Tag: Grifter-In-Chief

The Presidency Brought Trump ‘Rich Friends’

Buck Banks

“The question I get asked more than any other question: ‘If you had to do it again, would you have done it?’ The answer is, yeah, I think so. Because here’s the way I look at it. I have so many rich friends and nobody knows who they are.”

— Donald Trump, saying the “rich friends” he acquired from his presidency made it all worth it to him, according to Maggie Haberman’s upcoming book, the HuffPost reports.

Trump’s Truth Social Just Another Trump Grift

Buck Banks

“It’s been an inauspicious start for TRUTH Social, the former president’s new Twitter knock-off, helmed by bovine ex-Congressman Devin Nunes. … Like the other Trump schemes—airlines, steaks, board game, university, magic pills, magazine, etc. etc. etc. … — from the jump TRUTH had all the marks of a media buzz Potemkin Village that allows the first family of grift to cash in, but doesn’t deliver anything of value to the marks who got swept up in the hype.”

— Tim Miller

Grifter-In-Chief Trump Ran a Grand Scam

Buck Banks

$175 million

“Former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party leveraged false claims of voter fraud and promises to overturn the election to raise more than a quarter-billion dollars in November and December as hundreds of thousands of trusting supporters listened and opened their wallets,” the New York Times reports. “But the Trump campaign spent only a tiny fraction of its haul on lawyers and other legal bills related to those claims. Instead, Mr. Trump and the G.O.P. stored away much of the money — $175 million or so — even as they continued to issue breathless, aggressive and often misleading appeals for cash that promised it would help with recounts, the rooting out of election fraud and even the Republican candidates’ chances in the two Senate runoff races in Georgia.”

How Trump Violated His Oath of Office

Buck Banks

“Trump was a serial violator of his oath—as evidenced by his continual use of his office for personal financial gain—but focusing on three crucial ways in which he betrayed it helps clarify his singular historical status. First, he failed to put the national-security interests of the United States ahead of his own political needs. Second, in the face of a devastating pandemic, he was grossly derelict, unable or unwilling to marshal the requisite resources to save lives while actively encouraging public behavior that spread the disease. And third, held to account by voters for his failures, he refused to concede defeat and instead instigated an insurrection, stirring a mob that stormed the Capitol.”

— Tim Naftali