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TRUMP the stupid CHUMP

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #200 on: June 22, 2016, 12:58:18 pm »


ROFLMAO.....the Trump campaign for Prez is imploding.

Let's hope he takes the GOP with him.
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« Reply #201 on: June 22, 2016, 06:40:13 pm »


Mark Morford

Apple disses Trump, because of course they should

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 3:41PM PDT - Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Not exactly worried about Trump's boycott.
Not exactly worried about Trump's boycott.

WILL hardcore Trump supporters — like this sweet, all-American Arizona voter (see video clip below) — stop buying iPhones? Will iPhone fans who also love Trump now hurl their devices into the sewer and switch to Samsung, a vaguely creepy foreign company that doesn't give a damn about US politics, and will therefore happily support a hunk of rotting asparagus if it will sell them more Galaxy S'?



In short, will Apple's rather unprecedented decision to not supply the GOP with any financial or product support for this year's convention, which it has done for both parties for many years, all because of Trump's poisonous stances, spur a new outbreak of the Mac/PC wars that no one really cared about in the first place? Will Apple's stock tumble? Will Trump supporters revolt? Do they even read? You already know the answer.

Did you miss this thoroughly boring news item? It's OK; Apple's surprise move might be the least newsworthy hunk of Trump-molested news of the week, amidst a slew of stories about the Donald's flailing, broke, understaffed, grossly mismanaged non-campaign that's getting more absurd by the day.

But Apple's decision to avoid the GOP convention does bespeak one newsworthy aspect: Just how remarkable it is that a company the gargantuan scale and massive global reach of Apple is actually willing to take a (modest, not at all damaging) stance against… well, whatever the hell noxious stew of racist sexist bigoted hategurgle Trump embodies. Google didn't have the nerve. No one cares about Microsoft to notice either way. Facebook wimped out, as expected.


Trump fans, beware! Best go buy a Blackberry!
Trump fans, beware! Best go buy a Blackberry!

It just doesn't happen, much, particularly with companies of Apple's stature. They mostly tend to avoid any political stance or endorsement, at least publicly, to avoid insulting any potential customers. Sure, they sometimes band together, like Apple did with a wide range of companies against North Carolina's viciously homophobic “bathroom use” legislation. Sure, Walmart and Target, et al, eventually had to put a stop to Open Carry morons marching through their stores with rifles strapped to their bloated, paranoid white beer-bellies. But that's less of a stance than a function of running a fair-minded business.

But let’s be honest: Apple's move is hardly radical — and they know it (Tim Cook is even hosting a breakfast for Paul Ryan, to indicate the company's general bipartisanship). Banning Trump, blocking Trump, lamenting being anywhere near Trump, feeling your soul ripped to bloody shreds because you associate with Trump is quickly becoming a new American pastime. Dude is radioactive. So much so that it probably would have done more harm to Apple to have its brand even tacitly associated with the GOP convention, while Trump is its carcinogenic king.

So no, silly PC writer dudes and bored pundits, Apple is not now the “anti-Trump platform” — if anything, they're actually the “pro human-decency” platform.  This isn't going to cause the slightest blip in the eternally insipid “Mac/PC wars” that no one really cared about in the first place. There will be no violent anti-Apple rally. Apple will feel zero sales slump; if anything, more Americans will admire Apple for setting a clear boundary against the Rabid Orange Monster.


Definitely voting for Hillary. Shhh. Once told supporters to boycott Apple… while tweeting from his iPhone. He's got a big brain!
LEFT: Definitely voting for Hillary. Shhh. | RIGHT: Once told supporters to boycott Apple… while tweeting from his iPhone. He's got a big brain!

After all, Trump hates Apple already, and Apple… clearly could not care less. Tim Cook & Co. know there isn't a single American company of note that would willingly link itself to the Trump “brand” at this point. He's an abysmal businessman, a laughable thinker, a disastrous politician and has proven himself even dumber than Bush when it comes to inane conspiracy theories, bashing immigrants, understanding the rudimentary fundamentals of American policy.

Which is to say, Apple is merely doing what everyone with a functioning heart is doing right now: getting as far from the ticking warhead of slavering disaster that is the Trump campaign as possible, before it poisons everyone's drink. Just good business smarts, really.


Email: Mark Morford

Mark Morford on Twitter and Facebook.

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2016/06/21/apple-disses-trump-because-of-course-they-should
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« Reply #202 on: June 22, 2016, 08:03:45 pm »

Quote
if anything, they're actually the “pro human-decency” platform.


I diss Apple, because of course i should

Apples China Worker Slaves Management System Is Rotten To The Core

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« Reply #203 on: June 22, 2016, 08:32:55 pm »


Once told supporters to boycott Apple… while tweeting from his iPhone. He's got big brain!
Trump once told supporters to boycott Apple… while tweeting from his iPhone. He's got a big brain! 





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« Reply #204 on: June 22, 2016, 08:54:49 pm »

hahaha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU3vcvGpALQ#t=1118.281
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« Reply #205 on: June 23, 2016, 03:42:08 pm »

Is that snowflake below laughing at his commie religion
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« Reply #206 on: June 23, 2016, 04:15:47 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Trump's top example of foreign experience:
A Scottish golf course losing millions


By JENNA JOHNSON | 6:21PM EDT - Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Scot Isaac Lennox drives off the tee at Trump International Golf Links in Balmedie, north of Aberdeen, Scotland. — Photograph: Shannon Jensen Wedgwood/The Washington Post.
Scot Isaac Lennox drives off the tee at Trump International Golf Links in Balmedie, north of Aberdeen, Scotland.
 — Photograph: Shannon Jensen Wedgwood/The Washington Post.


BALMEDIE, SCOTLAND — When Donald Trump arrives this weekend at the golf course he built on the rugged dunes of this remote, windswept corner overlooking the North Sea, he will celebrate it as an example of his international business success.

He bought the property north of Aberdeen more than a decade ago as his first European project — a chance to establish the Trump brand in his mother's native country. He has pointed to it as a precursor to his bid for the U.S. presidency.

“When I first arrived on the scene in Aberdeen, the people of Scotland were testing me to see just how serious I was — just like the citizens in the United States have done about my race for the White House,” Trump wrote in a column published this spring in a local newspaper under the headline “How Scotland will help me become president”.

“I had to win them over — I had to convince them that I meant business and that I had their best interests in mind,” he wrote. “Well, Scotland has already been won — and so will the United States.”

But to many people in Scotland, his course here has been a failure. Over the past decade, Trump has battled with homeowners, elbowed his way through the planning process, shattered relationships with elected leaders and sued the Scottish government. On top of that, he has yet to fulfill the lofty promises he made.

Trump has also reported to Scottish authorities that he lost millions of dollars on the project — even as he claims on U.S. presidential disclosure forms that the course has been highly profitable.

Trump's original plan: a sprawling resort in the ancestral home of golf with two courses, a 450-room luxury hotel and spa, a conference center, employee housing, a turf-grass research center and a holiday community with hundreds of villas, condos and homes. The project would pump millions of dollars into the local economy and create 6,000 jobs — maybe even 7,000 jobs, Trump said at one news conference. Tourists would travel here from around the world, he promised, along with well-known celebrities such as Scottish actor Sean Connery.

Today, the Trump International Golf Links near Aberdeen employs 150 people and consists of one golf course that meanders through the sand dunes, a clubhouse with a restaurant and 19 rooms for rent in a renovated mansion and former carriage house. There is also a maintenance facility and a road running through the property. Lonely and desolate, the resort has attracted no major tournaments, and neighbors say the parking lot is rarely, if ever, full.

Trump, in a recent interview, blamed the delays in finishing the project on tedious local regulations and litigation over an offshore wind farm that he says would spoil his view. Trump said he or his children will eventually expand the hotel and build “thousands” of houses — but not until someday after the presidential campaign.

“In all fairness, right now it's not exactly top of my mind because I'm running for president,” Trump said. “But what I've done is made the land incredible…. It's a piece of land that's fully sculpted, it's beautiful, it's ready, and I can go anytime I want.”


Promotional material sits on the guest book at Trump International Golf Links. — Photograph: Shannon Jensen Wedgwood/The Washington Post.
Promotional material sits on the guest book at Trump International Golf Links.
 — Photograph: Shannon Jensen Wedgwood/The Washington Post.


‘Extremely implausible’

When Trump first announced the Aberdeen project in early 2006, he said he had scouted more than 200 locations in the region — and stopped looking as soon as he saw the majestic sand dunes on about 800 acres of coastline.

The land, which was previously used for hunting, presented a series of challenges. The ever-shifting dunes were supposed to be protected from development. There were plans for a wind farm just off the coast, with turbines as tall as Big Ben that threatened to ruin Trump's perfect view. And there were a handful of neighbors who would probably have to move.

Some locals puzzled over why Trump would build a golf course in a spot regularly shrouded in cold fog.

“It is fabulous news for the area, of course, and also for knitwear manufacturers, who will make a killing when the world's top players step out on the first tee and feel as though their limbs are being sawn off by a north-east breeze that hasn't paused for breath since it left the Arctic,” one local columnist wrote.

Still, much of the focus at the start was the potential economic windfall for the community. When Trump visited Aberdeen that spring, the local paper wrote that his arrival “could turn out to be as economically historic as the discovery of oil under the North Sea.” Local leaders greeted his private Boeing 727 at the airport, along with a bagpiper playing “Highland Laddie”. They were all a bit confused as Trump repeatedly referred to himself as “Scotch”.

Soon after the visit, Trump was named a global business ambassador for the country. At the same time, the wind project that worried Trump — first proposed in 2003 — reduced its number of planned turbines from 33 to 23. The total would later be reduced to 11.

Trump's formal proposal to a local planning board several months later was even grander than expected. A Trump official told locals they could expect their property values to go up 20 percent and see the creation of 1,200 permanent jobs and more than 6,000 jobs over 10 years. Trump said he would spend the equivalent of $1.5 billion on the project.

“Mr. Trump's promises were extremely implausible,” recalled Martin Ford, who led the local planning council at the time. “The number of jobs seemed ridiculously high, and the amount of money seemed also to be implausibly large.”

Ford cast the deciding vote against the plan in late 2007, throwing the Trump Organization into lobbying mode.

Trump refused to appeal the decision and threatened to move the project to Ireland. Then-First Minister Alex Salmond huddled with Trump's staff at a hotel in Aberdeen, and officials announced the next day that the national government would handle the application and hold a lengthy public hearing.

The Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Nicol Stephen declared that the series of events “smells of sleaze”. But Salmond said that at the time there was no indication that Trump wasn't genuine in his promises, and he worried that barring the foreign investment would scare away others looking to do business in Scotland.

“There was nothing to suggest that there wasn't serious intent behind it,” Salmond said. “We all wish that we had 20/20 hindsight, but I'm afraid that we are not given to having 20/20 hindsight.”


Battling with neighbors

The public inquiry started six months later, in June 2008. The world had dramatically changed since Trump first discovered the site. The global recession and collapse of the real estate market eventually pushed the Trump Organization to delay or cancel a number of projects. Trump stuck with the Scotland project, even as it became increasingly complicated.

While testifying at the hearing, Trump said that “the world is in chaos” and that the housing development might have to wait until after the economy recovered. But he promised to see the project through.

His testimony was filled with exaggerations — such as when he claimed to know more about the environment than his consultants — and seemed to show a lack of understanding of Scotland's laws and customs. At the hearing, Trump came face-to-face with Ford, who suggested the businessman did not properly research his purchase.

“You know, nobody has ever told me before I don't know how to buy property,” Trump responded. “You're the first one. I have done very well buying property. Thanks for the advice.”

Months later, in November 2008, Trump received the green light. Construction began the next year.

With that battle seemingly ended, Trump quickly shifted his focus to challenging the proposed wind farm and the neighbors living near the golf course who refused to sell their properties at his offered price.

Unable to negotiate sales directly with the neighbors, Trump began to pursue compulsory purchase — similar to eminent domain in the United States — to force them out of their homes. Not only did he want their land, Trump said he didn't want the views from his luxury hotel “obliterated by a slum.”


Michael Forbes stands beside his shed near Trump’s golf course in Balmedie, Scotland, in April 2012. — Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.
Michael Forbes stands beside his shed near Trump’s golf course in Balmedie, Scotland, in April 2012.
 — Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.


The largest property is owned by Michael Forbes, a farmer, fisherman, quarry worker and jack-of-all-trades who lives with his wife in a farmhouse surrounded by a collection of outbuildings. Trump once said that Forbes “lives like a pig”; Forbes painted “NO MORE TRUMP LIES” on the side of one of his buildings.

Trump's threat to seize property angered many Scots. A group of activists purchased a chunk of Forbes's land and piled their names onto a deed — making it much more complicated to seize it. Although elected leaders had bent to Trump's demands in the past, they stood firm against kicking locals off their own land to make way for a private business.

It appeared the two sides would be forced to live alongside each other — and not peacefully. The development took steps to shield neighboring properties from the course, prompting years of feuding.


Susan Munro lives next to the parking lot of Donald Trump's golf course north of Aberdeen. — Photograph: Shannon Jensen Wedgwood/The Washington Post.
Susan Munro lives next to the parking lot of Donald Trump's golf course north of Aberdeen.
 — Photograph: Shannon Jensen Wedgwood/The Washington Post.


In one case, Trump workers blocked in the cottage belonging to Susie and John Munro, constructing a two-story-high hill in their front yard and then adding a fence and locked gate, the couple said. Whenever it rains, they say, their yard fills with water and their steep dirt road turns into a mudslide.

During a dispute over property lines, workers ripped out a fence near the home of David and Moira Milne, who live in a converted coast-guard station on a hill above the golf course. The Trump workers installed their own fence — and then sent the Milnes a bill for it.


David Milne, who lives in a converted coast-guard lookout on the bluff above Trump's course, points out features on the original Trump plans. — Photograph: Shannon Jensen Wedgwood/The Washington Post.
David Milne, who lives in a converted coast-guard lookout on the bluff above Trump's course, points out features
on the original Trump plans. — Photograph: Shannon Jensen Wedgwood/The Washington Post.


“It ain't getting paid. I'm never paying it,” said David Milne, an energy consultant who chuckles at the thought of Trump trying to get Mexico to pay for a massive border wall when he couldn't collect on the bill for a slatted wood fence no more than five feet tall.

Trump's workers also planted a row of trees that blocked the Milnes' view of the sea. When the first batch died, the workers ripped them out and planted a second.


‘A very small job for me’

The 18-hole golf course opened in July 2012 — and even critics acknowledge that it is beautiful, meandering through the stabilized sand dunes with sweeping views of the coastline. Even on days when the course is full, which is rare, golfers say they feel as if they are playing by themselves on the edge of the earth, as other tees are hidden away by the rolling landscape.

Trump likes to say that this is a course designed by God himself. He considers it his masterpiece, comparing it to a treasured, multimillion-dollar painting.

“There are lots of ways that he can make money, and there are lots of ways that he can make a fast buck, and this was a project that was about his legacy, it was about his family, it was about his love of the game of golf,” said Sarah Malone, the executive director of the development.

Also in 2012, Trump halted work on the resort to challenge the proposed wind farm, which was still on track to be built. In a letter to Salmond, Trump dubbed him “Mad Alex” and warned that the wind project would make him “the man who destroyed Scotland”. Trump also took out advertisements in the local press criticizing the wind farm.

During a hearing in June 2012, Trump accused the Scottish government of luring him into investing in the country on the false promise that the turbines would never be built — an assertion that officials deny. At one point, one of the questioners asked Trump whether he was fighting the wind turbines as a way to back out of the project without embarrassing himself.

“I've created something that's magnificent — I've created what some people and myself are considering the best golf course anywhere in the world. That's what I said I was going to do,” Trump said at the hearing. “We're a very rich organization. We're a very substantial organization. This is a very small job for me. This is not a big job.”

The next year, Trump sued the government to block the turbines, kicking off an expensive legal battle. Late last year, Britain's highest court ruled against Trump.

His company released a statement: “History will judge those involved unfavorably and the outcome demonstrates the foolish, small-minded and parochial mentality which dominates the current Scottish Government's dangerous experiment with wind energy.”


Scott Easton, a local player, takes his putt. — Photograph: Shannon Jensen Wedgwood/The Washington Post.
Scott Easton, a local player, takes his putt. — Photograph: Shannon Jensen Wedgwood/The Washington Post.

‘Nobody wants him around’

Trump has provided starkly contradictory portraits of the financial health of his golf course here, along with two other projects in the region.

According to reports filed with the British government, Trump said the Aberdeen course has lost more than 4.71 million pounds since 2012 — the equivalent of $6.9 million at current exchange rates. British authorities were told that the course lost 1.14 million pounds, or about $1.67 million, in 2014 alone.

Yet in a July 2015 disclosure filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Trump valued Aberdeen at “over $50 million” and put his income from the course at $4.2 million between mid-2014 and the end of 2015.

A similar pattern holds for records filed for his Turnberry golf resort on Scotland's west coast, which he will also visit this week, and at a third Trump course in Ireland's County Clare — millions in losses reported in overseas records, millions in profits reported on U.S. forms.

Trump told Bloomberg News, which first reported on the gap between the reports, that the amounts he listed on his U.S. filings were “projected future income”.

Trump's son Eric, who takes the lead in golf course developments, said in an interview that the U.S. disclosure forms report gross revenue, not net income. He also said the British and Irish courses are losing money only because the Trump Organization is spending aggressively to turn them into leading international resorts.

“We are incredibly pleased with Aberdeen,” Eric Trump said. “… It is the most beautiful course I have ever seen. It is a spectacular project that will continue to be the gem of Trump Golf for years to come.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump's recent calls on the campaign trail for the United States to temporarily ban foreign Muslims from entering the country has sparked outrage here in Scotland. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stripped Trump of his business ambassadorship, and Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen rescinded an honorary degree it gave Trump in 2010.




Opposition to Trump is particularly strong in the Aberdeen area. Forbes and Milne — two of the neighbors that Trump feuded with — have erected Mexican flags on their properties in anticipation of his visit. And when more than 500,000 Britons signed a petition this year calling for Trump to be barred from the country, the highest concentration of signatures came from here.

“He would have us think that he is widely respected and loved, that Scotland he has won over…. That's just delusional, I'm sorry to say,” said Aberdeen's Suzanne Kelly, who organized the national petition. “Nobody wants him around…. And he refuses to see or refuses to accept what is reality.”


Tom Hamburger in Washington contributed to this report.

• Jenna Johnson is a political reporter who is covering the 2016 presidential campaign for The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-top-example-of-foreign-experience-a-scottish-golf-course-losing-millions/2016/06/22/12ae9cb0-1883-11e6-9e16-2e5a123aac62_story.html
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« Reply #207 on: June 23, 2016, 05:44:12 pm »

i am glad i hate golf get your head out of your arse snowflake
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« Reply #208 on: June 23, 2016, 06:49:16 pm »


Trump is a FAILURE when it comes to doing business.

He has failed in the casino business, the steak business, the vodka business, the magazine business, the airline business, the football business, the real estate seminar business, and the vitamin pyramid scheme business (to name just a few examples, of which there are many).

Click on all of those links, one by one, to read all about Donald Trump's business failures. And notice how he always walks away and leaves a shitload of debt behind and hurts a shitload of innocent workers, contractors, sub-contractors, other businesses, etc.

In other words, Donald Trump is a selfish, incompetent rip-off artist, thief, and LIAR who doesn't give a shit how much damage he does to other people.

Talk about a narcissistic wanker....yet some people are STUPID enough to think he'd make a great President of the USA?

FAAAAAAAAAARRKK!!   
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« Reply #209 on: June 23, 2016, 08:22:41 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Confident. Incorrigible. Bully: Little Donny
was a lot like candidate Donald Trump


By PAUL SCHWARTZMAN and MICHAEL E. MILLER | 6:26PM EDT - Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Donald Trump and Peter Brant, both about 11 years old, playing with snorkel gear in the pool of the Roney Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach. — Photograph: Courtesy of Peter Brant.
Donald Trump and Peter Brant, both about 11 years old, playing with snorkel gear in the pool of the Roney Plaza Hotel
in Miami Beach. — Photograph: Courtesy of Peter Brant.


AS A 5-YEAR-OLD, the boy followed his babysitter on an urban safari, descending into a sewer that was under construction beneath New York City. The light fading, the sitter grew concerned that the boy would panic. But little Donny Trump kept walking into the gathering darkness.

In elementary school, Donny impressed classmates with his athleticism, shenanigans and refusal to acknowledge mistakes, even one so trivial as misidentifying a popular professional wrestler. No matter his pals' ridicule, one recalled, he doubled down, insisting wrestler Antonino Rocca's name was “Rocky Antonino”.

At the military academy where he attended high school, Donny grew taller, more muscular and tougher. Struck with a broomstick during a fight, he tried to push a fellow cadet out a second-floor window, only to be thwarted when two other students intervened.

Long before he attained vast wealth and far-reaching fame, Donald J. Trump left an indelible impression in the prosperous Queens neighborhood where he evolved from a mischievous, incorrigible boy into a swaggering young man.

He was Trump in miniature, an embryonic version of the bombastic, flamboyant candidate who has dominated the 2016 presidential race, more than three dozen of his childhood friends, classmates and neighbors said in interviews. Even Trump has acknowledged the similarities between himself as an adult and when he was the boy whom friends alternately referred to as “Donny”, “The Trumpet” and “Flat Top” (for his hair).

“When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same,” the 70-year-old presumptive Republican nominee once told a biographer. “The temperament is not that different.”

His face crowned by a striking blond pompadour, young Donald commanded attention with his playground taunts, classroom disruptions and distinctive countenance, even then his lips pursed in a way that would inspire future mimics. Taller than his classmates, he exuded an easy confidence and independence.

“Who could forget him?” said Ann Trees, 82, who taught at Kew-Forest School, where Trump was a student through seventh grade. “He was headstrong and determined. He would sit with his arms folded with this look on his face — I use the word surly — almost daring you to say one thing or another that wouldn't settle with him.”

If nothing else, the military academy taught young Donald a lesson that would prove valuable in adulthood as he navigated two divorces, bankruptcy and regular spasms of bad publicity: No matter the crisis, he could prevail.


The home that stood out

In Jamaica Estates, the Queens neighborhood where Donald grew up, the Trumps' house on Midland Parkway was distinct, if not for its size then for what it suggested about the wealth of its builder, Fred Trump.

Seventeen brick steps led up a sloping hill to the entrance, which was framed by a Colonial-style portico, a stained-glass crest and six white columns. Two Cadillacs were in the driveway, their license plates bearing their owner's initials, “FCT1” and “FCT2”.

“No one had individualized license plates in those days,” said Ann Rudovsky, who grew up nearby. “Everyone talked about the Trumps because of the house and the cars.”

Unlike most families in the neighborhood, the Trumps had a cook, a chauffeur and an intercom system. Their color television, a rarity at the time, was among the Trumps' accoutrements that most impressed Mark Golding, Donald's childhood friend.

“He had the most amazing train set,” recalled Golding, a lawyer in Portland, Oregon. “He had all these special gadgets and gates and switches, more extensive than anything I'd seen. I was very envious.”


__________________________________________________________________________

About “Trump Revealed”…

This story is based on reporting for “Trump Revealed”, a broad, comprehensive examination
of the life of the presumptive Republican nominee for president. The biography, written
by Washington Post reporters Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher in a collaboration
with more than two dozen Post reporters, researchers and editors,
is scheduled to be published by Scribner on August 23rd.


__________________________________________________________________________

Donald is the fourth of Fred and Mary Trump's five children, the first of whom, Fred Jr., a gregarious airline pilot, suffered from alcoholism and died at the age of 43. Maryanne Trump, Donald’s older sister, became a U.S. Appeals Court judge. Another sister, Elizabeth, was an administrative secretary. His younger brother, Robert, went into business.

Their mother, Mary, a Scottish immigrant, relished attention, thrusting herself to the center of social gatherings. She also loved pageantry, spending hours watching on television the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth.

Mary Trump suffered a hemorrhage after Robert's birth that forced doctors to perform an emergency hysterectomy. She also developed an abdominal infection that required several more surgeries, during which she nearly died.

At one point, Fred Trump informed his daughter that her mother “wasn't expected to live, but I should go to school and he'd call me if anything changed,” Maryanne Trump once told Gwenda Blair, who authored a detailed history of the family. “That's right — go to school as usual!”

Maryanne Trump declined to comment for this article except to say, “He's still a simple boy from Queens. You can quote me on that.” Neither Elizabeth nor Robert Trump responded to messages.

Fred Trump, with his thick mustache and hair combed back, was a stern, formal man who insisted on wearing a tie and jacket at home. A conservative Republican who admired Barry Goldwater, Fred Trump and his wife forbade their children from cursing, calling each other by nicknames and wearing lipstick.

Fred Trump “was really very kind of tightfisted,” said Peter Brant, a newsprint magnate who was among Donald's closest childhood friends. “He didn't give Donald a whole bunch of rope.”

When Fred Trump visited one of his contractors, he sometimes brought Donald along and hired a teenage boy who lived next door to watch him during the meeting. One afternoon, recalled the sitter, Frank Briggs, 81, he led Trump on a sewer adventure during which “it was pitch black and you couldn't see the entrance.”

“The thing that amazed me,” Briggs said, “was that Donny wasn't scared. He just kept walking.”

Dennis Burnham was four years younger and lived around the corner from Donald. He inherited his own impression of his neighbor from his mother, who warned that he should “stay away from the Trumps.”

“Donald was known to be a bully, I was a little kid, and my parents didn't want me beaten up,” said Burnham, 65, a business consultant in Texas.

Once when she left Dennis in a playpen in a back yard adjoining the Trumps' property, Martha Burnham returned to find Donald throwing rocks at her son. “She saw Donald standing at the fence,” Dennis Burnham said, “using the playpen for target practice.”


Creating mischief

For kindergarten, Donald went to the private Kew-Forest School, which required skirts for girls and ties and blazers for boys. Everyone had to rise when their teacher entered the classroom.

Donald was among a group of boys who pulled girls' hair, passed notes and talked out of turn. “We threw spitballs and we played racing chairs with our desks, crashing them into other desks,” recalled Paul Onish, a classmate, describing himself and Trump as “probably the two worst.”

Donald spent enough time in detention, Onish said, that his buddies nicknamed the punishment “DTs” — short for “Donny Trump.”

“He had a reputation for saying anything that came into his head,” said Donald Kass, 70, a retired agronomist who was a schoolmate. When Trump misidentified Rocca, the pro wrestler, Kass recalled, “We would laugh at him and tell him he was wrong, and he'd say he was right. The next time, he would make the same mistake, and it would be the same thing all over again.”

In his neighborhood, Donald and his friends were known to ride their bikes and “shout and curse very loudly,” said Steve Nachtigall, who lived nearby. Nachtigall said he once saw them jump off their bikes and beat up another boy.

“It's kind of like a little video snippet that remains in my brain because I think it was so unusual and terrifying at that age,” recalled Nachtigall, 66, a doctor in New Jersey. “He was a loudmouth bully.”

At times, Trump's classmates fought back.

After he yanked her pigtails, Sharon Mazzarella hit Donald over the head with her metal lunch pail as she followed him down the stairs outside the school. “I must've been quite annoyed,” Mazzarella said of the incident, which she described as her only memory of Trump.

In his memoir, “The Art of the Deal”, Trump wrote that his main focus as a youngster was “creating mischief.” As a second-grader, he wrote, he “actually” gave his music teacher a black eye because “I didn't think he knew anything about music, and I almost got expelled.”

None of Trump's childhood friends recall the incident or Donald talking about it then. Asked about the punch recently, Trump said, “When I say ‘punch’, when you're that age, nobody punches very hard.”

At a 2009 reunion, Kass said, the teacher, Charles Walker, told him that Trump had never struck him. But Walker, who died last year, claimed no affection for Trump. In the final stages of his life, according to his son, Charles Walker learned that Trump was considering a presidential bid.

“When that kid was 10,” Peter Walker recalled his father telling family members gathered at his bedside, “even then he was a little shit!”


Aiming to overpower

If his grades suffered and he annoyed his teachers, Trump found success on the playground. During dodgeball games, he was known for jumping and pulling his knees up to avoid balls thrown at him.

“The Trumpet was always the last man standing,” recalled Chrisman Scherf, 70, a classmate who is a surgeon in Arizona.

Trump's best sport was baseball, a passion that inspired him, at 12, to write a prose poem that was published in the yearbook.

I like to hear the crowd give cheers, so loud and noisy to my ears,” Donald wrote. “When the score is 5-5, I feel like I could cry. And when they get another run, I feel like I could die. Then the catcher makes an error, not a bit like Yogi Berra. The game is over and we say tomorrow is another day.

By sixth grade, Donald's power as a right-handed hitter was enough that fielders shifted to left field when he batted. “If he had hit the ball to right, he could've had a home run because no one was there,” said Nicholas Kass, a schoolmate. “But he always wanted to hit the ball through people. He wanted to overpower them.”

A catcher, Trump's uniform was often the dirtiest on the field, and he shrugged off foul balls clanging off his mask. After once making an out, Donald smashed neighbor Jeff Bier's Adirondack bat on the pavement. The bat cracked, Bier said, but Trump did not apologize.

In those years, youngsters yearned for the new mitts with intricate webbing that Rawlings had begun manufacturing. Peter Brant persuaded his father to help pay for the $30 glove, but Donald could not persuade Fred Trump to buy him one.

Too expensive, Fred told Donald, though he did agree to buy him a cheaper model.


Straight to boarding school

In 1958, when they were 12, Trump and Brant liked to board an E train bound for Manhattan, a distant land of soaring, exotic promise. They did not ask their parents for permission for their Saturday expeditions. Manhattan was too far and too dangerous for two boys from the tranquil, low-slung reaches of Queens.

Exiting the train at 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue, Donald and Peter felt like an urban version of Lewis and Clark. They explored Central Park's bucolic recesses, watched African American men play basketball on courts along the East River and observed the panhandlers and hustlers in midtown.

Around Times Square, they discovered novelty shops, where they bought stink bombs, hand buzzers and fake vomit — perfect accessories for pranking their pals. The shops also sold switchblades. On Broadway, “West Side Story” was a smash, and the boys, imagining themselves as gang members, bought knives to fit the part.

Near the end of seventh grade, Fred discovered Donald's knives and was infuriated to learn about his trips into the city. He decided his son's behavior warranted a radical change. In the months before eighth grade, Fred Trump enrolled Donald at the New York Military Academy, a boarding school 70 miles from Jamaica Estates.

D'Antonio, the biographer who wrote Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, said Fred Trump's decision was “a very severe response to a kid who hadn't gotten arrested and wasn't involved in drinking and drugging. He was essentially a smart aleck.”

“This was a profound rejection of Donald,” he said.

Donald did not announce his departure to his friends, who, when word filtered out, struggled to understand. “It was a very, very sudden thing and I was really surprised and sad,” Brant recalled. “I always said to myself, ‘Is there something I didn't know about his past that would make his father send him to the military academy?’”

Irik Sevin, a prominent executive who was a year behind Trump at Kew-Forest, described Donald as a “normal, rambunctious kid.”

“The rug was pulled out from under him,” Sevin said.


Confidence and aggression

At the military academy, Trump wore a crew cut, a thick wool uniform and was awoken daily by a recording of reveille.

Instead of steaks prepared by his family's cook, Donald sat in a crowded mess hall and filled his plate from vats of meatloaf, spaghetti and something called “mystery mountains”, a stew of deep-fried leftovers remade as meatballs.

Instead of his own bathroom, he had to shower with fellow cadets.


Trump's yearbook photograph for the New York Military Academy. — Photograph: From the New York Military Academy yearbook.
Trump's yearbook photograph for the New York Military Academy.
 — Photograph: From the New York Military Academy yearbook.


Instead of his father, Donald's new taskmaster was Theodore Dobias, a no-nonsense combat veteran who had served in World War II and had seen Mussolini's dead body hanging from a rope.

Dobias, who died recently, would smack his cadets with an open hand if they ignored him, students recalled. He set up a boxing ring and forced students with poor grades and disciplinary problems to fight each other.

“At the beginning, he didn't like the idea of being told what to do, like make your bed, shine your shoes, brush your teeth, clean the sink, do your homework,” Dobias said in an interview last fall, referring to Trump. “We really didn't care whether he came from Rockefeller Center or whatever. He was just another name.”

Dobias said he recognized in Trump an innate drive: “He wanted to be number one. He wanted to be noticed. He wanted to be recognized. And he liked compliments.”

Trump won medals for neatness and took pride in his grades. He distinguished himself on both the baseball and football teams.

To his classmates, Trump was a blend of friendly and cocky. He boasted that his father's wealth doubled every time he completed a real estate deal. “He was self-confident and very soft-spoken, believe it or not, as if he knew he was just passing time until he went on to something greater,” said classmate Michael Pitkow.

In his room, Trump played Elvis Presley and Johnny Mathis albums. He liked to screw an ultraviolet light into the overhead socket and lie down for a tan. “We're going to the beach,” Trump would announce to his roommate, David Smith.

By senior year, Trump was known for bringing stylish women to campus and showing them around. “They were beautiful, gorgeous women, dressed out of Saks Fifth Avenue,” recalled classmate George White.

“Ladies Man” read the caption beneath a photo in the senior yearbook of Trump.

At times, Trump clashed with fellow cadets, including Ted Levine, with whom he shared a room at one point. Donald, Levine recalled, folded his towels and underwear so that “every single one was perfectly squared. Like, insanely neat.”

“Mr. Meticulous” was Levine's nickname for Donald.

After finding Levine's unmade bed while on inspection duty, Trump tossed the sheets on the floor. Levine, who was a foot shorter than Trump, said he “grabbed everything that was grabbable,” hurling a combat boot at Donald and hitting him with a broomstick.

Enraged, Trump shoved Levine toward a second-floor window. “He tried to push me out,” Levine said, but two cadets intervened.

Within the academy's testosterone-driven culture, Levine said, Trump's aggression was understandable. “Would I have respected him if he didn't?” he asked. “No. If he took that shit from the little crap I was, he wouldn't be where he is today.”


Destiny on Fifth Avenue

In his senior year, the academy appointed Trump to the prestigious position of captain of A Company. As a leader, recalled Peter Ticktin, a company platoon sergeant, Trump could inspire respect without raising his voice.

“He never yelled at anyone,” said Ticktin, now a Florida lawyer who touts Trump's candidacy on his Facebook page. “He'd just look at you, the eyebrows kind of raised. The kind of look that said you can't disappoint him.”

A month after senior year started, Trump faced a crisis. One of his platoon sergeants shoved a plebe, Lee Ains, against a wall because the freshman was too slow snapping to attention. At the time, the academy was already dealing with a serious hazing incident and was sensitive to new allegations of abuse. The administration reassigned Trump as a battalion training officer.

Ains said the academy concluded that Trump had not monitored his officers “as closely as he should have.”

Trump described his reassignment as a promotion. “I did a good job and that's why I got elevated,” he said.

After his transfer, Trump led a drill team in New York City's Columbus Day parade. Standing on Fifth Avenue, Trump turned to Major Anthony “Ace” Castellano and declared his ambition.

“You know what, Ace?” Castellano recalled Trump saying. “I'd really like to own some of this real estate some day.”

College awaited, but Trump seemed to know that he would follow his father into business, telling a roommate that he “felt like he might be missing out” if he did not. He considered attending film school in California but then decided New York would be his destination.

In 1964, after graduating from high school, Trump joined his father at the dedication of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Amid the pageantry, Donald noticed that no one paid homage to the bridge's 85-year-old Swedish designer, who had traveled from Europe for the occasion.

“I realized then and there that if you let people treat you how they want, you'll be made a fool,” he later told a reporter. “I realized then and there something I would never forget: I don't want to be made anybody's sucker.”

By his 18th year, Donald Trump had a clear sense of his own destiny, a vision he shared with a fellow cadet, Jeff Ortenau.

“I'm going to be very famous one day,” Donald promised.

“You know what?” Ortenau recalls telling Trump. “You're probably going to be president.”


• Paul Schwartzman specializes in political profiles and narratives about life, death and everything in between.

• Michael E. Miller is a foreign affairs reporter for The Washington Post. He writes for the Morning Mix news blog.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related media:

 • PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY: What was Donald Trump like as a kid? See pictures from his childhood.

 • Who does Donald Trump listen to? Other Trumps.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/young-donald-trump-military-school/2016/06/22/f0b3b164-317c-11e6-8758-d58e76e11b12_story.html
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« Reply #210 on: June 25, 2016, 01:41:26 pm »


Oh dear....somebody in Scotland doesn't like an idiot American capitalist visiting his golf course....



I wonder if the person being protested about is a mate of Boris Johnson?

Hahaha....it even kind-of rhymes too!!
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« Reply #211 on: June 25, 2016, 09:49:54 pm »

oh well at least she can spell

but you seem to have trump on the brain
my dog has a couple of fixations as well

i am not sure you are going to affect american politics from this website
mostly it's only you spamming trump to me it seems a waste of energy lol

have you tried yet starting a kill trump youtube channel
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« Reply #212 on: July 04, 2016, 05:39:15 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Editorial: Mr. Trump's fake charity

By EDITORIAL BOARD | 7:37PM EDT - Sunday, July 03, 2016

A list of some of the contributions made by the Donald J. Trump Foundation in 1988. — Illustration: The Washington Post.
A list of some of the contributions made by the Donald J. Trump Foundation in 1988. — Illustration: The Washington Post.

DONALD TRUMP, perhaps the greatest braggart ever to aspire to national office, is hardly shy about flaunting — or rather hyping — his good works. So it has been with his charitable giving, which, for the better part of 30 years, he has regularly exaggerated to the point of plain mendacity.

That Mr. Trump in his public utterances is a serial embellisher is no surprise. Still, the shamelessness by which his actual giving to worthy causes has trailed his public claims of generosity is stunning. And given the relish with which he boasted of his giving, his campaign's assertion that he has made private, quiet charitable gifts strains credulity.

A painstaking review by The Washington Post's David A. Fahrenthold, comparing Mr. Trump's public statements with available records of his giving, found a pattern of exaggeration and unfulfilled pledges.

Speaking of his royalties from the reality television show “The Apprentice”, which had recently debuted in 2004, Mr. Trump told the radio personality Howard Stern that “I'm giving the money to charity,” mentioning that as the show's host he had been paid “a lot more than” $1 million. The money, Mr. Trump said, would go to AIDS research and the Police Athletic League. Yet that year Mr. Trump's foundation — the entity he established to bestow charitable gifts — gave just $1,000 for AIDS research and $106,000 to the Police Athletic League.

And while he promised in the late 1980s to give royalties from his successful book, The Art of the Deal, to charities for the homeless, Vietnam veterans, AIDS and multiple sclerosis, only 8 percent of his charitable giving in those years went to those causes. Much more went to society galas, his alma maters and the exclusive schools his children attended.

The issue is not that Mr. Trump has been stingy, although he has made no bequests to his foundation since 2008, and his giving levels before that appear to have been far lower than those of others who have the wealth Mr. Trump insists he enjoys. The issue is the cavernous gulf between his words and deeds.

This appears not to concern the mogul in the least; if it did, he could easily dispel doubts by releasing his tax returns, as all other presidential candidate have done for decades. Because Mr. Trump has bragged of paying as little in taxes as possible, his returns would presumably make clear precisely what charitable gifts he has made — to which organizations and in what amounts — and for which he claimed deductions.

The truth is, Mr. Trump's exaggerated eleemosynary claims match his long history of embroideries, overstatements and wildly inflated assertions of prowess in other endeavors. The GOP candidate's whoppers come so fast and thick that it’s easy to lose track, and it's tempting to ignore much of what he says. That would be a mistake. Contempt for the truth is a disqualifying feature in a candidate for the presidency.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-trumps-fake-charity/2016/07/03/fbcd52e2-3e44-11e6-84e8-1580c7db5275_story.html
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« Reply #213 on: July 04, 2016, 05:43:50 pm »


What a DESPICABLE lying, cheating arsehole Donald Trump is.

Imagine that??!!?? 

Fancing actually telling LIES about giving money to charities or even creating FAKE charities!!

What a scumbag/piece-of-human-trash!!
 

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« Reply #214 on: July 05, 2016, 10:33:01 pm »

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« Reply #215 on: July 14, 2016, 02:27:57 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Trump promises ‘showbiz’ at convention,
but stars on stage will be relatively dim


By PHILIP RUCKER | 7:02PM EDT - Wednesday, July 13, 2016

A downtown Cleveland shop displays an image of the man who will be on everyone's mind next month. — Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.
A downtown Cleveland shop displays an image of the man who will be on everyone's mind next month.
 — Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.


CLEVELAND — When Democrats gather for their national convention in Philadelphia, the list of speakers praising Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy is expected to feature the president, the vice president, the first lady, a former president and a galaxy of well-known political luminaries.

But when the Republican convention opens next week in Cleveland, presumptive nominee Donald Trump will showcase an assortment of family members, defeated primary opponents and politicians whose names barely register with the general public. Many of the GOP's past, current and future leaders are staying away from the spotlights at the Quicken Loans Arena.

The star-power disparity between the conventions speaks volumes about the state of the two parties — one is united and marching together toward what it hopes will be its fifth win of the past seven presidential elections, while the other remains divided and still not fully accepting its new standard bearer.

“Republicans have always had a terrible star-power deficit — the Democrats have the latest hip-hop or pop act and we've got Lee Greenwood and the Oak Ridge Boys — but now it's going to be even more pronounced,” said Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist who is not supporting Trump.

Looking ahead to Philadelphia, Wilson said of the Democrats, “Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren — they're all going to be out there swinging for the fences. But the Republicans, it'll be like a hostage video of people forced on stage.”

Warren, a senator from Massachusetts who is considered a finalist to be Clinton's running mate, is expected to give a major address, as are two other vice presidential prospects, Senators Timothy M. Kaine (Virginia) and Cory Booker (New Jersey). Other expected speakers include Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont), who on Tuesday ended his presidential campaign and endorsed Clinton after weeks of holding out.

On the Republican side, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wisconsin) looks to be the highest-profile party leader. He will officially chair the convention and plans to give a speech in addition to his ceremonial duties. His remarks are expected to center on his conservative House agenda, “A Better Way”, and a call for Republican unity.

The highlight performances next week could come from members of Trump's family. His wife, Melania Trump, rarely speaks in public, but has been preparing remarks, and his three adult children, especially daughter Ivanka Trump, could open a window into their father's character. Four years ago, Ann Romney delivered one of the most memorable speeches of the GOP convention in Tampa when she spoke of the love story with her husband, Mitt.

Still, the absences in Cleveland will be notable.

The past two Republican nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain? Not coming.

The party's only two living past presidents, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush? They're skipping, too, as is Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor who lost to Trump in the early primaries.

What about the diverse constellation of stars oft-promoted by the GOP in the six years since they swept into office, including South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and Senator Marco Rubio (Florida)? You won't see them speaking in Cleveland, either.

“The fact that the party elders aren't willing to come make his case says a lot about the state of the Republican Party,” said Bill Burton, a Democratic strategist. “To the extent that Trump is having trouble getting speakers who can tell his story and tell the story he wants to tell about Hillary Clinton — it's a larger lift.”

Russell Schriefer, a longtime Republican strategist who helped run the party's 2012 convention, said, “You don't hear of any major Democratic figures saying they're staying home because Hillary Clinton's the nominee. That is the case with Trump.”

But Schriefer said the absence of more established luminaries presents “an opportunity for Republicans for stars to be born at the convention.” He noted that Barack Obama's breakout turn came at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, when he was an Illinois state senator.

For months now, Trump has promised that his convention would be unlike any other — a dazzling, spectacular affair that soars above traditional political theater. In an April interview with The Washington Post, he said the Tampa gathering four years ago was “the single most boring convention I've ever seen.” He vowed to bring a “showbiz” quality to Cleveland.

“It's very important to put some showbiz into a convention, otherwise people are going to fall asleep,” he said.

Trump has teased various plans for Cleveland, such as a “winner's night” starring sports heroes and cultural icons of decades past. But he and his campaign team have been tight-lipped about a lineup.

A list of speakers still had not been released as of Wednesday afternoon — a full week since Trump promised to do so — suggesting a last-minute scramble to book speakers. Republican operatives have complained privately this week that likely speakers have not been given final word on when they will address the delegates or what themes the Trump team would like them to discuss in their remarks. Such late uncertainty is unusual, as political conventions tend to be tightly scripted and highly choreographed.

Members of the Republican National Committee, which puts on the convention and is meeting in Cleveland this week, said they have been kept in the dark about the convention program.

“Donald Trump has run an unconventional campaign from the get-go, and he said right from the outset he wanted an unconventional program with not the usual speakers,” said Steve Duprey, an RNC member from New Hampshire. “Frankly, it might stir up more interest than parading out past luminaries of a party. Maybe the Trump way will work.”

The celebrities planning to be in Cleveland next week include Caitlyn Jenner, a former Olympian, reality television star and transgender advocate, and musical acts Kid Rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rascal Flatts and Big & Rich.

The Democrats traditionally draw more A-list celebrities, and this year will be no different. Among the actors and recording artists planning to attend are Lady Gaga, Snoop Dogg, Fergie, Lenny Kravitz, Idina Menzel and Bryan Cranston.

In Cleveland, Republicans who have been supportive of Trump will get top billing. They include Senator Joni Ernst (Iowa), who burst onto the scene in 2014 with a playful campaign ad vowing to apply her hog-castration skills in Washington to “make 'em squeal.” Trump eyed her as a possible vice-presidential running mate, and they met on July 4th, although she later took herself out of consideration.

Senator Tom Cotton (Arkansas), who also joined the Senate last year, plans to speak as well. Cotton is among a handful of young Republicans considered likely future presidential candidates. Another is Senator Ben Sasse (Nebraska), although he is a vocal Trump critic and will not be in Cleveland. Instead, Sasse plans to “take his kids to watch some dumpster fires across the state,” his spokesman provocatively told reporters.

At least two of Trump's primary opponents — Senator Ted Cruz (Texas) and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker — are planning to address delegates in Cleveland.

Cruz and Walker are trying to rebuild their profiles after being wounded in the nomination battle, looking to another run in four years. Yet neither has fully endorsed Trump, and it is unclear whether either plans to vouch for him.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, another 2016 contender, also plans to speak.

Among the former Trump rivals not planning to address the convention is John Kasich, who as governor of Ohio is something of a host for the week-long gathering. He has said that he plans to be in Cleveland next week but that he does not intend to step foot in the convention hall or speak on Trump's behalf.

Trump's vice-presidential running mate will give a formal address, although the runners-up also could have a turn on stage. A trio of finalists — Indiana Governor Mike Pence, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Georgia) — have been top supporters of Trump, as have Senators Jeff Sessions (Alabama) and Bob Corker (Tennessee).

Some Republican strategists worry, however, that the Cleveland convention will not showcase the full breadth of the GOP's diversity, both racially and generationally. In addition to Rubio and Martinez, two rising stars, Representatives Mia Love (Utah) and Elise Stefanik (New York), are staying home.

“On Earth 2,” Wilson said, “you'd be showing the Republican Party isn't this stupid white boys' club. But Donald Trump has rejected everybody who's not in the stupid white boys' club. At this point, we might as well have a giant cross burning out front.”

An antidote to that picture of the party are two Republicans from South Carolina: Haley, the state's first Indian American governor, and Senator Tim Scott, its first black senator. Both will be in Cleveland for the festivities — but neither plans to take the stage.


• Philip Rucker is a national political correspondent for The Washington Post, where he has reported since 2005.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

 • PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY: What Cleveland looks like as it prepares for the Republican National Convention

 • GRAPHIC: We narrowed Trump's vice-presidential possibilities to 35. Now you pick one.

 • While the GOP worries about convention chaos, Trump pushes for ‘showbiz’ feel

 • Trump closes in on running mate, says he seeks experience to unite GOP

 • This is the last stand for the ‘Never Trump’ movement. Here's what might happen.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-promises-showbiz-at-convention-but-stars-on-stage-will-be-relatively-dim/2016/07/13/2e28d14e-4453-11e6-bc99-7d269f8719b1_story.html
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« Reply #216 on: July 15, 2016, 10:40:10 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Get ready for the Trumpiest Show On Earth

By PAUL WALDMAN | 1:07PM - Thursday, July 14, 2016

The Republican National Convention venue in Cleveland, Ohio. — Photograph: Angelo Merendino/Getty Images.
The Republican National Convention venue in Cleveland, Ohio. — Photograph: Angelo Merendino/Getty Images.

IT'S being reported that Donald Trump has chosen Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate, and assuming the story holds up, this will be the single most boring thing Trump has done during the course of this campaign. Fortunately, the Republican convention starts next week, and Pence's appearance is unlikely to alter an event that stands to be positively historic in its chaotic splendor.

The standard complaint about contemporary political conventions is that it's just a big show for the TV cameras. Unlike in the old days, when backroom deal-making would actually determine the party's nominee, today everything is planned and scripted, little more than an elaborate display of bunting, balloons, and talking points.

Well get ready, because the Republican convention that starts on Monday is going to be the Trumpiest Show On Earth. We're now learning about the speakers, about the themes of each night, about the platform to which this party is pledging its allegiance, and about the chaos likely to ensue outside the hall. Equal parts entertaining and horrifying, the GOP gathering will probably get some of the highest TV ratings in history as Americans tune in to witness the political equivalent of a 747 crashing into a freight train full of toxic waste as it plunges off a cliff right onto a carnival freak show. It should be quite a sight.

Let's start with the speakers. While there's a long list of Republican politicians who suddenly found urgent appointments that required them to be as far from Cleveland as possible, the organizers managed to put together a fabulous lineup of electrifying orators. Aaron Blake breaks down the speakers list, but here are a few highlights:


  • No fewer than four Trump children, including Tiffany Trump, daughter of Marla Maples and the Zeppo of the Trump brood.

  • NFL washout Tim Tebow, world #484-ranked golfer Natalie Gulbis, and Ultimate Fighting Championship chief Dana White.


  • The rabbi who converted Ivanka Trump to Judaism.

  • Rudy Giuliani, there to explain why black kids are a bunch of criminals who need the educational benefits that only a fusillade of bullets from police officers' guns can provide; a sheriff known for his criticism of Black Lives Matter is also on the bill.


  • A man whose son was killed by an undocumented immigrant.

  • A guy who owns a casino.

  • The guy who runs Trump's winery.

  • Antonio Sabato, Jr., I guess because why the hell not.

This is, to say the least, not exactly the lineup you'd put together if you were really trying to appeal to the broad electorate. It's also notable for who's missing. It wasn't long ago that the party touted its rising minority stars, a generation of charismatic young politicians of color who could change the image of the party as a bunch of angry old white guys. Officeholders like Nikki Haley, Susana Martinez, Brian Sandoval, Tim Scott, and Mia Love (and even this kid from Florida named Marco) could show American a different face of the GOP. Four years ago, all of them addressed the Republican convention that nominated Mitt Romney. But this year, not one of them is on the schedule.

And what about the themes of the convention? If you had asked a diehard liberal what Republicans would showcase, he'd have probably responded sarcastically, “I'll bet they'll do a whole night on Benghazi, then show a video attacking Bill Clinton for his affairs.”

Well guess what: the first night of the convention will revolve around Benghazi, and at some point there will be some kind of “presentation” about Bill Clinton's sexual indiscretions.

The party will be ratifying a platform that has become not just more conservative than ever before, but in an almost comical way. Among other things, it endorses a wall across our entire southern border, declares pornography a “public health crisis,” changes its previous references to “illegal immigrants” to now say “illegal aliens,” and reiterates the party's opposition to gay people being allowed to marry or adopt children, transgender people being able to use the right bathrooms, women serving in combat, any restrictions on AR-15s or large-capacity magazines, and the Soviet plot to contaminate our precious bodily fluids (okay, I'm kidding about the last one).

Meanwhile, outside the convention hall, a group called Bikers for Trump is coming en masse to start cracking skulls if they see any nogoodniks stirring up trouble. “We're anticipating a victory dance, but it sounds like there's a lot of agitators and a lot of troublemakers coming to town,” the group's leader told CNN. “You can definitely count on the Bikers for Trump standing with the police department in the event they need it.”

I'm sure the cops are glad to hear it, because if there's one thing that will keep everything calm and civil, it’s a bunch of gun-toting Trump-supporting bikers ready to throw down.

And there will be guns, because Ohio's laws allow you to carry them pretty much anywhere. People coming to the area around the convention will be barred from carrying things like canned goods, drones, and tennis balls; most fittingly, you'll be arrested if you're carrying a water pistol, but carrying an actual pistol is just fine.

If you're worried about missing out by not being there in person, you might console yourself with the fact that there's a reasonable chance that a powerful alien empire will decide to vaporize the entire Cleveland area with a death ray in order to forestall the threat this lunacy poses to the galaxy. While we hope no one actually gets killed, it's a good bet that this is going to be the most fascinating and ghastly convention in modern times. In other words, it will be a perfect reflection of the man the Republican Party has chosen to nominate.


• Paul Waldman is a contributor to The Plum Line blog, and a senior writer at The American Prospect.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related story:

 • Billboard depicting Donald Trump, Ted Cruz kissing goes up on Cleveland's West Side


https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/07/14/get-ready-for-the-trumpiest-show-on-earth
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« Reply #217 on: July 18, 2016, 05:16:58 pm »


from The Washington Post....

‘Make America Great Again’ is not a policy.
It's an exercise in mass psychology.


By ROBERT J. SAMUELSON | 7:40PM EDT - Sunday, July 17, 2016

Donald Trump in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. — Photograph: Randall Hill/Associated Press.
Donald Trump in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. — Photograph: Randall Hill/Associated Press.

THE Republican National Convention in Cleveland this week ought to be interesting, but whether it will be informative is another question. Barring a last-minute surprise, the delegates will nominate real estate magnate Donald Trump to be the GOP presidential candidate, and he will pledge — probably repeatedly — to “make America great again.”

Just how he plans to do this (or whether the slogan is simply a clever sound bite) is something of a mystery, because Trump has advanced only the sketchiest of agendas. By now, its main elements are well-known: He would evict the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants; ban Muslims from entering the United States; slap stiff tariffs (35 percent and 45 percent, respectively) on Mexican and Chinese imports; and push Congress to pass a tax cut of $9.5 trillion over a decade.

It's doubtful that this program could be enacted in its entirety. Shipping 11 million people out of the country — to take an obvious example — is, at best, a cruel and daunting logistical exercise. It would surely face legal and political challenges. But even if the full program were adopted, it wouldn't restore America to some prior period of grandeur.

Think about it. If 11 million people left the country, there would be less spending. The economy would weaken. Likewise, production of many items made in Mexico and China would not return to the United States but would shift to other low-wage countries. There would probably be retaliation against U.S. exports to Mexico ($236 billion in 2015) and China ($116 billion), costing American jobs.

As for the massive tax cut, the economy doesn't need more “stimulus” now. The unemployment rate is 4.9 percent. If taxes were cut anyway, or used to offset a Trump-induced recession, large budget deficits would grow still larger. (This assumes — as seems likely — that the tax cuts wouldn't be fully offset by spending reductions.)

None of this constitutes a plausible program for economic renewal. It's a hodgepodge of mostly bad ideas that's supposed to hypnotize large numbers of Americans who feel (understandably in many cases) that they've been misused by an economy that mainly serves a wealthy upper class. Their incomes are squeezed; their jobs are less secure.

The pledge to “make America great again” is not an economic project. It's an exercise in mass psychology. The idea is to get people to displace their anger and frustration onto groups that (in Trump's view) have eroded America's “greatness” — Mexicans, Muslims, the Chinese, political and financial elites, and “the media.” The Trump treatment is to peddle hatred and resentment for his political gain.

As an election strategy, this might succeed if enough people subscribe to his self-serving stereotypes. But as economic policy, it's mostly a dud. It won't change most people's objective circumstances. In some cases, it may protect them from imports. But for most, it won't provide jobs, and any income gains from tax cuts are skewed toward the rich. Sooner or later, people will recognize that they've been had.

Trump's serious deficiencies are of character, not intellect. He is a salesman whose favorite product is himself. His moral code is defined by what works. What works to build his popularity is legitimate, even if it's untrue, tasteless, personally cruel or inconsistent with what he has said before. What doesn't work is useless, even if it involves inconvertible truths, important policies or common courtesies.

One consequence is a paucity of genuine policy debates. Consider budget deficits. Based on current policies, the Congressional Budget Office projects that annual deficits will go from today's 3 percent of the economy (gross domestic product) to 8 percent of GDP by the 2040s. What should be done? Trump hasn't had much to say. (To be fair, neither has Hillary Clinton.)

There's no secret as to what's happening. A slowing economy is colliding with a rising demand for government benefits, driven mainly by an aging society and its impact on federal programs for the elderly. Even now, Social Security and Medicare represent nearly half of non-interest federal spending. Their share will grow.

How much should we allow the expanding benefits for the elderly to degrade the rest of government — from defense to highways to subsidized school lunches — by slowly squeezing spending that's not for the elderly? This is a central political question of our time, and it has been evaded for obvious reasons (either taxes must go up or spending must go down).

The role of campaigns and elections in democracies is to let the people speak. Ideally, it is to shape public opinion by informing it and allowing it to coalesce around widely shared beliefs. But when the information being served up is false, incomplete or deceptive, the process is perverse. It sows disillusion, not progress.


• Robert J. Samuelson writes a weekly column on economics for The Washington Post.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

 • Robert J. Samuelson: We're not a poor country, Mr. Trump

 • Catherine Rampell: President Trump would be the biggest threat to the U.S. economy

 • The Washington Post's View: Donald Trump sets a new record for economic recklessness

 • Catherine Rampell: Donald Trump's trade policies are dangerous

 • Henry M. Paulson Jr.: When it comes to Trump, a Republican treasury secretary says: Choose country over party


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/make-america-great-again-is-not-a-policy-its-an-exercise-in-mass-psychology/2016/07/17/e316d5a2-4ab5-11e6-bdb9-701687974517_story.html
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« Reply #218 on: July 20, 2016, 05:05:50 pm »


TRUMP CLOWN CIRCUS CONVENTION
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« Reply #219 on: July 20, 2016, 08:19:02 pm »

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« Reply #220 on: July 21, 2016, 12:39:12 pm »


RUNING MATE
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« Reply #221 on: July 26, 2016, 01:08:50 pm »


ZERO ELECTORAL EXPERIENCE
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« Reply #222 on: July 26, 2016, 04:36:58 pm »

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« Reply #223 on: July 28, 2016, 02:56:54 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Trump invites Russia to meddle in the U.S. presidential
race with Clinton's emails


By PHILIP RUCKER, ROBERT COSTA and JOSE A. DELREAL | 5:39PM EDT - Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said the United States gets “no respect” from Russian President Vladimir Putin during a town hall event in Scranton, Pennsylvania on July 27th. — Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said the United States gets “no respect” from Russian President Vladimir Putin
during a town hall event in Scranton, Pennsylvania on July 27th. — Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters.


PHILADELPHIA — Republican nominee Donald Trump pleaded directly on Wednesday with the Russian government to meddle in the U.S. presidential election by finding and releasing tens of thousands of private emails from his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton — an extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented maneuver in American politics.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a news conference at one of his South Florida resorts. He added later, “They probably have them. I'd like to have them released.”

Asked whether Russian espionage into the former secretary of state's correspondence would concern him, Trump said, “No, it gives me no pause. If they have them, they have them.”

The emails cited by Trump are from Clinton's time at the State Department, where her use of a private server prompted a federal investigation. The FBI concluded that no prosecution was necessary.

Those are different than emails from the Democratic National Committee that were leaked ahead of the party convention here, possibly with the involvement of Russia. The FBI is investigating whether Russian state actors were responsible for leaking the politically damaging messages last Friday in an episode that forced the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

President Obama, who was scheduled to address the convention on Wednesday night, told NBC News in an interview on Tuesday that Russia could be working to influence the election.

“What we do know is that the Russians hack our systems, not just government systems but private systems,” Obama said. “What the motives were in terms of the leaks, all that — I can't say directly. What I do know is that Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin.”

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook responded to Trump's Wednesday comments with a tone of disbelief, telling reporters the apparent hacking was “a national security issue.”

“It appears the Russians did steal these emails from the DNC,” Mook said at a lunch sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. “It appears as if they were active in releasing them for the purpose of hurting the campaign.”

Democrats have labored all week to put Trump on the defensive over his business and personal ties to Russia, as well as his professed admiration for its president, Putin, as a model leader. Some have portrayed Trump as Putin's Manchurian candidate.

The candidate and several of his top advisers have business connections to Russia. Campaign chairman Paul Manafort has made millions of dollars in business deals with pro-Russia oligarchs as well as advised the Putin-aligned president of Ukraine whose 2014 ouster triggered Russia’s intervention there.

Trump seemingly played into Democratic hands on Wednesday by praising Putin's leadership qualities and vowing that U.S. relations with Russia would improve if he is elected in November.

“I don't think Putin has any respect whatsoever for Clinton,” Trump said. He added: “He has a total lack of respect for President Obama. Number one, he doesn't like him. And number two, he doesn't respect him. I think he's going to respect your president if I'm elected. And I hope he likes me.”

In a series of afternoon tweets, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said the candidate was merely encouraging other countries to turn over any information relating to Clinton's emails to U.S. authorities.

“To be clear, Mr. Trump did not call on, or invite, Russia or anyone else to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails today,” Miller wrote.

Still, Trump's provocation alarmed many Republican leaders and foreign policy experts — not only for his disjointed discussion of Russia, but also for the signal it sent about their standard-bearer's worldview. Many were also alarmed by Trump's remark that he would be “looking at” whether Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, should be recognized as Russian territory.

Rather than approaching Russia with trepidation, Trump embraced Putin as a future ally and said he hoped to develop a chummy and mutually beneficial rapport with one of the globe's notorious strongmen. In doing so, Trump broke with decades of Republican instincts that were honed during Ronald Reagan's presidency at the end of the Cold War.

“It is a very big deal,” said Eliot A. Cohen, a former counselor in George W. Bush's State Department. “Foreign governments sometimes express preferences about who should be elected; that's already problematic. But to do something in the nature of dirty tricks would be a very, very serious problem.”

Trump's running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, issued a statement minutes after Trump's remarks that hewed closely to established GOP orthodoxy. Instead of baiting the Russians to reveal Clinton's emails, Pence said that the FBI must “get to the bottom of who is behind the hacking.

“If it is Russia and they are interfering in our elections, I can assure you both parties and the United States government will ensure there are serious consequences,” the statement continued.

A spokesman for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Republican-Wisconsin), Brendan Buck, said in a statement: “Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug. Putin should stay out of this election.”

It was unclear whether Trump's declaration would hurt or help him politically. Such comments by a normal candidate in a normal election year would be a seminal and possibly fatal episode. Yet neither Trump nor this year are typical — and as with past controversies, voters may not take Trump's commentary seriously.

Partisan figures rallied immediately to Trump's defense, blaming the mainstream media for blowing Trump's comments out of proportion and trying to shift the focus from Clinton's judgment.

“What's irresponsible is that more than 30,000 emails were deleted by a crook who broke the law,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Republican-Georgia) said in an interview. “I don't care if it's the Bulgarians, the Chinese or Haitian immigrants studying at Stanford. Let's see the 30,000 emails.”

Veteran GOP strategist Mike Murphy said many longtime Republicans were appalled by Trump's gambit.

“This is what happens when you nominate an egomaniacal bozo as your candidate for president of the United States,” Murphy said. “He has jumped the shark into complete embarrassment…. He'll please his half of the Republican Party every day until the end, but that's not enough to win a general election.”

On stage here this week at the Democratic National Convention, Clinton's supporters have tried to cast Trump as a pawn in Russia’s global ambitions.

“The truth is that a Trump victory in November would be a gift to Vladimir Putin, and given what we have learned about Russia's recent actions, Putin is eager for Trump to win,” former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright said. “And that should worry every American.”

Trump has repeatedly tried to do business in Russia, and Russian investors have been important to his real estate empire, particularly in recent years.

In 2008, Trump's son Donald Jr. told a real estate conference in New York that Russians constitute “a pretty disproportionate cross-section” of Trump's real estate assets. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” he added.

According to litigation filed in Florida, Trump’s partners on a Panama project traveled to Moscow in 2006 to sell condos to Russian investors. Trump also sold a mansion in Palm Beach in 2008 for $95 million to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev; he had purchased the home at a bankruptcy auction four years earlier for $41.4 million.

Trump has also sought to build a tower in Moscow numerous times since the late 1980s, when he said he had a deal to explore a Trump project in partnership with the Soviet government. His most recent effort came after a Putin ally, Aras Agalarov, known as the Trump of Russia, paid Trump millions to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013. Agalarov has told The Washington Post that he signed a preliminary deal to bring a Trump project to the Russian capital.

“We will be in Moscow at some point,” Trump promised in a 2007 deposition.

Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization, also outlined the company's interest in Russia to The Post in May. “We're always looking to expand and do projects all over the world. I have no doubt, as a company, I know we’ve looked at deals in Russia. And many of the former Russian republics,” he said.

Trump tried to swat away several questions from reporters on Wednesday about his ties to Russia. “I have nothing to do with Russia,” he told one journalist. “How many times do I have to say that? Are you a smart man? I have nothing to do with Russia.”

Trump has also surrounded himself with aides with ties to Russia, in addition to Manafort. One of his foreign policy advisers, Carter Page, once ran the Moscow office of Merrill Lynch and has advised Russian oil giant Gazprom. Page has said his Russian business associates are excited at the prospect that a Trump presidency would result in the end of Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia, which has crimped their business.

Another Trump adviser, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who was on his short­list of potential running mates, has advocated for a stronger alliance with Moscow to fight Islamic State terrorists. Flynn sat near Putin at a 2015 dinner in Moscow honoring RT, an English-language media service aligned with the Kremlin.

At his news conference Wednesday, Trump imagined his presidency ushering in an era of good relations with Russia.

“I would treat Vladimir Putin firmly, but there's nothing that I can think of that I'd rather do than have Russia friendly, as opposed to the way they are right now, so that we can go and knock out ISIS together with other people and with other countries,” Trump said. “Wouldn't it be nice if we actually got along with people?”


Joaw DelReal reported from Milwaukee. Rosalind S. Helderman in Washington and Tom Hamburger and Anne Gearan in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

• Philip Rucker is a national political correspondent for The Washington Post, where he has reported since 2005.

• Robert Costa is a national political reporter at The Washington Post.

• Jose A. DelReal covers national politics for The Washington Post.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

 • Trump again proves he's the chaos candidate

 • The other remarkable, pro-Russia thing that Donald Trump just said

 • The Fix: The many problems with Trump's comments

 • Former Bush adviser: Trump's appeal to Russia was ‘appalling’

 • Republicans have a problem: Trump-Putin

 • By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines

 • PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY: What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail

 • Inside Trump's financial ties to Russia and his unusual flattery of Putin

 • Former mafia-linked figure describes association with Trump

 • In business as in politics, Trump adviser Manafort is no stranger to controversial figures


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-invites-russia-to-meddle-in-the-us-presidential-race-with-clintons-emails/2016/07/27/a85d799e-5414-11e6-b7de-dfe509430c39_story.html
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« Reply #224 on: July 29, 2016, 08:07:14 pm »



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