Ya know?!
Let’s never forget this bit of European perfection re: ivanka von bankrupt, neither:
merkin von bankrupt seems to understand very little, including that world leaders did indeed LOL @ him, and that the American people have spoken.
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I don’t think I ever “underestimated” Trump.
If I felt any surprise at his 2016 victory, it was because I overestimated about 40% of the American public.
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My thoughts weren’t clearly stated but I was trying to reply to the folks that wonder if he knows he is lying or not.
I believe they are all know they are lying. I also believe they lie to themselves as to why they do it.
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My hypothesis is that it doesn’t matter to him whether he’s telling the truth or not because he views himself as creating reality. What matters is making sure people agree with whatever he says because that means he has power and control over them.
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I mean, he admitted as much at CPAC when said something to the effect of, when polls are bad for me, I say they’re fake, and when the polls are good for me, I say they’re the best polls ever. He just came right out and said it.
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Honestly, after everything I’ve read about him over the last four years, I don’t believe it anymore. What he is, is rich. Everything else is just a consequence of the unbelievable privilege that comes from being that rich. All I’ve seen is a mediocre-at-best guy who started life with a support structure, where his money-making scams were already in place. His own scams weren’t all that successful - and some were downright disastrous for him. But he never faced consequences because systems - including, but not limited to, the criminal justice system - don’t normally punish people like him, they accommodate them. He basically stumbled into the presidency almost entirely on accident through dumb luck and forces that had little to do with him and his actions.
If he doesn’t have someone to give him the info and stats he’s looking for, he just makes them up. Actually, that’s what he mostly does. He’s surrounded by people who tell him what he can get away with - but then he ignores them, and they’re forced to simply not do what he wants; he’s protected from his worse impulses (that he can’t really control himself) by the people around him that enact (and interpret) his orders, which only works because Trump himself does so little. He’s “well connected” only in that he bribes a lot of people - or makes them think he will - not because he craftily cultivated relationships. He’s the perfect example of how competence has nothing to do with wealth or “success.”
I think the really scary bit about Trump, the bit that people are minimizing, is how willing and eager so many people are to support him and his views. We want to think he must be gifted when he says incredibly stupid shit and yet his supporters call him a genius, when he’s treated like a messiah by those who have ostensibly defined themselves by a moral code which Trump violates thoroughly. We desperately want to believe that people would only follow someone so obviously awful and idiotic because there must be something special about him. Instead, I think the source of his appeal is precisely that this incredibly dumb, ignorant, un-gifted guy who still manages to be really rich is giving them permission to be horrible human beings, and promising to hurt the people they don’t like. Nothing is any more complicated than that. We’re just minimizing how many Americans are racist assholes.
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I think this is it exactly.
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Some of us are not, and never have been because it is to our detriment to do so.
That said, I do believe that you have stated it best - no matter what 45 is or is not, he gives his base ‘permission’ to be horrible, antisocial human beings - he appeals to their darkest, worst impulses and they like it.
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Bezos is rich. Trump, OTOH, with an estimated fortune of $2.4 billion, doesn’t even make the top 1000 on the Forbes list of billionaires. In fact, Forbes suggests that if Trump had done the ethical thing and divested his assets at the start of his presidency, paid the required capital-gains taxes, and invested the proceeds in a fund tracking the S&P 500, he’d be $1.6 billion richer than he is today, on top of having avoided 4 years’ worth of nasty press. Trump is pretty rich, but he’s not rich rich, and not a smart businessman to boot.
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I truly believe he’s up to his eyeballs in debt, and trying his best to stave off his debtors creditors.
ETA: edited 'cuz not paying attention
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Oh yeah, absolutely - I should have prefaced that with, “If minimizing is going on…” Being able to minimize that is absolutely a privileged position.
Yep, he didn’t even have to be that rich to have that privilege, though part of Trump’s thing is getting other people to pretend he’s richer than he is, even when he’s technically broke.
For a good chunk of his life, Trump has been so inept as a businessman he’s probably owed more than he owns. That is almost certainly true right now. But owing massive amounts of money also gave him power (and cash to fuel his lifestyle). He pretended he had more wealth than he did to get loans, then that bank fraud gave him leverage over those lenders to demand more money when he was at risk of going under. That particular dynamic hasn’t worked for him for a while, but he largely switched to money laundering a while back. Even that probably won’t fly with the added scrutiny of him, now.
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You mean his creditors. He IS the debtor.
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Yeah, that. I need some sleep.
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I think you’re overestimating his wealth by about $3.4B.
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More importantly…
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See also his use of “sarcasm” to describe his suggesting we look into disinfectant as a covid cure.
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If anyone is, it’s Forbes. I assume they’re not making up the numbers for their billionaires list, but OTOH as we all know Trump is notorious for non-transparency when it comes to his finances, so feel free to apply a grain, shakerful, or truck load’s worth of salt, according to taste.
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