The Family That Grifts Together

[BeckyDem]

While the Trumps are being fined for skimming off their own foundation, the administration’s getting closer to deporting low-income immigrants.


By Sasha Abramsky

Today 7:00 am

This week, Donald Trump paid a total of $2 million to eight charities. Not because he wanted to, but because last month—in a lawsuit brought by New York’s previous attorney general—a judge ruled that he had to pay this, as a penalty for using the Donald J. Trump Foundation as a personal piggy bank.

Even more extraordinary, however, are the broader terms of the court settlement, which make it clear that the president and his three oldest children—who were all foundation officials—are con artists who can’t be trusted with other people’s dollars. If Trump ever wants to take part in charity work in New York State again, he will only be able to do so under special supervision. Attorney General Letitia James’s office also announced that Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump have been put through “compulsory training to ensure this type of illegal activity never takes place again.”

In normal times, a court ruling that the president is a grifter who can’t be trusted to run his own charity would have gotten rather a lot of attention. But in a time of Noise—an attorney general deliberately misstating the findings of his own inspector general’s report, the president tweeting insults at his own FBI director, yet another Nuremberg-styled Trump rally on Tuesday, and so on—the story got largely pushed to one side.

https://www.thenation.com/article/trump-foundation-settlement/

[Newest Reality]

1. We need to ask...

We need to ask, as a country, why this is such a wonderful time to be a grifter and a traitor.

Is the capitalistic environment in such bad shape now that the people and behaviors that are floating to the top can practice bold faced corruption in broad daylight because it is easy to do?

I smell a need for some drastic and systemic changes, one way or another, or we have grabbed a rope tied to a lead weight that is falling into a bottomless chasm.

[FiveGoodMen]

2. We let liars lie until much of the country is absolutely deluded

We're proud of that, oddly enough.

We expect someone to give us brownie points for the WAY we're committing suicide.

[keithbvadu2]

3. Daddy Donald can start another charity in Florida?