Here is the third appearance of a new Trump.45 species of information transfer, a hint of his gracious MAGA restoration effort. Imagine the sound of a flashbulb popping on a heavy 40’s style news photog’s camera wielded by a Joe Pesci-type character, revealing in an instant the seamy side of politics, life, love, social gossip, and juicy scandal. Who would ever have believed the intimate connexity of the terms Presidential and Quickie would be a seriously appropriate item of discourse?
Trump’s America (2017). Keep Your Eyes Open and Your Hat On Tight.
Welcome to Trumpville, y’all. Popcorn at the back. Also, Trump.45 hats and other souvenir merchandise available at just a small (really, very tiny) markup, all to support only the very best of causes (personally determined by our Dear Leader, DJT).
Third up on the analytical turntable, the only President in living memory who treats the nation’s trust like a peddler.
First 100 Days Briefing
Trump Files For Re-Election — To Hold On To His Campaign Cash
On the day of his inauguration, President Trump filed paperwork to declare his candidacy in the 2020 election, but it wasn’t necessarily a show of supreme confidence — more like a grasp for cash.
Financial disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission show that a lucrative December made the move an accounting necessity. The Trump campaign ended the year with $7.6 million in the bank and no debt, so any funds raised over $5,000 by the campaign in 2017 would have be returned unless Mr. Trump registered as a candidate for 2020. He obviously was not prepared to offer refunds.
And the money has kept flowing. The campaign brought in more than $4 million in expense refunds, mostly from members of the media and the Secret Service for the seats they used on his campaign planes. This arrangement is typical — campaigns are required to charge the Secret Service and the press a fair rate. What’s unusual is that most of the campaign’s air travel expenses, nearly $9 million, were paid to companies owned by Trump.
There is one expenditure that has not slowed: Making America wear red hats again. The Trump campaign, along with two fundraising committees that raise money jointly with the Republican Party, brought in $6.5 million in contributions in the last month of 2016. More than a third of that was spent on hats, mugs, stickers and other collateral.
Trump vowed to fund his own campaign, and then vowed to spend $100 million of his own money to win with his People’s Movement. Then he broke his double promise in golden spades. He raised hundreds of millions from fat cats and little people alike, contributed only half of what he claimed from his own funds, and then had the effrontery to overcharge for super luxury air travel and accommodations at his own branded hotels, clubs and private planes, while reimbursing himself around $10 million for the outsized charges, all on the little people’s backs. And all apparently within the thinnest margin of the law, if at the same time in gross violation of its spirit and Trump’s heartfelt promises to his supporters.
Trump claims he is a man worth billions, almost too much to count, but it is now revealed in mandatory campaign filings that he is resorting to yet another legal but thoroughly distasteful trick. Instead of returning a small portion of his financial fund raising bounty to those who helped him, he has decided to stop along the way and pick up all the pennies scattered on the floor (to the tune of $7.6 million, only a few millions right now). Mere peanuts to him, but worth more to his DWA middle class supporters. The ones without whose minority votes and vocal support Trump would be licking his political wounds in Florida on vacation today.
No refunds here. You know this whole refunds are a non-starter deal from a Trump associated business entity sounds awfully familiar. Oh yes, here it is, hot off the presses today.
A federal judge has ordered a golf club owned by President Donald Trump to refund nearly $6 million to members who said Trump’s team essentially confiscated refundable deposits after taking over the country club in 2012.
U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth A. Marra ruled that the Trump National Jupiter Golf Club violated the contracts with members by retaining the fees and locking out many members who had declared their plans to resign.
Trump’s most fervent supporters, those benighted folks sure are a forgiving crowd. Lie to me once, shame on you. Lie to me twice, do it again. It feels so good while it hurts so bad. Break your word, I don’t mind, it’s all right. You the Man.
By filing for 2020 re-election status, Trump gets to keep all the cheese, plus the extra $4 million in expense reimbursements that rolled in recently. But the real winning element in the deal is that in December 2016, the Trump Apparatus brought in $6.5 million in new money and more than $2 million of that was for his Trump logo hats and assorted tchotchkes. In one month post-election.
Whoo-wee, baby! Ka-Ching, Ka-Ching, Red Version.
Shania Twain Video Ka-Ching, Ka-Ching Red Version
Watch Shania Twain sing it. You go girl.
The Scope and Scale
The American people bestow on their President a $400,000 annual salary, a sumptuous place to live, domestic staff and assistants to care for it, 24-hour security which is the best in the world, free transportation by jet, helicopter, and bullet-proof limousine everywhere in the world with no extra mileage charges ever, the best communications system on the planet, a lifetime pension to look forward to, lifetime office expenses reimbursement after his term, and still it is not enough for a Trump. Not for a grubby, greedy-fingers supreme.
Trump’s Inaugural Blend: The 10,000 Cigar March (Limited Edition)
The Trump money machine mobilizer looks fair to cash in for at least $2 million plus per month on the dumb hats, and the primo Presidential version of the marketing machine is just getting cranked. There will be commemorative coins, and license plates, and crystal shot glasses and silver trays, shirts, jackets, and hoodies, and even commemorative limited edition foreign cigars, imported fresh from Central America in special packaging ($60 for a 3-pack).
Trump’s Inaugural Cigars, 3-Pack: Trump is of Course a Lifetime Non-Smoker. Don’t Let That Stop You.
Best of all, none of this commerce is considered a new business deal under Trump’s commodious definition, so to avoid any hint of conflict of interest and in furtherance of yet another solemn Trumpian promise of financial rectitude on his part. And this tack appears to be legal, if ultimately Limburger stinky and unseemly.
Limburger Cheese & Dark Rye Bread: A Famously Pungent German Dish. If You’re New to the Pleasure, It Will Chase You from the Room
In the end, Trump has managed to potentially increase the annual salary take for the president to 60 times higher than that authorized by American taxpayers as reasonable compensation, if Trump’s marketing panache holds. All by the quiet stoke of a pen in silence out of the Public Eye. No need to use a mask and gun or try and rob banks, the River of Money just walks in the door of its own free will and inspiration.
Better yet, there is already a second Trump hat design on the shelves, so that is an entire golden field of previous successful sales prospects to harvest again.
The Original Official Trump-Pemce Inaugural License Plate. Yours for Just $50 from the Website. Yes, I Bought One Too.
Some limited folks among our fellow citizens seem to have an unceasing appetite for yet more Trump stuff. This is America. More power to them.
The Official, Official Trump Inauguration License Plate (On the Limos). This is the One the Inaugural Committee Didn’t Control for Distribution
Our founders were pretty smart fellas, but with all their 18th century Enlightenment brilliance, they never foresaw a huckster as the Head of State who would freely pillage the trust and good will of the country for personal private financial gain with no shame and no limit.
Just a quick calculation here. If Trump manages to scarf up say $3 million a month on average for the next four years from his hats and souvenirs, he will have made a cool $150 million in slush moneys to do with as he will.
Sounds just like his scammy Trump Foundation (about to be late and unlamented), that he is shutting down, but on a scale fully 10 times bigger and more prestigious to boot.
What do you know about that?
Think the Congress is going to pass some kind of ethics rules to wag a finger at, if not forbid, this sort of venal corruption in our nation’s house? Don’t count on it.
In fact, some of the seamier clever minds on the Hill are probably secretly lusting to discover a way to legally spread the new wealth enhancement methods around in their neighborhood further down Pennsylvania Avenue. You know, share the Wealth Methods more widely. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if some of the more talented little munchkins with law degrees there are already working with Team Trump on a draft mini-Congressional replica version, albeit only after they sign strictly binding non-disclosure agreements to keep the good stuff under their hats..
Why would Trump worry about keeping the Hill sweet? Everybody could use a break from the all-the-time fundraising necessary to stay in office today, and some serious cash spread around can almost always lubricate a hard corner or two on a tough-sell policy matter. Amazing, how the impelling need for a bigger picture approach may spontaneously emerge under the right sort of green lighted stimulation.
This sort of dramatic New Approach is perhaps not exactly what most people had in mind when they heard the recent solemn promises from Trump to drain the swamp, but then again those folks are only the proles. And Nature being ineluctable, the swamp based effluent has to go somewhere, by the immutable laws of chemistry and physics. And some of you thought Trump.45 was anti-science. Pshaw.
The really hard truth is when you drain one swamp, you still have to move the muck. The trick is to send it in a relatively controlled stream aimed in the general direction of someplace you can manage its deposition for the greater good.
Now that’s just Modern Swamp Draining Civil Engineering 101.
In the end, Trump is simply breaking new ground and re-writing the rules of practice. After less than 30 days in office, he is vying without competition to be crowned Chiseler Hustler in Chief.
All Hail the Chief.
And May God Still Bless America.
Trump’s America (2017) You Never Know Who is Watching You