Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

In my day, never was longer.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Everybody saw this coming.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

T R E 4 5 O N

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Consistently wrong since 2002

Infrastructure week. at last.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

People are complicated. Love is not.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

We still have time to mess this up!

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Trump Crime Cartel / So Much Crime We Can’t Keep Up

Reader Interactions

37Comments

  3. 3.

    TenguPhule

    Like the Elaine Chao scandal. How many of you even heard about it?

    Broke the story here yesterday.

  7. 7.

    Mnemosyne

    So much for all of the pundits insisting that Mitch McConnell couldn’t possibly have a financial motive behind his obstruction. ?

  8. 8.

    TenguPhule

    Speaking of scandals in motion, the head of ICE plans to target more families for deportation.

    Due to increasing budget constraints, they’re limited to spending $80 per person.

    What could possibly go wrong?

  9. 9.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Mnemosyne:
    Hi Mnem!

    OT: I was wondering if I could get your opinion on Disney’s live action remakes? Are they just cash grabs to capitalize on their classic properties?

    I know the Lion King live action remake looks particularly bad because the characters can’t emote like in the original

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    @Mnemosyne: Mitch McConnell Feeling Emasculated By Wife Who Makes More Illicit Money Than Him.

    Admitting that the financial arrangement of their marriage made him uncomfortable, Senator Mitch McConnell revealed Monday that he often feels emasculated by his wife, U.S. secretary of transportation Elaine Chao, who makes more illicit money than him. “I don’t like saying it, but it makes me feel like less of a man to see how much more ethically compromised money my wife brings in,” said the Republican Senate majority leader, adding that despite his own efforts to leverage his congressional standing for ill-gotten gains from a variety of dark-money financiers, the vast majority of the couple’s wealth came from his wife’s work using her government positions to give favorable treatment to her family’s overseas firms. “I’m a traditional guy, so it’s just hard to stomach looking at our joint illicit finances and knowing she’s contributing way more dirty money than me. Plus, her family gives us a lot of cash, which is kind of embarrassing to be a grown adult man receiving financial help from your wife’s corrupt parents. It’s just hard being in a marriage where your wife is the primary payola winner.” McConnell also admitted that in his darkest moments, he feels emasculated by the thought that his wife has been way more successful at undermining the principles of democratic government in the United States than he has.

  14. 14.

    Aleta

    re Chao, Saudis, Kusher, Blackstone Group, China

    Mike Forsythe 傅才德 @PekingMike
    Reuters’ largest client restricting Tiananmen coverage – guys this is important. Refinitiv is majority-owned by Blackstone.

    Paste Magazine March 2019 [I don’t know much about Paste’s reliability]

    In May 2017, Kushner flew with Trump to Saudi Arabia. … While there, Trump announced a $110 billion arms deal with the kingdom, a claim that has since proved to be a fairly massive lie, even for Trump. That deal, Trump said, was part of an even larger $350 billion investment deal between the two countries. As part of that deal, Saudi Arabia pledged to invest $20 billion in a new $40 billion fund—fifty percent—marked for U.S. infrastructure development.

    The Kushner key: That $40 billion fund, announced at the time of the Saudi visit, is managed by a firm called the Blackstone Group (not to be confused with Blackrock, Bayrock, or Blackwater). Since 2013 Blackstone has loaned Kushner Companies—which have been plagued by financial troubles—more than $400 million to fund an array of deals.

    But we can go one step further: Blackstone co-founder and CEO Stephen Schwarzman was actually in Saudi Arabia with Kushner and Trump when they made the deal. And even further: At the time, Schwarzman was the head of Trump’s business-advisory council.

    Blackstone stock rose eight percent upon the announcement of the deal, meaning Schwarzman’s personal net worth increased about $500 million.
    …
    Fast forward one year, and enter Elaine Chao, Trump’s Secretary of Transportation and Mitch McConnell’s wife. In May 2018 Chao proposed to Congress a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan, which would get the majority of its backing not from the federal government, but from “non-federal” (i.e., private) sources. This ties back to the Blackstone/Saudi fifty-fifty $40 billion infrastructure fund investment, and in more than one way.

    Elaine Chao’s brother-in-law, a guy named Jim Breyer, was named to Blackstone’s board of directors in the summer of 2016. (Breyer is married to Chao’s sister.) A few weeks after news broke that Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) had ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, Breyer attended a business summit in Saudi Arabia hosted by none other than MBS himself.

    Because MBS had essentially just been accused of murdering a U.S. journalist, most of the invitees didn’t attend. Breyer obviously shared no such compunction.
    …
    Blackstone’s CEO—that Schwarzman guy mentioned above, who headed Trump’s business advisory council and went to Saudi Arabia with him—also donated $5 million to a PAC called the “Senate Leadership Fund” during the 2016 election. That PAC is closely aligned with McConnell.

    So now we see Blackstone tied directly to a massive new U.S. government infrastructure project … via not only Kushner, but Chao and her husband McConnell (whose interests are obviously connected) (and) the Saudi Arabia point.

    Blackstone is other news this week for a investment in warehouses, related of course to ecommerce, i.e., Chinese goods and Amazon.

    Schwarzman backed Trump in 2016 and iirc was withholding $ support around the midterms (?), I think he was applying pressure for some reason, don’t recall what.

    .

  15. 15.

    James E Powell

    The press/media say that Trump presents so many scandals that they can’t focus on any one and therefore he gets away with them all. They said the same thing during the campaign. That’s just bullshit. The press/media could very easily have chosen three or four of the major scandals and pounded them like they did Her Emails!!! They chose not to do so.

    The constant complaints that the press/media made mistakes, failed to learn, don’t know how to deal with Trump, etc. are all just bullshit excuses. They love Trump. He is the best thing for them since 9/11 and they definitely want to keep him around. He is making careers both for his sycophantic propagandists and his supposed detractors.

  16. 16.

    Mike in NC

    @James E Powell: You are quite correct. The media first saw Fat Bastard on “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” and decided he needed to be covered as much as possible. This goes back 35-40 years, before 24/7 cable news.

  18. 18.

    mrmoshpotato

    “Well, we could do some crimes, but, and hear me out, WHY DON’T WE DO ALL THE CRIMES!?”

    What’s the over-under on hearing that Dump actually did shoot someone on Fifth Avenue back in the 80’s?

  19. 19.

    PaulWartenberg

    I’ve just picked up the basics of it. From what I gather, every Republican official is pretty much in the pockets of either Russia, China, or Saudi Arabia.

  20. 20.

    Bonnie

    I had heard it mentioned yesterday or the day before; but, no one gave a reference so inquiring minds could read about it. This is first solid piece of info I have seen. Thanks.

  21. 21.

    J R in WV

    @PaulWartenberg:

    From what I gather, every Republican official is pretty much in the pockets of either Russia, China, or Saudi Arabia.

    Oh, come on now! You know as well as I do that every Republican office holder is in bed with at least two of those source of money, if not all three~!!~ Really~!!!~

    Plus the private sector of illicit monies — business dirt done dirt cheap in the dark ~!!~

  24. 24.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Baud: 100 years ago she would NOT be considered white.

    Many Chinese Americans do not seem to realize that a true white supremacist would not consider them part of the ‘in’ group.

  25. 25.

    burnspbesq

    @Mnemosyne:

    No way to be certain, but I expect that ol’ Yertle is on the wrong end of a very one-sided pre-nup. Family money stays in the family.

  27. 27.

    kindness

    The swamp is an ocean. We’re gonna need a bigger hose to drain this sucker!

    Thanks Mitch. Taking money from not only the Russians but also the Chinese. I won’t ask who’se side he’s on. His own.

  29. 29.

    plato

    As long as the ‘voters’ keep rewarding these knaves and thieves for decades, why would they even bother to stop?

  31. 31.

    rikyrah

    I suspected the criminality when I read a story about how the Turtle’s net worth grew over a short period of time.

  32. 32.

    joel hanes

    @zhena gogolia:

    I get the dead-tree Times every day, and the front page is full of negative stories about Trump.

    Well, credit for good behavior.

    But it’s a little late now.
    They have decades of Clinton Rules to atone for. Decades.

  33. 33.

    rikyrah

    Seeing the extensive story of Chao’s criminality just made me shrug the shoulders. They are all crooks in this Administration???

  34. 34.

    Steeplejack

    @rikyrah:

    To be fair (ugh!), Mitch and Elaine’s net worth went way up with a huge bequest from her mother’s estate.

    But, yeah, it’s interesting that Mitch’s net work is in the low eight figures after a career almost exclusively in [checks notes] elected office.

  35. 35.

    jonas

    It’s a (sobering) lesson to future administrations: be so corrupt that the public and the media are so confused and preoccupied deciding which incident of criminality or corruption is worthy of coverage that all of it sort of becomes white noise. Seems to be working for Trump. Back in the day, treason, incompetence, and corruption would cost you substantial political capital. Now it’s just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  36. 36.

    Chris Johnson

    @joel hanes: I don’t think so. I think they’re Russia-owned, and what it means is ‘Trump stronger at this point doesn’t help Russia’.

    It should be really obvious that Russia helping Trump does not have the end game of making the resulting corrupt rightwing USA actually POWERFUL. If it starts to look like the rightwing coup is so effective that the guys can just run amok, unchecked, then it’s time to undermine them a bit. Or a lot. But not in such a way that it gives Dems lots of power and authority and a strong position in the world.

    That’s just… mechanical. There should be nothing surprising about it at all. I don’t buy for a second that the NYT is on the side of the angels if they’ve turned on Trump. There’s an ulterior motive, and it doesn’t make them our friends.

  37. 37.

    EthylEster

    Thread is dead but ….

    @Steeplejack wrote:

    but because we hate the New York Times we thought it better to ignore it

    I can’t tell if you are snarking here. Sign of the times (or Times).

    Anyway I want to confess that I am a daily reader of the NYT and WaPo. Often I visit this site and find fresh outrage about something that was published in either or both papers several days ago. A month ago I decided to pony up a buck a week to get online access to the NYT for a year. That’s my price point and I’d rather pay the Grey Lady than Josh Marshall. Because he never does long articles into non-Trump stuff like the ongoing Boeing story that appeared on Saturday. IIRC it hasn’t been mentioned here yet.

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