Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Everybody saw this coming.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

In my day, never was longer.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

This blog will pay for itself.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Let there be snark.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Goniffs in the Night Open Thread: Happy B-Day, Ya Putz!

Goniffs in the Night Open Thread: Happy B-Day, Ya Putz!

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I {heart} New York… of course the AG charged the Trump Foundation on the old man’s birthday…


 


Reader Interactions

102Comments

  2. 2.

    Mike in NC

    Not yet Friday, but overall not a great week for Fat Bastard even after he bowed before Lil Kim.

  4. 4.

    Mary G

    She wants him to give the $1 million left in the foundation to other charities and pay NYS $2.8 million in penalties. I wonder if he even has that much money free.

    Christine and John Legend are pretty cool and her twitter feed can be hilarious.

  5. 5.

    Yarrow

    The hidden tidbit in this civil lawsuit by the NY AG against Trump Foundation is the fact that they also sent referral letters to the IRS & FEC, outlining potential violations of federal law. This could very easily spawn 2 new criminal investigations into the Foundation as well!— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) June 14, 2018

  7. 7.

    randy khan

    Amidst the mind-numbing violations of law and best practices, remember that nearly all of the family foundations in the country are entirely funded by the families that establish them. The Trump Foundation got essentially no money from Trump, which makes it more like those fake charities that call you to beg for money for police orphans and actually spend every dime on fundraising than like the Ford Foundation. Heck, the Koch Brothers are orders of magnitude more charitable than Trump. (Of course, they have real money.)

  8. 8.

    Kay

    Google “Clinton Foundation”. The New York Times really thoroughly flogged that story. Nothing rivals the email coverage of course, the biggest story of the century, but it was close!

    Odd though. All those years and the Trump Foundation right under their noses and nary a mention.

  9. 9.

    zhena gogolia

    @Mary G:

    OT except John Legend, but I’ve been listening to the CD of the NBC Jesus Christ Superstar, and his performance as Jesus is excellent. It really comes through on the audio, because his acting was eclipsed by Brandon Victor Dixon on the show.

  10. 10.

    BruceFromOhio

    @Platonailedit: Perhaps. Still, better than not at all, which is what these two-bit ratfuck soulless criminals expect.

    What interests me from an anthropological perspective is, how long will the trained seals keep clapping as the many truths of how unbelievably depraved these people are, this man is, come to light? It’s a morbid thing, like wondering how long I might survive while being devoured by worms or being tortured with a spoon. Regrettably, it takes down my fucking country, along with a whole lot of people with little or nothing left to lose.

  11. 11.

    Kay

    I love that they used it to pay legal fees for one of the sleazy businesses. I hope it went to Cohen. We’ll be seeing that again!

    The Trumps will never pay that fine, BTW. They better attach one of the properties or they’ll never see a dime of that money.

  14. 14.

    M4

    They’re horrible and evil, okay sure, but god, they’re also so gallingly shallow about it.

  15. 15.

    Mike J

    @Mary G: It was insurance companies that told Kansas schools they wouldn’t cover them if they allowed teachers to carry.

    If guns made you safer insurance companies would require them.

  16. 16.

    Kay

    Rudy Giuliani demands Mueller suspension “tomorrow” after Justice Department report

    Guffaw. “Demands”. I mean, he can say it, but is it necessary to pretend it means something?

  18. 18.

    Duane

    An RNC text today asked me to send my wishes to Trump on his birthday. I sent him, the RNC, and their former finance committee heads my thoughts and prayers. Mostly for their quick demise or lengthy jailtime.

  19. 19.

    Kay

    @BruceFromOhio:

    It’s just weird how all this brazen white collar crime went completely undetected, given that his name is all over those buildings and he was a reality tv show star. Not enough clues, I guess. They couldn’t track down these criminals for 50 years. Maybe they needed a service address. “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Finally”.

  22. 22.

    Platonailedit

    Phew. Bad day for Sarah Sanders, James Comey, Scott Pruitt and Donald Trump. But it’s nothing like the day a throng of terrified children are having in an abandoned Walmart after thugs unleashed by an AG preaching a twisted gospel of evil ripped them from their desperate parents.— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) June 15, 2018

    Voters, even the rethugs, need to wake the fuck up.

  24. 24.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    Why the fuck is Sean Spicer wishing the man that probably made his life a living hell happy birthday?

  27. 27.

    Mandalay

    And in other legal news, Michael Cohen has filed a STFU-or-else order against Michael Avenatti for saying mean, howwible and nasty things about him all the time.

    IANAL but the irony of Trump’s lawyer arguing this in pursuit of a gag order on Avenatti is a bit rich:

    The right to a fair trial, both in civil and criminal cases, is of the utmost importance to the administration of justice. Many courts have held that a trial judge has the authority to adopt reasonable measures to avoid injury to the parties by reason of prejudicial or inflammatory publicity and trial orders should be issued which avoid improper attempts to undertake trials in the press and prejudice opposing litigants.

  29. 29.

    Platonailedit

    @Kay:

    Maybe they needed a service address. “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Finally”.

    LOL. Indeed. All the governmental oversight agencies dropped the ball. Collectively. And repeatedly.

  30. 30.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Mike J:
    There you libs go again, bringing your facts and reality into this. Everybody knows good guys with guns literally everywhere make us all safer. //

  31. 31.

    M. Bouffant

    California Bear:

    A woman hiking the Pacific Coast Trail north of Los Angeles says she fought off an attacking bear by stabbing it.

    The 25-year-old woman told Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies that she was in the Vasquez Rocks park on Thursday when a small black bear ran toward her. The woman says she pulled a knife from her backpack and stabbed it in the shoulder and the animal fled.

    The woman had a scratched wrist but declined treatment.

    Authorities evacuated the area and closed the park for several hours. They found bear droppings but no tracks or other signs of the bear and the park was reopened.

    Vazquez Rocks is a rugged, rocky area that is a popular filming site for TV shows and movies.

  32. 32.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Platonailedit:
    The local news here in Ohio was pretty brutal (for local TV news) on Trump. Plainly stated that the footage of Trump saluting that North Korean general is being used as propaganda in the DPRK. Also reported on the “tent cities” being planned. They’re usually much more “even handed”. I saw a headline in the Plain Dealer the other day, to the effect of “Objectives unclear after Summit”. This isn’t exactly glowing and if I was a low-info voter this would be deeply concerning.

    Between this, the thousands of migrant children being held in concentration camps, and the trade war against practically the entire world, I don’t know. I think the spell is beginning to fade. Trump is scaring a lot of people and the press is getting wise to his flash over substance shtick.

  33. 33.

    Mandalay

    Now Ivanka’s pinned tweet (“Those who say it can not be done, should not interrupt those doing it.”) makes perfect sense.

    She’s talking about those nattering nabobs of negativism who told her that the Trump family should not be getting suckers to donate to the Trump Foundation and then using that money to get her dad elected.

  36. 36.

    dmsilev

    @jk:

    Stockholm Syndrome

    Oddly enough, that’s also the technical term for Trump’s Nobel Prize Envy.

    (and yes, I know the Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo. I doubt Trump knows that.)

  37. 37.

    Platonailedit

    Today, the New York Attorney General said that the President of the United States is someone who should be banned from running a charity in New York for 10 years.

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 15, 2018

    Remember the rethugs issuing empty threats of how they gonna impeach Obama on unstated “high crimes and misdemeanors” ?

  38. 38.

    Suffragettecity

    @M4:

    OT: Here’s Samwise, nature’s perfect killing machine.

    Too cute !! Made me smile ..a lot!

  39. 39.

    dmsilev

    @Mandalay: Someone should tell her that aphorisms like that are the sole property of green puppets lifting X-wings out of swamps.

  46. 46.

    Wapiti

    @Platonailedit: I was sort of miffed that the NYAG also recommended the 3 elder offspring be banned from running charities for 1 year. Hell, they were blatantly disregarding their duties on the board for something like 19 years. They should be banned from being on a charity BoD for 10 years as well.

  47. 47.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Kay: “The report showed that Strzok didn’t let him biases against Trump impact the investigation and that he was canned as soon those biases became known to management. Therefore, he must be jailed and his boss must be fired fucking immediately Or Else.”

    Oh, that’s not like a banana goddamn republic at all, is it?

  54. 54.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Major Major Major Major: Yeah. The “Now, I’m just a humble hyper chicken from a backwoods planet” bit is priceless, but I figured Zapp was better. And I was really hoping somebody would post the Billy West/Trump thing, though it’s also kind of depressing.

  58. 58.

    Mnemosyne

    When I was a kid, I had a friend who was born on the 14th of June, and I was always a little jealous that she got to have a holiday on her birthday, while I only got to have Father’s Day every four-ish years since I was born one day later.

    Trump has helped me let go of that old feeling, so … thanks?

    (Yes, this is partly a convoluted way of saying that tomorrow is my birthday. We’re going to Disneyland!)

  61. 61.

    FlipYrWhig

    I was thinking about Trump’s weirdness involving his many supposed conversations with parents of slain Korean War soldiers from 65 years ago and it occurred to me: is Trump perhaps unaware that Korea and Vietnam are two different places?

  62. 62.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne:

    Well, I knew about the Disneyland part but not the birthday part. Have a happy, and enjoy your mini-vacation!

  64. 64.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Wouldn’t surprise me at all. That theory certainly makes as much sense as anything else, and would be in keeping with his overall ignorance and dearth of curiosity.

  65. 65.

    Shalimar

    @Quinerly: They might want to do an inventory before Issa takes over, make sure he doesn’t “borrow” any cars. Though he is the logical choice for protecting consumers given Trump’s “who is the most corrupt person possible for this position” job-search criteria.

  69. 69.

    Mnemosyne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    You know me, I’m all about the sportsball. Yay team, kick a home run!

    The fact that I got a half-price room at the Grand Californian is the true influencer. Don’t tell G that half-price is still really fucking expensive. It’s my money, anyway.

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Thank you! Technically it’s still an hour to go on this coast, but I wanted to catch the nighttime crowd.

  72. 72.

    Mnemosyne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    I’m flying to Sacramento.

    Like, voluntarily? ?

    Kidding — I remember you said you were going to go up there for a photo safari. Hopefully you’ll get some nice shots.

  73. 73.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    ” I’m going on an adventure next month, I’m flying to Sacramento. ”
    We all need to hear about this. What are you plans for Northern California, SoCal stranger?
    Makes me think about voting yes on the split California initiative. Keep those outside agitators out of here.

  74. 74.

    Aleta

    My hopeful question is, how likely is it that the illegal acts of the sham Tr Fdn will entangle the T Organization even more? (New kinds of trouble in addition to Russia and potential money laundering, foreign agents and whatnot.)

    I remember (a few months ago?) Mueller subpoenaed the T Org for its records concerning Russia and other unknown parts of the investigation. Iirc, he supposedly went straight to the subpoena, without going through a period of ask and wait for compliance.

    Anyway, I hope there are some threads of felonies running not only from the Fdn to the campaign, but also to the Organization. A KO for the TO.

    So that the sibs may live their mean lives appearing in front of judges for years and years. So that the loans and shell companies and cash flow and NYC apartments and rotten deals collapse all around them more spectacularly than ice shelves of a melting glacier crash into the sea.

  75. 75.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @J R in WV: The Capitol itself is a steel frame building, it was given the White House treatment about 40 years ago.
    @Mnemosyne:
    @jl: I was planning on driving up there, but I found a competitive airfare, so I’m flying. I’m taking pics of the Capitol and the surrounding area. Looking at the Capitol website, I’ll have to take my camera bag instead of my camera backpack.

  76. 76.

    Aleta

    @Mnemosyne: Happy last 16 minutes before your birth day. Btw your marigolds are up and got some rain today. I hope to show you a picture some day, though drop box is all I know how to do.

  79. 79.

    sukabi

    Colbert’s commentary on the internment of children was good tonight.

    Noting that the administration is apparently considering erecting tent cities to shelter these children, Colbert said, “It wouldn’t matter if you took these children to really nice hotels—or Trump hotels—we’d still be the only country in the whole damn world doing it, because it’s just plain wrong.”

    The host urged his viewers to call their elected representatives this Father’s Day and “demand they do something.”

    “I sincerely believe that it doesn’t matter who you voted for,” Colbert concluded. “If we let this happen in our name, we are a feckless… country.”

  84. 84.

    Aleta

    Last week, Wall Street Journal reported citing sources that Putin is considering the opportunity of organizing his meeting with Trump in Vienna and discussed this issue with Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurtz.
    According to the publication, during his visit to Austria earlier this month Putin allegedly spoke with the Chancellor about the possibility of organizing a summit in Vienna this summer. According to the newspaper, Kurtz told the Russian leader that he would contact Trump about this matter.
    Later a representative of the White House confirmed that Vienna informed the US administration about its readiness to host the summit.
    On March 20, Putin and Trump had a telephone conversation. According to the Kremlin press service, the heads of US and Russian foreign ministries were instructed to work out the details of the meeting between the two leaders. Moreover, later it became known that Trump not only talked about the possibility of a meeting, but also invited Putin to Washington for this purpose. At the end of May, aide of the Russian President Yuri Ushakov said that the opportunity of organizing a meeting between Putin and Trump in the coming months, before the summit of G20 in November, has not been discussed yet.
    On June 10, Putin confirmed that he was ready to meet with Trump as soon as the US was ready for it.

    -TASS

  87. 87.

    Mnemosyne

    Thanks, all! Now I need to get to sleep — we have to get up bright and early to take Annie for her checkup with the kitty dermatologist. Then it’s time for booze and giant mice!

  90. 90.

    piratedan

    it really is kind of funny how the GOP has completely abandoned the old positions of “being the rudder for common sense”, lets understand the implications of change before we embrace it and so on and so forth and have completely bought into feeding the beast that their media arm has created by vilifying everything that they aren’t. It’s actually kind of terrifying that these guys are willing to meekly go full Nazi so they can stay in power as if they really are completely devoid of ethics and morals and that they should be in charge, because baby jaysus said that all middle age white dudes have the dominion of kings.

    If Democrats take control, there shouldn’t be a purge, but we sure as hell better stop being “collegial” about this shit and punish every last one of the asshats that broke our laws in order to get their freakish hate flags on….

    I will gladly pay my taxes to witness that and we can have the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library housed at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.

  92. 92.

    M. Bouffant

    @FlipYrWhig: If there’s any vaguely sequential explanation, it’s that Lumpy’s conflating/confusing the recently released D.P.R.K. prisoners w/ the remains of service members.

    “Hey, parents are parents, some of those people whining at me must’ve lost their kid …”

  94. 94.

    NorthLeft12

    Hey, my memory is definitely not what it used to be, but was’t a lot of this malfeasance widely reported in 2016?
    Like, before November?

    And I seem to recollect that the Trump foundation was known to be a Sham/Scam well before that.
    Too bad something was not done earlier, because I have the sneaking suspicion that none of this will matter.

  95. 95.

    trnc

    @Kay:

    Google “Clinton Foundation”. The New York Times really thoroughly flogged that story. Nothing rivals the email coverage of course, the biggest story of the century, but it was close!

    Odd though. All those years and the Trump Foundation right under their noses and nary a mention.

    NPR, too. I think there’s a better than even chance the Koch Bros have some editorial power at NPR in the same way they had hiring control at George Mason.That’s the only way I can make sense of the Clinton Foundation stories, the weekly stories about DT supporters and non-pushback on the obvious lies of DT administration officials in interviews. I hope one day I’ll feel like I can become a sustainer again. I think they’ve been a little better in the last couple of weeks, so we’ll see.

    Also, did anyone else think it was weird that Cokie’s segment this week was spent answering listener questions about the history of the Korean War rather than her usual politcal rundown? Seems like they would have brought on a Korea expert for that and had Cokie taking about the politics of the NK summit. Maybe they couldn’t find enough (or any) pluses to highlight for DT.

  96. 96.

    different-church-lady

    a)

    A good thing for news companies to do this week: Publish an estimate of reporter-hours they spent on Clinton & Trump foundations in 2016

    We’ll have self-driving unicorns before we ever see any “we got rolled” articles from the media.

    b) We have to remember that things like this are only symptoms of the root problem, which is: far too many Americans are just… shitty… people.

  100. 100.

    Gelfling 545

    @Mnemosyne: I need me some Disney right now but unfortunately it’s not in the budget just now. AND I read on FB that we may be facing a world shortage of Irish whiskey!

  101. 101.

    Shana

    @Duane: My father used to get those occasionally. He’d write in big letters “Pardon Richard Nixon? The American people would never stand for it. – Gerald Ford” and send it back. He’d also stuff as much junk mail as possible into the envelope along with it.

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