling in other properties, such as Ivanka's apartment valued at either $8.5 million or $25 million depending on who was asking. NYState could, for example, demand the taxes Trump shorted them based on that value. (Or, Trump could admit under oath he lied to banks to get loans. That'd be just fucking stupid, and surely a reason he doesn't want to answer any questions under oath)

I am not an accountant, but I do live in NYState, and know how they figure their property taxes. This is not my finest work, but, I estimate Trump shorted NYState by about $2.25 million dollars.

Per year.

Indefinitely.

Didn't Trump say he was under audit since 2001? Using 20 years and a relatively mild 2% interest plus very mild 10% extra in fines, that's $60 million.

Oh, and that was just for the penthouse. Not the rest of his NY properties.

And I'll remind everyone with glee, that during his 4 years squatting in the WH (read into that verb what you will) he lost hundreds of millions a year, while still running his businesses, mostly because his name became toxic. That has not changed, although inflation might have raised the values of his physical holdings.

Is Trump rich? I mean, compared to me, sure. Can he self-finance? I'm estimating that, if Trump continues to support CyberTrump 2077 (he did say "private") and do business as poorly as he has, his money has between five and ten years to live.

TL,DR is "Maybe, but not for very long, he isn't/he can't."

Whoa...that was a lot more than I thought it was going to be. I think I'm going to play Fallout 76 for a while, a piece of software that's proven over time to be better run than Truth Social. See y'all around.

---

¹I don't waste the good jokes on something as trivial as "Trump is still broke".

[gondrin]

And I'll remind everyone with glee, that during his 4 years squatting in the WH (read into that verb what you will) he lost hundreds of millions a year, while still running his businesses, mostly because his name became toxic. That has not changed, although inflation might have raised the values of his physical holdings.

Well, his name was always toxic if you would ask anyone that knew him. It was always known as someone who never paid his bills. It became publicly toxic to everyone else in a very major way after becoming President.

[postman1782]

You think so? I’d like to believe that, but if these past 6 years have taught me anything it’s not to take this shit for granted…

Besides, who else would they run? DeSantis is just Trump-lite…not exactly inspiring for the base.

Its going to be pretty fucking tough for him to run from Prison.

[Gorsameth]

Its going to be pretty fucking tough for him to run from Prison.

No law against running from Prison. Its been done before.

[Kaleredar]

No law against running from Prison. Its been done before.

I imagine that the appeal to non-sycophant Trumpsters will be very small if Trump is actually convicted, even if that acquiesces to real jail time or not.

[postman1782]

No law against running from Prison. Its been done before.

He won't be able to travel the country, he won't be able to televise anything, he won't have the same freedoms he did running in 2016 or 2020.

[Edge-]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2159176.html

Apparently Meadows is handing over more texts and communications now...that he may have intentionally withheld earlier.

Is the National Archives going to be the instigator for bringing down the organized crime that took place in the White House? It's looking like it, which is pretty wild.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.businessinsider.com/ron-...hortage-2022-9

And Ron Johnson, continuing to be a piece of shit, thinks that seniors need to get off their lazy bums and come out of retirement to fill job vacancies.

Which many are doing out of necessity to begin with. But he's proposing no payroll tax for these seniors, so at least he sorta came up with a new idea for it. Kinda. Not really. But he's trying!

[Breccia]

he's proposing no payroll tax for these seniors

Whaaaaat? The tax cut for the rich wasn't enough? It's almost like, gasp, it didn't go to most working-class people!

- - - Updated - - -

Rep. Jamie Raskin (Ph-D-MD) went on the Sunday talk circuit and said two people basically need to testify: Pence and Ginni Thomas.

Pence, from what we've heard, seems more or less okay with that. It's not like he committed any crimes.

This might be the first time a SCOTUS family member is given a subpoena, should it come to that. It'd be a gutsy move...but no-one is above the law.

[Ursus]

This might be the first time a SCOTUS family member is given a subpoena, should it come to that. It'd be a gutsy move...but no-one is above the law.

Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures.

[Corvus]

Trump seems to be frothing at the brain even more than usual in his latest rally speech in Pennsylvania. He has called Biden a 'enemy of the state' over the FBI raids. You may be large enough to be a state, but that isn't how it works, fatso.

He also said the raids will lead to "a backlash the likes of which nobody has ever seen". Does that sound like an incitement to violence there?

[Bakis]

I wonder what diagnoses history will give Trump. Its far more than extreme narcissism and hubris.
Maybe someone with knowledge of psychological diagnoses can pop some possible options

[Breccia]

He also said the raids will lead to "a backlash the likes of which nobody has ever seen". Does that sound like an incitement to violence there?

No, he was intentionally vague enough.

Of course, look at what the GOP is saying on the news. There isn't a backlash against Biden. It's more against him.