TRUMP the stupid CHUMP

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

that hits the nail right on the head Yak lol

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[guest49]

That's easy. 
One refers to Donald Trump, the other refers to Hilary Clinton!

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

ROFLMAO.....North Korea Donald Trump....


from The Washington Post....

North Korean state media offers support
for 'wise politician' Donald Trump

By ADAM TAYLOR | 10:31AM EDT - Tuesday, May 31, 2016


Donald Trump attends a campaign rally in Boca Raton, Florida, in March.
 — Photograph: Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency.

DONALD TRUMP, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has faced an unusual amount of criticism from foreign leaders — in large part because of his combative tone and unorthodox policy suggestions. This week, however, he found an unlikely international voice of support — in North Korean state media.

State outlet DPRK Today published an editorial on Tuesday that called the business mogul a “wise politician” and said he could be good for North Korea. “There are many positive aspects to Trump’s ‘inflammatory policies’,” the author of the article wrote, according to a translation from NK News. “Trump said he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North, isn't this fortunate from North Korea's perspective?”

The author of the editorial also dismissed Hillary Clinton, Trump's likely Democratic rival in the presidential race, calling her “dull” and saying that she hopes to use the “Iranian model to resolve nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsula.”

It's an unusual change in tone for North Korean state media, which has largely avoided talking about the U.S. campaign directly. The article claims to have been written by a guest contributor — Han Yong Mook, who is introduced as a Chinese North Korea scholar — but the fact that it was published by a notoriously patriotic outlet may well suggest that the ideas contained within it are likely to hold serious sway in Pyongyang.

Trump has made several recent comments about U.S. policy toward the Korean Peninsula. In an interview with The Washington Post's editorial board in March, he had argued that the U.S. defense deal with South Korea was not fair, adding, “We're reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing.” In a subsequent interview with The New York Times, Trump had suggested that he would withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea if elected, noting that Seoul may need to build its own nuclear weapons to protect itself. Trump then told Reuters in May that he would be willing to speak to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “I would speak to him, I would have no problem speaking to him,” he said.

Such comments had caused concern in Seoul, with JoongAng Ilbo, one of South Korea's biggest newspapers, dubbing Trump's ideas “myopic”. North Korean officials also had appeared to be initially confounded by his comments. During an interview with CNN in April, one Pyongyang-based official said Trump's comments about nuclear proliferation were “totally absurd and illogical.” Later, North Korea's ambassador to Britain said his country had no interest in talking with Trump, calling the candidate's overtures “the dramatics of a popular actor.”

Han Yong Mook writes, however, that North Korea should welcome Trump's proposals, suggesting that they could help Pyongyang achieve its goal of removing U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula. “Yes do it, now,” the editorial reads. “Who knew that the slogan ‘Yankee, Go Home’ would come true like this? The day when the ‘Yankee, Go Home’ slogan becomes real would be the day of Korean Unification.”

• Adam Taylor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. Originally from London, he studied at the University of Manchester and Columbia University.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related story:

 • 47 not-very-positive things foreign leaders have said about Donald Trump

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/05/31/north-korean-state-media-offers-support-for-wise-politician-donald-trump

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

every one loves donald

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

every one loves donald

Correction....BRAIN-DEAD MORONS who like being LIED TO love Donald Trump.

The American news media has been keeping records of everything Donald Trump has said, and they are also keeping records of him being caught-out lying, flip-flopping, being inconsistent, and generally changing his views to the complete opposite. Also his failure to engage his brain into gear before he farts out of his mouth. The fact that Trump supporters see nothing wrong with all those numerous examples of inconsistency, flip-flops and down-right LIES shows that they are STUPID SIMPLETONS & RETARDS who not only will swallow anything, but are TOO THICK to work out they are being taken for a ride in order to feed one despot's ego. It's going to be hilarious when those STUPID SIMPLETONS & RETARDS finally wake up to the fact they have been bullshitted to by the clown they are worshiping. I'm going to piss myself laughing at the IDIOTS when that happens.

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

everyone realises the american media are a bunch of liars who are owned by the same elites who have been screwing the americans in the arse for years.
nobody with a mind believes anything the american media says.

the country needs a new management team  which is something trump has lot of experience at
he will make america great again and get rid of the bludger pigs who are all mercenary puppets of the corrupt elite.

if trump wins and doesn't get murdered like jfk there will be real changes and not bullshit like obama who is just a radical arsehole
that divides the people and blows the race card trumpet every chance he gets because obama is a dead ball leftist lying wanker.

has obama ever kept any of his election promises?= HELL NO

the only thing obama is interested in is toilet policing because he's full of shit 

A List Of 23 Famous Obama Quotes That Turned Out To Be Broken Promises Or Cold-Hearted Lies

Obama Turns Lying Into A Fine Art

How many lies can one president tell and still retain any credibility? What you are about to see is absolutely astounding. It is a long list of important promises that Barack Obama has broken since he has been president. If he had only told a few lies, perhaps the American people would be willing to overlook that. After all, pretty much all of our politicians our liars. Unfortunately, many of the lies that Obama has told appear to have been quite cold-hearted in nature. For example, Barack Obama repeatedly made the promise that “you will be able to keep your health care plan” under Obamacare. But now we are learning that he knew that this was a lie all along. Not only that, the Democrats in Congress knew that this was a lie all along too. In fact, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, said the following when she was asked about Obama’s promise to the American people recently: “He should’ve just been specific. No, we all knew.” Barack-Obama-takes-one-last-look-in-the-mirror-before-going-out-to-take-the-oath-of-officeYou can see video of her making this statement right here. The truth is that they all knew that millions upon millions of Americans would lose their current health care policies under Obamacare. They deliberately lied just so that they could get the law passed.

And of course this is far from the only major lie that Obama has told in recent years. The following is a list of 23 famous Obama quotes that turned out to be broken promises or cold-hearted lies…

#1 “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

#2 “My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.”

#3 “We agree on reforms that will finally reduce the costs of health care. Families will save on their premiums…”

#4 “I don’t want to pit Red America against Blue America. I want to be the president
 of the United States of America.”

#5 “We’ve got shovel-ready projects all across the country that governors and mayors are pleading to fund. And the minute we can get those investments to the state level, jobs are going to be created.”

#6 “And we will pursue the housing plan I’m outlining today. And through this plan, we will help between 7 and 9 million families restructure or refinance their mortgages so they can afford—avoid foreclosure.”

#7 “I will sign a universal health-care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.”

#8 “We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime.”

#9 “For people with insurance, the only impact of the health-care law is that their insurance is stronger, better, and more secure than it was before. Full stop. That’s it. They don’t have to worry about anything else.”

#10 “We will close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, the location of so many of the worst constitutional abuses in recent years.”

#11 “Allow Americans to buy their medicines from other developed countries if the drugs are safe and prices are lower outside the U.S.”

#12 “We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years.”

#13 “Will ensure that federal contracts over $25,000 are competitively bid.”

#14 “We reject sweeping claims of ‘inherent’ presidential power.”

#15 “Will eliminate all income taxation of seniors making less than $50,000 per year. This will eliminate taxes for 7 million seniors — saving them an average of $1,400 a year– and will also mean that 27 million seniors will not need to file an income tax return at all.”

#16 “We support constitutional protections and judicial oversight on any surveillance program involving Americans.”

#17 “If we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home, we will end this war. You can take that to the bank.”

#18 “Will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.”

#19 “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

#20 “We have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division and conflict and cynicism…. That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, ‘Not this time….’”

#21 “We’ve got to spend some money now to pull us out of this recession. But as soon as we’re out of this recession, we’ve got to get serious about starting to live within our means, instead of leaving debt for our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren.”

#22 “[T]oday I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay – and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.”

#23 “I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will execute the office of president of the United States faithfully, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States.

http://freedomoutpost.com/list-23-famous-obama-quotes-turned-broken-promises-cold-hearted-lies/


only thing hes interested in is toilet policing because he's full of shit 

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Say what you like about American media........but there is actual TELEVISION FOOTAGE of Trump saying one thing........then actual TELEVISION FOOTAGE of Trump saying the opposite........I guess Trump supporters are too stupid (and too gullible) to switch their brains on and compute that when Trump says opposite things he is LYING on at least one of those occasions. And there is example after example after example after example of Trump saying one thing........then saying the complete opposite. YouTube is FULL of video clips of Trump's lies and inconsistencies. Only the STUPID cannot see it. Are YOU one of those STUPID THICKOS? 

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Trump saying one thing and doing the complete opposite....


from The Washington Post....

Trump has profited from foreign labor he says is killing U.S. jobs

By ROSALIND S. HELDERMAN and TOM HAMBURGER | 10:19PM EDT - Sunday, March 13, 2016


Donald Trump’s line of clothing and accessories is made in Bangladesh, China, Honduras and other low-wage countries.
 — Photograph: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post.

DONALD TRUMP wanted to market a line of men's clothing that would bear his name.

He told people working with him to help find a company known for producing quality merchandise on a mass scale. In the end, Trump signed on with Phillips-Van Heusen, a manufacturer of affordable shirts produced in factories in 85 countries.

The 2004 deal — one of the first of many merchandise-licensing arrangements in which Trump attached his name to products made by foreign workers and sold in the United States — is relevant today as the billionaire businessman wages a populist presidential campaign in which he accuses companies of killing U.S. jobs by moving manufacturing overseas to take advantage of cheap labor and lax workplace regulations.

Documents and interviews reveal the personal role Trump played in negotiating the deal. Participants said they could not recall him expressing a preference that products be made in the United States.

“Finding the biggest company with the best practices is what was important to him,” said Jeff Danzer, who was vice president of the company hired by Trump to broker the deal. “Finding a company that made in America was never something that was specified.”

Today, Donald J. Trump Collection shirts — as well as eye­glasses, perfume, cuff links and suits — are made in Bangladesh, China, Honduras and other low-wage countries.

Trump's daughter Ivanka, a vice president at his company and frequent campaign surrogate, markets hundreds of additional products under her own line of jewelry and clothing. Many are made in China.

The contradiction between Trump's business decisions and his political agenda illustrates the sometimes-awkward transformation of an aggressive, profit-oriented marketer and real estate mogul into a firebrand champion of the struggling working class.

When Trump began cutting licensing deals more than a decade ago, many business executives and politicians in both parties argued that free trade and overseas production were beneficial to everyone — a needed boost for poor, developing economies abroad and a path to cheap goods for middle-class consumers in the United States.

Trump, though, has emerged as the Republican presidential front-runner largely by tapping into growing anger among voters who think free-trade policies — such as the ones that have added to Trump's fortune — have devastated U.S. communities that have lost manufacturing jobs to Mexico, China and elsewhere.

Trump's rivals and critics say he is a hypocrite, enriching himself with overseas labor while blasting the practice for political gain.

Representatives for the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment, and a spokesman for Ivanka Trump's product line declined to comment.

On the campaign trail, Trump has blasted Ford Motor Company for opening factories in Mexico, criticized a U.S. drug company that moved its headquarters offshore and said he will eat no more Oreo cookies because its maker, Nabisco, moved part of its production to Mexico.

When news broke three weeks ago that the air-conditioner maker Carrier was moving 1,400 jobs from a plant in Indianapolis to Monterrey, Mexico, Trump wrote on Facebook: “We cannot allow this to keep happening. It will NOT happen under my watch.”

Moreover, Trump has mentioned labor conditions overseas in support of his position that goods should be made in the United States, telling CNN last year that Chinese laborers are “paid a lot less and the standards are worse when it comes to the environment and health care and worker safety.”

During Thursday night's Republican candidates’ debate, Trump said he knows how to fix the policies that encourage outsourcing because he spent so many years taking advantage of them.

“Nobody knows it better than me,” he said. “I'm a businessman. These are laws. These are regulations. These are rules. We're allowed to do it…. But I'm the one that knows how to change it.”

Trump's rivals for the Republican presidential nomination have tried — so far to no avail — to undercut his popularity among working-class voters by portraying him as someone who rampantly outsources jobs. A similar line of attack proved effective four years ago against then-GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

Senator Marco Rubio (Republican-Florida) called on Trump during a March 3rd debate to announce that “all the Donald Trump clothing will no longer be made in China and in Mexico but will be made here in the United States.” Trump dismissed the notion, arguing that China's currency policies “make it impossible for clothing makers in this country to do clothing in this country.”


This shirt in Donald Trump's clothing line was made in Bangladesh.
 — Photograph: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post.

Critics say Trump is being disingenuous.

Robert Lawrence, a professor of trade and investment at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, has reviewed Trump-brand products for sale online and found that a large percentage are imported.

For example, the website selling Ivanka Trump's merchandise line links to 838 products — 628 of them imported. Of those, 354 are from China, a country that Donald Trump often says takes advantage of the large U.S. trade deficit.

Ivanka Trump's products also were marketed alongside her father's on the Trump Organization website. But amid criticism last week of the family's outsourcing practices, his daughter's page was removed.

“I don't decry what he and his daughter do,” said Lawrence, who served on the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton. “But at the same time, for him to claim that this is somehow immoral and go after companies that have relocated manufacturing when he has done the same puts him in conflict with his own rhetoric.”

Lawrence said that some of Trump's proposals could hurt his own businesses. His proposed 15 percent tax on companies that outsource jobs, or a proposed 20 percent tax for importing goods, could result in higher prices for consumers buying Trump-brand products. Recently, he has discussed placing a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports.

Lawrence estimated that Trump's $250 suits made in China would suddenly be priced in the United States at $350 or more. “The impact would be staggering and widespread,” he said.

Michael Strain, deputy director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said that Trump's trade rhetoric is “deeply irresponsible” because isolating the U.S. economy could devastate businesses and hurt consumers.

Trump struck the 2004 deal with Phillips-Van Heusen, which owns Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, at a critical moment for his brand — the same year his hit show “The Apprentice” premiered.

Several people engaged in the negotiations said that Trump was personally involved. None could remember him specifically mentioning the U.S.-worker issue.

“If he's concerned about jobs in the United States, it should have been a question he asked,” said one person involved in the deal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid offending Trump. “And I can tell you that in none of the meetings did it come up.”

The shirtmaker used factories in some countries, including Bangladesh, China and Honduras, where labor violations such as forced overtime are common, according to Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a group that monitors factory conditions.

The agreement signed by Trump and Phillips-Van Heusen placed no restrictions on where Trump dress shirts, tuxedo shirts and neckwear could be manufactured.

Phillips-Van Heusen agreed that any products “manufactured by it or for it anywhere in the world” would not be made using child labor “as defined in the relevant jurisdiction of production,” according to the contract, which was filed in a later lawsuit in New York between the broker company and Trump.

Mark Weber, who was chief executive of Phillips-Van Heusen at the time, said the company employed a “global sourcing network” to produce clothes for Trump's line and other brands.

Weber described Trump as a master negotiator who correctly predicted the brand would be a smashing success and persuaded a wary Phillips-Van Heusen to sign on.

In a deposition filed in the New York lawsuit, Trump recalled that the massive clothier had been eager for the deal. “They were very hot to make a deal with us,” Trump said, according to a deposition transcript provided to The Washington Post by Jay Itkowitz, an attorney for the broker company that unsuccessfully sued Trump.

Weber, who is supporting Trump for president, said he concluded at the time that Trump was a patriot.

“He had a clear preference to support American values and what was good for America,” Weber said.

Asked whether Trump ever specifically expressed a preference for items bearing his name to be made in America, Weber said, “You're asking me for specifics that are very hard to recollect.”

Weber said that at the time, the industry's widely shared goals — promoted through overseas production — were to improve standards of living for workers in the Third World and to offer U.S. consumers lower prices.

“That was a time when America was very much in favor of building a better life for the people of our hemisphere,” he said, referring to factories in Central America.

“While we care about Americans, we care about people all over the world, too,” Weber said.

He also said that Trump never attempted to require that products be made in the United States as part of the contract between the two companies.

“No one can tell us where to make our products,” said Weber, who left the company in 2006. “I have never signed a contract in my 40 years of experience where someone could tell me where to make my goods.”

After Trump drew scrutiny over the summer for disparaging comments about Mexican immigrants, Macy's, which sold his clothing line, announced it was ending its relationship with him. Phillips-Van Heusen, now called PVH Corporation, quickly followed suit, saying that its licensing deal with Trump would be unwound.

Dana Perlman, a spokeswoman for the company, said last week that it no longer manufactures Trump clothing. She declined to comment further.

• Alice Crites contributed to this report.

• Rosalind Helderman is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-decries-outsourced-labor-yet-he-didnt-seek-made-in-america-in-2004-deal/2016/03/13/4d65a43c-e63a-11e5-b0fd-073d5930a7b7_story.html


I guess Trump gets away with it because there are plenty of STUPID, UNINTELLIGENT PEOPLE (including in NZ at the junction of SH2 and SH5) who are gullible enough to believe all sorts of bullshit, eh?

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

An example of Trump's SUCCESSFULL (NOT) business skills.

Not to worry....there are even IDIOTS in New Zealand (at the junction of SH2 and SH5) who are gullible enough to believe Trump is a success.





from The Washington Post....

Trump's bad bet: How too much debt drove his biggest casino aground

By ROBERT O'HARROW Jr. - Investigative Reporter | 7:03PM EST - Monday, January 18, 2016


Donald Trump, who currently seeks the Republican nomination in the presidential election, stands next to a genie lamp at the Trump Taj Mahal,
marking the grand opening of the venture in Atlantic City, New Jersey on April 5th, 1990. — Photograph: Mike Derer/Associated Press.

FOR months in 1987, Donald Trump maneuvered to take control of the hulking, unfinished Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. He snapped up stock in the parent company after its owner died and then made a surprise bid to take the company private.

With the Taj, along with two casinos he already owned in the city, Trump could dominate gambling on the East Coast. But first he needed to convince state gambling regulators that he was financially stable and could raise enough cash to complete the $1 billion project.

On February 8th, 1988, at a licensing hearing in front of the state Casino Control Commission, Trump said he could pull it off for one main reason: He was Donald Trump. Because of his reputation as a dealmaker, he said, bankers were lining up to lend him money at prime rates. That meant he could avoid the risky, high-interest loans known as junk bonds.

“I'm talking about banking institutions, not these junk bonds, which are ridiculous,” Trump testified, according to transcripts of the hearing. “The funny thing with junk bonds is that junk bonds [are] what really made the companies junk.”

Trump received the approvals he needed for the Taj, but the prime-rate loans never materialized. Determined to move forward, he turned to the very junk bonds he had derided in the hearing. He agreed to pay the bond lenders 14 percent interest, roughly 50 percent more than he had projected, to raise $675 million. It was the biggest gamble of his career.

In April 1990, the Taj opened as the world's largest casino-hotel complex, joining Trump's other holdings already operating in Atlantic City, the Trump Plaza and Trump's Castle. But Trump could not keep pace with his debts on the three casinos. Six months later, the Taj defaulted on interest payments to bondholders as his finances went into a tailspin. In July 1991, Trump's Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy, the first and most significant of the four that his companies have experienced.

The bad bet on the Taj Mahal continues to haunt Trump, the leader in the race to become the Republican nominee for president. During recent GOP debates, opponents and journalists have repeatedly asked why he should be trusted to manage the country after losing lenders hundreds of millions of dollars. Trump responded that he was shrewd for using “the laws of the country to my benefit” and has distanced himself from the Taj's troubles, saying he never personally declared bankruptcy.

Much has been written about this period of Trump's career. But much has been forgotten over the past quarter-century — or overlooked in this lightning-fast election cycle. The Washington Post reviewed hundreds of pages of legal, regulatory and financial records relating to the Taj Mahal. The Post found that Trump's statements during the campaign about his companies' bankruptcies play down his personal role in the downfall of the Taj. Trump took extreme risks in a shaky economy, leveraged the Taj deal with high-cost debt, and ignored warnings that Atlantic City would not be able to attract enough gamblers to pay the bills, documents and interviews show.

In an interview with The Post, Trump said his work on the Taj Mahal was ultimately successful and earned him a lot of money. He said the bankruptcy was the result of external forces beyond his control, specifically an extremely bad economy in 1990. He said he had “the prerogative” to change his mind about using junk bonds in the financing.

“I didn't want to have any personal liability, so I used junk bonds. I accept the blame for that, but I would do it again,” he said. But Trump vehemently denied that the deal represented a personal failing or affected his personal wealth.

“This was not personal. This was a corporate deal,” he said. “If you write this one, I'm suing you.”

Documents and interviews show he left a legacy of bitterness among onetime proponents, including city officials, casino regulators and citizens. Some came to see that the giant Taj, while outwardly impressive, had little financial substance behind it. Steven P. Perskie, former chairman of the Casino Control Commission and a former state Democratic lawmaker, called it a “Potemkin village”.

Trump made promises to Atlantic City that he did not keep, Perskie said. “When I read and hear him say he was beloved in Atlantic City, that was before [the bankruptcy]. He remembers to perceive how he started, not how he was perceived when he left.”

The Taj bankruptcy was a corporate filing, as Trump has noted. But there was much overlap between Trump the corporation and Trump the man. He owned 100 percent of the casino, documents indicate. As the Taj tumbled, so did Donald Trump, documents show. He eventually gave up half of his stake in three casinos and sold off other holdings, including the 282-foot Trump Princess yacht.

Roger Gros, publisher of Global Gaming Business magazine in Las Vegas, witnessed Trump's rise and fall in the casino business. He has tracked Trump's presidential campaign. Gros said the version of events Trump shares on the campaign trail does not square with the events that unfolded a quarter-century ago in Atlantic City.

“His claims now just are not credible,” Gros said.

The story of the Taj offers insight into the man who wants to succeed Barack Obama as president of the United States. Then, as now, Trump sold himself aggressively as a consummate entrepreneur and manager. He positioned himself as an outsider with unique talents and said he could achieve things far beyond the grasp of competitors.

In the Republican presidential debate in October, he said that his experience with companies that went through bankruptcy would help him manage the nation's debts.

“That is what I could do for the country,” he said. “We owe $19 trillion. Boy, am I good at solving debt problems. Nobody can solve it like me.”



By the time he became interested in Atlantic City, as early as 1976, Trump was gaining a reputation as a highflying developer in Manhattan. He had taken over his father's sprawling real estate empire and was looking to expand.

He kept watch as support for a referendum permitting casinos gathered steam in New Jersey's statehouse. The city then was a struggling resort town, “barren and hostile, with its boarded-up shells and vacant lots,” investigative reporter Wayne Barrett wrote in “Trump: The Deals and the Downfall”, published in December 1992. Gambling promoters promised that casinos would change everything.

After the first casino opened in Atlantic City in May 1978, Trump traveled from his offices in Manhattan to scout out the Boardwalk for possible sites to build his own hotel. Paul Rubeli, then chief of gaming operations for the new Tropicana hotel and casino, recalled hearing that Trump wanted to tour the property. Rubeli said Trump was very thorough and insisted on seeing everything from “the bottom of the building to the top of the building.”

“He was an up-and-coming guy,” Rubeli told The Post.

Trump began buying land along the Boardwalk and successfully sought to be qualified for a gaming license. In 1982, he teamed up with Holiday Inn to build the casino that came to be known as the Trump Plaza. When it opened in 1984, the Plaza was the city's tallest building and its largest casino.

The next year, Trump bought the Hilton Hotel, secured approval to operate it as a casino and renamed it Trump's Castle. Both did well, but his ambition remained unsated.

From the beginning, Trump kept an eye on the Resorts International Hotel and Casino, which opened in May 1978 as the city's first gambling hall. It raked in cash for the company owned by its legendary founder, James Crosby.

In 1986, Crosby died unexpectedly during surgery. His company was suddenly rudderless at a time when profits had begun to wane. Resorts was also overwhelmed by what had been Crosby's grand vision for a new casino: the Taj Mahal. Over the previous three years, Resorts had poured as much as $500 million into the massive structure, which promised more than 1,000 rooms. But it was only half done, and construction funding was running low.

Some people considered the Taj to be a money pit. Trump, then 40, saw it as a potential money machine. In March 1987, he made a move on Resorts, agreeing to buy a controlling chunk of the company's voting stock from Crosby's heirs — giving him control of assets potentially worth $1 billion. Market watchers applauded Trump's verve. But some industry insiders wondered about his timing.

Resorts was deeply in debt. The projected completion costs of the Taj had quadrupled to more than $800 million and were rising. To cash in on his investment, Trump would have to finish the Taj, and do it at a time when financing was becoming difficult to arrange.

At the same time, the gambling market was becoming more complex. Revenue in Atlantic City had risen to record levels. But casino profits had dropped in recent years because of mismanagement and fierce competition. In 1986, the city's casinos recorded $2.5 billion in gambling revenue but only $74 million in profit, according to one report.

Some gambling analysts were becoming bearish about the prospects for future growth. In June 1987, Marvin Roffman, a prominent analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott, said the opening of the Taj Mahal would only intensify the pressure on profits. He wrote that “we are projecting that 1990 may be a very tough year for the Atlantic City casino operators.”

Trump appeared to be undaunted. In July 1987, he became the chairman of Resorts' board of directors and finalized the stock deal, spending $79 million and receiving 72 percent of the voting shares in the corporation. Trump installed his brother Robert and another associate on the board. Trump wasn't acting merely as an investor or manager. He began to press for a lucrative “comprehensive services agreement” that would require Resorts to pay him to arrange for financing and manage the Taj's construction. It was estimated to be worth $108 million over five years.

Lending became exceedingly tight after October 19th, 1987, known as Black Monday, when the Dow Jones industrial average plunged by almost 23 percent. In the aftermath, Resorts stocks continued a long slide down.

On December 16th, despite the downturn in the market and qualms about Trump's management fees, the commission approved his services agreement.

Five days later, Trump delivered a surprise. He offered to buy the remaining Resorts stock at the depressed prices and take the company private.

In a news release, Trump offered gambling regulators a tough choice: They could support his new direction, or he would walk away and the Taj project would languish. The release warned that “only with the financial backing of the Trump Organization will it be possible to build the Taj Mahal.”

It was a striking display of self-confidence. “Instead of drawing the millions in fees due under his carefully arranged management contract, without any down­side risk, Donald was repositioning himself to rise or fall with the Taj,” Barrett wrote.

While his offer to buy the Taj was pending, Trump went before the commission to win approval for a casino license in his name for the complex. At the hearing on the morning of February 8th, 1988, the commission, unsettled by Trump's recent maneuvers, asked him to provide more details about his plans.



Trump, testifying under oath, said his attempts to raise financing had faltered because bankers did not have enough faith in Resorts and were uneasy about his lavish services agreement. He said it was not until he moved to take total control of the company that bankers responded well to his request for a big loan.

With him in charge, Trump said banks were willing to give him loans at 9 percent interest or less, “prime rates” far below what other developers could hope for. “I also, as I said before, don't have to use junk bonds. I can use my own funds or I can use regular bank borrowings, so I can build at the prime rate,” he told the commission. “I mean, the banks call me all the time. ‘Can we loan you money? Can we do this? Can we do that?’”

Trump took time to elaborate on the importance of avoiding junk bonds.

“I'm telling you that whether it's General Motors or Procter & Gamble, or any other company, if they have to go out and get junk bonds to do their borrowings, they are not a strong company,” he said. “They make them junk. So it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy almost.”

The commission and its lawyers expressed skepticism. How could Trump get such a good deal when others had to pay so much more to borrow?

“It's easier to finance if Donald Trump owns it,” he said. “With me, they know there's a certainty they would get their interest.”

Trump said he held another appeal for bankers: “I get it done, and everybody is happy and it turns out successfully,” he said.

He was asked, in general terms: “Is there anything that can go wrong, that you're aware of?”

“We can have a depression,” Trump responded. “The world could collapse. We could have World War III. I mean, a lot of things can go wrong. I don't think they will.”

The commission pressed Trump about his projected costs. His plans would bring spending on the Taj to $1 billion, with added luxury suites, gourmet restaurants and opulent fixtures, something the commission referred to as “extras”.

“Don't people have to live within their means?” one commissioner asked.

Trump said the added costs were insignificant and were necessary to help impress customers. “We are probably talking about a difference of $50 million or so,” he said.

“I mean, the worst thing to happen with the Taj Mahal is for the building to open and for people to have been disappointed with it,” he said. “Because word of mouth on something like this, it's like a Broadway show.”

“My basic attitude has always been that I want to do what is good for Atlantic City,” Trump said.

Ten days later, commissioner Valerie Armstrong said Trump's testimony was “laced with hyperbole, contradictions and generalities which make it difficult to evaluate” his fitness for licensing, according to a transcript of a subsequent commission hearing on February 18th, 1988.

“While it might be possible to conclude that the events of the past eight months resulted from happenstance, impulse, fate and/or events beyond Trump's or Resorts' control, it is also just as easy, perhaps easier, to conclude that many of the events leading to Mr. Trump's current [takeover] proposal have been carefully staged, manipulated and orchestrated,” Armstrong said.

A month later, a day before Trump's deal for Resorts was set to go through, his plan hit a snag. Merv Griffin, the television host and producer, made a competing high-priced offer.

Griffin said he would pay $245 million for Resorts if Trump agreed to vote in favor of the takeover and canceled his services agreement. Trump declined. For weeks, the two fought a highly publicized battle.



On May 27th, they agreed to a complicated settlement that split the company and its assets. Griffin got the existing Resorts casinos in Atlantic City and Bahamas. Trump received a substantial payment to release Resorts from his services agreement. More important, he got the Taj.

Trump later wrote that acquiring “the Taj wasn't something I had planned.”

“Our compromise, which gave me $12 million and the unfinished Taj Mahal, turned out to be one of the best deals I ever made,” Trump wrote in “Trump: The Art of the Comeback”. “At the time, I thought his chances of making Resorts successful were about as good as his chances of getting Sharon Stone pregnant.”

Within days, Trump formed a company called Trump Taj Mahal Funding to seek a loan for the construction. Despite his claims to the commission, Trump could not line up the prime loans. He had to make do with the junk bonds he had so forcefully derided.

In November 1988, a financial firm working with Trump issued junk bonds that paid 14 percent. He would have to pay about $95 million a year in interest payments, not counting the debt from his other casinos and holdings, according to one analyst's report.

“The Taj was going to be the biggest and the best and greatest,” Rubeli, the former Tropicana executive, told The Post. “As Donald would say, ‘It was going to be huge’.”

Trump's Taj Mahal kept expanding. It was now going to be bigger and costlier than anything Crosby envisioned — the largest, most expensive casino ever constructed. The complex would include 1,250 hotel rooms, a 120,000-square-foot casino and about 6,500 employees.

Trump paid little heed to a growing drumbeat of concerns about Atlantic City. In July 1989, Roffman, the market analyst, issued another gloomy report for investors. Its headline: “Atlantic City, New Jersey — Top Heavy in Debt — Houses of Cards”.

Roffman’s message was stark. Five years earlier, the city's nine casinos recorded almost $169 million in profit on winnings of almost $1.8 billion. In 1988, profit dwindled to under $15 million, even though winnings had soared to $2.7 billion.

The problem was debt. “The Taj itself looks like a big gamble,” Roffman wrote of Trump's heavily leveraged operation.

Trump and his executives knew of Roffman. “After he did his deal with Merv Griffin, he called me on the telephone and said, ‘Marvin, didn't I do a fantastic deal?’” Roffman recently told The Post. “I said, ‘I think you made a mistake, Donald’. I said, ‘Why own three casinos?’”

Trump brushed it off. “This is going to be a monster property,” Trump said, according to Roffman.

On March 20th, two weeks before the Taj opening, the Wall Street Journal published remarks Roffman made about the casino, in a story that said the Taj would need to gross up to $1.3 million or more every day to pay the bills and the loans, more than any casino had ever taken in.

“When this property opens, he will have had so much free publicity he will break every record in the books in April, June, and July,” Roffman told the Journal. “But once the cold winds blow from October to February, it won't make it. The market just isn't there.”

Trump was furious. He faxed a threatening letter to Roffman's boss. “You will be hearing shortly from my lawyers unless Mr. Roffman is immediately dismissed or apologizes.”

Trump also called Roffman directly, according to an account in Roffman's book “Take Charge of Your Financial Future: Straight Talk on Managing Your Money From the Financial Analyst Who Defied Donald Trump”. Roffman said Trump urged him to “write me a letter stating that the Taj is going to be one of the greatest successes ever, and I'm going to have it published.”

Under pressure, Roffman signed a letter of apology drafted by his firm. But when Trump asked for changes, Roffman retracted it in a follow-up note to Trump. A day later, he was fired.



Roffman pursued arbitration, saying his dismissal was unjustified. He won a $750,000 settlement from his firm.

“Understand that I was with the firm for 17 years, and I was a vice president of research. I loved my job,” Roffman told The Post. “I didn't want to lose it. And I had never lost a job.”

He also sued Trump, settling for an undisclosed amount. Roffman declined to discuss the settlement.

The Post examined documents from Roffman's lawsuit, including a deposition of Trump.

In his deposition, Trump said he could not recall reading any of Roffman's reports. He described Roffman's remarks in the Journal as a “vicious attack” and “not a nice thing on a human basis.”

Trump testified it was not his intention to get Roffman fired, despite what his demand letter said. Trump said he only wanted Roffman to withdraw remarks that “were totally inappropriate.”

“I didn't have the right to fire Mr. Roffman by any stretch,” Trump said in his deposition.

The Taj Mahal opened on April 2nd, 1990. Over the next several days, gamblers lined up around the block. Michael Jackson appeared as the star guest. Publicists called it the “Eighth Wonder of the World”.

Behind the glitter loomed extraordinary financial problems. The Taj and Trump's two other casinos labored under a total of $1.3 billion in mortgage bonds. Trump's empire owed an additional $2.1 billion to institutional lenders, of which Trump had personally guaranteed $833 million, according to the Casino Control Commission.

Trump's net worth became a subject of intense interest. Trump said it was about $1.4 billion. Forbes pegged it at $500 million. The commission later reported he was actually worth just $206 million.

In August, as Trump scrambled to remain solvent, accountants hired by him to assess his financial condition said in a report that his debts could exceed by $295 million the value of all his casinos, hotels, office buildings, his airline and other properties, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer article. In response to “severe cash flow difficulties,” he got a $65 million line of credit to keep Trump's Castle, Plaza, Taj and other Trump enterprises afloat, commission documents show.

Another crisis came to a head in November when Trump was unable to pay interest on the Taj's massive debt and defaulted. In December 1990, when Trump did not have enough money to pay the interest on the Castle's debt, he turned to his father, a successful development tycoon.

On December 17th, a lawyer representing Fred Trump went to the Castle's casino cage, handed over a check for $3.35 million as “front money”, filled out several forms and walked out with an equivalent amount of $5,000 chips in a briefcase, commission documents show. The lawyer repeated the procedure the next day, this time the exchange was worth $150,000.

Trump used the money to pay the interest, and the casino recorded the exchange as an outstanding gaming liability, documents show. But state officials later ruled it was a surreptitious loan and said it violated casino regulations. The state Division of Gaming Enforcement fined the Castle $65,000.

By March 1991, Trump was in “non-compliance” on $1.1 billion in loans across his empire, including the Taj, Trump Shuttle airline, the Castle, Trump Palm Beach Corporation and Mar-a-Lago, the spectacular estate in Florida.

Nearly all of his real estate holdings were “funded by external financing,” such as mortgages and construction loans, an internal commission report stated on April 15th, 1991. His lifestyle, meanwhile, was also sapping his wealth, the report said.

“Mr. Trump expects to exhaust his financial resources in July 1991,” the commission's report said. “Furthermore, as a result of his severely limited financial resources, Mr. Trump cannot be relied upon as a financial resource for Taj Mahal, Castle, or Plaza.”

On July 16th, 1991, Trump Taj Mahal filed a petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code. Trump described himself in documents as the “sole Shareholder of Trump Taj Mahal, Incorporated.”

The consequences of the Taj bankruptcy rippled through Atlantic City and Donald Trump's empire.


The Trump Taj Mahal, shown in Atlantic City, New Jersey this month, opened in 1990 as the world's largest casino-hotel complex.
 — Photograph: Yana Paskova/The Washington Post.

On August 28th, 1991, a federal judge approved the bankruptcy petition after a bondholders' representative said “it would be a disaster” if the Taj were simply liquidated, according to a New York Times account.

Under the agreement, Trump gave up half his stake in the Taj to bondholders in exchange for support in reorganizing his debt, according to the Taj's annual report for 1992.

Large institutions took the brunt of the losses. But many small-time investors who had bought the bonds, directly or through retirement funds, also suffered losses, according to Bryant Simon, a professor at Temple University and author of “Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America”. So did the small-business owners who sold Trump paint, equipment, food, limousine services and much more. Many were eventually paid only a fraction of what they were due.

“He was a brutal and ruthless negotiator,” Simon told The Post. “People paid the price.”

Trump acknowledged that he drove hard bargains but said he created many opportunities for lots of people in Atlantic City.

“I wasn't the nicest person on earth,” he told The Post. “Many of these same people, if not all, made a lot of money with me.”

On March 9th, 1992, Trump's Castle and Plaza casinos also filed for bankruptcy protection.

To resolve those debts, Trump gave up half of his stake in each casino to his lenders. As part of his reorganization, the casino commission put him on a short leash, requiring him to file regular reports about his other businesses, delinquent taxes and personal spending. Trump eventually sold the Trump Princess yacht, his Trump Shuttle airline and other holdings.

Even in the face of Trump's obvious financial instability, the commission allowed him to keep his gaming licenses because “he was too big to fail,” said Perskie, the former commission chairman. “The consequences for the city and the industry, and everything we cared about, would have been horrific.”

In his recent interview with The Post, Trump emphasized that his companies were not alone during the long downturn in the gambling industry in the city, saying that a number of other casinos also declared bankruptcy.

“I was able to take my great casino empire, which makes me far and away the number-one player in Atlantic City, and bring it through a horrific storm,” Trump wrote in “The Art of the Comeback” in 1997.

At its peak, Atlantic City had 12 operating casinos. Today, there are eight left. Trump is no longer involved, having sold his interests or given up equity through bankruptcy proceedings years ago. The Castle is thriving under new ownership, the Plaza is closed, and the Taj is operating under supervision of a bankruptcy court.

“Trump was welcomed with open arms by everybody and provided the sense he was able to do everything he promised,” Perskie said. “His name and his legacy in the city were significantly tarnished. The business community and regulators no longer accepted the music of the Pied Piper.”

Over the years, Trump has modified his business approach and rebounded with a focus on selling himself as a brand.

He now claims that he is worth $10 billion. Trump has developed a dedicated following, in part because of his brashness and wealth. He owns or has a financial interest in properties around the world.

When talking about his legacy in Atlantic City, he expressed no regrets. “The Taj Mahal was a very successful job for me,” he told The Post.

“It's not personal. This was just business,” he said. “I got out great.”

• Alice Crites and Walter Fee contributed to this report.

• Robert O'Harrow Jr. is a reporter on the investigative unit of The Washington Post. He writes about law enforcement, national security, federal contracting and the financial world.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/trumps-bad-bet-how-too-much-debt-drove-his-biggest-casino-aground/2016/01/18/f67cedc2-9ac8-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

I can post example after example after example after example of Trump's inconsistencies and business incompetence without even breaking out in a sweat, because I have already posted heaps of examples, and as I always format stories like that on notepad documents first (including inserting source code to place images, hotlinks, etc.,) I simply have to dig out those saved notepad documents (which are filed by date order using a simple numerical code consisting of an eight-digit number before the article title, with that number consisting of the year, month and date) and repost them to show up stupid, gullible Trump supporters.

It's just like shooting fish in a barrel.

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

he's already stated many times that he plays the system

i can't see a big deal with that when you're in business it's about making a profit you can't blame him for that, he admits it's wrong but it's caused by US government policy decisions which forces businessmen to adapt to it or go broke.

lets face it you only hate trump because he has lots of money and you want it because you're a rabid communist

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

your examples are as weak as your limp wrist lol

everyone has a few failures in life that's how people learn from making mistakes lol


and if you owe a bank a couple of hundred thousands they will take you to the cleaners but when you borrow millions banks are never as keen to force you into bankruptcy because you have them by the balls and they are forced to make deals.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Hahaha.....look at all those stupid Americans bending over and taking it up the arse from Donald Trump while he brings in foreign workers and uses them in his businesses instead of employing those stupid Americans who continue to take it up the arse.

STUPID people, eh? 

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

you have all the rantings of a mad man lmao

you're dirt poor trump is rich get over it you whining pussy lol

you the one that's butt hurt

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

There's a very good reason why the Chinese Donald Trump....



from The Washington Post....

• President Trump would hand the world to China



I wonder what all those STUPID Trump supporters are going to do when they wake up to the fact that President Trump has sold them out to China?

It should be bloody hilarious when the penny drops, eh? 

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

The Washington Post is broken ass left wing toilet paper

so its handy for something 

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

The Washington Post has a huge database of Trump's inconsistencies in what he says and what he does.

They can back it all up with FACTS and real-time recordings of Trump, unlike Trump himself who just farts more bullshit whenever he is caught out.

Not to worry....Trump has plenty of stupid gullible people who hang on his every word of bullshit.

It's going to be hilariously funny when President Trump sells-out all those white-trash stupid Americans to China.

I will be pissing myself with laughter!




And with that....I'm going to leave the STUPID to it and head off to bed....

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Hahaha....make America great again.....well they were great once, but then they started all those oil wars and ended up in hock to the tune of trillions of dollars to the Chinese due to living beyond their means with all that warmongering; and now the 21st century is gradually becoming the Chinese Century with the Americans gradually slipping into has-beens and owing trillions to and having their economy propped up by those Chinese.

Funny shit how Trump thinks he is going to reverse that. People of his ilk are like those Britishers who look longly back at the 19th century, which was the British Century prior to the 20th century becoming the American Century. There sure are a lot of stupid delusional Americans who will blindly follow President Trump into the annihilation of their country when he borrows a shitload more money to indulge in yet more warmongering. Funny shit, eh?

[nitpicker1]

I wonder how many he lost/won. ?


Trump has been involved in thousands of law suits

More than three thousand five hundred over the past thee decades ....


http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2016/jun/01/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-poll-sanders-election-2016-live

At least there should be no surprises coming out of the woodwork in the future for whoever wins this election:

Seems to me there can't be many more left to find?

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

He's still hiding his tax files, which tends to tell us he REALLY DOES have something to hide.

I reckon he has been avoiding paying tax and sponging off his fellow tax-paying Americans.

Filth like Donald Trump always have heaps of skeletons like that in their cupboard.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

PGA Tour moves tournament from Miami
Donald Trump course … to Mexico

By DAVE SHEININ | 6:14PM EDT - Wednesday, June 01, 2016


Donald Trump drives cart around the course to watch the final round of the Cadillac Championship golf tournament
in Doral, Florida, in March. — Photograph: Luis M. Alvarez/Associated Press.

THE Donald Trump-owned golf course in Miami that has hosted a storied professional golf tournament for the past 55 years lost that event Wednesday when the PGA Tour announced it was moving its elite World Golf Championship out of South Florida. Beginning in 2017, the tournament will be played instead in — of all places — Mexico City.

The move highlighted the uneasy relationship between the sport of golf and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, an avid golfer who has spent much of the past decade building a golf empire that includes some of the most coveted properties in the world. Some of golf's governing bodies have moved to distance themselves from Trump since he made controversial remarks about Mexicans and Muslims.

At a news conference on Wednesday, PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem initially said the move was not “a political exercise” but a financial one, prompted by the decision by Cadillac not to renew its title sponsorship of the tournament. Later, however, Finchem said, “Donald Trump is a brand — a big brand — and when you are asking a [sponsor] to invest millions of dollars in branding a tournament and they're going to share that brand with a host … it's a difficult conversation. The politics may have contributed some since he's been running.”

Trump apparently broke the news himself on Tuesday night during an appearance on Fox News, telling host Sean Hannity, “I just heard that the PGA Tour is taking their tournament out of Miami and moving it to Mexico…. They're moving it to Mexico City — which, by the way, I hope they have kidnapping insurance. But they're moving it to Mexico City. And I'm saying, you know, what's going on here? It's so sad when you look what's going on with our country.”

On Wednesday, Trump released a statement calling the move “a sad day for Miami, the United States and the game of golf.”

Trump purchased the Doral Resort and Spa — which had held a tour event every year since 1962 — out of bankruptcy in 2012 and rebranded it Trump National Doral Miami, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into renovating the property and redesigning the signature Blue Monster tournament course. In 2013, he signed a 10-year deal with the PGA Tour to keep the tournament there, although the tour had an out clause in the event of a title-sponsor change.

After Cadillac's decision last year not to renew its sponsorship contract following the 2016 tournament, the tour spent a year searching for a new title sponsor, Finchem said. That became increasingly difficult after Trump announced he was running for the Republican presidential nomination, claiming many Mexicans were “criminals, drug dealers, rapists” and vowing to build a wall to keep Mexicans out of the United States.

Asked about the decision to end its title sponsorship, Eneuri Acosta, a spokesman for Cadillac, said in an email, “We thank the PGA Tour for a great six years” with the tournament. Acosta did not respond to a question regarding Trump.

The tour previously warned of a potential move from the Trump property, saying in a statement in December — not long after Trump called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States — that those remarks “were inconsistent with our strong commitment to an inclusive and welcoming environment in the game of golf…. Immediately after the conclusion of the [March] 2016 tournament, we will explore all options regarding the event's future.”

This isn't the first time Trump has lost a golf tournament over his controversial stances. Last summer, the PGA of America announced it was moving the Grand Slam of Golf — contested in October — out of a Trump-owned course in Los Angeles. However, the 2017 U.S. Women's Open and Senior PGA Championship both remain on track to be played at Trump properties — the latter at the Trump National Golf Club of Washington, D.C., in Sterling, Virginia. The 2022 PGA Championship is scheduled to be played at Trump's club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

As for the former WGC-Cadillac Championship, the new tour event, christened the WGC-Mexico Championship, will be played at the Club de Golf Chapultepec outside of Mexico City.

“It's quite ironic we're going to Mexico after being at Doral,” Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy, the world's third-ranked golfer, said at a news conference on Wednesday. “We'll just jump over the wall.”

• Dave Sheinin has been covering baseball and writing features and enterprise stories for The Washington Post since 1999.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related stories:

 • Trump National loses PGA Tour's Grand Slam of Golf in 2015

 • Trump teed up $25 million in upgrades at Trump National in D.C.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/golf/pga-tour-moves-tournament-from-miami-donald-trump-course--to-mexico/2016/06/01/0a625456-2838-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

Trump's personal, racially tinged attacks
on federal judge alarm legal experts

By JOSE A. DELREAL and KATIE ZEZIMA | 8:19PM EDT - Wednesday, June 01, 2016

DONALD TRUMP's highly personal, racially tinged attacks on a federal judge overseeing a pair of lawsuits against him have set off a wave of alarm among legal experts, who worry that the Republican presidential candidate's vendetta signals a remarkable disregard for judicial independence.

That attitude, many argue, could carry constitutional implications if Trump becomes president.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is handling two class-action lawsuits against Trump University in San Diego, has emerged as a central target for Trump and his supporters in recent weeks. The enmity only escalated after Curiel ordered the release of embarrassing internal documents detailing predatory marketing practices at the for-profit educational venture; that case is set to go to trial after the November election.

“I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He's a hater,” Trump said at a campaign rally in San Diego, adding that he believed the Indiana-born judge was “Mexican.”

He also suggested taking action against the judge after the election: “They ought to look into Judge Curiel, because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace. Okay? But we will come back in November. Wouldn't that be wild if I am president and come back and do a civil case? Where everybody likes it. Okay. This is called life, folks.”

The courtroom proceedings come with high stakes for Trump, whose likely tough­general-election fight against Hillary Clinton will leave him open to intense scrutiny of his character, business practices and temperament. Clinton said on Wednesday that the Trump University allegations are “just more evidence that Donald Trump himself is a fraud.”

Trump's strikingly personal attacks on Curiel are highly unusual and have prompted questions about how he would react to adverse judicial decisions should he become president. Trump's remarks also stand out because he has a personal financial stake in the case.

“Having a presidential candidate embroiled in litigation totally unrelated to the political system … that is what is so novel about this. And then you add to this the personal criticism,” said Arthur Hellman, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “It's personal all the way, and that's what makes this different.”

Conflicts between the courts and the political branches are common and, to some degree, expected. The Constitution mandates lifetime tenure for federal judges who serve in “good behavior” and protects them against recrimination by forbidding that their salaries be diminished.

Judicial appointments are among a president's most lasting legacies, and in the current presidential campaign, candidates from both parties have gone beyond the comfort level of many legal experts by issuing litmus tests. On the Democratic side, Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont) have said overturning the Supreme Court's controversial Citizens United ruling should be a priority, while Republican candidates went after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. for his votes upholding the Affordable Care Act.

President Obama prompted outrage among conservatives in 2010 when he blasted the Citizens United ruling in his State of the Union address. Republican members of Congress criticized the president for attacking the decision with members of the court seated just feet away from him, while Democrats defended the comments as within the bounds of policy debate.

Trump's attacks on Curiel stand out for their personal nature, for the racial remarks and for the suggestion by a potential president that someone “ought to look into” the judge.

Charles Gardner Geyh, a professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, said he has no problem with presidents or presidential candidates criticizing judges or judicial decisions. But, he said, “there's a line between disagreement and sort of throwing the judiciary under the bus that I think is at issue here.”

One of Trump's earlier jeremiads came in February, when he told Fox News that Curiel was biased against him because of his controversial immigration comments and proposals, including his promises to build a giant wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and deport 11 million illegal immigrants.

“I think it has to do with perhaps the fact that I'm very, very strong on the border,” Trump said then. “Now, he is Hispanic, I believe. He is a very hostile judge to me.”

Trump returned to ethnicity at last week's San Diego rally, where he erroneously suggested Curiel was from Mexico: “The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great. I think that’s fine. You know what? I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump when I give all these jobs, okay?”

Curiel, who through his office declined to comment, was born in East Chicago, Indiana, and is a 1979 graduate of the Indiana University law school. He gained acclaim prosecuting drug traffickers along the Tijuana corridor and was reportedly targeted for assassination by the Felix cartel; he joined the federal bench in 2012 after being nominated by Obama.

Katrina Pierson, a spokeswoman for Trump, has expanded on the accusations of bias, wrongly suggesting Curiel is part of a group organizing protests at Trump rallies around California. Curiel is a member of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, a professional group that she appeared to confuse with the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group.

Luis Osuna, the president of the lawyers association, said the group is not an advocacy group and supports candidates on both sides of the aisle. He said Trump's attempts to discredit Curiel should give voters serious pause, not least because his comments reduce Hispanics in the legal profession to their heritage.

“Every time there is a comment like this, it is disheartening,” Osuna said. “It is not, unfortunately, surprising, given the source of the comments. But it displays a complete lack of understanding of the role that we have as attorneys and judges and the role that we have in upholding the Constitution.”

“He's definitely using it as a dog whistle to his supporters,” he added. “Obviously, I don't know what is in his heart. I can only judge based on the way he has acted in the past, but this has been a recurring theme in his campaign.”

Trump is not without recourse if he thinks that Curiel has engaged in misconduct. Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Trump could file a complaint with the federal court of appeals. He said Trump would have to provide evidence that Curiel was biased in his behavior against the real estate mogul and could then proceed with a disqualification motion. Wheeler said Trump could also ask Curiel to recuse himself from the case because of impartiality. If Curiel declined, Trump could file an appeal.

But Wheeler added that, based on what he has seen, Curiel “has been nothing but fair in this case.”

As part of the ongoing class-action lawsuit against Trump University that he is overseeing, Curiel ordered the release of internal documents that showed Trump played a key role in the marketing for the business and how staff members were guided to push customers to purchase expensive follow-ups costing up to $35,000 after taking free introductory courses.

The order came in response to a request by The Washington Post, which argued that Trump's presidential bid made the documents a matter of public interest. In the order, Curiel said that Trump had “placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue.”

• Robert Barnes contributed to this report.

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

• Katie Zezima is a national political correspondent covering the 2016 presidential election. She previously served as a White House correspondent for The Washington Post.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related:

 • PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY: These Republicans refuse to vote for Donald Trump

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/06/01/437ccae6-280b-11e6-a3c4-0724e8e24f3f_story.html