Or, “Oops! I didn’t tell the bulldozers to do that, but it’s too late now! The building was old and ugly and needed to be torn down anyway. The new Golden White House will be better.”
I bet you a dollar he’s been rehearsing remarks along those lines.
He’s probably pretty excited about it!
It’ll be some variation of “Trump House”. Like, “Donald J. Trump Best President Ever Palace of Perfection”.
Darrell Hammond as Trump on SNL in 1999, addressing Reform Party leadership:
First off, the Donald has a few plans for that staunchy and outdated old White House, you understand? Gentlemen, I give you the Trump House. A 90-story deluxe government facility and gambling casino, all brass and class. And to top it all off, my campaign slogan: “I got it, you want it, come and get it!”
That was eerily prescient.
I found an early mock up.
Nice.
Very good! The only thing I would change is paint the whole building gold. Or, if not that, then decorate the outside walls with those gold curlicue thingies. Lots of them. All over. Top to bottom. Yeah. That’s the ticket.
Trump disclosed that he “earned” about 2 billion dollars last year, about half of which came from crypto deals.
When you hear crypto, think bribes
There used to be a time-honored tradition in politics and government of sneaking around and hiding your corruption. Not any more. Trump brags about it and waves it in everyone’s faces. I guess in his mind [sic] that means he’s a winner!
I’m guessing a good chunk of the other half of the 2 billion came from all the illegal stock trades he made, like investing in NVIDIA stock shortly before giving them the go-ahead to sell to China.
Trump took advantage of that and has taken being a con man to the greatest extreme. It’s human nature for people to think that if you are doing something wrong, you will try to hide it. So he just does everything right out in the open making people think it can’t be so bad. It especially works because he does so much of it. It is hard to comprehend that someone can be that corrupt.
What I can comprehend is why people don’t just say ‘fuck off asshole’.
Sorry to be so blunt, but there it is.
There’s no shortage of people who want to believe they’re part of the scam and somebody else will be left holding the bag. They even believe it’s better when they’re dealing with a known scammer, as they think they are personally too capable and savvy to be one of the suckers.
People are dumb and greedy and, paradoxically, are more easily conned by a known con artist than anybody with the slightest of scruples
Yes, I think you’re right about that. The size of the bribes he gets, bribes for distorting US policy in favor of the bribe-giver, make him “a winner” in his mind.
If his life depended on it—say, someone holding a gun to his head—I don’t think he could define “public service” or “clean government” or “the common good.” All those concepts are so utterly irrelevant to him that I don’t think he could even manage to bullshit-out an answer.
This. One unfortunate effect of the recent news about Donald’s cashing-in: less-bright people will take away the message “crypto is a way to get rich.”
Obviously DONALD got rich from crypto via individuals, companies, and nations wanting to curry favor with him by buying his crypto (the aforementioned “World Liberty Financial.”) It’s not as though someone lacking the power of the Presidency could duplicate Donald’s results.
Channeling my inner MAGA conservative,
‘Yeah Trump made money, but look at all the money Barack Hussein Obama made on that book deal… for a book that actually sold… after he left office… I tell you these politicians are all the same.’
Yup, that’s about what they’d say.
I wonder if the tolerance for Trump’s brazen corruption is that his supporters all think the system is rigged anyway. i.e. They lack any faith in the system and have no problem watching their hero cheat to enrich himself.
Nah, they think it’ll trickle down. Remember back in the first term when they interviewed that lady who said “he’s not hurting the right people”?
They figure they’re among the scammers instead of the victims. And they’ve little incentive to admit, even to themselves, they’ve been had