Trump Says Whoops! Pardon Me

My intense distaste for tRump and his totally repugnant (and often illegal) antics (both before and after the election) have prompted me to share with you the following post. I’ve referenced this writer before because  (1) I really like the way he writes, and (2) he pretty much says what I’ve been thinking.

In this particular article, the writer talks about how tRump’s past actions of shirking his responsibilities are coming back to haunt him, why it scares the crap out of him, and how he hopes to push it all under the rug by using an action similar to that which has served him well in his business ventures.

It is a well-known and documented fact that Donald Trump companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times. For those of you unfamiliar with this process, a company can remain in business while wiping away most if not all of its debts. A bankruptcy court approves a corporate budget and a plan to repay any remaining debt while shareholders and or investors lose all if not most of their equity. Think of Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a pardon, past sins are erased, the slate is clean and in the case of Trump’s Taj Mahal Atlantic City casino ready for another bankruptcy one year later.

If you want to know what this Russia, fake news thing is really all about these six bankruptcies is where a special counsel investigating Trump and his connections to Russia would begin and guess what, it appears that is what is happening.

Over the course of several years and several bankruptcies American banks quit loaning Trump money. Again, a documented fact. Think the old adage “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”. Each Trump property is in separate Limited Liability Corporation, a LLC, and it is highly unlikely that Trump signed a personal guarantee for any of the loans, so when one property fails the only recourse a bank has is to liquidate the failed property and hope the assets equal or exceed the debt. They never do.

Trump gets his money out of these properties on the front end, through development fees, management fees, mark-ups on materials and labor, etc. When the revenues being generated can’t support the debt service, Trump files for bankruptcy. What he gets is a pardon, a do over. The guy that he owes $650,000 for purchasing and installing gold-plated toilet levers gets pennies on the dollar or worse, nothing at all. 

As you can imagine, banks got tired of this game as Trump crowed about using the system to his advantage. If you recall during one of his debates with Clinton he characterized his use of the bankruptcy laws as “What I’ve done is I’ve used, brilliantly, the laws of the country.” U.S. banks disagreed and closed the money the spigot to Trump. Unfortunately for Trump, he needed dollars, lots and lots of dollars to prop up and feed his machine, and to pay for the lifestyle he was accustom to living. This is the point where Trumps door opened and the Russians stepped in.

Several press outlets are reporting that Trump and his legal team are now exploring the possibility of Trump pardoning his top advisers, his family members and even himself. What has precipitated this thinking? Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation appears to have expanded into Trump’s past finances which means getting his tax returns and loan documents from Deutsche Bank an institution known as a conduit for Russian rubles and Trumps primary lender in recent years.

For Trump, a pardon would simply be like filing for bankruptcy and, as he would describe it, using the laws of the country “brilliantly”. Most of us see the character flaw in this line of thinking and action, but 35% of you still celebrate his behavior. His supporters have thrown morals, standards and character out the window. They don’t care. But here is the issue, they honestly don’t know what they are supposed to care about. They are to busy watching the show, the train wreck. They think they are rooting for their hero but they have forgotten what the battle is all about. At this point it doesn’t matter if they are winning or losing they no longer remember what the game is. It is all about the show, the pageant, the spectacle and for that his 35% have hooked their wagon to the perfect star, the perfect ringmaster for this circus of chaos.

What are you going to do?

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You can read the original here.