I must admit that Trump seems to make an effort to live up to his election promises.
Of course Mrs. Clinton is still on the run, but in general he appears to have a list and work on it if and when he’s actually doing any work (didn’t he also make a promise that he would be less on the golf course than Obama? Don’t see that one on the list).
If it was anybody else I would say that is recommendable. It could even justify his childlike stubbornness on the shutdown extortion. Unfortunately we are dealing with Donald John Trump, a man who has a long history of being an unreliable business partner when it comes to finances. I remember an article quoting former associates saying something like “Don’t let him near the money, because he will take it all and run” (must admit, can’t find it anymore).
We already see examples of transactions that vary from shady, through unethical to flat out corrupt. Example; money being paid for long expensive stays in Trump resorts, not just by him and his whole entourage, but also by foreign governments in need of “favors”.
So when this man demands we give him 5.3 billion dollars (to start with) for a project that serves no other purpose than living up to a campaign promise and maybe please a few of his voters, my bullshit detector goes crazy and my scam radar off the chart.
Apart from the whole stupid wall concept (which in recent days has suddenly changed into a metaphor for border security), I feel like we’re being scammed by a man who has built a fortune on lies and bullshit. I am willing to bet my left testicle that this money is earmarked for something other than Mexican blocking or a wall builder stimulus package. The whole thing smells funny…doesn’t it?
He’s shut down the government because he’s angry at Congress for trying to make him keep his campaign promises. That’s kind of the opposite of what you said. He promised that Americans wouldn’t pay for the Wall, and so Congress said “OK, then, we won’t pay for it.”.
And a guy’s not allowed to say, “wait, don’t we already have a metric ton of live threads on this subject”? (ETA: And my links weren’t even a complete inventory.)
In my defense, the subject is not the wall but rather the funding. If there is another thread on that subject I’ll be happy to continue my point there.
I’m sure there’s a scam somewhere in this debacle. Trump has, as you point out, a long history of scamming.
But that said, I feel there is probably a wall somewhere in his plan. He’s probably got it set up that his five billion dollar wall will cost the taxpayers ten billion dollars or more. And Trump is planning on pocketing a few hundred million of that. This is the equivalent of Boss Hogg saying Hazzard County needs a new bridge; a boondoggle so a crooked politician can skim money off of it.
I thought for sure he would proclaim a border crisis today. It being Friday and all. He wants so bad for this to take focus away from the Russian investigation. His supporters are counting on that ‘wall’. Even the ones who are laid off or working with no pay. He’s led that bunch up the garden path, the long way.
I’m waiting for him to say that we don’t have a wall. Which means building the wall cost nothing. And Mexico paid us nothing. So technically, Mexico paid for the costs of the wall.
With all due respect, I think you’re missing an important point, (and yes, I’ve said the same thing in all the other threads about “the wall”). Trump’s election/campaign promises themselves are bullshit from the start. He just says whatever gets a response–he had no particular interest in a wall itself. For Trump, promises are not real–they’re just things he says to put on a show. His “stubbornness” now isn’t any kind of commitment toward keeping a promise–it’s just more bullshit posing, more of the dog-and-pony show for those people who fell for the wall idea in the first place, to make himself seem “strong” about this fantasy, fictional “crisis.”
Sure, yeah, if he can get them to build a wall, he’d like that, but only in as much as it perpetuates this image for his base. And, of course, you’re completely right that–if they were ever to start building this thing–a bunch of Trump butt-licking incompetent sycophants would get the contracts, and it would be rife with corruption.
Has Hillary been locked up yet? How’s the rebuilding of our infrastructure coming along? Did I miss the news that China has been labeled as a currency manipulator? H
