dhork

@dhork@lemmy.world

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dhork,

"They made Han Solo sell the Millennium Falcon too, yeah, that’s right! He got sued by some tentacle-haired flunky and he had to sell it to that woke “Ray” kid for peanuts. What kind of name is “Ray” for a girl, anyway? It’s way too butch, if you ask me. They won’t like me saying that, but it’s true…

dhork,

It’s more than just not commiting crimes. These are civil judgements, after all, and technically not criminal matters. But at their heart, we will find lots and lots of lying. Lying about his interaction with Carroll, lying about the values of his properties, all very public lies. Lying to the point where, when his lies are exposed, he keeps lying. His dishonesty has no limits.

It amazes me that people admire that.

dhork,

… he is the prosecutor, it’s his job.

dhork, (edited )

There’s another key point in the article: the reason why those other companies didn’t bite is that they would not entertain taking real estate as collateral. Chubb was the only company willing to even try and negotiate that, and Trump couldn’t come up with a satisfactory package for them.

Since we already know that Trump overvalued his properties for loan purposes, it is very possible that an objective analysis of their worth vs. their outstanding debt led to the conclusion that they are mostly underwater.

Major Asset Seizure Likely as Trump Can't Afford Bond for NY Fraud Case (www.commondreams.org)

Less than a month after New York Attorney General Letitia James said she would be willing to seize former Republican President Donald Trump’s assets if he is unable to pay the $464 million required by last month’s judgment in his civil fraud case, Trump’s lawyers disclosed in court filings Monday that he had failed to...

dhork,

Wait, how in the world could this have been a 5000-page filing? Is the entire text of War and Peace included 3 times in an appendix?

dhork,

He testified to $400M, and he already put up a $100M bond for the other thing. But the whole point of this is that he overvalues things, right? I bet when his people had to get down to the actual state of the accounts and not what DJT feels they are, it was probably only $200M or so that is liquid.

It’s not worth going after him again for overstating that in court. It’s too easy to skirt around. His punishment will come when the DA starts seizing and auctioning stuff to pay the judgement.

dhork,

That’s not quite how it works. When the bond company writes the bond, they don’t just take the $2m from the client and then the client is off the hook. They ask the client to put up collateral. So in order for Trump to secure this bond, he would have had to set aside the full amount of the bond and say “If the verdict doesn’t get reduced on appeal, I am giving you all this stuff, and not using it for anything else in the meantime”.

All Trump is getting for that fee is not actually having to sell those assets now, and have any overage refunded if the appeal gets the verdict reduced. (Given the interest rates right now, the passive income on that kind of cash is not trivial).

dhork,

A source for which part?

I’ve read some different things about what those bond companies will take as collateral. They are not likely to take on real estate as collateral. Not only is it a pain to unload, but the properties also likely have existing liens on them, reducing the value that can be recovered. The bond companies are well within their rights to say that they will only accept cash or marketable securities as collateral.

dhork,

Stop down voting this, people! Moore may be a bit questionable himself, but in this case he’s right. Trump is extremely good at subverting established systems to his own advantage. That is because he sees every interaction in life as a zero-sum deal. If he doesn’t achieve 100% of his aims, he loses. He has no respect for anyone except himself.

Case in point: he just got assessed a whopping judgement. And he can’t raise the capital easily for it. So what does he do? Offer a bond for less than 1/4 of it and ask to call that good. He is approaching a court judgement as just another negotiation, totally ignoring the fact that if anyone else did that, they would get their ass handed to them by the court. He thinks that gives him leverage.

dhork,

There is a March 20 deadline to give some paperwork

fec.gov/…/march-monthly-reporting-reminder-2024/

dhork,

It’s not all tied up in real estate. Recall he has a lot of the equity in Truth Social, which he is trying to sell at an inflated price to DWAC. He is just as much of an internet influencer these days as a real estate investor.

But I think it is telling that a key point of the trial was that he overinflated the value of his assets, and now that he has to put up cash, all of a sudden we find that he can’t put up enough collateral, because banks are no longer taking his word on those valuations.

dhork,

Does anyone else have the sneaking feeling Elon is going to show up at some point? He is probably the only person with that much cash on hand who would be willing to lend it to Trump.

If Elon were a natural-born US citizen, I wouldn’t put it past Trump to sell him the VP job. He might try anyway. Or make him Secretary of State, or some bullshit like that.

dhork,

He better watch out. He brags about being able to shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, but her dad shot a man in the face and that man ended up apologizing for being in the way.

Trump might be in over his head in this one.

dhork, (edited )

I can guarantee that Trump has never held a firearm. His fat, tiny hands couldn’t pull a trigger.

(Edit: I was wrong, he had a concealed carry permit, in NYC of all places. Huh.)

dhork,

Do you have to specifically ask a dick to be a dick? I don’t think so. It just comes naturally.

Fact check: Trump, telling a completely fictional story, falsely claims he released ‘the tape’ of his Zelensky call (www.cnn.com)

Former President Donald Trump told an entirely fictional story on Saturday about how he had supposedly outwitted his Democratic opponents by releasing “the tape” of the 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that was a key factor in Trump’s first impeachment....

dhork,

It doesn’t matter. His base will believe it, even though it is verifiably false. Trump has proven that he is incapable of sticking to the truth once he latches on to a convenient lie, even if it costs him millions of dollars to keep lying.

The only question is whether enough of the rest of the country will find a reason to go along, too.

dhork,

The gig will work for him, the Jets season will probably be over by election day

dhork,

I wonder if this is why Ken Buck is leaving so soon, and why he thinks others will leave as well. That Discharge Petition needs a majority of the House to sign on, which means to work it needs a handful of Republicans. I bet Buck’s name is on it, and he and the other four or five names on it recognize that once it is public, their career as legislators in the MAGA party is effectively over.

dhork,

Importantly, Harris is. This will give her beer positioning to step up if needed this campaign season.

I know it’s a typo, but I can see Brett Kavanaugh swearing her in on a stack of kegs

dhork,

Isn’t “doing this to get more votes” what politicians are supposed to be doing, though? They are supposed to be responsive to people’s concerns, so those people prefer them to the other alternatives when it comes time to vote?

dhork,

It depends on which beer, though. Does swearing an oath over Bud Light mean anything?

dhork,

You know how Russia has an actual, functional government on paper, but we all know the real power there are the Oligarchs with ties to Putin? Trump wants to directly replicate this in the US.

It takes a full article to explain how Trump is connected, through these wanna-be oligarchs, to this effort to discredit Biden with outright lies. Most people won’t bother reading it. That is what Trump and his friends are counting on, though.

How many times has Putin done this in Russia, and ruined the careers of opponents by making shit up in such a manner that it sticks legally?

This is why it’s so important to oppose Trump now. If Trump is elected again, it might be the last free election we have. We will still have elections, but they will turn into the rubber stamps for the oligarchy that they are in Russia right now.

Speaker Johnson: ‘There will probably be a change’ to motion to vacate next Congress (thehill.com)

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday predicted that the House will “probably” change the rules around the motion to vacate in the next Congress, months after eight Republicans banded with Democrats to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) using the procedural maneuver....

dhork,

There already was a change, the current rules were new for this Congress and meant to keep the Speaker on a short leash while Matt Gaetz does… well… whatever he normally does when he has a human on a leash.

If Democrats get a majority in the next Congress, it is guaranteed they will go back to the old rules.

dhork,

This might not be a popular view here, but I believe the guy. We all know Trump’s dubious history about paying people, I’m sure this guy does, too. This company is large enough that Trump can’t make them go away by ignoring and delaying it.

And, we might end up with Chubb simply taking a bunch of Trump properties. Could we end up with Chubb Tower? That alone might be worth it.

dhork,

Which one?

dhork,

If you are curious why Trump has any support at all, note that his statement fits in a tweet, while the Biden administration response took paragraphs. Like it or not, he knows how to hold his supporters’ attention, and have them believe what he wants them to believe.

dhork,

His advisors probably wouldn’t let him. I don’t think he really expected to win the first time, so he had to fill his staff out with career Republicans who weren’t so high on the Insurrection thing. He won’t make that mistake again . All the advisors in the second Trump administraton will owe their loyalty to him, exclusively.

dhork,

Right, but last time some of those handlers were more traditional Republicans. This time, it’s Nazis all the way down.

dhork,

No, I don’t recall the entire leadership of the party changing when the nominee for President is firmed up. Normally, the party committee’s job is not to get any one person elected, it’s to organize the fund raising and spending efforts to give the party the best shot at all the major races, from President to Congress to Governors and State Legislators. Since the President is the biggest job on the ticket, you always expect the party leadership to back their nominee, of course. But I don’t recall changes this major this close to the convention.

This is likely an attempt to make sure the RNC pays his legal bills, and doesn’t move to abandon him, even if he gets convicted.

dhork,

“Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people,” Trump, who was formerly U.S. president between 2017 and 2021, said in a CNBC TV interview on Monday.

I am disappointed that they go through the whole article, and never point out that Trump runs his own social media platform, and that might give him a conflict of interest when speaking about Social Media companies. Is Facebook really an enemy of the people, or is it just a competitor of Truth Social?

dhork,

It’s OK, they will now fall all over themselves to kill it, while blaming Democrats for it existing in the first place.

Reminder: Trump’s Last Year in Office Was a National Nightmare (www.nytimes.com)

One of the amazing political achievements of Republicans in this election cycle has been their ability, at least so far, to send Donald Trump’s last year in office down the memory hole. Voters are supposed to remember the good economy of January 2020, with its combination of low unemployment and low inflation, while forgetting...

dhork,

It’s not “Biden is old” that gets you down voted, it’s “Biden is too old to do the job, so vote for the other guy who is almost as old but is worse in every way that matters” that gets the LemmyHammer.

dhork,

I find it hard to talk badly of anyone who had just died, whether or not they were related to Mitch McConnell. That was a horrible way to go.

But, if it turns out the Tesla design was at fault, then we may be watching one of the few families who have enough resources to challenge Elon Musk get medieval on his ass. Which would be fun to watch, even if did take a tragedy to start all off.

dhork,

I disagree, it’s important to note that Conservatives love their families, too. They are not inhuman.

And their love of their family can, for some, feed into their racism. Their families are successful and they may attribute that to genetics. People with inferior genetics can’t really help themselves, can they? They need a ruling class to make the important decisions for them.

You’re right though, if they sue it won’t be to prevent this from happening to anyone else. It will be for revenge and punishment. Profit is a side motive here. They might pour an excessive amount into any lawsuit just for revenge.

dhork,

Who in there right mind would, seriously, consider something that’s not even the closest thing to being backed by science and logic.

They’re not interested in science, logic, or anything that goes against their pre-concieved world view, though. They are right because they have the courage of their convictions, and if there are facts or logic that get in the way, well the facts and logic must be wrong!

That’s how we get to almost half the country believing in “alternative facts”, which makes governing this country so hard.

dhork,

Trump has the first half of “dictator” covered …

dhork,

I get down voted here for saying that sometimes Joe Biden’s mouth gets out in front of his brain. But it’s so, so true.

dhork,

Wouldn’t be the first time Trump has paid good money for a chubb

Rep. Ronny Jackson was demoted by Navy following investigation into his time as White House physician (www.cbsnews.com)

“The substantiated allegations in the DoDIG investigation of Rear Adm (lower half) Ronny Jackson are not in keeping with the standards the Navy requires of its leaders and, as such, the Secretary of the Navy took administrative action in July 2022,” a Navy spokesperson told CBS News.

dhork, (edited )

What I find remarkable is that Ronny Jackson was the WH doctor for part of the Obama administration, too, and Obama was the one who recommended him for the promotion to Admiral in the first place. (That bit was in the WaPo article this is based on)

dhork,

It’s not like he reads the damn things anyway. They should just give him a picture book with “TRUMP” in big letters on every page to color in.

dhork,

The State of my Onion is chopped and sauteed with a bit of butter

dhork,

He looks like the Keebler elf

dhork,

Well yeah, none of it will get done, and he will blame the guy behind him, and the other guy who is holding his strings.

dhork,

If nothing else, he’s proven he still has some endurance left. This is a long speech.

dhork,

This is why it’s essential for those debates to happen. Yes, both men are declining mentally, but Biden can at least make a coherent argument, even if he mixes up names sometimes.

There is no excuse for either candidate to avoid debates anymore. we need to hear them talk, without prepared speeches. I will take Biden’s odds on that over Trump’s any day.

If Biden wins this thing, I think history will find that the reason he beat Trump twice was that he was not at all intimidated by him. He takes Trump seriously, but also has the courage to call him out for the liar he is, convincingly, without dismissing his supporters as a bunch of losers. That takes a bit of confidence that only age can bring. Maybe Bernie could have done it, but I don’t think any other candidate could. Clinton absolutely failed at that.

dhork,

I agree with all of that. His issues go beyond his stutter, though. His mouth has always been a step or two ahead of his brain, and he got himself into trouble in the past saying stupid shit. He has run for President for years and years, and couldn’t win until Trump made it OK to say stupid stuff.

dhork,

The idea of the Electoral College makes more sense when you consider it to be the weighted average of 50 elections. It keeps elections confined to a state-by-state event. Imagine the shit show if we had a full popular vote, and a candidate won by 5 votes, so the entire country got recounted?

But having the Electoral College be actual people is silly. And it’s weighted all wrong, because the House hasn’t expanded in 100+ years. Maybe if the House were twice it’s size, things might be more representative.

There is an actual algorithm to determine House apportionment based on the population in the 50 states. One of these days, I want to take the time to figure out if Trump would still have won if the House were twice the size in 2016, or whether that would have skewed the weightings just enough for Clinton to have won.

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