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Donald Trump 2020

Francisco 2.0

By Francisco 2.0
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Thatguy
Thatguy

Let me be candid and honest here my man. I cannot be sympathetic to your comments because this is how adult life has always been. From the moment I stepped out of my home and headed off to college I h

Francisco 2.0
Francisco 2.0
henrygandorf
henrygandorf

it won't matter if his taxes ever come out.  it won't matter if his taxes don't ever come out.  you wanna know why?  because we already know what's in them. since early 2017 when people starting

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32,432

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https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-sneak-peek-643038a0-7e3c-4f70-8b30-ea1e65d1ba0f.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiossneakpeek&stream=top

 

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President Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has told several White House staffers he's fed specific nuggets of information to suspected leakers to see if they pass them on to reporters — a trap that would confirm his suspicions.

"Meadows told me he was doing that," said one former White House official. "I don't know if it ever worked."

Why it matters: This hunt for leakers has put some White House staffers on edge, with multiple officials telling Axios that Meadows has been unusually vocal about his tactics. So far, he's caught only one person, for a minor leak.

 

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Trump has made clear to Meadows that an important part of his job is to "find the leakers" — a wickedly difficult task that has plagued all three of Meadows' predecessors.

Trump is especially furious about two recent leaks of classified and sensitive information.

As Politico first reported, the administration has interviewed people with access to the intelligence that the Russians were paying the Taliban bounties to kill American soldiers. A senior White House official confirmed Politico's reporting that they have narrowed down the list of suspects to fewer than 10 people. 

Trump was also enraged when the New York Times reported that the Secret Service rushed him down to the bunker during the protests outside the White House.

 

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So far, Meadows has yet to deliver on either of these high-priority leak hunts. A source familiar with Meadows' thinking said he is "focused on national security leaks and could care less about the palace intrigue stories." 

On a recent podcast with Sen. Ted Cruz, however, Meadows said they had tracked down and fired a federal employee who leaked information about a White House social media executive order.

 

Spoiler

Meadows, Trump's fourth chief of staff in three and a half years, faces the same problem all of his predecessors faced: In the leakiest White House in modern history, how does one possibly satisfy a president who has privately said he feels like he's surrounded by snakes?

All of Trump's chiefs have tried to stop the leaks, with no success, but perhaps nobody tried harder than Mick Mulvaney. 

Mulvaney never netted the sort of catch Trump wanted. A former White House official said the one time Mulvaney did take evidence to Trump that he presented as damaging, the president dismissed it. 

In January, Mulvaney asked the White House's IT department to search the work cellphone records of senior staff. His office gave the IT department the cellphone numbers of the top reporters who cover the White House.

After getting back the spreadsheet and finding senior staff contacts with reporters to be mostly unremarkable, Mulvaney zeroed in on what he thought were some unusual phone calls for White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.

Mulvaney, who had been in a bitter feud with Cipollone, had already told Trump he thought the White House counsel was a leaker.

When he made those accusations, Trump replied, "The guy doesn't even talk to the press. Never has," said a source familiar with their interactions.

The spreadsheet the IT department produced for Mulvaney in mid-January showed that Cipollone had multiple phone calls with the New York Times' Maggie Haberman and CNN's Pamela Brown. But when Mulvaney presented this information to the president, Trump brushed it off and did nothing about it, the former official said.

A former administration official familiar with the impeachment defense defended Cipollone. "Pat was encouraged by the president to talk with the media because the president viewed him as a strong advocate on his behalf. This was part of a coordinated effort."

"It's important to note Pat made all of these calls from his official phone," the former official added. "If he was leaking, do you really think he’d be doing it from his official phone?"

Told of this incident, Chris Whipple, presidential historian who wrote the definitive book on White House chiefs of staff, called it "unprecedented." 

"It's a level of paranoia that we never even saw in the Nixon White House," said Whipple, whose forthcoming book is "The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future."

Trump went into a fury about leakers in late 2019 and early 2020.Trump told multiple members of staff it was a high priority to find "Anonymous," the senior administration official who wrote a viral New York Times op-ed and later a bestselling book describing Trump as dangerously unfit and unstable.

The White House procured authorship attribution software to match Anonymous' writing style against internal writing samples from current administration officials. But the software was difficult to use and the effort failed, according to a senior administration official.

Meanwhile, Trump's trade adviser Peter Navarro launched his own personal hunt for Anonymous. 

Navarro's investigation culminated in a lengthy memo citing stylistic analysis, biographical information, a Reddit post and a defunct blog to allege that the author was former national security staffer Victoria Coates. She vehemently denied the charge and retained counsel.

Other highlights of the White House's leak hunts include former press secretary Sean Spicer forcing his own staff to dump their phones on a table for an impromptu phone search — an interrogation that itself immediately leaked. 

And former communications director Anthony Scaramucci famously threatened to fire all the leakers, but at the same time... well this Vox headline sums it up: "Anthony Scaramucci leaked that he would fire a press aide, then complained about the leak."

The bottom line: Over the past three and a half years, Trump's White House has been in a persistent state of flux, but one constant has remained — he persistently urges his top aides to "either 'find the leakers' or 'find the f---ing leakers,'" as one senior White House official put it.

In early December, Trump told a senior White House staffer it would be "a better use of your time to stay here and find f---ing Anonymous" rather than join the president on his trip to London for the NATO summit, according to a source familiar with the exchange.

The staffer went on the trip, nonetheless. Seven months later, Anonymous is still at large.

"Leaks drive presidents crazy," Whipple said. "They always have and they always will. But one thing that effective chiefs of staff figure out is that the way you prevent leaks is not by tapping people's phones or threatening to ruin them. 

"The way you prevent leaks is by running an effective White House staff where voices are heard and people feel they have a stake in the process and there's some integrity.

"I know that may all sound Pollyanna-ish," Whipple added, "but that's really the way you prevent leaks.

"And the way you encourage them is by doing lunatic things like trying to monitor their calls and ferret them out and threaten to ruin them. So it's just counterproductive."

After we got off the phone, Whipple texted a final thought: "A good chief of staff knows that the best way to prevent damaging leaks is to stop doing illegal, stupid stuff. You don't have to be James Baker to figure that out."

 

 

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32,432

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But he wasn't going to have anything to do with Trump Org.  His kids would be doing it all:

https://www.scotsman.com/news/uk-news/revealed-trump-plans-build-new-world-class-coastal-retreat-scotland-2910997

 

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In what would be one of the most ambitious and expensive foreign projects undertaken by Donald Trump’s family business since he assumed the presidency, his company has commissioned a detailed masterplan to develop as many as 225 properties, as well as leisure facilities and shops, on an expanse of rolling farmland adjacent to Turnberry’s lauded Ailsa course, a four-time host of golf’s Open Championship.

 

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Given the Trump Organisation has yet to formally submit a planning application, it has not announced the project or publicised its intentions. But Scotland on Sunday has obtained a series of documents prepared on its behalf by an architectural practice and one of the nation’s leading planning lawyers. Together, they spell out the company’s grand ambitions for the 114 year old resort, arguably the most prestigious of all Trump’s properties.

 

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A key selling point put forward by the Trump Organisation’s architects is the creation of “high-end private residential homes for retirement living,” which it says would offer "permanent tranquility and respite” and help address a “social need” amongst an ageing population.

 

All well and good.  But those pesky fake media types always coming up with a question or two:

 

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While planning officials in South Ayrshire have refused requests to rezone the land in question, the prospect of Trump’s firm pursuing an expansion far bolder and bigger in scale than anything it has previously proposed at Turnberry has sparked concerns and renewed questions about Trump's financing.

 

But wait, there's more!

 

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What is self-evident is that the Trump Organisation plans to spend considerably more money on an asset which has remained stubbornly in the red. Accounts filed with Companies House show Turnberry’s corporate vehicle, Golf Recreation Scotland Limited, has lost nearly £43m since Trump’s 2014 purchase, and it is reliant on £114.9m in loans from its parent undertaking, the New York-based Donald J Trump Revocable Trust.

 

So, in 6 years the course has lost nearly 43 million pounds, relies on loans from a trust out of New York to stay afloat, and is adding on something like 225 retirement homes, with no word on how those are going to be financed?

 

 

 

 

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45,751

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Just now, Bama Chick said:

I mean, look at Trump in comparison.

e1e901798f4db62e18e7287a9187f665.jpg

Jimmy and GHW could get it (back in the day). Who knew?

We really did elect a full on white trash president. More than anything, this hell we are living in has opened my eyes as to how many white trash Americans there are. It’s staggering. 

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High Plains Drifter

High Plains Drifter 11,054

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40 minutes ago, longhornmatt said:

He wants to build a massive high end retirement community in fucking Scotland?  LMAO.  His idiocy knows no bounds.  Come retire to sunny ... Scotland.  

 

 

6 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

I mean, look at Trump in comparison.

e1e901798f4db62e18e7287a9187f665.jpg

Jimmy and GHW could get it (back in the day). Who knew?

 

That needs to be on a billboard on the road to Mar Lago.

 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54,477

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1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

So, in 6 years the course has lost nearly 43 million pounds, relies on loans from a trust out of New York to stay afloat, and is adding on something like 225 retirement homes, with no word on how those are going to be financed?

 

I would bet about a billion rubles that I know how it's going to be financed.

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54,477

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24 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

I mean, look at Trump in comparison.

e1e901798f4db62e18e7287a9187f665.jpg

Jimmy and GHW could get it (back in the day). Who knew?

I don't think you're old enough to remember when Jimmy tried to run a 10K.

Jimmy didn't do well.  Jimmy nearly went into shock!

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ChiTownDoc

ChiTownDoc 21,175

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Is there any college outside of Liberty that will have this asshat's presidential library?  I mean it's a shame his dumbass family is too stupid to be embarrassed...because if you've been President, how fucking terrible is having your library at some obscure fake church university?

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Upgrayedd

Upgrayedd 5,822

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4 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

Is there any college outside of Liberty that will have this asshat's presidential library?  I mean it's a shame his dumbass family is too stupid to be embarrassed...because if you've been President, how fucking terrible is having your library at some obscure fake church university?

It’ll end up at the University of Idaho because of a small oversight.

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tx 3 putt

tx 3 putt 77,619

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19 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

Is there any college outside of Liberty that will have this asshat's presidential library?  I mean it's a shame his dumbass family is too stupid to be embarrassed...because if you've been President, how fucking terrible is having your library at some obscure fake church university?

university of moscow will pay BIG BUCKS to get it

 

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NWBuck

NWBuck 8,588

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1 hour ago, Mo Horn said:

Ladies and gentleman, the President of the United States retweeting Chuck Woolery about Covid-19 being a hoax. What a time to be alive. 

Meh. Until Wink Martindale weighs in, I'm still skeptical. There were inconsistencies with Gene Rayburn's passing, though...

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32,432

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22 minutes ago, TornACL said:

It's the most American thing ever to suspect that a global pandemic is all just a conspiracy to influence the U.S. election. 

 

Soros paid Marvel to CGI the pandemic in all other world media, in order to show the US that it is, indeed, a global pandemic.

 

 

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Beantown Express 2.0

Beantown Express 2.0 6,561

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9 hours ago, ChiTownDoc said:

Is there any college outside of Liberty that will have this asshat's presidential library?  I mean it's a shame his dumbass family is too stupid to be embarrassed...because if you've been President, how fucking terrible is having your library at some obscure fake church university?

Let’s hope it is somewhere like Attica Prison Library and for an extra $5 you get to yell names at him while he is in his cell.  We could solve the national debt in about a month that way.

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Guest Lobo

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Wait, the new strategy against Biden is "He can't get the ratings I get, so Big Media will suffer financially?"

Am I basically reading that correctly?  That's what he's going with?  That wouldn't play during any other election in our history, but to attempt that now?  Da fuh?

I know you're worried about the economy, how your kids' schools reopening will unfold, the massive raging pandemic, Russian bounty hunters, and riots in your cities...but have you a moment to learn with me about how the Fox News Corp. stock price is valued against its Nielsen Ratings?  

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