A National Calamity: There's A Family Of Grifters In The White House

Closing In by Nancy Ohanian

Within moments of Elizabeth Warren's inspiring speech in Lawrence yesterday, announcing her 2020 presidential campaign, a Trump spokesperson was on the attack with the name-calling and negativity, calling her a fraud and claiming "the American people will reject her dishonest campaign and socialist ideas like the Green New Deal, that will raise taxes, kill jobs and crush America's middle class." Anything to get people away from thinking about the news that has virtually buried him alive this week. Can anyone still down that Trump is the Grifter-in-Chief?

Yesterday Jonathan Chait laid it out for anyone who has been too busy to follow the news this week: Trump’s Inaugural Grift Reportedly Lined His Own Pockets. That's illegal and under intense investigation. Chait points out that enough pieces have already come together that we know where the story is going. It all started with a March 14 radio broadcast on WNYC:



9 months later WNYC and ProPublica reported that mind-boggling overpayments to Trump were laundered, criminally, through his Washington Hotel. And, as Chait noted, "fees to Trump’s hotel go straight into the pockets of Donald Trump and his family. So these apparent tax law violations-- which amount to embezzling funds from the inaugural committee through self-dealing-- were carried out for their personal benefit.

Another thing we know about Trump is that he takes a very close interest in his own money, and nothing infuriates him more than the idea that somebody is making money off of him. Chris Hayes told one story of Trump attempting to wring a commission out of a Tower Records store located in one of his buildings:

A more chronologically relevant account comes from Michael Lewis, who has reported about Trump’s lack of interest in planning for his presidential transition during the campaign. Trump could not let go of the idea that the money for the transition was somehow coming at his personal expense:

The first time Trump paid attention to any of this was when he read about it in the newspaper. The story revealed that Trump’s very own transition team had raised several million dollars to pay the staff. The moment he saw it, Trump called Steve Bannon, the chief executive of his campaign, from his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, and told him to come immediately to his residence, many floors above. Bannon stepped off the elevator to find Christie seated on a sofa, being hollered at. Trump was apoplectic, yelling: You’re stealing my money! You’re stealing my fucking money! What the fuck is this?

Seeing Bannon, Trump turned on him and screamed: Why are you letting him steal my fucking money? Bannon and Christie together set out to explain to Trump federal law. Months before the election, the law said, the nominees of the two major parties were expected to prepare to take control of the government. The government supplied them with office space in downtown DC, along with computers and rubbish bins and so on, but the campaigns paid their people. To which Trump replied: Fuck the law. I don’t give a fuck about the law. I want my fucking money.

2019 version: "Fuck la loi! Je veux mon argent!"

Did Donald Trump personally direct the apparently illegal scheme to divert inaugural funds to enrich the Trump Organization? That remains to be proven, but the odds would seem to be fairly high that he did.

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