2020 Elections - Trump FIRED

[Peter Brown]

Guarantee you that Trump has already called Bill Barr and told him to get people arrested pronto.

Well there is the not-insignificant matter of it being a federal crime to release private tax information of a private citizen. Outside that, I guess you have a point somewhere.

[Peter Brown]

The IRS has been investigating Ivanka for reporting receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.". That kind of double dipping is ILLEGAL under tax law.

Like the rest of you, I 'd like to know who thinks having the DOPUS on the hook for over $400 million in debt payments is a good idea for the country - He will have to play golf literally every day at a Trump property to generate enough taxpayer-funded expenses to raise revenue and even THAT likely won't be enough.

And to whom does Trump owe that money? If it’s Deutsche Bank, the ultimate “lender” may be Vladimir Putin and his cronies, which would explain a lot of things.

It may turn out that Trump has been living high through illegal tax evasion, bank fraud, and Russian money laundering.

DocBarrister

Does anyone want to let DocB know that Deutsche is a publicly traded shareholding company, and not, ummmm, 'owned by the Russians'?

[RedFromMI]

PB does not seem to remember that the R domination of Congress until recently has allowed for cut after cut in the IRS budget to go after guys like Trump. One of the biggest myths is that the IRS will catch everyone. The fact is they do not...

So if it is Biden, and a D Congress, I would expect to see a boost - with a focus on the uber wealthy...

[Peter Brown]

The IRS has been investigating Ivanka for reporting receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.". That kind of double dipping is ILLEGAL under tax law.

Like the rest of you, I 'd like to know who thinks having the DOPUS on the hook for over $400 million in debt payments is a good idea for the country - He will have to play golf literally every day at a Trump property to generate enough taxpayer-funded expenses to raise revenue and even THAT likely won't be enough.

Twitter line of the day
Steve Marmel
"Surprise.
The guy who is morally bankrupt is actually bankrupt."

Isn't it odd (meaning, isn't it comically predictable) that Democrats are concerned about a $700,000 consulting fee to Ivanka, but could not care less that Hunter got a wire transfer of $3,500,000.00 from the Mayor of Moscow's wife...?

[Peter Brown]

PB does not seem to remember that the R domination of Congress until recently has allowed for cut after cut in the IRS budget to go after guys like Trump. One of the biggest myths is that the IRS will catch everyone. The fact is they do not...

So if it is Biden, and a D Congress, I would expect to see a boost - with a focus on the uber wealthy...

Please. That lib lie is the biggest canard in all the land and libs use it to stoke class warfare.

IRS budgets don't need to be as absolutely high as they were because technology has reduced headcount need. The 'effective' IRS budget is higher than it's ever been; meaning for an expense of less than previous, we collect far more per payer than ever. The IRS budget ultimately will trend toward zero, because technology will preclude a taxpayer's ability to evade taxes.

I swear, half my days I have to wonder if libs are this dumb or just purposefully obtuse.

Also, your odds of an audit if you are uber wealthy are quite high relative to everyone else. There can be no doubt that a guy like Trump who uses every tool in the toolbox to reduce his taxes is under constant audit.

[RedFromMI]

The IRS has been investigating Ivanka for reporting receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.". That kind of double dipping is ILLEGAL under tax law.

Like the rest of you, I 'd like to know who thinks having the DOPUS on the hook for over $400 million in debt payments is a good idea for the country - He will have to play golf literally every day at a Trump property to generate enough taxpayer-funded expenses to raise revenue and even THAT likely won't be enough.

Twitter line of the day
Steve Marmel
"Surprise.
The guy who is morally bankrupt is actually bankrupt."

Isn't it odd (meaning, isn't it comically predictable) that Democrats are concerned about a $700,000 consulting fee to Ivanka, but could not care less that Hunter got a wire transfer of $3,500,000.00 from the Mayor of Moscow's wife...?

Except that the money went to a company that Biden was part of, and it is not at all clear that any of it ended up with Hunter Biden. But certainly it can be investigated.

There is no clear criminal behavior yet shown regarding Hunter Biden, but the Trump Organization and Donald Trump himself appears to be essentially a criminal enterprise trying to avoid taxes. So it is not odd at all...

PB is full of cognitive dissonance today...

[Peter Brown]

The IRS has been investigating Ivanka for reporting receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.". That kind of double dipping is ILLEGAL under tax law.

Like the rest of you, I 'd like to know who thinks having the DOPUS on the hook for over $400 million in debt payments is a good idea for the country - He will have to play golf literally every day at a Trump property to generate enough taxpayer-funded expenses to raise revenue and even THAT likely won't be enough.

Twitter line of the day
Steve Marmel
"Surprise.
The guy who is morally bankrupt is actually bankrupt."

Isn't it odd (meaning, isn't it comically predictable) that Democrats are concerned about a $700,000 consulting fee to Ivanka, but could not care less that Hunter got a wire transfer of $3,500,000.00 from the Mayor of Moscow's wife...?

Except that the money went to a company that Biden was part of, and it is not at all clear that any of it ended up with Hunter Biden. But certainly it can be investigated.

There is no clear criminal behavior yet shown regarding Hunter Biden, but the Trump Organization and Donald Trump himself appears to be essentially a criminal enterprise trying to avoid taxes. So it is not odd at all...

PB is full of cognitive dissonance today...

Your party spent a hundred million dollars of taxpayer money, and four years of idiotic media commentary, trying to prove Trump was in the pockets of the 'Russians'. Here you have a large wire transfer from the Mayor of Moscow's wife...a mayor who by every account is seriously corrupt. But the libs sniff at it. "Joe doesn't even know Hunter'.

As I say, predictable makes you not a serious player here.

[RedFromMI]

With five weeks left, Trump plays defense in states he won in 2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html

The presidential battleground has shifted on the margins five weeks before Election Day, with President Trump still on defense as the contest with Democratic nominee Joe Biden is fought almost entirely in places that Trump won in 2016.

Of the 13 states where Biden spent money on television last week, according to Biden’s head of paid media Patrick Bonsignore, only three — Minnesota, New Hampshire and Nevada — were won by Hillary Clinton four years ago. Of the 12 states where Trump is spending, all but Minnesota and Nevada are places that he won in 2016.

Biden has committed millions to advertising in Georgia and Iowa, where Trump won in 2016, while Trump’s campaign continues to decrease his investment in other states, including New Hampshire and Michigan, as the candidates prepare for the first presidential debate Tuesday.

The decision to add funds reflects both the Democratic cash advantage and the Biden campaign’s increasing optimism as polls show Trump struggling to make up ground in a contest that has been remarkably stable from the start, despite waves of social unrest, pandemic disease, economic dislocation and the beginning of a nasty partisan battle over the future of the Supreme Court.

The Biden campaign has recently launched distinct paid media programs for veterans, rural voters and Black voters, catching up with Trump, who debuted similar programs months ago. Biden has also been buying billboards, in concert with the Democratic National Committee, to encourage early voting in key states.

This week, another Biden program targeting faith voters is slated to launch, with advertising on gospel radio, during televised Sunday services, and on Spanish language stations. The program could help defend Biden against Republican claims that Democratic opposition to Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, reflects an anti-Catholic bias.

“We think there is a real opportunity there, not only because it is something that is so authentic to who Joe Biden is, his abiding Catholic faith, but in the places that get us to 270, there are significant pockets of voters we want to have that conversation with,” Bonsignore said.

The symbolic and strategic core of the race remains in the northern states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Michigan, a traditionally Democratic region where Clinton underperformed, giving Trump the presidency. But so far this year, Biden has maintained an apparent connection to White voters in these states and elsewhere that Clinton let slip away as she lost all but Minnesota.

That connection also has boosted Biden’s chances in states like Ohio and Iowa, which were long considered to be in Trump’s corner because he won them so convincingly in 2016. Trump held two rallies in Ohio last week and will return there for the presidential debate with Biden on Tuesday night. Biden is scheduled to campaign in Ohio and Pennsylvania the next day.

Biden’s appeal has also blunted Trump’s efforts to flip Minnesota, which the president has long sought to move into his camp, at the same time the president battles political fallout from rapidly diversifying states like Georgia and Arizona. Trump has continued to hold his own in Florida and North Carolina, where the races are a dead heat.

“The tipping point states that people thought would be tipping point states in the spring are likely to be tipping point states now,” said Michael Halle, a Democratic strategist who worked for former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg this cycle. “What has changed is the significant money advantage that Biden has.”

While Trump has continued to poll better than his 2016 election result among Black, Hispanic and other non-White voters, by about 10 points, he has lost considerable ground among other segments of the population, including a 14-point shift to Biden of voters over the age of 65 and a 12-point shift among White voters, according to a Washington Post average of public national polls.

The same polling shows that Trump has been able to recover from a dip in June and July, when the protests against police brutality dominated headlines and coronavirus cases began spiking. The Biden campaign now registers the same advantages they believed they had during the Democratic primary, raising their confidence that voter opinions will stay static through the coming Supreme Court nomination fight, the three presidential debates and any other surprises. Trump is counting on the debates and the nomination hearings to boost his standing.

“This race has been stable for 18 months,” said one Biden campaign adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak more frankly. “We are not even talking about eight months. Since the midterms, this race has been stable.”

That was underscored Sunday when a Washington Post-ABC News poll found Biden had a 53 percent to 43 percent lead over Trump among registered voters, statistically unchanged from an August poll that found a 12-point spread. The September Biden lead, driven by high female support, was six points among likely voters.

Biden now polls seven points ahead in Wisconsin, down from nine points in June and July, seven points ahead in Michigan and seven points ahead in Pennsylvania, down from 11 points in June and July, according to a Washington Post average of polls. In Minnesota, the president trails by 10 points.

The Trump campaign has argued that the campaign’s significantly larger surrogate and field operation will provide a further boost by November and make up for ad deficits. They also point to Trump’s far more aggressive travel schedule, which has regularly drawn thousands to indoor and outdoor settings, which the campaign argues is a sign of high voter enthusiasm.

But behind the scenes, Trump advisers have grown frustrated that it has been difficult to land attacks on Biden — who is largely staying off the radar — and that the race has hardly budged, with Trump behind, according to four officials. They feel more comfortable in Florida and North Carolina than other states but acknowledge they are playing defense in places like Georgia.

“It has tightened. The president is trailing, but not by an insurmountable margin,” said one Republican strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private data. “The president’s campaign can only do what it can do. They only have so many resources, and they can only spend in so many states.”

The president has joked to advisers that they are putting too many events on his schedule, three aides said, but the goal is to draw a sharp contrast with Biden, hoping voters will reward him for showing more effort in a pandemic. They are also leaning heavily on an extensive surrogate program that sends Trump boosters around the country, for instance trying to impress suburban women by sending presidential adviser and daughter Ivanka Trump into districts.

Trump campaign officials once bragged about fighting in 17 battleground states — but they concede now that hopes of expanding the map in their direction has largely faded. “It’s really about seven or eight states at this point,” said a senior campaign official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private information.

A Trump campaign cash crunch that started in late summer has also forced the campaign to regularly pull or reduce television reservations this month, ceding to Biden’s already substantial on-air dominance. Over the week that began Sept. 22, Trump pulled $2.1 million in television reservations from the four core northern states, or about 30 percent of his scheduled buy there, according to Advertising Analytics.

Some of those funds were shifted to Florida, where Trump is preparing for an avalanche of pro-Biden outside spending funded by billionaire Mike Bloomberg.

Biden’s campaign advisers also say that even though Trump is outspending them on Google and Facebook, the former vice president is spending more where it counts, on Facebook and YouTube ads in the targeted swing states. Trump, by contrast, is spending more on digital fundraising efforts in states that are not up for grabs.

The weekly Trump television cutbacks have been particularly stark in Michigan, a state that Trump won by less than a quarter of 1 percent in 2016. The Biden campaign’s ad buyers estimate that Trump has been halving his investment in the state, despite a competitive Senate race. Since late March, the Trump campaign and outside allies have spent about $9.5 million on television in the state, compared with about $37 million on the Democratic side, according to Democratic tracking of the television spending.

But there are few signs that Trump will formally withdraw from the state, as surrogates have continued to travel there and Trump visited as recently as Sept. 10. In the meantime, Trump television advertising in New Hampshire, another state Clinton narrowly won in 2016, has effectively stopped for weeks, as several Republican strategists say the state could be slipping away. Though a plurality of New Hampshire voters are unaffiliated, the share registered as Democrats has been growing, in February eclipsing the number of Republican voters for the first time in 10 years.

Trump campaign officials deny that the television spending shifts predict a loss, pointing to recent office openings, frequent surrogate visits and a large paid staff presence on the ground.

“Donald Trump is going to win New Hampshire,” said Corey Lewandowski, a campaign manager for Trump in 2016 who now works as a senior adviser to the reelection effort. “The enthusiasm is intense.”

While Trump has been cutting back, the Biden campaign has faced the opposite problem, as fundraising has exploded in recent months: where to spend all its money.

Besides the new targeted media programs, the money has paid for ads in the two typically red states where Trump has been forced to hold ground once thought safe. One Biden campaign aide said the former vice president planned to spend more than $10 million on television in Georgia and millions more in Iowa, two states where Democrats also are hoping to pick up as many as three Republican Senate seats this year. To date, Trump and his allies have been advertising unopposed in Georgia and they had been outspending Democrats in Iowa on the airwaves.

Republicans have reacted with alarm about Georgia, where two U.S. senate seats are on the ballot, though they hope the coming Supreme Court fight will minimize the risk of crossover voting for Biden and other Democrats.

“Broadly there has been a lot of concern about Georgia for the entirety of the cycle,” said one Republican strategist who has focused on the state but was not authorized to speak publicly. “The Atlanta suburbs are exploding and they are registering a lot of new voters and that needs to be addressed.”

Democrats are hopeful that the Biden investment will have significant benefits down the ballot, both for Senate races and for state legislative and congressional contests.

“The thing about the Biden campaign that goes unappreciated is the way they have been communicating is down the middle of the road, on jobs, health care and covid,” said J.B. Poersch, the president of the Senate Majority PAC, an independent effort to elect Democratic senators. “It’s been a very good workmanlike approach compared to the very frenetic approach coming out of Trump.”

Even in Ohio, a state filled with White voters without college degrees who delivered Trump an 8-point victory in 2016, the race is effectively tied in public polls, forcing Trump to sink precious resources into the Columbus and Cincinnati television markets, where Biden has yet to spend.

“It’s tied but there is a lot more room for Biden to grow,” the state’s Democratic Party chairman David Pepper said Thursday. “Trump knows he has to work to win Ohio. I don’t think he visited here earlier this week just for the fun of it.”

For Democratic strategists allocating money to the presidential race, the fact that Trump and his outside groups are focused so much on states that he just needs to hold on to is among the best news of the last month.

The Democratic group Priorities USA, which invests heavily in battleground polling, currently predicts that Pennsylvania will deliver the 270th electoral vote to Biden.

Their current data show 54 percent of the Republican spending is now on states more likely to be won by Trump than Pennsylvania, compared to 25 percent on states less likely to be won. By comparison, the Democratic side is clearly playing offense, with half its money going to states where Trump is polling stronger than Pennsylvania, compared to 25 percent where he is weaker.

[MDlaxfan76]

Put aside the political aspects of piercing the Trump mythology of being a successful businessman (has there been any American who has lost as much money as Trump?) and the optics of paying less than the vast majority of Americans in federal taxes despite living a lavish lifestyle.

This story is much more meaningful than 'it looks bad'.

This is going to be about fraud and foreign influence.

The fight with the IRS is explicitly about a massive deduction falsely filed. And lots of "smaller" deductions, but adding up to millions of dollars, that are false.

But that's just the tax fraud and evasion. When put beside his bank applications, there's going to be substantial bank fraud.

He faces very significant legal charges when he leaves office, may well go to jail. So may some or all of his children. As they all should if directly involved and complicit.

And the story is going to be about who he owes massive amounts of money, who has known what he owes, and who has been currying favor with income through his properties. Big national security implications. Follow the money.

Russia. Saudi Arabia. Turkey. Phillipines. others?

[Typical Lax Dad]

The IRS has been investigating Ivanka for reporting receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.". That kind of double dipping is ILLEGAL under tax law.

Like the rest of you, I 'd like to know who thinks having the DOPUS on the hook for over $400 million in debt payments is a good idea for the country - He will have to play golf literally every day at a Trump property to generate enough taxpayer-funded expenses to raise revenue and even THAT likely won't be enough.

Twitter line of the day
Steve Marmel
"Surprise.
The guy who is morally bankrupt is actually bankrupt."

Isn't it odd (meaning, isn't it comically predictable) that Democrats are concerned about a $700,000 consulting fee to Ivanka, but could not care less that Hunter got a wire transfer of $3,500,000.00 from the Mayor of Moscow's wife...?

Except that the money went to a company that Biden was part of, and it is not at all clear that any of it ended up with Hunter Biden. But certainly it can be investigated.

There is no clear criminal behavior yet shown regarding Hunter Biden, but the Trump Organization and Donald Trump himself appears to be essentially a criminal enterprise trying to avoid taxes. So it is not odd at all...

PB is full of cognitive dissonance today...

Your party spent a hundred million dollars of taxpayer money, and four years of idiotic media commentary, trying to prove Trump was in the pockets of the 'Russians'. Here you have a large wire transfer from the Mayor of Moscow's wife...a mayor who by every account is seriously corrupt. But the libs sniff at it. "Joe doesn't even know Hunter'.

As I say, predictable makes you not a serious player here.

Hunter needs to be removed from office.

[CU88]

Heather Cox Richardson

September 27, 2020 (Sunday)
Late this afternoon, the New York Times published the story we have been waiting for since 2016: the story of Donald Trump’s taxes. There was never any doubt that whatever was in those taxes was bad or he never would have worked so hard to hide them. But the picture the New York Times story revealed was worse than expected.
The New York Times obtained more than two decades of Donald Trump’s tax information, including that of his companies, through his first two years in the White House. The picture they paint is of a man more than $300 million in debt; whose businesses are constantly losing money; who deducts personal expenses including houses, airplanes, and $70,000 in hairstyling; who is fighting with the IRS over the repayment of a $72.9 million tax refund which, if it has to be repaid, will run to $100 million; and who in his first year in office paid the most income tax he had paid in a decade: $750.
That’s not a typo.
In 11 of the 18 years the reporters examined, Trump paid no taxes at all. He has, however, paid taxes elsewhere. In 2017, Trump paid $750 to the U.S., but paid $15,598 in Panama, $145,400 in India, and $156,824 in the Philippines (rather undercutting the idea that American tax laws are too harsh on the very wealthy).
The information illuminates a number of the shadowy puzzles of the Trump presidency. It shows that he was deeply in debt in 2015, and was, as his former fixer Michael Cohen said, eager to rebuild his brand by running for the highest office in the land. He had a bad habit of running through cash and accumulating huge debt, a pattern that showed up first when he ran through the money his father gave him, and then when the brief popularity of The Apprentice put $427.4 million into his pocket. He threw the money from The Apprentice into failing golf courses.
The presidency has injected cash into Trump’s businesses, as lobbyists and foreign governments invest in them, but he is still losing money. The Times notes that “within the next four years, more than $300 million in loans—obligations for which he is personally responsible—will come due.”
This, of course, means that Trump is a huge national security risk. He owes money—to whom we don’t know—and he does not have it to pay his debts. It is no wonder that a bipartisan group of nearly 500 national security officials, past and present, last week endorsed Biden for president. According to Defense News, the list included “five former secretaries of the Navy, two former Army secretaries, four former Air Force secretaries, two retired governors, and 106 ambassadors.” Retired General Paul Selva, who served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the first two and a half years of Trump’s term, signed the letter.
The tax returns also suggest that Trump’s desperation to stay in office is sparked by the 1973 Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel memo saying a sitting president cannot be indicted. Former inspector general of the Department of Justice Michael Bromwich tweeted “Trump knew something we didn't when he started balking at the peaceful transfer of power. If he loses the election, he faces federal and state prosecution for bank fraud, tax fraud, wire fraud, and mail fraud, as does his entire family. No OLC memo will spare him.”
Among other things, the information revealed that Trump wrote off about $26 million in “consulting fees” between 2010 and 2018. This reduced his taxable income, but it appears it might have simply been a way to give money to his children without paying taxes on it: his daughter Ivanka appears to have received $747,622 from the Trump Organization in consulting fees, despite being an employee there.
Remember, this is the information Trump chose to tell the IRS. It seems worth wondering what he did not tell them.
The Times says it will not release the actual documents in order to protect its source(s). It also says it will continue to drop more news from this trove over the coming weeks.
A piece from Michael Kranish at the Washington Post today reinforced the New York Times story. Apparently, when he was on the verge of personal bankruptcy in the 1990s, Trump tried to trick his 85-year-old father, who was sliding into dementia, into signing a codicil to his will that would cheat Trump’s siblings out of their inheritance and give Trump control of his father’s entire estate. Trump’s mother stopped her husband from signing it.
Trump had a press conference scheduled for shortly after the New York Times story broke. When asked about it, Trump claimed the story was “totally fake news,” although a lawyer for the Trump Organization could only try to refute the story with misleading information. After the conference, CNN’s Ana Cabrera pointed out that Trump could stop the New York Times story if it were wrong by “releasing his tax returns, by making them public.”
This evening, news broke that Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, has been hospitalized after threatening suicide. While most commentators simply noted the story and warned against making this particular personal story political, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said: "Brad Parscale is a member of our family and we all love him. We are ready to support him and his family in any way possible. The disgusting, personal attacks from Democrats and disgruntled RINOs have gone too far, and they should be ashamed of themselves for what they've done to this man and his family." There is no evidence linking Democrats or anyone else to this incident.
The big New York Times story came on top of yesterday’s big story: Trump’s announcement that he has nominated Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court, to take the seat formerly held by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Barrett clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and like he was, she is an originalist. In a speech, she explained: “The constitution means what it meant to those who ratified it.” Scalia “interpreted that text as people would have understood that text at the time it was ratified…. if we change the law now to comport with our current understandings or what we want it to mean then it ceases to be the law that has democratic legitimacy.” Change must come from new laws and new constitutional amendments, not from the courts. Like Scalia, Barrett resists “the notion that the Supreme Court should be in the business of imposing its views of social mores on the American people.” This understanding does not bode well for the Affordable Care Act, which the court will begin to review on November 10, just a week after the election.
Trump elevated Barrett from her professorship at Notre Dame Law School to the U.S. court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on May 8, 2017, and the Senate confirmed her the following October 31. Now 48 years old, she is in line to join the Supreme Court.
Lindsey Graham (R-SC), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has laid out a lightning fast schedule for Barrett’s expected confirmation. Today he told the Fox News Channel that his committee will approve her by October 22, so she will be on track for a full Senate vote before the end of October. It will be one of the fastest confirmations for a Supreme Court justice in history.
This is a huge scandal. In March 2016, when President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court after the death of Antonin Scalia the previous month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) insisted that it was inappropriate to confirm a justice so close to an election. That was ridiculous, of course, in our history 14 justices have been confirmed in an election year before the election (three more have been confirmed after it). But no Supreme Court justice has ever been confirmed later than July before an election. Now the Republicans are fast-tracking a nominee while people are literally already voting. And the president has said he wants Barrett confirmed because he expects the election results will be thrown into the Supreme Court where, presumably, she will vote in his favor.
Barrett is a devout Catholic who is a member of the charismatic Christian People of Praise community. Concern about the gender roles enforced in that patriarchal community have prompted her supporters to claim that her opponents are anti-Catholic. This claim is odd when both the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, and the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, are themselves devout Catholics who have endured Republican attacks on their faith, including Trump’s declaration that, if elected, Biden would "hurt the Bible, hurt God…. He’s against God.”
Rather than being prompted by concern for religious freedom, Republicans insisting that Democrats are anti-Catholic falls in line with a pattern identified by Brian Fallon, former director of public affairs for the Department of Justice and now the executive director of Demand Justice, which has tried to stop Trump’s packing of the federal judiciary. “It is a long running tactic of Senate GOP that, when they are about to do something unpopular, they invent some grievance to ‘psych’ themselves up and act like Dems forced their hand. This is why they are desperate to act like attacks on Catholicism are lurking out there.”
Today, Biden urged senators, many of whom he knows personally from his decades in the Senate, to de-escalate their stance on Barrett and to “do the right thing.” He warned that voters “are not going to stand for this abuse of power.” “This is where the power of the nation resides — in the people, in the rule of law, in precedents we abide by. To subvert both openly and needlessly, even as Americans cast their vote would be an irreversible step toward the brink and a betrayal of a single quality that America has born and built on — the people decide.”
“I urge every senator to take a step back from the brink,” he said. “Take off the blinders of politics for just one critical moment and stand up for the Constitution you swore to uphold.”

[kramerica.inc]

Hell, If MDLF76 wants Trump's children jailed for Trump's fraud, if that's where we are on this, why should Hunter/Joe get a pass?

[Peter Brown]

Hell, If MDLF76 wants Trump's children jailed for Trump's fraud, if that's where we are on this, why should Hunter/Joe get a pass?

This is all performative art. MD doesn't care about Trump's issues; he's posting odes to the libs about common TDS kinship.

[Peter Brown]

Put aside the political aspects of piercing the Trump mythology of being a successful businessman (has there been any American who has lost as much money as Trump?) and the optics of paying less than the vast majority of Americans in federal taxes despite living a lavish lifestyle.

This story is much more meaningful than 'it looks bad'.

This is going to be about fraud and foreign influence.

The fight with the IRS is explicitly about a massive deduction falsely filed. And lots of "smaller" deductions, but adding up to millions of dollars, that are false.

But that's just the tax fraud and evasion. When put beside his bank applications, there's going to be substantial bank fraud.

He faces very significant legal charges when he leaves office, may well go to jail. So may some or all of his children. As they all should if directly involved and complicit.

And the story is going to be about who he owes massive amounts of money, who has known what he owes, and who has been currying favor with income through his properties. Big national security implications. Follow the money.

Russia. Saudi Arabia. Turkey. Phillipines. others?

This is as dumb a take as it gets (and I fully expected it from MD).

MD: did you never consider that the IRS is mostly Democrats and almost every one would love nothing more than to see Trump get kicked out of office and therefore might have possibly perused his filings previous to the NYT non-bombshell? I guarantee if he had left out $0.01 of income Bharara would have drawn and quartered him during Obama's reign.

And I gather you think his lending banks were born yesterday and said to themselves today, 'gee, this Trump fella sure plays fast with the asset valuations!, we shoulda gotten some 3rd party valuations'.

Finally, I guess you think Trump does all his returns himself, and fills out bank loan documents himself too.

Your post is the stuff of DNC idiocy. Trump has been a target by the IRS and even banks since time immemorial. Any lender to Trump spent more money on their due diligence than they ever got back in fees.

If you think or believe otherwise, you are not a serious player in business.

[RedFromMI]

PB does not seem to remember that the R domination of Congress until recently has allowed for cut after cut in the IRS budget to go after guys like Trump. One of the biggest myths is that the IRS will catch everyone. The fact is they do not...

So if it is Biden, and a D Congress, I would expect to see a boost - with a focus on the uber wealthy...

Please. That lib lie is the biggest canard in all the land and libs use it to stoke class warfare.

IRS budgets don't need to be as absolutely high as they were because technology has reduced headcount need. The 'effective' IRS budget is higher than it's ever been; meaning for an expense of less than previous, we collect far more per payer than ever. The IRS budget ultimately will trend toward zero, because technology will preclude a taxpayer's ability to evade taxes.

I swear, half my days I have to wonder if libs are this dumb or just purposefully obtuse.

Also, your odds of an audit if you are uber wealthy are quite high relative to everyone else. There can be no doubt that a guy like Trump who uses every tool in the toolbox to reduce his taxes is under constant audit.

Wrong on the necessity for a lower budget, and the uber wealthy are audited less and less...

You just spew nonsense without any backup...

[njbill]

Guarantee you that Trump has already called Bill Barr and told him to get people arrested pronto.

Well there is the not-insignificant matter of it being a federal crime to release private tax information of a private citizen. Outside that, I guess you have a point somewhere.

Maybe. Depends who did the leak.

Maybe they can put the same crack team on this that has been trying for four years to figure out who leaked Flynn’s Kislyak call to David Ignatius.

As Kellyanne would say, let me know when the jail sentence starts.

[Peter Brown]

PB does not seem to remember that the R domination of Congress until recently has allowed for cut after cut in the IRS budget to go after guys like Trump. One of the biggest myths is that the IRS will catch everyone. The fact is they do not...

So if it is Biden, and a D Congress, I would expect to see a boost - with a focus on the uber wealthy...

Please. That lib lie is the biggest canard in all the land and libs use it to stoke class warfare.

IRS budgets don't need to be as absolutely high as they were because technology has reduced headcount need. The 'effective' IRS budget is higher than it's ever been; meaning for an expense of less than previous, we collect far more per payer than ever. The IRS budget ultimately will trend toward zero, because technology will preclude a taxpayer's ability to evade taxes.

I swear, half my days I have to wonder if libs are this dumb or just purposefully obtuse.

Also, your odds of an audit if you are uber wealthy are quite high relative to everyone else. There can be no doubt that a guy like Trump who uses every tool in the toolbox to reduce his taxes is under constant audit.

Wrong on the necessity for a lower budget, and the uber wealthy are audited less and less...

You just spew nonsense without any backup...

The IRS collects more money than ever with more refunds than ever, with less headcount. Sounds like someone is doing the right thing.

Red here wants the IRS to be able to purchase more Thomas the Tank Engine Wristbands for manager meetings and Vegas hookers at Treasury boondoggles.

[RedFromMI]

And PB fails logic again - the change in budgets alone would explain "collect" more. The question is does the IRS collect a large enough fraction of what is owed to the US Treasury, and that does not follow from his statements.

[njbill]

Isn't it odd (meaning, isn't it comically predictable) that Democrats are concerned about a $700,000 consulting fee to Ivanka, but could not care less that Hunter got a wire transfer of $3,500,000.00 from the Mayor of Moscow's wife...?

You forgot to list the pending criminal case against Eric.

[RedFromMI]

Another gem showed up on my Twitter feed:

In 2016, Trump wanted to select Ivanka as his running mate...