"Donald Trump took money other people gave his charity and used it to pay his businesses' fines."
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) September 20, 2016
David Fahrenthold deserves at least one Pulitzer. And if his excellent reporting saves our country from the horrors of a Trump presidency, possibly a Medal of Freedom as well.
From his latest Washington Post article:
Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents.
Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses…
If the Internal Revenue Service were to find that Trump violated self-dealing rules, the agency could require him to pay penalty taxes or to reimburse the foundation for all the money it spent on his behalf. Trump is also facing scrutiny from the New York attorney general’s office, which is examining whether the foundation broke state charity laws.
More broadly, these cases also provide new evidence that Trump ran his charity in a way that may have violated U.S. tax law and gone against the moral conventions of philanthropy…
The four new cases of possible self-dealing were discovered in the Trump Foundation’s tax filings. While Trump has refused to release his personal tax returns, the foundation’s filings are required to be public…
By all means, read the whole thing. Of course it’s been clear since the beginning that Trump wouldn’t release his personal returns because they’d show just how much of a petty thief and two-bit chiseler he is, but now it looks more and more like an attempt to avoid legal repercussions.
RYAN: Did you really pay your legal fines w/ charity money?
TRUMP: Just going forward, "I did it" is the answer to all questions, OK, rube?— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) September 20, 2016
“Think what the reaction would be if Clinton used her foundation’s money to pay off personal lawsuits.” https://t.co/Gr53pwDJUJ
— David Frum (@davidfrum) September 20, 2016
redshirt
Jeez, Anne, save some bullets!
rikyrah
Dylan ScottVerified account
@dylanlscott
Holy wow. Joe Manchin’s wife (i.e. mother of Mylan CEO) helped lead effort to require schools to purchase EpiPens:
piratedan
well… at least the money went to a “worthy” cause….
rikyrah
Daniel Dale @ddale8 Sep 18
There is a “stand your ground hotline” that helps gun owners who’ve just killed people
rikyrah
Matt BarrowsVerified account
@mattbarrows
Colin Kaepernick says he’ll donate $100k a month for the next 10 months. Is setting up web site so public can track $, how it is spent.
Soylent Green
Great, so Trump will be assessed some fines after he is elected. Okay if the taxpayers pick up the tab?
rikyrah
Eric Lipton @EricLiptonNYT Sep 19
Surveillance video of NYC explosion makes obvious: shatterproof glass installed street level in many NYC buildngs post Sept. 11 saved lives
Mai.naem.mobile
Trump is going to get $100k/a night with a five night minimum for inauguration night for the post office hotel penthouse suite. Keep in mind hotels have done surge pricing forever. Does anybody see how quid pro quo money could be laundered to the Trumps through their hotels quite easily? They talk about the Clinton Foundation which is pretty transparent while ignoring. Trumps private opaque business.
rikyrah
Josh Marshall @joshtpm 5h5 hours ago
Remind me again how many huge scoops @Fahrenthold has had. A single reporter w public records and a phone and legal pad.
scav
Hey! Let’s make ‘Merka Great Again using Other People’s Money just like the bigly Trump Empire as seen on da teevee and in da media when someone cons the news organizations to keep the stenographers busy and hanging on his every dropping! Conservativism at its traditional best, unlike those moochers and deadbeats and moreover those losers that pay their bills.
rikyrah
Reza AslanVerified account
@rezaaslan
Just a reminder that 74% of law enforcement agencies say #1 threat to America is not Islamic but Right Wing Terror.
bk
I think that the sleaziest part of all of this is that he shortened the hole at his Westchester club to less than 150 yards so that he wouldn’t have to pay out for a hole in one. Christ, what an asshole.
hilts
“if his excellent reporting saves our country from the horrors of a Trump presidency, possibly a Medal of Freedom as well.”
Hell, if his reporting can do that, his likeness belongs on Mt. Rushmore.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I don’t understand the context.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
That fucking guy.
Was super busy all day but one of my kids texted me to tell me that the President’s UN speech was extraordinary.
Wapiti
And Trump is going to put The Trump Organization into a “blind trust” to be run by his children. His children, who are the current directors for the Trump Foundation, who saw nothing and said nothing when he diverted funds from the foundation to his own purposes…
Renie
and is any investigative agency going to do anything about this before the elections?
still don’t understand why Bush family with all their money and connections didn’t get all this oppo research out on Trump last year
rikyrah
After another police shooting, silence from Kaepernick’s critics speaks volumes
September 20, 2016 10:38am EDT
On Sunday afternoon, Colin Kaepernick knelt for the national anthem before another game. On Monday, video went public of unarmed 40-year-old Terence Crutcher being shot to death by Tulsa police, as he walked beside his stalled car with his hands clearly raised.
Kaepernick responded to it on Twitter several times that day. His point was being made for him in the most horrific way, a graphic example of the police brutality against citizens of color he told America from Day One was the primary target of his protest.
As of Tuesday morning, his critics across the sports world the last three weeks had said of the Tulsa video … absolutely nothing.
Thunderous silence. Complete absence from the discussion. Utter disinterest in a full-color, blood-soaked illustration of the very issue they obstructed and deflected in their rush to condemn Kaepernick and his method of protest.
hovercraft
@bk:
Which part of all this is the sleaziest ? All of the Katie, all of them.
J.
AND MARK HALPERIN IS ON EFFING MSNBC SAYING TRUMP IS NOT TO BLAME for this slip up! His lawyers and foundation folks should have known better, he says. If Trump is guilty of anything, it’s poor hiring decisions, he says. WHAT THE FUCK?! This after I turned on MSNBC earlier only to find the Ambulatory Cream Cheese going off about some shooting being the REAL story. When the fuck did MSNBC turn into Fox and Friends?!
bk
@hovercraft: For sure, but this one was just low-class grifting.
Anne Laurie
@redshirt:
I was hoping to give the loyal commentors a place to put up their Open Thread thoughts (personal narratives, non-Trump-related news) before I posted this fairly important information.
You’d think I’d know better, by now.
rikyrah
Matt McDermottVerified account
@mattmfm
Trump campaign doesn’t have money for FL GOTV. How did NYT find out? Campaign sent worrisome email to wrong person!
Keith G
I never would have known.
bk
@shomi: There have been earlier threads and comments about just that, dipshit.
rikyrah
Trump campaign reporters no longer in motorcade
09/20/16 09:37 AM EDT
The Donald Trump campaign has reversed a move that was meant to improve logistics for the traveling media. Reporters following Trump as part of his pool will no longer travel in the candidate’s motorcade.
According to an email sent by organizers of the Trump press pool, the campaign said it was the Secret Service’s decision to remove the press pool from the motorcade as their resources are being stretched too thin amid a “heightened state of security” to keep the press’ plane clean.
“We have communicated that this is an issue that the campaign should have spotted long ago and are vigorously protesting the decision,” an email from the pool chairs said. “We have told the campaign that if they are truly committed to transparency, than [sic] they should place the pool on Trump’s plane so it is a truly protective pool. They have not been responsive to that request.”
On Monday, the journalists following Trump began to fly on a new “chase” plane which would more closely follow Trump’s plane, and were told they would now travel within the Trump motorcade. The move, which the campaign said was in the works for weeks, was expected to help prevent instances such as last week, when Trump’s press pool, caught in traffic on the way from a different airport, was late to a Trump rally in New Hampshire. Instead of delaying his rally, Trump mocked the press for being late.
By not being in the motorcade, the pool will have to contend with normal traffic, making it more likely that they could miss or be late to other events. The Trump press pool has been lobbying to travel with Trump on his plane, a move which would solve these logistical problems, and one his campaign has signaled will likely never happen. Nearly all previous presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, have their traveling press corps with them on their planes by this point in the campaign.
The reversal is the latest in a series of events that has seriously frustrated the reporters who cover Trump. From the campaign blacklisting certain outlets, to the candidate himself calling out certain reporters he feels are unfair (NBC’s Katy Tur was once escorted out of a rally by Secret Service for her own protection after Trump called her out), the reporters following Trump have had to deal with a seemingly never-ending series of roadblocks.
hovercraft
@MomSense:
It was a very good speech, at the rate he’s been going recently it’s going to be really difficult to decide which are his top 10 speeches.
Here’s the video from C-SPAN
eemom
Meanwhile, a book about the Clintons from an actual JOURNALIST, instead of a lie-mongering scumbag.
rikyrah
Imani GandyVerified account
@AngryBlackLady Imani Gandy Retweeted Rewire
Republicans in Michigan are stripping Flint of the right to sue over the water crisis that Republicans started.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
I guess he was counting on OPM for FL GOTV, too.
Pamoya
I’m supporting good journalism by finally subscribing to the electronic version of the Washington Post. I’ve noticed that I’m running low on my free quota of articles, and yes there are ways around that but if you can afford to subscribe you should consider it. If you have an Amazon prime account, you can get a 6 month free trial and the subscription is only $3.99 a month after that. You should be able to google that deal.
hovercraft
@J.:
I watched that, but it’s Mark “this is good news for John McCain/RMoney” Halpern, so of course it’s not Trumps fault. He also said it wasn’t that big a deal because it doesn’t involve the government where as the CGI scandal does. At this point his “analysis” is simply an audition to be Trumps Press Secretary.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
This seems like a stupid own-goal by Trump. He needs the media, and doing stuff to needlessly piss them off is just asking for negative coverage.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: Its not a hotline. Its one of several insurance plans/schemes that have hotlines to call to get an attorney if you’ve used your firearm in self defense. Stand your ground or not. Is it a good thing? That’s another issue entirely.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Roger Moore: Like info comerial for his hotel last friday? I think it’s some domination game with Trump. One would think what the press did to Hilary would be an example to him.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Something most sensible people know and Republicans will not acknowledge.
Villago Delenda Est
@J.: So Halperin thinks that Drumpf is not responsible for the Foundation that bears his name, but ZOMG the Clintons should be boiled in oil because their foundation doesn’t pay them salaries and 90% of its income is used on programs.
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore: Wasn’t it just yesterday we were told Hillary is the only one neglecting the media?
kd bart
@bk: It’s the story that needs to be repeated constantly because it’s the type of thing the average voter can relate. How Trump rigged a contest in order to get out of paying an average Joe a prize he had earned. It reveals how at the heart of it all, he’s a cheap corrupt carny always looking to cheat a mark.
japa21
@J.: So Halperin is saying that since the Presidency requires delegation of duties via the process of selecting good people to run agencies, etc., Trump is not qualified to be President.
Patricia Kayden
@J.: Did anyone explain to Halperin that even if this is the fault of hirelings, it still shows that Trump has poor judgment? What type of people will he select for key government positions as President given his poor choices to run his charities?
inventor
@Adam L Silverman:
…or, you know whatever.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
CK said that he would donate $1 million to charity.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Doesn’t appear to matter as Trump is up in the polls in Florida. At least for now.
bemused
Trump treats everything like a Trump style business deal but did he broadcast to every business or entity he has dealt with in the past ahead of the deals that he planned to use OPM or their money instead of his own. Seems weird to me that he would do the same with countries for Syrian “safe” zones but tell them before he would be making them pay. He is so full of shit performing for his idiot fan base.
hovercraft
@Patricia Kayden:
Halpern did make that one concession, he said it shows bad judgment in hiring them, but otherwise nothing to see here.
hilts
@J.:
Mark Halperin and Howie Kurtz are the 2 biggest media shills for Trump and they’re both paralyzed from the neck up.
bk
@kd bart: Agreed. But sadly, Brangelina will devour the news cycle for the next few days.
Patricia Kayden
@hovercraft: It’s a big deal that someone who wants to be the Leader of the Free World has repeatedly shown bad judgment in the way he handles his private matters. After Halpern called our President a dick, he can go beep himself as far as I’m concerned.
Roger Moore
@kd bart:
And then when he got caught, he used other people’s money to pay the fine.
hovercraft
@Patricia Kayden:
Monmouth had Clinton up by 5 in Florida today, so as usual pick your poison. He still up on average but I think it’s neck and neck.
JMG
So according to Halperin, underlings bought two huge oil paintings of Trump on their own hook. He’s not smart enough to be a minor league hockey color commentator.
In happier news, Trump foundation was the lead political story on ABC nightly news (seen by about 50 times more people) and it was a long report, too. Post gives TV permission to chase the story, because you know, Woodward and Bernstein.
debbie
@efgoldman:
For all the lying Clinton has been accused of, it’s turning out that Trump’s lying is even yuuuger.
Jeffro
@J.:
But I thought Trump only hires the best people? OUCH – kawgnitiv disssonents!!!
Eric S.
If I had a higher (Any) opinion of Trump’s intelligence I would suggest he ran for president to discourage prosecution.
Aleta
If he’s paying no taxes, why in the world would he need to give his own money to charity?
Mike in NC
This would-be Manhattan Mussolini needs to go the way of his predecessor.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Aleta: Maybe money laundering.
Aleta
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Don’t his mobster associates do that for him?
mike in dc
Someone needs to explain to Halperin what self-dealing is.
Adam L Silverman
@inventor: Its not a whatever. These are specifically one of two things: 1) either a fee for service plan for one to have access to an attorney should one use their firearm for what they are claiming as self defense – stand your ground, castle doctrine, retreated as far as was safely possible or 2) insurance plans that provide access to the attorney and then liability insurance to cover the cost of one’s defense and/or one’s defense and then any civil liability/liabilities. It does us no good to not be accurate about what it is we are describing.
That said, as I wrote the other day when this article was referenced, in the specific case that the article is addressing in the Citrus Park/Plantation areas of northwest Hillsborough County, a lot of the determination here not to prosecute is the result of Mark Ober, the State Attorney (what FL calls District Attorneys) for Hillsborough County. He’s a pretty corrupt piece of work and has recently gotten himself in trouble as a result of the cavalier way he has treated an underage sexual slave case.
dmsilev
This is just mean:
(From Politico)
debbie
I can’t believe he’s only got a little over 2,000 followers on Twitter.
Peale
@japa21: yep. Part of the spiel is that he’ll find the best people. Great people. Yet no one he’s hired seems great. Or honest. I don’t think he’s got enough goodwill stored up in the public mind to get away with trying to be the “good decent war hero who’s only error was trusting bad peoples too much” u.s. Grant defense.
Adam L Silverman
@JMG: Halperin needs to explain, exactly, why Trump signed the checks then.
Starfish
@rikyrah: Requiring schools to buy some Epi-pens instead of requiring every freaking student with an allergy to have an Epi-pen sit in the school office the whole year might create an overall cost savings. I know she was probably pushing for both.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: There were Boomers born in 1931? Who knew.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t wanna eat old people!
different-church-lady
@hovercraft: Based on the behavior of certain characters in a non-political corner of the interwebs I hang out on, it would appear H has broken her slide.
Other than that, I’ve been too much of a coward to actually look at the polls themselves. Saw someone bragging about an NBC poll today that has her breaking 50% nationally.
different-church-lady
@mike in dc: It’s good news for John McCain, isn’t it?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: I hear they’re tasty and nutritious, must be the Geritol.
Renie
@Pamoya: if you do that, when you comment on an article does it use your amazon name and email? My amazon acct is almost 20 years old and I used my real name and family email for it so I don’t want that public. Do you know the answer? Thanks.
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: she took a nosedive to 81% at Wang’s joint today, based on a questionable modeling decision. Still sorting through that one myself. But the pollster polls, I mean, if you look at the aggregates basically nothing has ever changed ever except for the convention bounce.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
I think you have Miami-Dade won, you are a nice Jewish boy. But I think that might work against you up in the panhandle, so I don’t know. But then again a state that elected Bat Boy twice should be willing to elect you, as long as you dumb it down. Sorry Betty.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: From the data, the support in FL for Trump peaks around 65 year olds and tails off at 85. So there are a few in there that predate the boomers, but the highest concentration is among the boomers. We’ll mark the product made from those that predate the boomers as “best used by: immediately” in case you’re worried about past their use by date.
JMG
@Major Major Major Major: He just factored in the Ipsos 50-state polls today, although they were out on Saturday. It isn’t his gig like it is for Silver, it’s an avocation.
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: You just need to cook them properly. Braising would be a good place to start.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: You will do so or you will not get dessert!
humboldtblue
When did David Frum become the guy on the right side?
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Unfortunately all to often.
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major: From the few dribs and drabs I did see, the interesting thing is that she does not seem to have lost much of her own support, but Trump has gained a lot since the conventions.
I find it utterly mystifying. What are these people thinking? Has Trump somehow become a different person in the last six weeks?
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: With all the humidity down here they’ve already been wet aged!
Villago Delenda Est
@Patricia Kayden: Halperin knows nothing about good judgement, as we have often seen in his “work product” which is often pulled directly from his ass.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Eh, the oldest Boomer would be 70(1946-~1964).
ETA: Adam, this is something that sticks in my craw just a tad; saying elderly==Boomers. It’s been going on for probably about 10 years, before any Boomers were over 65. It is true that early Boomers are now over 65, but remember most of the 65+ demographic are the Silents.
James E Powell
@rikyrah:
Keeping the spirit of I.F. Stone alive.
Jeffro
@debbie:
Well, he’s got one more, but then again, I really wanna just see his stuff keep lighting up the Post
JMG
@different-church-lady: Republicans falling in line. There is a theory that poli scientists have advanced that due to the unpopularity of both candidates, the one who is in the news the most loses ground. Last week that was Clinton. So far this week, it’s Trump.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev: Mean, and accurate.
hovercraft
@Peale:
The flag pole will be his defense, he’ll deflect from everything and focus on the unpatriotic regulations didn’t want him to let him fly his giant American flag. His yahoos will chant U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A. The suburban voters who hate their home owners association will also be sympathetic to him. And voila we’re talking flags and flag pins corruption forgotten.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The actual point here is that old people are once again looking to hose everyone else. Hence my belief that we can sell “soylent green is people” as an effective political message.
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: they’re republicans.
@JMG: yeah, but by his own standards a good number of those polls shouldn’t even be in the model since the data is so old. My bet is that she’s back up to ~88%, meta margin 2.4 in five days just on these ‘new’ results starting to expire.
dmsilev
@JMG: I wonder if the Post’s long string of Trump Foundation scoops is going to prod the NYT to get off its oh-so-respectable ass and start doing some similar digging. They essentially reprinted today’s Post story, apparently through a clenched jaw.
SiubhanDuinne
@MomSense:
Your kid was right.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Adam L Silverman:
Of that group, only those 65-70 are boomers.
CaseyL
@different-church-lady: I see some of them over at TAC, esp. Dreher’s column. These are people who’ve convinced themselves that no matter what Trump has done, Clinton is worse. Also, they’re theocrats who want White Christians in charge, and they believe Trump would make that happen.
Like Dreher himself, they played coy for a while, saying they’d either sit out the election or vote for the Libertarian. But the possibility of a White Christian Reich is too powerful. They’re on board.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I promise will have a lovely chocolate milkshake flavor so they won’t stick in your craw.
redshirt
OT: BIG PAPI!!!!
Jeffro
@hovercraft:
Let’s see…page 2 of the Obama playbook…”We can walk AND chew gum”…
Come on you know that’s what Hillz & Kaine will say. “It’s not hard to be patriotic in any number of ways AND still expect citizens to obey the law, even if they wish to work to change it.”
PPCLI
@rikyrah: The new I.F. Stone! It’s about time… We’ve been needing one.
ETA – ah, I see people have already had that idea
hovercraft
@different-church-lady:
Yes she has stabilized, NBC/Survey Monkey a weekly tracking poll had her up 3 points from last week back up to 50.
Latino Decisions has begun their weekly tracking poll.
And the lack of enthusiasm we’ve been hearing about among Latinos:
So there are some encouraging signs.
But still everyone GOTV, volunteer.
Chris T.
@Adam L Silverman:
Just to be serious for a moment (is this allowed?), it’s worth noting that by 85, most of the men have died off, leaving mostly women.
Major Major Major Major
@Chris T.: I saw the phrase ‘Trump Peaks’ and thought man, now that would be a weird TV show!
hovercraft
@different-church-lady:
Republicans have come home, he was between 65 and 75 for a few weeks post convention, now he’s up in the mid to high 80’s, Hillary is still at 90 with dems.
Frankensteinbeck
@humboldtblue:
Never, but for years he’s been the merely asshole Republican who did not go apeshit insane just because a black man became president. Compared to other Republicans, he can sound quite decent.
redshirt
@Major Major Major Major: *Plays weird Angelo Badalamenti theme…
Chris T.
@Major Major Major Major: The peaks are very small, though.
RaflW
Anyone in Mtn or Pacific time, please watch PBS this evening, Sharp’s War, a new Ken Burns film. If you are in CDT it’s on now. Should be available streaming as well.
It’s chilling but important.
J R in WV
@J.:
When Hillary Clinton was nominated, all major news media turned into Faux News.
SATSQ
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: Only the yoogest, classiest peaks other people’s money can buy.
Peter H Desmond
@efgoldman: this is encouraging; thanks for letting us know.
Peter H Desmond
@JMG: yay!
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
Really? That almost — not entirely, but almost — makes me want to open a Twitter account.
Naaahhh…..
Brachiator
@Peale:
This is a good point. I hope that Team Clinton will use something like this in the debates. Trump promises much, but he delivers little. His top counsellors seem to be warmed over neoconservatives, failed Republicans, unreconstructed racists and anti semites, and Vladimir Putin.
Pamoya
@Renie: If you use Amazon Prime to sign up for a WaPo subscription, it does have you sign in with your Amazon username and password, so I’m guessing that yes, it uses this to sign your comments if you comment on articles. I don’t know that for sure, though.
SiubhanDuinne
@RaflW:
Heard an interview with Ken Burns earlier this evening. He said that after the Civil War and the Vietnam War, the mood in the country today is the most divisive he has ever witnessed.
(His Civil War documentary series is, deservedly, iconic. He has a new film on Vietnam coming out in 2017. Can’t wait to see it, although I’m certain it will be upsetting.)
Mike in NC
@J R in WV: They hired a right-wing dick named Andrew Lack.
Aleta
@Steeplejack (phone): Is the comment of Adam’s you are quoting/replying to on another thread? (The link back from his name does not work for me.) Thanks.
schrodinger's cat
@SiubhanDuinne: I find Ken Burns documentaries overly long. He goes on and on….
Miss Bianca
@Aleta: I was wondering the same thing…thought maybe the site was acting up on me. Or maybe the comment got deleted? Was trying to guess from context whether Adam had been advocating a “Soylent Green” solution for the problem of the Olds Voting for Trump…/
Brachiator
According to the Guardian, Trump Jr is upping the ante on his Skittles obscenity.
But of course it would be rude to say that Trump was blatantly appealing to racists. We obviously need the NY Times public editor to weigh in on this.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I think it’s partly shorthand for “people who were born prior to the Civil Rights Act being passed.” Which is a little unfair to younger Boomers, but I think that’s the idea.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Aleta:
It’s from a comment in this thread that he subsequently deleted.
Anne Laurie
@humboldtblue:
When he realized nobody in the Trump campaign was gonna pay him to cheerlead for them.
He figured going back to the #NeverTrump “true GOP conservatives” was his best fallback, especially since that doesn’t eliminate his hopes of a nice gig in the future HRClinton administration.
Capri
@Frankensteinbeck: Frum told the truth as he saw it about Bush and Obamacare. As a result, he was fired from his think tank and blackballed from Fox News. He’s old school GOP, before they became a death cult.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Miss Bianca:
Yes on both counts. Deleted and Soylent Green.
Aleta
@Miss Bianca: first the electorate, now the site — has logic forsaken us?
Aleta
@Steeplejack (phone): ok, thanks. did not occur to me.
Anne Laurie
@different-church-lady:
I hear that the National Review people are retreating from their bold #NeverTrump stance — as predicted by anyone who’s ever dealt with the NR people, professionally or personally.
Suspect the polling changes are mostly NR sympathists or subscribers; now that they’ve milked their BOLD PRINCIPLES stance for what it’s worth, gotten their markers down for the history books, they’re sneaking back under the Repub tent while everybody’s looking in the other direction.
Miss Bianca
@Steeplejack (phone): @Aleta: SOYLENT GREEN IS VOTERS!!
NonyNony
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
The problem is that Boomers as a group are not. A group that is. The early Boomers born before 1955 have more in common with the Silent generation than they do with the later Boomers born after 1960 (who have more in common with early Gen Xers than they do with their older Boomer peers). When people speak of “Boomers” as a generation they mean the folks who were 18+ during the summer of love, not the folks who were 8.
The entire concept of 20 year generation cycles as cohorts is really goddamn silly. Can we really say that an early gen Xer (born in 1965) and a late gen Xer (born in 1983) shared common experiences growing up? Same for the Boomers – a Boomer born in 1946 is going to have a very different set of life experiences than a Boomer born in 1964. And yet for some reason everyone wants to lump them together as the cohort of Beatlemania and Free Love. It’s nuts.
Lizzy L
I just signed up for The WaPo digital edition through Amazon Prime.
Steve in the ATL
@Anne Laurie: My stepfather is suffering from severe dementia, but he still possesses a crystal clear memory of what an asshole his Yale classmate, Wm. F. Buckley, was. Apparently he was widely despised by the student body. (Buckley, that is. No idea about my stepfather’s popularity.)
Aleta
Still confused, I looked up soylent green. Until now I thought (honestly) soylent green was some kind of energy drink powder.
Miss Bianca
@Anne Laurie: I’m inclined to be a bit – just a bit – more charitable about David Frum than about some of asshat fellow travelers. Don’t know what that says about either him or me, but I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s maybe genuinely revolted by what he sees in Trumpism.
ETA: I don’t know that I’ve quite got to the point of “all is forgiven”. Not till he apologizes for coining the term “Axis of Evil”.
rikyrah
@humboldtblue:
Occasionally they hook him up to truth serum.
Turgidson
Yeah but Hillary wrote emails so who cares.
Major Major Major Major
@Aleta: “soylent” is a meal-replacement drink/powder supplement thing. It’s named after Soylent Green, a sci-fi food made of people.
Turgidson
@Miss Bianca:
He has very gradually become less abhorrent, but his first several years in the “Kicked Out of the Wurlitzer” wilderness were spent larding up damn near every column offering constructive criticism of the GOP with idiotic anti-Obama throat-clearing – I assume it was in the hopes that he’d be invited back into the Wurlitzer’s Frequent Morons Club. He seems to have given up on this aspiration and his work has improved as a result. He’s still a fucking asshole though.
Aleta
@rikyrah: Thanks for this one and the other articles you post.
J R in WV
@Mike in NC:
Sorta like The AP hired a right wing hack named Ron Fournier as AP bureau chief for the Obama election. Now moved along to the seriously significant position of Detroit econ reporter.
Aleta
@Major Major Major Major: Gravity boots appeared in sci fi long before they showed up in our world, too.
Miss Bianca
@Turgidson: Well, OK. He may still be an asshole – I won’t dispute it – but he’s so much better than the rest of his repellent breed of right-wing scribblers that like I said, I’m cutting him a bit of slack. Probably more slack than he truly deserves, but hey – I’m feeling generous toward anyone on the right who isn’t licking Trump’s boots right now.
mapaghimagsik
#chiseler
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Grading on a curve, are we?
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Damn it, I’m really glad I’d put my tea down before I read that…
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Always put down your drink before refreshing the page on this site. Basic safety protocol.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: So noted. : ) Off to do some scribbling of my own before bed-time. Bonjour et bonne nuit!
patroclus
@Major Major Major Major: What??!! Soylent Green is PEOPLE???!!!
Ken
@patroclus: No, it’s really algae and soy protein. But the marketing division came up with this great viral campaign…
Jeffro
@Anne Laurie: Nah come on, Frum and Rubin and a (very) few others have been out there getting beat like a piñata from both sides this election. If we had to ask ourselves, what would a principled conservative be saying at this point, it would look a lot like what the two of them are putting out there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeffro: As far as I am concerned, anyone who still identifies as a Republican at this point has forfeited any benefit of a doubt.
Jeffro
@Brachiator:
It’s not about delivering, or even about his counselors’ connections (although those are important, of course). It’s that Trump is way too much of a fucking moron to even know or begin to know who the best people for the job are.
All he does is hire yes-men and people who praise his “intelligence”, so…Secretary of State Lewandowski? Press Secretary Conway? That crazy-ass rogue general Flynn for SecDef?
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: Trump Jr. may somehow be more despicable than his old man.
FlipYrWhig
@Jeffro: Plus his loathsome children. They’re his braintrust.
Jeffro
@Omnes Omnibus: I hear you, but (here’s the inner debate team guy in me, dammit – I swear I’m really as Progressive as they come) there’s a case to be made for principled conservatism, limited government, whatever. These two are not at all identifying as Republican at all and are openly calling for the death of the current GOP.
We don’t see it quite as clearly because we hate them for past offenses, and probably rightly so. But this is what it would look like if a conservative was appalled by Trump and actually stuck to his/her principles.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeffro: I tell you what, I’ll give you Bruce Bartlett.
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady:
For a while after Kellyanne Conway came on, the campaign seemed to keep Trump from saying anything too outrageous on Twitter. Clinton was also staying kind of low-profile and fundraising, and I think it all caused a sort of regression to the tribal mean. The convention bounce had lasted way longer than anyone expected as it was.
Then there was the weekend of “basket of deplorables”, the fainting video and Pneumoniaghazi, which I think drove a bunch of Gary-Johnson-curious conservatives to remind themselves how much they already hated Hillary and get on the Trump train to beat her.
Jeffro
@FlipYrWhig: Well his real brain trust is himself*, but yeah, I get what you mean. This is an issue only for us Dems and the three remaining swing voters left in the country, unfortunately.
*as with so many other quotes and reporting, just for fun, picture the reporting that would follow if Clinton had said the crazy-ass shit about “I consult with myself, I have a great mind” that Trump did. I mean that alone would have knocked her out of the race months ago.
Matt McIrvin
@Anne Laurie: Frum had gone off the reservation before. I’m still stunned at his long-form disemboweling of Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart,” which to some extent was bashing attitudes that Frum himself had expressed years before.
Jeffro
@Omnes Omnibus: Bruce is awesome, I must say.
Frankly, you’d think this would be the time for conservatives with a royally self-righteous streak (but I repeat myself) to be seriously laying the wood to all these lame folks falling in line behind Der Fraudster. I mean, they MUST know that history is going to be on their side…don’t they?
gratuitous
Here’s a question that occurs to me: If Trump Foundation money was used to pay off Trump’s personal debts and obligations, shouldn’t Trump be declaring that money as income, and paying taxes on it?
Uncle Cosmo
@NonyNony:
In your opinion. In my opinion your opinion is complete bullshit. After a career as a research statistician, I may understand just a leetle bit more than you about the use & usefulness of central tendencies in describing a large number of data points, as well as the limitations thereof.
bs
@gratuitous: If you’re intelligent, and you’re embezzling from your “charity”, you don’t declare it on your taxes. Trump may very well have done so, though.
Joe Miller
@Uncle Cosmo: There is no such thing as a “typical” Greatest Generation, Silent, Boomer, Gen X’er, Gen Y’er, or Millennial. All of those terms are nonsense. Groups of people are staggeringly diverse, and history does not unfold in so-called generations. I spent several decades teaching history, hold an advanced degree in it, and am writing a multi-volume deep history. I know a few things, too. And NonyNony happens to be right.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I hope this story has legs. Obama could give it legs by launching an investigation…and if howls of trying to influence the election ensue all he has to say is it looks like Trump violated the law and we have a responsibility to investigate. Also, too, Republicans weaponized this shit in the 90s, and payback is a bitch, assholes.