They tried that with the sanctuary city stuff. IIRC, the upshot was that federal funds are disbursed for specific reasons and have specific strings attached. The government can’t just cut off a source of funding if the recipient is fulfilling their end of the bargain.
He could probably direct federal agencies to create new rules for renewals or upcoming programs that are crafted exclude NY, but that would also get taken to court.
I may be wrong, but even if he were to win either or both of the appeals I expect he’d still owe some substantial amount to the plaintiffs. Wouldn’t a successful appeal simply result in the damages/fines issues being sent back to the courts for recalculation? I mean, his torts against Ms Carroll have already been adjudicated, as has his fraud.
My favorite sentence all week.
I love the idea that trump could end up homeless, only technically and only temporarily of course, but still.
Yet I fear that something like this will happen…
If the courts don’t cut him a break, I’m concerned he maybe could get financed by a Russian bank, or manage to fleece his followers to raise enough cash. It looks like trump & his enablers are trying to do so:
At the moment, they’re not raising enough to cover the daily interest.
Good! I so hope he doesn’t somehow manage to weasel his way out of this one, and we all have a delightfully schadenfreudey Monday.
I wouldn’t be all that disappointed by either of those possibilities.
His followers don’t even have that sort of scratch anymore. Or at least after nearly a decade of the grift, they seem to realize they’re not getting any return on it. If they somehow do manage to raise nearly half a billion and give it away to the state of New York, all the better - even if it were burned, that money is going to people who would use it to better purpose.
As for Russian banks, those folks want ROI, and I suspect they are the sorts to make sure to get repaid in one form or another. I wouldn’t want to be half a billion in hock to the sorts who take human life as lightly as they appear to do.
The scary part of this scenario is, if trump gets reelected, the ROI will be in the form of the U.S. pulling out of NATO, letting Russia have free reign with Ukraine, and who knows what other Putin-friendly policies. Russia needs to keep their asset viable, and it may be worth a half bill to them to do so.
Oh certainly, but they also have to realize there’s a big risk betting on that. Oligarchs like and expect such things to happen for free (or nearly so), not as a risky investment which has a significant risk of backfire
Exactly. Putin may see it as a reasonable risk.
trump was getting Russian investment money back in the 90s I believe, when even back then trump was having trouble getting financing through more reputable sources. And I don’t think it was because they thought trump was such a brilliant businessman-- I suspect even back then they were playing a long game, not at all sure trump would or could ever get into a position of political power, but willing to bet on a longshot.
Only if the source of the money can be guaranteed to be kept secret. If it became known that Putin bailed Trump out, he can kiss the election goodbye. Sure, the MAGAts will still vote for him, but if even 5% of the vote peeled away because of this, Trump would lose bigly.
Trump would have been useful for money laundering purposes at the time anyway, given his willingness and ability to play the shell game with shell companies with his business debt. The political benefit is basically Putin hitting the jackpot.
They weren’t playing any long game. They were most likely figuring he could provide a good way to launder money and/or get into US markets to which their access was otherwise limited. That he later got elected was a bonus
They weren’t just giving him money. On paper, at least, he was in debt to them and likely had some sort of collateral lined up.
They might simply giving him hundreds of millions with no collateral to back it, but that would be at odds with their behavior to date.
I’m not so sure. As I said in the Letitia James thread:
Hard, incontrovertible evidence that Russia put up the half-billion bond wouldn’t budge the polls an inch. 49% of American voters would call it a savvy foreign policy maneuver. Or, even if they acknowledged that it looked bad, it still wouldn’t be as bad as whatever Biden’s done.
OK, I suppose I was speculating a bit too much about that. I’m sure that back in the 90s nobody thought that trump could ever, by any stretch of the imagination, become President.
After sharing the GoFundMe image (with someone’s comment about donating the price of a Big Mac), I asked my Trump cultist friend how much she’s going to donate. ‘Not a dime,’ she said. She’s not poor, but Trump means less to her than a Big Mac. (Actually, she believes Trump was appointed by God, so he’s going to win (keep winning) because it’s God’s will.)
I wonder what she’d do if you were in her house, knocked a vase off the table smashing it, and just shrugged and said “Oh well, God’s will.”
Oh no, other people don’t get to claim things are God’s will. Just her, especially if it costs her anything.
There’s a definite sociopathic streak to the whole crowd
And on the political front, from The Hill: GOP primaries flash warning signs for Trump