Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), an early endorser of Mr Trump, gets grilled about whether he’d launch racist attacks on a federal judge like the man he’s supporting for President. Collins tells Wolf Blitzer he wouldn’t but he still thinks Trump is awesome. “Donald is Donald. And he wears it on the sleeve, calls it out for what it is. People love him for speaking directly.”
Which Republican member of Congress is ready to go next?
With all the ranting and noise, I want to catch us up on what we actually learned yesterday with Trump’s big Vets’ charities show. Summary version: Trump didn’t hand out the money, lied about handing out the money, got caught not handing out the money, coughed up the money. Four-plus months after holding his debate-skedaddle fundraiser and announcing $6 million raised, Trump was caught in a series of lies about the money, most notably that he’d apparently tried to get away without contributing any of the $1 million he pledged after repeatedly saying he already had. (Here’s a helpful timeline through May 24th, the date Trump was finally shamed into coughing up the money.)
This is particularly notable since Trump claims to be worth $10 billion, which of course means 10,000 million dollars. Why he would try to skip out on a comparatively small amount of money (for him) raises its own questions.
Furthermore, none of the new contributions announced yesterday were Trump’s own money.
Let’s look at the details.
I confess Trump’s ‘Trump University’ turned out to be a bit more sleazy and craven than I’d realized. Does anyone remember Tom Vu, the comical, endlessly parodied late night real estate seminar infomercial king from the 80s and 90s? Trump U seems to have been a rip off on that scale. Just look at this single passage from the Times first look at the documents released yesterday …
I’ve been working on a piece on the many substantial, albeit circumstantial, reasons to believe that Donald Trump is not only not worth $10 billion but quite likely not a billionaire at all. In other words, Trump’s vaunted alleged wealth seems to be a fraud. Now it seems Trump frenemy Mark Cuban has similar doubts. This from a radio transcript courtesy of Buzzfeed ….
I was just watching the first segment of Hardball where the topic of discussion was Trump’s non-existent impulse control and the persistent theme of grievance that is driving his attacks on the press, Judge Curiel and everyone else. Everybody had their idea. But how should this surprise us? Grievance and a desire for revenge has been the essence of Trump’s campaign from the very beginning.
There’s some fun to be had with the news that the PGA is moving its World Golf Championship to Mexico. But look at the details. PGA couldn’t find a sponsor who would associate itself with a Trump event. How much of a hit will Trump end up taking after more damage is done by the fall? Who knows. But remember, the whole edifice is likely far more precariously perched than most understand.
Over the last decade and a half I’ve become relatively proficient at running a small business with the mix of record-keeping and spreadsheets, forecasting and cash flow management. I have no competence to analyze the wealth of an extremely rich person like Donald Trump with all the mixes of assets, leverage, advantageous tax structuring, rates of return in different businesses, etc. But I can read what those who do know these topics very well have written about Trump’s wealth and disclosures. And I can apply simple logic and numeracy.
The following is a list of things I’ve learned about Trump over recent months that make it clear he is worth dramatically less than he claims and think it is a real possibility that he has a net worth of less than $1 billion. None of the ten is definitive or proves he is worth a certain amount now or even that he could not be worth the $10 billion he claims. But taken together they show a chronic exaggeration of his wealth, repeated instances of financial reports that include almost comical efforts to inflate the numbers (like reporting gross revenues as income) and various points where his net worth was estimated with some precision and make it hard to credit how he could now be worth so much today.
So with that, here’s the top 10.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley says racially-charged, divisive rhetoric like Donald Trump routinely uses can lead to lead to horrific mass race-killings like that of Dylann Roof. “I know what that rhetoric can do,” said Haley. “I saw it happen,” referring to the murders of 9 African-American parishioners last June at a historically black church in Charleston.
I’m not sure if anything captures the weirdness and moral vacuum of this campaign better than this. Today, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said that divisive, racially charged rhetoric like Donald Trump’s led to last year’s horrific mass killing at an African-American church in Charleston. That’s quite a statement. (The Justice Department recently announced it will seek the death penalty against Dylann Roof, the 22 year old who has been charged with the crime.) She wishes Trump would be more civil. And yet, as our Trump Endorsement Scorecard shows, Haley, like virtually every other elected Republican in the country, says she will support Trump as the nominee of her party.
The Dallas Morning News reports that Texas state prosecutors built a $4.5 million fraud case against Trump and Trump University. But the case never went forward because it was deep-sixed by then-Attorney General and now Governor Greg Abbott (R). The former deputy director of Abbott’s Consumer Protection Division, John Owens, tells the DMN: ““The decision not to sue him was political. Had [Trump] not been involved in politics to the extent he was at the time, we would have gotten approval. Had he been just some other scam artist, we would have sued him.”