With Trump, I think it’s all about his perception of how power works. He thinks powerful people should be allowed to do whatever they want. So he can’t understand how he wasn’t re-elected. He was the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world; when he declared he won everyone else was supposed to obey him.
I think these two are just a couple of pawns in the whole “Flood the Zone” Bannon strategy. Once you declare fealty to Trump, you do as you’re told, and Trump wanted to create as much chaos and doubt around the election as possible; be it directing his lawyers in filing frivolous lawsuits based on made-up “information” and lies, having his press secretary tell outright lies, pressuring his sycophants in Congress to support the lies, dangling $$ and influence in front of Fox News personalities to reinforce the lies, etc. Trump demanded the election be known as fraudulent, so every lever in his apparatus was pulled to support that one (fake) idea. Giuliani and Powell were just supporting their master without, what it seems, much direct benefit to either of them (unless, of course, the whole thing actually worked). I guess they knew they were rolling the dice from the get-go, but could not (or refused) to say no.
I agree with this, other than that I think Trump genuinely believes that he won a landslide victory which was stolen from him by Democrats and Never Trumpers. But the dynamic with his people is as snowthx posted.
I think a lot of people get sucked into Trump’s orbit thinking “OK, he’s a bit out there, but he’s not completely nuts and I can work with him”, not realizing that there are no limits to his delusions and his amorality, and that he will demand that anyone who works “for him” go along with all of them. So these people get sucked in little by little. You “humor Trump” on a couple of things here and there, and then he’s demanding that you take another step out onto the ledge and then another, and it never stops. Some people manage to pull back at some point (e.g. Sessions recusing himself and refusing to back off it) but some don’t, especially since there’s an “in for a penny, in for a pound” aspect to it as well, once you’ve already sold out to a large extent.
Could this also be true of his supporters, or at least some of them?
He was quoting a politician. A great phrase!
I would very much appreciate (a) a detailed explanation of exactly how the typical Ponzi scheme works, and (b) a similarly detailed explanation of how Trump’s actions correspond to said scheme.
trump and co were using the donated funds to fund spurious lawsuits, to lure more donations to lure investors.
I am surprised you didnt know what a Ponzi scheme is, so now you know. It’s classic.
I think his point was that he did know what a Ponzi scheme is and that you were misusing the term.
The central aspect of a Ponzi scheme is that the proceeds from later investors are returned to earlier investors, and misrepresented as being the profits of the investment idea (which is then used to lure in yet more investors/victims). That has nothing to do with what you’re claiming happened here.
This is not a Ponzi scheme.
You’re not accusing him of playing dumb to make a point are you?
It is exactly what is happening here. What did the donors want to get for their $$? Legal fights to stop the steal. So chief conman trump threw a few bones their way in the way of spurious lawsuits, which caused even more fools to donate. They "invested’ their cash in the hopes of stopping the steal by way of lawsuits. So, some cheap spurious suits were filed. Read the suits, they were filed in haste with little money spent. The investors wanted lawsuits to stop the steal as their “returns” on their investment.
One of my friends, a die hard trumpist, was so very happy when the suit got filed with SCOTUS, he had donated and was so very very sure that the Supremes would throw out the will of the voters and install trump.
It doesnt have to be cash invested and paid out to be a “ponzi scheme”, that’s just the classic, see these cites that agree with me that trumps whole strategy is a Ponzi scheme".
It is often said that Donald Trump is a confidence artist, a snake-oil salesman, a fraudster. The truth is much more disturbing. The U.S. president is a Ponzi scheme unto himself. He has gotten many hardworking people to invest their hopes and dreams in him.
But if you take a closer look, I think you’ll find that Donald Trump’s presidential record is just like his actual business record: exploiting the hopes and fears of Americans by promising huge rewards, without any practical plan for delivering them. It’s a political Ponzi scheme.
Not only am I not accusing him of that, but I also believe that you’ve misused the term.
But I’m not interested in arguing about it with you.
So, you replied to my previous post because?
Do you agree trump is a conman?
Do you agree that most of the money for 'stop the steal" didnt go to trying to stop the steal, that indeed, it was a con game?
Or do you just think that I, along with the Atlantic and the Institute for Policy studies are misusing the term Ponzi Scheme and that it can only refer to money returned investment scams of a certain sort?
I’m pretty sure Giuliani just wanted to parlay his fame into having sex with the 15 year old daughter of some Kazakh journalist (and money).
Powell, on the other hand, likely just wanted money (although she never categorically denied her desire for Tutar). Specifically, millions of dollars to “defend the Republic as these lawsuits continue to be filed to ensure victory.” While the website has since whitewashed the relationship with her, it was obvious early on that this was her baby. In fact, checks were to be made payable to Sidney Powell PC. What are the odds that her 501c4 used her services? Archived version of the site from a few months ago, when she was front and center:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201227061307/https://defendingtherepublic.org/
While they’re all grifters, I think Powell (like Wood) is also a True Believer. Other lawyers have carefully toed the line on where they could spread the lie about “massive voter fraud” and where they couldn’t; Powell was the one who brought the “expert evidence” into court about vote counts in fictional Michigan counties and gave us the “military intelligence analysts” who turned out to be one guy who flunked out of the training program and denied he’d said half of what had been attributed to him. And as a reward, she’s facing sanctions and/or disbarment proceedings, a hefty defamation suit from Dominion and a social media ban.
Yeah, it’s important, I think, to note that while they are all liars, they actually don’t all have the same motivation.
I don’t think Rudy Giuliani really believe the election was stolen, and I’m not even sure he cares all that much about Donald Trump, though he might. I think he sees Trump as an avenue for Rudy Giuliani to be famous and powerful, and so to that end, a Hail Mary pass into the Supreme Court was, to him, a gamble to try to keep Trump in power, either by getting a bullshit SCOTUS ruling or by creating enough “doubt” to get Congress to turf the election of some such bullshit.
Powell I am pretty sure is psychologically troubled, and believed at least in part in her conspiracy theories. Wood I know is unhinged, and believed most or all of them.
I suspect that Wood moved into the Trump camp via his representation of that “smirking” kid, which set him up on the side of Trumpists and against the mainstream media.
In the case of Powell, it would be her representation of Michael Flynn, which might itself be connected to her earlier representation of Enron defendants (and resulting antipathy for Andrew Weissman).
I don’t Know about Powell, but Rudy is going for some kind of performance art. What else would explain the Four Seasons embarrassment, the oil running down his face, and the zany SNLish chick he actually showed up in court with?