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It's about dinner time here but I have a lot of thoughts about this, so I'm QTing this now to start a thread later.
But the short version is: state prosecutions plus I don't think he can actually service his debts with any amount of money. https://twitter.com/kibblesmith/status/1347323222312804353
But the short version is: state prosecutions plus I don't think he can actually service his debts with any amount of money. https://twitter.com/kibblesmith/status/1347323222312804353
Okay, as promised a thread speculating on what Trump is so afraid of that he's clinging to a job he hates with dear life and has been willing to risk so much to keep it. https://twitter.com/kibblesmith/status/1347323222312804353
The first thing you need to understand is that the Trump Organization is, in some senses, a fiction. Back in the early days of Trump's term, some enterprising investigators on here dug into it in a big way and found that Trump owns basically an unending string of paper companies.
More recently, Washington Post did a dive into his financial disclosures and attempted to provide a visual catalogue of his business empire. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/21/trumps-complex-web-business-interests-visualized/
The metaphor I've used sometimes for his "business empire" is that it's like a piñata: a gaudy creation of paper that is ultimately hollow and extremely fragile, designed to look like something it isn't.
Basically, Donald Trump throughout his career has created new businesses at the drop of a hat, sometimes to launch a product or project and other times to have an entity he can move money through, something he can use to launder income or attract investments.
The bottom line is that however successful any of these businesses may be at a given point in time, as a whole the structure is not successful at being a business. He can fictitiously assign the same asset to three different businesses and then use that to inflate his worth...
...and move liabilities from one entity to another in order to hide them. They're not businesses for the point of turning a profit. They exist as game pieces to be manipulated.
Donald Trump's preferred MO going back to when his father was alive and in charge of the family fortune was to get other people to put money into his business doings. He found ways to live off that money, which meant he didn't care if the business made money or lost it.
He frittered away so much of his father's money while he was still alive through "small" (six figure) loans, surreptitious and illegal cash investments into his businesses, and basically cajoling the old man for whatever he could get.
After his dad died and he had seen the last of the original Trump fortune off, he needed new income streams. The famous money laundering from foreign mobs and oligarchs. Licensing deals to put his name on anything he could think of. The Apprentice.
A lot of Trump's crooked dealings are stuff that would and should really be penny-ante for a billionaire. He did get more traditional funding through banks and stuff back in his Atlantic City days, but of course they did eventually learn their lesson.
This is the explanation for some of the most salient points of Trump's presidency.
Why doesn't he release his taxes? Because they reveal what a sham his business is.
Why didn't he divest? Because he literally can't. Too many of the companies aren't real. He can't sell them.
Why doesn't he release his taxes? Because they reveal what a sham his business is.
Why didn't he divest? Because he literally can't. Too many of the companies aren't real. He can't sell them.
He can't sell them because there's nothing to sell, just conflicting lists of exaggerated assets and hidden liabilities, and their only value as a company is to him personally to keep his game going.
And why he ran for president in the first place. Everybody's heard the theory that he didn't want the job, he just wanted to boost his media profile so he could become a cable news magnate. I mean, maybe that was something he considered.
But win or lose, his campaign would lead to the thing that he needed: fresh new streams of revenue he could splash around where he needed to, when he needed to, to keep the whole thing in motion and keep it from collapsing in on itself.
So to Daniel's point: why can't he bow out "gracefully" now and use his celebrity/notoriety and cult following to keep those new revenue streams going?
Let's talk about Trump's debts.
Let's talk about Trump's debts.
Here's my somewhat contrarian theory on Trump's current debt load. I said before that banks won't lend him money anymore. I'll take that further and say I don't think anyone lends him money. I think the loans are another legal fiction.
If you were an transnational crime syndicate, if you were an old ex-KGB grand master, if you were anyone who had two brain cells and half a billion dollars... would you lend it to Donald J. Trump?
Or to rephrase it: would you expect to get your money back?
Or to rephrase it: would you expect to get your money back?
If a foreign oligarch donates millions of dollars to a US politician... ooh, we're in bad territory there, aren't we?
But if a foreign bank extends a line of credit to a famous US man of business? Oh, that's just business, isn't it?
But if a foreign bank extends a line of credit to a famous US man of business? Oh, that's just business, isn't it?
Could Donald Trump pay back his almost-a-billion dollars of loans by becoming the right-wing media kingpin? I mean, maybe. But we're talking about a man whose instincts led him to running three casinos in competition with himself and driving them into the ground.
And what if his creditors didn't expect to get their money back? What if they wanted in exchange was not money but the things he could bring them from the White House... not just explicit favors, but aligned international policy goals, chaos, a weakening of the western order.
To the extent that the loans do exist on paper they're entitled to their money back and to that same extent he could, if he lucked and flailed his way into a profitable cable empire maybe he could pay them back.
But would his creditors be satisfied?
But would his creditors be satisfied?
What terrifies Donald Trump more than anything, what is at the root of all of his other fears, is death. The sheer indignity of mortality. The reality of the mortal condition. The ultimate price of the ride: nobody gets out of here alive.
He hates that.
He hates that.
And at the point where Donald Trump can't perform the actual service that was expected for some of his larger debts, I suspect he fears he becomes a liability in the ledgers of his transnational business partners. Someone who knows too much and has too little to lose.
And while all this may or may not be happening... I mean, prosecutors in New York have not been shy about the fact that they're waiting for his immunity to expire. And Georgia has made noise about prosecuting him. And who knows what other states are looking into what crimes.
All those state prosecutions could very easily unravel his paper empire, interfere with his ability to keep doing business in a way that makes the business seem viable. It would reinforce to his transnational partners that he is weak and useless and vulnerable.
From the beginning @sarahkendzior has been very consistent in referring to the Trump regime as part of a transnational criminal conspiracy and she has done all the homework there.
What does the syndicate do when the most craven link in the chain is facing prosecution?
What does the syndicate do when the most craven link in the chain is facing prosecution?
Even if we grant that his cult would be a license to print money for the rest of his life, I don't know that he anticipates having a very long one once he's out of power.
I think he fears that he would live just long enough to see all of the grand illusions that he has built up around him disappear and wink out of existence, to see the Trump name become mud, the cult idol revealed to have clay feet, the business empire be smashed open.
And who knows? Maybe I'm off in my calculation and the people who've propped him up and put him into power are satisfied with four years of chaos and all the ways he has weakened our country and its alliances. Maybe they'd squeeze him for what money they can and move on.
Maybe the national spirit of unity and desire for normalcy will prevail and those prosecutions will wither and die on the vine. Maybe he will be a successful media magnate and live to a hundred and two, richer in reality than he ever was before. I don't know! Neither does he.
But I think that's what he's afraid of, or at least one big part of it.
And as I've said many times since this began, the simplest person in the world is still pretty complicated. We contain multitudes; horrible people contain horrible multitudes.
And as I've said many times since this began, the simplest person in the world is still pretty complicated. We contain multitudes; horrible people contain horrible multitudes.
And I think there is truth in this, as well. There is a part of this that is as simple as: Trump defines himself as a winner, and sees losing as the worst thing a person can do short of dying (the worst losing). https://twitter.com/eustaciavye77/status/1347326615748046848
