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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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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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I know the media needs to continue to propagate their place in our election systems.  And then the pollsters, the consultants, the data analysts, et. al.  But the "What went wrong with Trump's campaign" talk is already starting.  I know it's early, but if he does lose---how the fuck can they have that conversation with a straight face?  I mean, he probably hired overpaid yes-men with tilted data sets.  But I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume the problem with the Trump campaign is it had Trump as its candidate. 

On to more fun topics...what's the Trump concession drinking game?  We know his rally speeches down cold.  And we know, a la Steve Schmidt lecturing Sarah Palin on Election Night in 2008, that he'll have some grown-up attempt to take him aside and convince him to at least read the teleprompter before he goes off-script and into the Russian ether.  

But really, what does one reasonably expect from such a speech and how do we turn it into a drinking game?  

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BehoId, The Underminer!

BehoId, The Underminer! 11667

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1 minute ago, Bat Guano said:

What makes you think he's going to concede? 

He won't. Ever. No matter what happens.

it will be amazing.  in my conscious life, only two one termers.  one was a highly dignified man who handled it in as dignified a manner as possible.  the other . . . maybe they'll be a bit of a contrast here.

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Pasken

Pasken 1309

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6 minutes ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

it will be amazing.  in my conscious life, only two one termers.  one was a highly dignified man who handled it in as dignified a manner as possible.  the other . . . maybe they'll be a bit of a contrast here.

Hard to imagine Trump hosting Biden at the White House for all the ceremonial shit next year if Biden wins.

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Hiphopopotamos

Hiphopopotamos 20865

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2 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

Imagine what the letter in the desk would say. 

I've wondered whether Trump will do any of it.  Will he leave a letter?  Will he make the drive over with Biden? 

Does Biden hold the ceremony to put Trump's portrait up?  (after he does Obama's)  Would Trump even attend?

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Bat Guano

Bat Guano 359

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I could really see him sneaking away to Mar a Lago sometime mid-December and setting up some kind of media outlet - TV network devoted to all-Trump all the time, combined with a boiler room of twitter trolls - and just never even returning to the White House. Keep messaging that the election was stolen, and blow off any actual presidential duties or responsibilities.

Not even kidding.

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BehoId, The Underminer!

BehoId, The Underminer! 11667

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1 minute ago, 4th&Five said:

If he loses I think he'll be out of the WH by next week and won't ever be back.  Maybe that's just wishful thinking.

no way. turning grift express up to 11.  executive orders that all ambassadors have to golf a round at mar a lago within 24 hours of a plane flight, trump tower must be projected onto the side of the empire state building 4 hours a night, ivanka replaces betsy ross on all official state artwork, etc.

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Horn Dogg

Horn Dogg 3804

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4 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Earlier I noticed Ag is posting tweets from right wing pundits with election fraud, etc. They are all in on believing this is a red wave and any other result is wrong.

If I learned anything at UT it was 1) how to have a good time and 2) never take aggy seriously.  aggy is a miserable cult that should be pitied, maybe even studied......but never taken seriously.

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Upgrayedd

Upgrayedd 5803

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49 minutes ago, Bat Guano said:

I could really see him sneaking away to Mar a Lago sometime mid-December and setting up some kind of media outlet - TV network devoted to all-Trump all the time, combined with a boiler room of twitter trolls - and just never even returning to the White House. Keep messaging that the election was stolen, and blow off any actual presidential duties or responsibilities.

Not even kidding.

And setting up his 2024 grift-o-rama 

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C-Man

C-Man 26982

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1 hour ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

it will be amazing.  in my conscious life, only two one termers.  one was a highly dignified man who handled it in as dignified a manner as possible.  the other . . . maybe they'll be a bit of a contrast here.

It's gonna look something like this:

 

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32290

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It's a great story at Forbes, but coming on Election Day, not sure how many will ever notice:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2020/11/03/the-ultimate-donald-trump-mystery-that-couldnt-be-solved-before-election-day/?sh=3b91e5c154ae

 

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As Americans vote today, they do so with a limited view of Donald Trump’s finances—especially at one project, the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, which offers the prospect of shedding light on many questions: who the president owes money to, whether he’s beholden to unknown foreign entities and how he manages his taxes.

The New York Times devoted thousands of words to the Chicago property last week, revealing some eyebrow-raising tax maneuvers. But key questions went unanswered. Both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have also dispatched crack investigative units to dig into the property, but they’ve come away scratching their heads.

 

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The clearest indication that something strange is going on in Chicago comes from the president himself. On September 21, 2015, Donald Trump picked up the phone and called the editor of Forbes magazine, who had just spent several hours with him, listening to the Republican frontrunner pump up (and lie about) the value of his assets in an attempt to climb higher on the annual Forbes 400 list of America’s richest people.

What could be so urgent to take more time away from the campaign that would ultimately catapult Trump to the White House? The Chicago project, which is the largest tower he ever constructed and one of the ten tallest buildings in the country. Rather than boost its value, though, Trump seemed intent on making it disappear. “If you want to mark it at zero, that’s okay,” he said, multiple times.

 

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Trump, who is known not to use email, followed up by faxing a handwritten, all-caps note scrawled in black marker. Between a couple of Trumpian boasts—suggesting Forbes was undervaluing his brand by billions and noting Trump Tower’s “GREAT LOCATION”—the future president reiterated: “CHICAGO CAN BE $0—(ZERO).”

Why would Trump, someone obsessed with appearing richer than he really is, push one of his marquee assets to carry a public valuation of $0? And why would a man, in the throes of a historic presidential campaign, be so concentrated on a single asset—his tower in Chicago—if it was just one of dozens that he owned?

 

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His actions are clues in a mystery. After all we’ve learned about Trump’s finances—from years of investigative reporting, an avalanche of tell-all books and a trove of tax-return data, the president’s biggest secret seems to be hidden near Lake Michigan.

 

Spoiler

Fifteen years ago, a blue-glass needle began climbing 92 stories into the sky, offering condos with hardwood finishes and views that extend forever. The building officially opened in 2009, at the low point of the Great Recession. Trump defaulted on a $640 million loan, according to his lender. Rather than back down, he sued his creditors, seeking $3 billion in damages. He claimed his lender Deutsche Bank helped “set fire” to the economy, which he called the equivalent of “having torched the building.”

Deutsche Bank countersued, demanding $40 million that it said Trump had personally guaranteed against the project. Four years later, in a bizarre turn of events, Trump secured $99 million of new debt from an unlikely source—Deutsche Bank. According to the New York Times, the fresh financing came from a different arm of the bank, but it helped pay back the original Deutsche Bank debt.

Fortress Investment Group also had a loan against the project, a $130 million note that was junior to the Deutsche Bank financing—and therefore more vulnerable. Court filings suggest that interest and fees accrued on the loan, bringing the amount outstanding to roughly $150 million by March 2012. It was then that Fortress, facing a dicey situation with a troubled property, allowed Trump to buy back the debt for just $48 million—apparently reducing the tycoon’s liabilities by more than $100 million.

The big mystery at the Trump tower in Chicago centers around the current loans outstanding against the building. In 2015, Trump filed his first financial disclosure report as candidate for president of the United States. In the liabilities section, he listed two loans against the Chicago tower. One of them was a $45 million debt to Deutsche Bank. The value of the other was harder to discern—the document lists it as “over $50 million,” without getting more specific.

Here’s where things get really complicated. The creditor on the second loan was a company called Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC. Elsewhere in the disclosure report, Trump noted that he owned Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC. So in other words, one of his companies was apparently lending money to another one of his companies. Since the value of the debt was listed at over $50 million, it would make sense if Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC, the creditor on the liability, was in turn worth more than $50 million. But instead, Trump listed the value of the asset at just $1,001 to $15,000. Every year since, the president has recorded the value on his financial disclosures as nothing at all. “There should be an offsetting entry somewhere,” said Harvard real estate professor Richard Peiser. “I can’t explain that.”

Trump offered a partial explanation in a 2016 interview with the New York Times. “Mr. Trump said he bought this particular loan back from a group of banks several years ago,” the newspaper wrote. “Instead of retiring it, he decided to keep it outstanding, and he pays interest on it to himself.”

But financial disclosure reports show no income for Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC, suggesting Trump does not actually pay interest on the loan to himself. And in the same interview with the New York Times, Trump offered a perplexing explanation of why he lists no value for the LLC. “We don’t assess any value to it because we don’t care,” he said. “I have the mortgage. That is all there is. Very simple. I am the bank.”

If Trump were like other banks, however, he would theoretically list the loan as an asset. There are other inconsistencies. Documents filed in the United Kingdom last year show that Trump also loaned about $200 million to two of his overseas golf resorts, but those debts—unlike the Chicago loan—have never showed up on Trump’s financial disclosure reports. Determined to unravel the riddle, Forbes spent months digging into all of this in 2018, reaching out to more than 200 people and interviewing over 50. Ultimately, none of them could provide a definitive answer.

Lots of the sources offered up theories, though. One suggestion was that someone could have simply made a mistake on the documents. That doesn’t seem all that likely, though, given that the filings include the same inconsistencies year after year. A more intriguing hypothesis: Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC could owe money to a secret third party, which might cancel out the value of the debt it holds from Trump, making the net value zero. New York accountant Mark Feldstein noted one possible advantage of structuring a loan this way: “It would be a way to disguise who he is borrowing from.”

All of this provides fertile ground for conspiracy theorists. Setting aside the possibility of money from nefarious sources, even a traditional lender could cause complications for the president. A review of past financiers at the building is enough to send shivers down the spines of both Democrats and Republicans. Entities tied to liberal tycoon George Soros, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and pro-gun businessman Stephen Feinberg all helped finance the tower in Chicago at one point or another.

Russ Choma of Mother Jones published two major stories about Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC. The first, released in 2017, suggested the loan could signal a secret lender for Trump. The second theorized that perhaps Trump could have used Chicago Unit Acquisition as part of a tax-fraud scheme. The Internal Revenue Service generally requires borrowers to treat canceled debt as income, forcing them to pay taxes on the amount of money forgiven. Choma suggested Trump could have acted like the debt was still held by Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC and therefore avoided tax payments.

The New York State attorney general seemed to be pursuing that idea as part of its investigation into the Trump Organization’s finances. The office tried to figure out whether the Trump Organization had recognized the debt forgiven by Fortress as taxable income, addressing the president’s business about all of this in April. According to prosecutors, the Trump Organization claimed its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, would answer questions about it during testimony. But when Weisselberg spoke to investigators, he wouldn’t confirm much at all, the attorney general’s office later said in a court filing.

Last week, the New York Times, which has access to Trump’s tax-return data, said that the president did in fact document $287 million of income from canceled debts in Chicago. Trump ended up paying taxes on very little of it though, according to the newspaper, because he used losses from other parts of his business to wipe out the income. Nonetheless, the revelation that he declared income from forgiven debt in Chicago casts doubt over the idea that Chicago Unit Acquisition is a vehicle to hide liabilities from tax authorities.

What remains is a swirl of unanswered questions. Did Trump account for all the forgiven debt properly? Is Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC in fact just a way of hiding a secretive lender? What else might explain the riddle? And why are Trump and his representatives acting so strangely about all of this?

It seems clear the president is hiding something. On annual net worth statements that the Trump Organization puts together for the president, the Chicago property has not appeared since 2009, according to the New York attorney general. Patrick Birney, who works in the finance department at the Trump Organization, has suggested that the debt against the Chicago building is only $45 million, completely ignoring the Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC loan.

And in 2017, Forbes asked a Trump Organization executive about the mysterious lender. The executive initially deflected questions until finally claiming—in perfectly clear English—that his phone connection was breaking up.

 

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Gap03

Gap03 3243

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2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Bunker.

Bitch.

 

And, if by the grace of God he loses.....every day between now and Jan 20th should just be a mass of people with loudspeakers out front shouting 

tenor.gif

....repeatedly.  Without stopping.

I've grown pretty fond of what the Brits adapted for him in 2017:

 

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ultimaton

ultimaton 2966

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1 hour ago, Hiphopopotamos said:

I've wondered whether Trump will do any of it.  Will he leave a letter?  Will he make the drive over with Biden? 

Does Biden hold the ceremony to put Trump's portrait up?  (after he does Obama's)  Would Trump even attend?

Depends on if they can work out the furlough with Sing Sing.

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Rapid Horn

Rapid Horn 2

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You guys are all talking like DJT is going to lose.  Hate to say it fellow Longhorns et. al. but whether you like it or not DJT will more than likely be re-elected.  Now the Senate may be another story but I think the GOP holds it or it's at 50 seats with Pence breaking ties and there is a slim possibility of the GOP getting enough seats to retake the House.  But then again I also bet on Texas football so there's that.

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BradInATX

BradInATX 9208

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2 minutes ago, Rapid Horn said:

You guys are all talking like DJT is going to lose.  Hate to say it fellow Longhorns et. al. but whether you like it or not DJT will more than likely be re-elected.  Now the Senate may be another story but I think the GOP holds it or it's at 50 seats with Pence breaking ties and there is a slim possibility of the GOP getting enough seats to retake the House.  But then again I also bet on Texas football so there's that.

Oh.

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