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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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A tax return is far from a complete picture of a person’s financial life. For one thing, it is an accounting of income rather than wealth, so it would not establish whether Mr. Trump is a billionaire. But Mr. Trump’s tax returns could provide significant information about matters of greater public import, including his debts and the sources of his income. For example, if Mr. Trump deducted the interest payments on a loan from his taxable income, he would be required to disclose information about the source and amount of that loan. Another example: A partnership that sells real estate, and includes foreign partners, must disclose information about those partners.
If Mr. Trump holds money in foreign tax havens, those investments would be listed, too.
The disclosure of Mr. Trump’s tax returns could also help to verify, or falsify, a range of assertions that Mr. Trump has made about his own life — stories that he used to build support for his candidacy and continues to use to build support for his policies.
One straightforward fact-check: Mr. Trump repeatedly said he would not benefit from the tax cuts passed by Congress in 2017. He said that he would be a “big loser” and that the plan “is going to cost me a fortune.” The claim is absurd on its face. Virtually every major analysis of the tax cut has shown that wealthy people like Mr. Trump are the primary beneficiaries. But despite Mr. Trump’s best efforts, facts remain stubborn things with special power, and the release of his tax returns would allow a precise calculation of just how much money the president put into his own pocket.
Concerns about Donald Trump’s fitness for the office of president arose during the campaign and continue to this day. But now, in the Mueller report, we have an abundance of new evidence that sheds light on these concerns. What makes this a unique opportunity is the quality and relevance of the data: They are derived from multiple sources both friendly and opposed to the president, were obtained under oath, and show us how the president conducted himself in the eyes of those who worked directly with him while in office.
While we were concerned enough to put our initial cautions in a public-service book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” each additional piece of evidence has substantiated the correctness of that assessment over time. Now, the Mueller report elevates this assessment to new levels. Here is just a small sampling: …
These episodes demonstrate not only a lack of control over emotions but preoccupation with threats to the self. There is no room for consideration of national plans or policies, or his own role in bringing about his predicament and how he might change, but instead a singular focus on how he is a victim of circumstance and his https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/19/18-times-donald-trump-complained-about-being-treated-unfairly/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.befb0f8e34ba (familiar whining about unfairness).
This mindset can easily turn into rage reactions; it https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/05/09/looking-mueller-report-from-mental-health-perspective/AaGgMt2Bq7vEHEZc5UKx7H/(https:/muse.jhu.edu/article/558608/summary in violent offenders in the criminal justice system, who perpetually consider themselves victims under attack, even as they perpetrate violence against others, often without provocation. In this manner, a “victim mentality” and paranoia are symptoms that carry a high risk of violence.
“We noted, among other things, that the president stated on more than 30 occasions that he ‘does not recall’ or ‘remember’ or have an ‘independent recollection’ of information called for by the questions. Other answers were ‘incomplete or imprecise.’ ” (Vol. II, p. C-1)
This response is from a president who, in public rallies, rarely lacks certainty, no matter how false his assertions and claims that he has “https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/05/09/looking-mueller-report-from-mental-health-perspective/AaGgMt2Bq7vEHEZc5UKx7H/(https:/www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/amid-latest-controversy-trump-claims-worlds-greatest-memory-n468621” and “https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/05/09/looking-mueller-report-from-mental-health-perspective/AaGgMt2Bq7vEHEZc5UKx7H/(https:/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_59f0cb90e4b0d094a5b6ce08.” His lack of recall is particularly meaningful in the context of his unprecedented mendacity, which alone is dangerous and divisive for the country. Whether he truly does not remember or is totally fabricating, either is pathological and highly dangerous in someone who has command over the largest military in the world and over thousands of nuclear weapons.
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As mental health professionals, we are able to offer our understanding of behavior when it reflects profound impairment. The psychological nature of the president’s impairments is thoroughly revealed in the Mueller report. The report has documented the president as willful, enormously self-absorbed, ruthlessly exploitative, threatened, and delusionally heedless of the consequences of his impulsive actions. His dangerousness constitutes a national crisis.
During the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton often warned that Donald Trump would do to the United States what he had done to his businesses.
She was thinking of his record of debt, failure, and bankruptcy—about which The New York Times offered grim new details this week.
But there is an even more disturbing way that Clinton’s warnings are being fulfilled. North Korea has resumed missile testing, disregarding both Trump’s wooing and his threats of “fire and fury.” It has taken the U.S. president’s measure—and found him weak and empty.
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In the 1980s, Trump was burning through his own money. As president, he’s playing with the wealth and lives of nations. That greater responsibility has not in any way improved his behavior. Greater power has also only temporarily restored his credit. The North Koreans see through him on missile testing. Now the Chinese seem to be doing the same on his trade threats. Trump’s current round of trade threats is failing to elicit trade concessions.
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The world is absorbing the lesson that Wall Street learned in the 1980s. Trump has only one negotiating move: Take an aggressive position, try to deceive others and maybe yourself about your own strength, issue threats you cannot fulfill, and then retreat amid losses if the bluff is called.
But whereas once those losses were denominated in the millions, today they rise to the hundreds of billions. Where once he troubled only those investors credulous enough to take seriously his tycoon image, today he troubles the peace of the world.
Senorman
Well-known Member
Sorry Newt, Trump’s NET LOSS was over 1B$, that is, after adding back a few random windfalls that generated minor profits.
The Trump tax records came from a source who legally had possession of the material, known as tax transcripts, the Times reported. There are others—bankers, employees, regulators and even family members—who have other such material. More of them may be more willing now to feed it to the Times, to me, or some other source known for understanding complex tax and financial documents.
It’s enough to keep Trump up at night, fearing that every secret he has may see the light of day. And he should fret because he has a lot to hide, as I’ve learned from following him for more than 30 years, diligence that made him nickname me “the weird dude.”
So why should you care that Trump is a financial fraud? Beyond basic questions about honesty and integrity, why should you care?
For the same reason that our government looks into the finances of people seeking security clearances. A man or woman in financial stress is just the kind of person spy agencies target. Plying people in desperate need of cash is an ancient and often very successful technique for grooming traitors.
We know that Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have been exceptionally friendly to Russian oligarchs (aka Vladimir Putin’s criminal gang), Saudi royals, and others eager to bend American government policy in their favor. And Trump is always praising Putin, saying he takes him at his word while he dismisses the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Now that we know Trump is a fake business genius, it’s also reasonable to ask what other cons he has run on the American people, especially since his administration says it will fight every effort by House Democrats to engage in oversight of the administration.
The Times exposé, brilliant in its grasp of complex accounting and tax issues and yet told in simple language, also confirms my reporting on why Trump is always trying to do a new deal instead of growing the businesses he has controlled over the years.
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In 1989, when the Trump Organization was hurtling toward collapse, he reported $52.9 million of interest income. That was more than 110 times the interest income he had reported three years earlier in 1986.
The more than $1 million per week of interest for 1989 implies that Trump held more than $660 million of 30-year Treasury bonds or more than $350 million of risky junk bonds paying an eye-popping 15 percent interest.
Who paid that interest?—if it was interest. We know Trump was for years deeply entangled with a major international cocaine trafficker, has done squirrely deals with Russians that on the surface make no economic sense, among other strange financial deals. Was what Trump reported as interest actually payment for something else? If so, was it benign or sinister?
From other records we know that Trump did not have such vast holdings in bonds. The Times, always equally genteel and respectful of power, called it a mystery.
It’s a mystery that Congress has the power to investigate. It should. After all, as Richard Nixon told us, “Americans need to know that their president is not a crook.”
(CNN) President Donald Trump often freely admits he doesn't know what's going to happen next with his risky global bets.
So at a moment of high tension -- with Trump juggling unfolding crises with Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and China -- the rest of the world could be forgiven for being in a state of high alarm.
"We'll see, we'll see," Trump said on Thursday.
He was referring to deadline efforts to avert a China trade war but his comment encapsulates his off-the-cuff attitude, which often leaves allies, enemies and even his own staff guessing.
Each of these simmering crises is also the result of decisions made earlier in the Trump administration. It's too early to know whether he, and America, will succeed or fail. Presidents reap what they sow in foreign policy, even if it takes time for their initial decisions made early in their terms to reshape the world.
But the bill may be becoming due for Trump's unorthodox style.
The President often treats foreign policy as an extension of his wild, unpredictable character that abhors restraints, has little appreciation for history and lives in the moment. He says he's the master deal maker, but he's more of a destroyer than a builder on the world stage.
He loves splashy headlines, defying the wisdom of diplomatic sages, the spotlight of one-on-one summits, jabbing allies and using tyrants as pen pals.
He enjoys wielding a big stick but doesn't want to get into foreign quagmires. He disdains long-thought-out strategies, hates global organizations and doesn't sweat details.
The current dramas have all been exacerbated by the President's shoot-from-the-lip interventions and his tendency to reject traditional diplomatic practice.
