The last word on the latest New York Times hit piece on Donald Trump-- from Matt Taibbi, on Substack. (subscription only)
The New York Times published a massive expose about Donald Trump’s taxes on Sunday, starting the world on yet another trip up the Trump delirium coaster. The stages of the morality play are burned in our brains. Pundits scream bombshell, rush up a ladder of indignation, jump squealing into an abyss of apocalyptic predictions, dust off and do it again.
How many of these stories have there been? A hundred? Five hundred? A thousand? I tried physically counting and gave up. Our heads are packed with years of half-told stories that were discarded the instant they stopped having commercial or political utility. Some involved Trump, some not, who can remember them all? From sonic weapons in Cuba to spies gone dark to a secret bank server to hacker huddles in Prague to probable cause for an “agent of a foreign power” to Mike Flynn’s mistress to the Manafort-Assange confab to the exfiltrated agent with a home on Realtor.com to Putin’s niece and treason in Helsinki and North Korea and the Oval Office, we remember beginnings and not ends.
Matt Taibbi is one of the few lefty writers worth reading. He writes spectacularly well, and he is not insane.
ReplyDeleteIf your father gives you over $400,000,000 and by the time you're 74 years old you're over $400,000,000 in debt, you're not a great business man. You're a great president.
ReplyDeleteLowghost: I don't know where you got your numbers, but assuming they're accurate, they don't even mean he's a bad businessman. Had you told me that Trump's current net worth is a negative $400,000,000, then I'd agree he's probably not a great businessman. But you said "debt", and frankly $400,000,000 in debt doesn't tell us much of anything. It's possible he used that debt to acquire an asset that's now (or soon will be) worth much more than $400,000,000, and that his current assets are generating more than enough cash both to cover the loan payments and to generate an acceptable return on investment. So without knowing more, I can't rule out the possibility that he's both -- i.e., a great president and great businessman.
ReplyDeleteLowghost: assumes facts not in evidence.
ReplyDeleteLowghost, please try harder to be snarky. This is far too lazy. I can get this on any robot Twitter feed. This is a highbrow blog, man, we've got real talent over here. Chicago Boyz and whatnot. You don't want to be tossing around dumb numbers in this sandbox.
ReplyDeleteYour comment is common to humanities academics and government workers, people who have never for a moment even tried to understand how practical business actually works. You really do not understand debt vs worth, do you? I'll help. Imagine Orangeman sold all his assets, and he made 3 billion from the sale. He would then be up 2.6 billion (plus or minus expenses). Get it? But that might expose him to crazy income and business taxes and the government would take a huge bite, better to park it and get a nice return.
And for tax purposes, it may make more sense to keep the debt and write it off on his taxes, depending on how his assets are held and how his businesses are structured and how the property depreciates or appreciates. In sum: it's complicated and I'm sure his legal team along with his accounting dept know what they are doing.
I do know you have no idea how any of this works, and neither does 98% of all Democrat voters. Bunch of maroons.
He's not broke, not even close. This is why releasing the taxes was a bad idea, not because he's crooked, but because stupid people cannot understand how a business of that size works. That's why they are government workers. And richer men (Bloomberg, Cuban, Buffet) will mock him for not being rich enough to be in their super-billionaire clubs. Lose/lose.
As president, he's been the greatest president since Lincoln. No man in modern history has accomplished more while faced with more concentrated hatred and adversity delivered toward him on a daily basis than Orangeman. He created his own category in the upcoming DSM-6. If he wins this election, he will cause 20% of America to lose what little remain of their wits entirely.
If I'm $400,000 in debt to the bank and have no means of paying it, I have a problem. If I'm $400,000,000 in debt to the bank and have no way of paying it, it's the bank's problem.
ReplyDelete80/20% crazy season rule, courtesy of Scott Adams:
ReplyDelete(paraphrased)
If it's one month before a major election, 80% of the bombshell/scandalous news stories are nothing-burgers.
No points are to be given for (R) or (D) , L or R after the sources' name or news outlet.
- shoe