I realize he may actually have a case to make for him being able to blab anything he wants to blab, to anyone he wants to blab it to - while he's POTUS.
But I need somebody to explain to me why this prick is walkin' around free right now.
Trump Said to Have Revealed Nuclear Submarine Secrets to Australian Businessman
Soon after leaving office, the former president shared sensitive information about American submarines with a billionaire member of Mar-a-Lago, according to people familiar with the matter.
Shortly after he left office, former President Donald J. Trump shared apparently classified information about American nuclear submarines with an Australian businessman during an evening of conversation at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The businessman, Anthony Pratt, a billionaire member of Mar-a-Lago who runs one of the world’s largest cardboard companies, went on to share the sensitive details about the submarines with several others, the people said. Mr. Trump’s disclosures, they said, potentially endangered the U.S. nuclear fleet.
Federal prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, learned about Mr. Trump’s disclosures of the secrets to Mr. Pratt, which were first revealed by ABC News, and interviewed him as part of their investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents, the people said.
According to another person familiar with the matter, Mr. Pratt is now among more than 80 people whom prosecutors have identified as possible witnesses who could testify against Mr. Trump at the classified documents trial, which is scheduled to start in May in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla.
Mr. Pratt’s name does not appear in the indictment accusing Mr. Trump of illegally holding on to nearly three dozen classified documents after he left office and then conspiring with two of his aides at Mar-a-Lago to obstruct the government’s attempts to get them back.
But the account that Mr. Trump discussed some of the country’s most sensitive nuclear secrets with him in a cavalier fashion could help prosecutors establish that the former president had a long habit of recklessly handling classified information.
And the existence of the testimony about the conversation underscores how much additional information the special prosecutor’s office may have amassed out of the public’s view.
During his talk with Mr. Pratt, Mr. Trump revealed at least two pieces of critical information about the U.S. submarines’ tactical capacities, according to the people familiar with the matter. Those included how many nuclear warheads the vessels carried and how close they could get to their Russian counterparts without being detected.
It does not appear that Mr. Trump showed Mr. Pratt any of the classified documents that he had been keeping at Mar-a-Lago. In August last year, the F.B.I. carried out a court-approved search warrant at the property and hauled away more than 100 documents containing national security secrets, including some that bore the country’s most sensitive classification markings.
Mr. Trump had earlier returned hundreds of other documents he had taken with him from the White House, some in response to a subpoena.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Smith declined to comment. Representatives for Mr. Pratt did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Even though Mr. Pratt has been interviewed by prosecutors, the people familiar with the matter said, it remained unclear whether Mr. Trump was merely blustering or exaggerating in his conversation with him.
Joe Hockey, a former Australian ambassador to the United States, sought to play down Mr. Trump’s disclosures to Mr. Pratt in a phone interview on Thursday.
“If that’s all that was discussed, we already know all that,” Mr. Hockey said. “We have had Australians serving with Americans on U.S. submarines for years, and we share the same technology and the same weapons as the U.S. Navy.”
Still, Mr. Trump has been known to share classified information verbally on other occasions. During an Oval Office meeting in 2017 shortly after he fired the F.B.I. director James B. Comey, Mr. Trump revealed sensitive classified intelligence to two Russian officials, according to people briefed on the matter.
Well into his presidency, he also posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, a classified photo of an Iranian launch site.
The indictment in the documents case also accused Mr. Trump of showing a classified battle plan to attack Iran to a group of visitors to his club in Bedminster, N.J. Prosecutors claim that a recording of the meeting with the visitors depicts Mr. Trump as describing the document he brandished as “secret.”
Mr. Trump has not had access to more updated U.S. intelligence since leaving the presidency; President Biden cut off the briefings that former presidents traditionally get when Mr. Trump left office in the wake of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings,” Mr. Biden said at the time.
“What value is giving him an intelligence briefing?” he said. “What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”
Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Pratt appear to fit a pattern of the former president’s collapsing his public office and its secrets into his private interests.
Mr. Pratt cultivated a relationship with Mr. Trump once he became president. He joined Mar-a-Lago in 2017, then was invited to a state dinner and had Mr. Trump join him at one of his company’s plants in Ohio.
He won't stop on his own. He won't be stopped by the people around him - or the ones who may only be tangential to his "positions", but who see an opportunity to benefit from the shit he's doing.
Since forever, this shit ends in one of only two ways
The normal people get their heads outa their asses and push the Overton Window back to where it belongs before it's too late
Donald Trump's Properties Will Likely Be Auctioned Off, Attorney Says
Donald Trump's properties will likely be liquidated and sold off at auction after a judge found he had committed fraud, New York's former assistant attorney general has said.
Tristan Snell was speaking after a court found that the former president had massively inflated the value of some of his properties and ordered that some Trump companies involved be stripped of their corporate licenses. It's one part of Trump's ongoing civil fraud trial.
"The worst outcome that could have come from this case has already been handed down, and that is for the corporate licenses to be canceled," Snell told MSNBC. "The properties are likely going to be liquidated. The properties are probably going to be sold at auction. That's probably what is going to happen. We don't know that for sure, but that is probably where this is headed. So [Trump] is already really, really in trouble."
Snell said that it was important to remember that Trump has already lost, despite his protestations of innocence.
Judge Arthur Engoron ruled last week that Trump, his adult sons, The Trump Organization and other businesses associated with the former president had overvalued several of his properties—including his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, and his triplex in Manhattan at the Trump Tower—for financial gain.
Trump and his sons responded with incredulity to Engoron's summary judgment last week, which ordered that some of their business licenses in New York be rescinded and that the companies that own the properties named in the judgment be handed over to independent receivers.
Trump's lawyers have vowed to appeal the decision and took issue with the figures used to determine that the properties had been overvalued during the first day of the trial. The former president himself appeared in court on Monday in order to, as he put it, "fight for my name and reputation."
The ongoing trial will now determine the outstanding allegations against Donald Trump and his named associates.
Judge Engoron is presiding over the trial in the $250 million civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against Trump, his adult sons and The Trump Organization. Trump is accused of inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to secure favorable loan terms from banks. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Newsweek reached out to Christopher Kise, a lawyer for the former president, via email for comment.
The former president's daughter, Ivanka Trump was listed as a witness in James's prosecution case in court filings prior to the trial, having previously been named as a co-defendant.
A court order filed on June 27 this year dismissed Ivanka Trump as a co-defendant as the claims against her were "accrued prior to...February 2016" and that she had not been party to a 2021 tolling agreement between the New York attorney general and the Trump Organization extending the period of statutory limitations on the claims.
The move to becoming a witness in the case against Donald Trump "usually indicates some form of cooperation," an attorney previously told Newsweek, leaving open the potential that Ivanka Trump could give potentially damaging evidence against her family at the trial.
Newsweek reached out to a lawyer for Ivanka Trump via email for comment.
But this guy is mad - in both the emotional and psychiatric senses.
This is not the kind of comic relief "unhinged" that pundits love to throw around, leaving everybody a plausible way to rationalize that he's just being a little nutty - he doesn't really mean that - c'mon, that's the thing he does to keep the rubes all amped up. It's part of his act.
No. Stop it. Even if it is just that thing he does, this fucker's audience is taking it all very seriously.
It would seem that Trump is coaching his lawyers to make presentations like they're on TV - like it doesn't really matter what you say as long as you look good saying it, and that what you say makes Trump look good.
Habba is very good at the PR-kinda "law, where she makes assertions in declarative terms and in a way that (I guess) is supposed to evoke a favorable response(?)
And that's right up Trump's alley. He lives in a fantasy world where he can just speak his desires into existence, and he expects his lawyers to follow his lead.
(paraphrasing)
"Just say what I tell you to say, and let my Social Media Ratfuckers do the rest."
The tenor of the trial changed during Trump’s lawyers’ opening statements.
In their respective opening statements, the attorney general’s office and lawyers for Donald J. Trump spoke past each other: While the attorney general’s lawyer focused on the specific mechanics by which properties were valued — and why — Mr. Trump’s lawyers continued to argue that, overall, there had been nothing wrong with the former president’s financial statements.
Kevin Wallace, a lawyer for the attorney general’s office, told the courtroom that employees of Mr. Trump had reverse-engineered the value of individual assets — properties like Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street — to arrive at the former president’s desired net worth. He played a clip of Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, explaining the process, prompting the former president to cross his arms and shake his head, scowling.
But Christopher M. Kise, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, responded in his opening that there was no objective value of the assets and that differing valuations were standard in real estate.
“There was no nefarious intent, it simply reflects the change in a complex, sophisticated real estate development corporation,” he said of the way Mr. Trump’s company represented the assets’ value.
Though Mr. Trump’s lawyers began their opening arguments with a dry presentation, the tenor of the trial changed after a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Alina Habba, gave what she said was an extemporaneous presentation in which she attacked Ms. James as politically motivated and again declared that her client’s business partners had made money from the deals. Mr. Trump watched intently, occasionally nodding in agreement.
That kicked off a sequence in which Justice Arthur F. Engoron went back and forth with Ms. Habba and the other defense lawyers, Mr. Kise and Clifford S. Robert, correcting what he thought were legal errors from their presentations.
Melania wants a new contract. So how's the smart money betting on this thing?
Does she and her legal gang see something coming down the road that makes them believe she needs to get a better while she still can?
Is it the mercenary shit we've always thought it was?
Sure hope she's good and careful around staircases and windows and stuff.
Why Melania Trump may want to revisit her prenup with Donald Trump
Melania Trump is reportedly renegotiating the terms of her prenuptial agreement with Donald Trump, per Page Six.
The former first lady previously revisited the terms in 2017, according to a biography.
Lawyers told Insider renegotiating may be smart amid the legal troubles Donald Trump faces.
Melania Trump spent the first few months of her husband's presidency in New York renegotiating the terms of their prenuptial agreement, Mary Jordan, a Washington Post reporter wrote in her book, "The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump."
Now, as Donald Trump maintains his position as the top GOP contender for the 2024 Republican nomination, all the while besieged by a mountain of growing legal troubles, Melania Trump could be wise to revisit those terms yet again, two lawyers told Insider.
A dishy report from Page Six on Thursday said that the former first lady has already done just that, citing two anonymous sources who told the outlet Melania Trump "quietly" renegotiated the terms of a new "postnup" agreement with her husband over the last year.
Insider was unable to independently confirm the report. Representatives for Donald Trump and several acquaintances of Melania Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.
Renegotiating a prenup isn't solely reserved for couples experiencing marital woes, attorneys told Insider. Reevaluating the legal agreement is common among those who anticipate future financial turbulence, as well.
Trump is facing four criminal indictments and a civil action in Manhattan, in which a judge ordered that the Trump Organization's New York corporate charters be revoked.
"She may well want additional protections for herself and her son," said Bill Beslow, a high-powered New York City divorce lawyer who represented Marla Maples in her 1999 split from Trump.
Beslow could not confirm any details of the current Trump couple's prenup, but said generally, protecting your stake in the marital assets is important, he said, "if you think the whole roof may fall in on you."
Melania Trump may also want to take advantage of the leverage she has at this moment, according to Beslow, whose clients include Demi Moore, Nicole Kidman, Al Pacino, Linda Evangelista, and Mia Farrow.
"She may be saying 'this is what you need to do, if you want me on your side, if you want me on the campaign trail, if you want me in the courtroom,'" he said.
"And he may need her not to do certain things," Beslow added. "What's that worth for him, for example, for her not to write a book?"
Melania Trump has thus far removed herself from her husband's 2024 presidential campaign, forgoing public appearances alongside Donald Trump on both the trail and in court.
As Donald Trump's litany of legal troubles mount, so too do his likely legal fees, Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told Insider.
"There's a possibility that when it's all said and done, Trump isn't going to be in a good financial state," Rahmani told Insider.
"She may be trying to protect herself," he added.
Beslow, however, cautioned against jumping to the conclusion that a prenup-renegotiation means the Trump marriage is on the rocks.
Spouses in high-power, high-asset marriages do renegotiate their prenups for benign reasons — such as a gesture of generosity, he said.
But more nefarious motivations can also come into play. A prenup can be changed to keep marital property out of the hands of creditors.
"The spouse who is having financial difficulties, or facing financial difficulties, may want to transfer assets out of his or her name," Beslow said.
"That would be all with the view toward avoiding the seizure of those assets," he added.
Regardless of what happens come 2024, Melania Trump is wise to renegotiate the agreement now, Rahmani said.
"To the extent that you can get money from the marriage now, before his creditors get to him, that's something you should consider," he said.
It was an obvious theatrical stunt. He did it to suck up to the ammosexuals, and to reinforce the notion that the law is whatever he says it is at any given time.
ie: The 2nd amendment is absolute and unlimited, so there's no way it can be illegal for me to buy a gun - no matter the circumstances.
Indicted Trump Asks to Buy a Glock at Campaign Stop—Which Would Be Illegal
A spokesperson later corrected himself and said the transaction hadn’t actually gone through.
In a PR stunt gone terribly wrong, former President Donald Trump went gun shopping on Monday with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and asked to buy a Glock pistol on camera—which would have brazenly violated the very same law that recently landed Hunter Biden criminal charges.
Federal law prohibits anyone under indictment from attempting to buy a firearm. Trump has been criminally indicted four times in as many jurisdictions—Atlanta, Miami, New York, and Washington—facing dozens of felony charges that could land him in prison for decades.
So, what "a spokesman" said about the transaction not going thru makes no difference. Trump made the attempt, he did it on camera, he's guilty of yet another felony, and it appears there will be no direct consequences for his obvious violation of federal fucking law.
“I wanna buy one,” Trump said while taking a tour of Palmetto State Armory, a federally licensed gun dealer in South Carolina that's widely revered by firearm enthusiasts.
“Sir, if you want one, this one’s yours,” a person on the tour said, seeming to divert the president away from making an actual purchase.
“No, I wanna buy one,” Trump insisted.
It only added to the fiasco when those present pulled South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson into the photo op—as well as his brother, Julian Wilson, an executive at the private equity company that owns the gun dealer. They are both Republican Congressman Joe Wilson’s sons.
The disaster started when Trump's campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, tweeted that his boss actually went through with the sale.
"President Trump purchases a @GLOCKInc in South Carolina!" he posted Monday afternoon.
But the campaign went into damage control mode as soon as firearms journalist Stephen Gutowski and others pointed out that the entire transaction would be blatantly illegal.
“Did he actually go through with the purchase?” Gutowski asked openly in tweet.
Cheung later claimed to CNN that Trump never actually went through with the purchase—and deleted his original statement. The Daily Beast could not immediately independently confirm whether Trump finalized the deal.
The irony is that the federal law Trump appeared to almost violate is the very same one that the feds used to indict President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
The federal law that restricts how someone may buy or sell firearms is 18 U.S. Code § 922, the go-to statute for prosecutors seeking to imprison felons who manage to acquire guns after serving time in prison, straw purchasers who buy a gun with the specific intent to sell it to another person, and other people who aren’t allowed to acquire them. That law is why anyone buying a gun from a licensed dealer must fill out what's called an ATF Form 4473, which asks: “Are you under indictment or information in any court for a felony, or any other crime for which the judge could imprison you for more than one year, or are you a current member of the military who has been charged with violation(s) of the Uniform Code of Military?”
Answer “yes,” and no gun shop can legally sell you a gun. Trump, who is facing criminal charges across the eastern seaboard, would have to answer in the affirmative.
Republicans—and Trump in particular—have been calling on the Department of Justice to hold Hunter Biden accountable for violating the same statute, in his case, for lying about drug use on that form.
Trump pumps out the lies faster than I can write them down.
Fact check: 14 of Trump’s false claims on ‘Meet the Press’
Former President Donald Trump delivered a laundry list of his familiar election lies and other false claims – plus some new falsehoods on subjects ranging from abortion laws to his policy on dealing with drug cartels – in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The show’s new moderator, Kristen Welker, promptly corrected some of the false claims; others were aired unchallenged. Here’s a fact check of 14 of the false claims, plus a check on another important claim for which there is no evidence.
This is not a comprehensive list of the inaccurate remarks Trump made in the interview.
Infanticide
Trump, attacking Democrats on abortion policy, claimed, “You have some states that are allowed to kill the child after birth.” He also said specifically, “You have New York state and other places that passed legislation where you’re allowed to kill the baby after birth.”
Facts First: This is false. Killing a child after birth is not allowed in any state, and New York did not pass legislation permitting infanticide.
A law New York approved in 2019 makes abortion illegal after 24 weeks with the exception of cases where the fetus is not viable or the abortion is “necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.” The law does not legalize post-birth murder. Since its passage, however, it has been the subject of online misinformation falsely claiming it does.
There are some cases in which parents decide to choose palliative care for babies who are born with deadly conditions that give them just minutes, hours or days to live. That is simply not the same as killing the baby.
Brad Raffensperger’s comments
Trump, who is facing criminal charges over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia, defended the January 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump told numerous lies about supposed election fraud and pressured Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to give him a victory in the state.
Trump said: “Brad Raffensperger, the head – who, by the way, last week said I didn’t do anything wrong. He said, ‘That was a negotiation.’ Brad Raffensperger, who I was dealing with, I appreciate that he said that. But he said last week, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Raffensperger did not say Trump didn’t do anything wrong on the January 2021 call; Raffensperger has been sharply critical of Trump’s behavior on the call.
Trump did not specify what he was talking about, but it’s possible he was mischaracterizing Raffensperger’s testimony at a late-August court hearing on the attempt by former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to get his own Georgia criminal case moved from state court to federal court. Nowhere in Raffensperger’s testimony did he say Trump didn’t do anything wrong or defend Trump’s words.
Rather, Raffensperger testified that “I didn’t take it as inappropriate” when Meadows told him on the January 2021 call that he (Meadows) hoped they could reach an agreement to allow the Trump side to look more fully at the election data. (Meadows had asked if, “in the spirit of cooperation and compromise,” they could “at least have a discussion” to seek a “less litigious” path forward.) That Raffensperger remark was in response to a question that was solely about Meadows’ words, not Trump’s words.
Raffensperger published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in early September criticizing efforts to use the 14th Amendment to get Trump disqualified from the 2024 ballot on the grounds that Trump engaged in an insurrection or rebellion against the US – Raffensperger argued that “denying voters the opportunity to choose is fundamentally un-American” – but Raffensperger didn’t even mention the call in that op-ed. When he was then asked about the call in a Fox interview about the op-ed, he said he had done due diligence before the call and knew that Trump’s various fraud claims were unfounded. He offered no defense of Trump’s conduct.
In his 2021 book, Raffensperger criticized Trump’s behavior on the call at length. He wrote “the president was asking me to do something that I knew was wrong, and I was not going to do that.” He wrote that, regarding some of Trump’s language on the call, “I felt then – and still believe today – that this was a threat.” And he wrote that, at another point in the call, Trump was doing “nothing but an attempt at manipulation” by “using what he believes is the power of his position to threaten [another Georgia elections official] and me with prosecution if we don’t do what he tells us to do.” A New York Times article about presidential records
Trump denounced the criminal charges against him over his retention of classified documents after his presidency. He said, “I fall within the Presidential Records Act. It’s very simple. It’s a civil thing. In fact, The New York Times of all institutions did a story, and it was headlined, ‘Please, please, please, Mr. President, could we take a look at the documents.’ And they said in the story that the only way you can get documents from a president is if you go there and say please. Because this is civil.”
Facts First: Trump inaccurately described this New York Times article. The January article did not say the only way “you” can get documents from a president is saying please. Rather, the article explained that one particular entity, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), lacks “independent” enforcement power and is limited to polite requests – but that another entity, the Justice Department, enforces laws governing presidential documents and classified records. In other words, contrary to Trump’s suggestion here, the article did not say that the existence of the Presidential Records Act means there can be no enforcement, period, over presidential documents.
The Times article, whose online headline is “As Archives Leans on Ex-Presidents, Its Only Weapon Is ‘Please,’” explained that NARA is unable to compel ex-presidents to take action. But then the article said this: “Enforcement of the laws governing presidential records and classified documents is up to the Justice Department, which has opened investigations into the actions of President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, who have each discovered classified records at their homes.” The article subsequently included a paragraph in which an expert was quoted as saying, “If there are violations of law, they can be referred to the Justice Department for action…But NARA itself has no police force or ability to enforce its own actions.”
Biden’s false claims
Trump said of Biden: “Look at all the lies he’s told over the last couple of weeks. He said he was at the World Trade Center and he wasn’t. He said he flew airplanes, right? He didn’t. He said he drove trucks, and he didn’t. Everything he says is, like, a lie.”
Facts First: Trump made a false claim here while denouncing Biden for making false claims: Biden has not said that he flew airplanes. This was not a one-time Trump mistake; he was even more specific at a September 8 rally, suggesting that Biden had claimed he “used to be a fighter jet pilot.”
It’s true that Biden has falsely claimed to have driven a tractor-trailer truck, though we aren’t aware of him saying this “over the last couple of weeks” as Trump said here. And Biden did make a false claim last week about when he visited the World Trade Center after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001; Biden visited Ground Zero, but he did so nine days after the attacks, not “the next day” as he claimed.
Trump’s comments about drug cartels
Welker said to Trump, “If elected, you say you would order the Defense Department to use special forces to inflict maximum damage on drug cartels.” But Trump responded, “I didn’t say that. No. People said I said that.” He repeated, “I didn’t say that.”
Facts First: Trump said that. In a video he released in January, which remains on his website, he said that, if elected president again, “I will order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber-warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure and operations.” The media and the war in Ukraine
Trump claimed, “I will say this: something’s going on, and it’s not good for Ukraine. Because the news is no longer reporting about the war. The fake news. They don’t report about the war anymore. You don’t find much reporting. That means that Ukraine’s losing. Okay? I see very little reporting from NBC, your network. I see very little reporting from NBC, ABC, from CBS, from anyone about the war.”
Facts First: It’s not true that news outlets “don’t report about the war anymore,” though the amount of television coverage on broadcast news networks has certainly declined from the first months after Russia’s invasion in 2022.
CNN continues to do extensive daily reporting on the war on television and online. NBC News wrote in its own fact check of this Trump claim: “That is demonstrably false. In the last two weeks alone, NBC News has published dozens of stories and broadcasts on all platforms about the Ukraine war.” The fact check cited specific examples, then continued, “CBS News and ABC News have had dozens of articles and videos on their websites, too.”
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Trump criticized President Joe Biden for releasing a large quantity of crude oil from the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to keep prices down in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and Trump claimed that this is a reserve “I had a lot to do with filling up for the first time ever.” Trump added later in the interview, “He wanted to have low gas prices for an election. And now, we have nothing left.”
Facts First: Trump made two false claims here. First, contrary to his repeated assertions, it’s not true that he filled up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; the reserve actually contained fewer barrels of crude oil when he left office in early 2021 than when he took office in 2017. Second, while the amount of crude in the reserve is at a 40-year low, it’s not even close to true that “we have nothing left” at present; the reserve remains the world’s largest even at its current level, with about 350.6 million barrels of crude as of the week ending September 8.
The fact that the amount of oil in the reserve fell during the Trump presidency is not all because of him. The law requires some mandatory sales from the reserve for budget reasons, and when Trump issued a 2020 directive to buy tens of millions more barrels and fill the reserve to its maximum capacity, Democrats in Congress blocked the required funding. Nonetheless, he didn’t fill up the reserve as he claims.
The size of the national debt
Trump said, “We have to save our country. We have $35 trillion in debt.”
Facts First: The national debt is very large, but Trump exaggerated its size. It is right around $33 trillion (it was $32.99 trillion as of Thursday, the latest day for which we have official data), not “$35 trillion.”
We didn’t publish a fact check when he claimed at a campaign rally on September 8 that it was $34 trillion, but this is now an exaggeration of an exaggeration – and $2 trillion is certainly a significant difference. The price of bacon
While discussing inflation, Trump said, “Things are not going, right now, very well for the consumer. Bacon is up five times.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim that the price of bacon has quintupled over the last few years – which CNN previously debunked when he made it earlier this month – is grossly inaccurate.
The average price of bacon is higher than it was when he left office, but it is nowhere near “up five times.” The average price of sliced bacon was $6.502 per pound in August 2023, compared with $5.831 in January 2021, according to federal data – an increase of about 11.5%, not even close to the 400% increase Trump keeps claiming.
Military equipment left to the Taliban
Criticizing the way Biden handled the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Trump repeated a claim about how much military equipment was left to the Taliban when the Afghan government and armed forces collapsed.
“We gave $85 billion worth of equipment to the Taliban,” Trump said.
Facts First: Trump’s $85 billion figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of the roughly $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.
As other fact-checkers have previously explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up figure (it’s closer to $83 billion) for the total amount of money Congress appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. A minority of this funding was for equipment.
Trump and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline
Trump said of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Look, I had a very good relationship with him. And yet nobody was tougher on Russia than me. I stopped Nord Stream 2. You never heard of Nord Stream 2 – that was the pipeline – until I got involved. I said, ‘Nord Stream 2.’ People that were sophisticated, military people, and political people never heard of Nord Stream 2. I had it ended. The pipeline was dead.”
Facts First: It’s not true that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was “dead” during Trump’s presidency or that he “had it ended.” While he did approve sanctions on companies working on the project, that move came nearly three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already estimated to be 90% complete – and the state-owned Russian gas company behind the project said shortly after the sanctions that it would complete the pipeline itself. The company announced in December 2020 that construction was resuming. And with days left in Trump’s term in January 2021, Germany announced that it had renewed permission for construction in its waters.
Second, while we don’t know what any particular “military people” and “political people” might have said to Trump, it’s not true that, in general, “you never heard of Nord Stream 2” before he began discussing it as president. Nord Stream 2 was a regular subject of media, government and diplomatic discussion before Trump took office. In fact, Biden publicly criticized it as vice president in 2016. Trump may well have generated increased US awareness of the project, but he certainly wasn’t the one to bring it to the federal government’s attention.
The pipeline never began operations; Germany ended up halting the project as Russia was about to invade Ukraine early last year. The pipeline was damaged later in the year in what has been described as an act of sabotage.
Trump blames Pelosi for January 6
Trump repeatedly attempted to blame Democratic California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was speaker of the House on January 6, 2021, for the riot that day at the US Capitol – claiming she rejected his offer, days prior, of 10,000 National Guard troops. Trump said, “Listen: Nancy Pelosi was in charge of security. She turned down 10,000 soldiers. If she didn’t turn down the soldiers, you wouldn’t have had January 6.” He said explicitly, “She’s responsible for January 6.”
Facts First: Trump’s claims about Pelosi are comprehensively inaccurate.
First, the speaker of the House is not in charge of Capitol security. Capitol security is overseen by the Capitol Police Board, a body that includes the sergeants at arms of the House and the Senate. (The Senate was led at the time by a Republican, Sen. Mitch McConnell; McConnell is not at fault either, but Trump has not blamed him while casting blame on Pelosi.)
Second, there is no evidence for the claim that Pelosi rejected a Trump offer of 10,000 National Guard troops in advance of January 6. Her office has explicitly said she was not even presented with such an offer, telling CNN last year claims to the contrary are “lies.” Pelosi said on MSNBC on Sunday: “The former occupant of the White House has always been about projection. He knows he’s responsible for [the riot], so he projects it onto others.”
Third, even if Pelosi had been told of an offer of National Guard troops, she would not have had the power to turn it down. The speaker of the House has no authority to prevent the deployment of the District of Columbia National Guard, which reports to the president (whose authority is delegated, under a decades-old executive order, to the Secretary of the Army).
Fourth, it’s worth noting the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol found “no evidence” Trump gave any actual order for 10,000 Guard troops, and the Biden-era Pentagon told The Washington Post in 2021 it has no record of any such order. Miller testified to the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol that Trump had, in a January 5 phone call, briefly and informally floated the idea of having 10,000 troops present on January 6 but did not issue any directive to that effect. Miller said, “I interpreted it as a bit of presidential banter or President Trump banter that you all are familiar with, and in no way, shape, or form did I interpret that as an order or direction.”
Fifth, at around 3:49 p.m. during the riot, Pelosi was filmed while on the phone with Miller urging him to hurry Guard troops to the Capitol, telling him “just get them there” and to “just pretend for a moment this was the Pentagon or the White House or some other entity that was under siege.” Trump made no such plea; the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol found that Trump did not call any “high-level Defense official” during the riot, that Trump never ordered a Guard deployment – Miller did so – and that Trump never instructed any law enforcement agency to assist.
Pelosi said on MSNBC on Sunday: “Chuck Schumer and I begged him to send the troops, again and again.” She added, “These Trumpites were attacking the Capitol, fighting the police, threatening my life and the life of the vice president — we’re turning down the troops?”
Trump’s indictments
Trump referred to the four indictments against him as “Biden indictments.” He repeatedly claimed that Biden told Attorney General Merrick Garland to “indict him,” saying at one point that Biden “went to the attorney general of the United States, and he told them, ‘Indict Trump.’”
Facts First: This claim is not supported by any evidence. There is no sign that Biden has been involved in the decision to criminally investigate or prosecute Trump, let alone any proof that he personally went to Garland and urged him to indict Trump. Biden said in June that he had not spoken to Garland on the subject and was “not going to speak with him.”
Grand juries made up of ordinary citizens – in New York, Georgia, Florida and Washington, DC – approved the indictments in each of Trump’s criminal cases. The two federal indictments were brought by a special counsel, Jack Smith. Smith was appointed in November 2022 by Garland, a Biden appointee, but that is not proof that Biden was involved in the prosecution effort, much less that Biden directed it. The 2020 election
Trump repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him and he claimed that he was the real winner.
Facts First: These claims are false. The election was not rigged, Trump lost fair and square to Biden by an Electoral College margin of 306 to 232, and there is no evidence of any fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state.
Seems like all the hangers-on are still trying to play it on the straight with Trump - even after he's demonstrated consistently that he has no intention of repaying their loyalty - because they're absolutely sure they've sold him on the idea that they need to stick together (?)
And it doesn't matter if his reciprocation makes his own position better or worse. It's just a matter of whatever fucked up notion he has in his head at any given time.
There's something wrong with these people. They all act like rubes.
The deal's not dead just yet, but at this point, I don't think it really matters - everybody has to be able to see what a fucking loser Trump is.
If this thing goes tits-up, I think it could be a fair indicator that all the smart-guy libertarian capitalists are cutting their losses and bailing on The Donald because they realize it's just not possible to make that clown legit.
🤞🏻
Trump’s Truth Social facing a key funding deadline
The ‘blank check’ ally of former president Donald Trump’s media start-up was once a stock-market star. It’s now days away from potential liquidation.
When former president Donald Trump’s media start-up announced in October 2021 that it planned to merge with a Miami-based company called Digital World Acquisition, the deal was an instant stock-market hit.
Tech is not your friend. We are. Sign up for The Tech Friend newsletter. With the $300 million Digital World had already raised from investors, Trump Media & Technology Group, creator of the pro-Trump social network Truth Social, pledged then that the merger would create a tech titan worth $875 million at the start and, depending on the stock’s performance, up to $1.7 billion later.
All they needed was for the merger to close — a process that Digital World, in a July 2021 preliminary prospectus, estimated would happen within 12 to 18 months.
“Everyone asks me why doesn’t someone stand up to Big Tech? Well, we will be soon!” Trump said in a Trump Media statement that month.
Now, almost two years later, the deal faces what could be a catastrophic threat. With the merger stalled for months, Digital World is fast approaching a Sept. 8 deadline for the merger to close and has scheduled a shareholder meeting for Tuesday in hopes of getting enough votes to extend the deadline another year.
If the vote fails, Digital World will be required by law to liquidate and return $300 million to its shareholders, leaving Trump’s company with nothing from the transaction.
For Digital World, it would signal the ultimate financial fall from grace for a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, that turned its proximity to the former president into what was once one of the stock market’s hottest trades. Its share price, which peaked in its first hours at $175, has since fallen to about $14.
Digital World’s efforts to merge with Trump Media have been troubled almost from the start, beset by allegations that it began its conversations with the former president’s company before they were permitted under SPAC rules.
Then, in the past year, its issues became more pronounced: Its chief executive was terminated by the board, a former board member was arrested on charges of insider trading, and the company agreed to pay an $18 million settlement to resolve charges that it had misled investors and given false information to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The merger has “been pretty much unprecedented in terms of all of the glitches,” said Jay Ritter, a University of Florida finance professor who studies stock markets. “The deal does seem to be running out of time. You can’t just keep getting extensions forever.”
The Washington Post provided a detailed outline of its reporting for this article to Digital World and Trump Media.
Shannon Devine, a spokeswoman for Trump Media, which has sued The Post in an ongoing lawsuit for defamation over its past coverage of the merger, said in a statement, “Having repeatedly defamed TMTG with false accusations that it still hasn’t retracted, The Washington Post adds to its heaping pile of bias with this new collection of defamatory and self-refuting falsehoods, proving once again why it’s a terrible mistake for anyone to believe a word they read in this publication.”
The statement did not single out any specific inaccuracy in this story, but Trump Media has alleged in its lawsuit that The Post previously erroneously reported that Trump Media paid a finder’s fee for a loan it received to a company that Digital World’s previous CEO had an interest in.
The SEC declined to comment.
SPACs are known as “blank check” companies because they raise money from investors to buy a private company before identifying who they intend to target. Once the SPAC decides on and discloses its target, it works to merge with that company and bring it to the public stock market, avoiding some of the demands of a more traditional initial public offering, or IPO.
If the SPAC is unable to complete the merger within the time it specifies, it must return the money it raised to shareholders.
Digital World completed its IPO on Sept. 8, 2021, and set a “termination date” for when the merger would be completed one year later, it said in SEC filings. Then, last August, Digital World said in a filing that the board believed it did not have sufficient time to complete the merger and asked shareholders to approve up to four three-months extensions.
Digital World’s leaders then staged an intense get-out-the-vote campaign, postponing shareholder meetings six times as they worked to secure enough investor support. After drawing on millions of dollars in funding from its corporate sponsor, ARC Global Investments II, the company was ultimately able to extend its deadline to Sept. 8 of this year.
Digital World needs 65 percent of the shares held by its nearly 400,000 investors to vote “yes” on the deadline extension; unvoted shares are counted as “no” votes. If the extension fails, Digital World said in a filing in July that it would “cease all operations except for the purpose of winding up” and repay investors at a price of about $10.24 per share — far below what many shareholders paid.
Deadline-extension votes like these are almost always approved because SPAC shares usually are bought by professional or institutional investors who closely track how a deal unfolds, Ritter said.
But Digital World’s shareholder base is made up largely of small-time “retail” investors, making it harder for the company to boost shareholder participation in critical votes. Ritter said he suspects these investors, many of whom bought shares out of love for Trump or loyalty to his brand, may not be paying attention as the liquidation deadline approaches.
Trump Media has blamed the SEC for the deal’s troubles, saying in a statement last year that the agency had worked to “sabotage” the merger for political reasons with “a bureaucratic black hole of inaction.”
But the SEC, which requires SPACs to meet disclosure requirements and other closing conditions before permitting a merger, said in July that it had investigated Digital World and found it had made “material misrepresentations” to investors.
In filings dating back to its September 2021 IPO, Digital World executives said they had not participated in merger discussions with any companies when in fact they’d started speaking with Trump Media leaders months earlier, in violation of federal antifraud guidelines, the SEC said in the statement.
In agreeing to pay an $18 million settlement over its false statements if the merger closes, Digital World said it would revise its registration statement, known as a Form S-4, to correct inaccuracies. The company has yet to resubmit that revised document, SEC filings show.
In a separate filing, Digital World said it also was not ready to file two required quarterly financial reports covering the first half of this year, saying it could not complete them in time without “unreasonable effort or expense.” It has sparred with its former auditors in SEC filings and letters over who is to blame for missing information.
Digital World also is late in filing two required quarterly financial reports with the Nasdaq stock exchange, the company said, adding that Nasdaq has given the company until November to file the reports or risk being delisted.
In a flurry of notices to shareholders, the company has pushed investors to vote to stave off liquidation. “Time is Running Out. Don’t Delay,” one mailer said, in underlined font. “DO NOT THROW THIS AWAY.”
Digital World’s chief executive, Eric Swider, said in a statement to The Post that most of this article’s reporting was “inaccurate or wildly misleading” but offered only four specific responses, arguing that the idea that the deal is on the edge of catastrophe is “nowhere near the truth”; that the company does not “look for ‘hype,’” and that he disputed the existence of a quote attributed to him in a company statement as well as the meaning of one of his Truth Social posts.
Swider has in recent days posted “URGENT!!” messages on Truth Social imploring shareholders to vote. In one post, he wrote, “As the Democrats will tell you; management says vote early, vote often. Bring all of your friends with you.” Swider told The Post the quote “had nothing to do with” Digital World. The post was written three days after Digital World postponed its last shareholder meeting with an official filing that quoted Swider as saying, “Our SPAC is at a defining crossroads.”
In another company statement on Aug. 22, Swider was quoted saying, “A vote for the Extension is a vote for freedom of speech.” When told The Post intended to include the quote in this story, Swider said in an email, “I do not believe this is accurate.” Days before the shareholder vote, the statement remained online.
Trump, who would retain his 90 percent ownership of Trump Media if the deal falls apart, has yet to make mention of the shareholder vote on his own Truth Social account.
Truth Social has attracted a relatively meager following. Though Trump Media projected in a 2021 investor presentation that the site would have 41 million total users by the end of this year, usage estimates from Similarweb, a data firm that analyzes web traffic, suggest it is a long way from reaching that goal.
According to Similarweb estimates, roughly 500,000 monthly active users in the United States visited Truth Social via its Apple and Android mobile apps in July, down from 600,000 in June.
Similarweb’s estimate of how many people in the United States visited Truth Social in July from either a desktop computer or their phone’s web browser totaled just over 1 million, down nearly 20 percent since June. (There is some overlap, given that users can access the site on both their desktops and phones.) Three times as many unique visitors in July visited the websites for The Old Farmer’s Almanac and the Denver Gazette, Similarweb estimates show.
Trump Media also has yet to unveil any of the other offerings it promoted in 2021, such as a subscription video service, TMTG+, that would feature “non-woke” entertainment. In campaign financial filings, Trump has placed the company’s value at between $5 million and $25 million.
In recent weeks, Trump has used Truth Social to hammer some of the public officials connected to his four criminal indictments.
The site has missed out on some opportunities for promotion, however. When Trump sat for an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson scheduled to counter the Republican primary debate, the video aired not on Trump’s own social network but on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Trump had told his advisers he didn’t want the video to land on a Truth Social competitor, but Carlson’s team argued that Trump’s platform didn’t have the necessary reach, people familiar with the negotiations told The Washington Post.
Truth Social’s main point of distinction — its exclusivity to Trump’s online musings — could face its own threat. On Aug. 24, after surrendering at an Atlanta jail on felony charges alleging he participated in a criminal conspiracy to overturn his 2020 election loss, Trump posted his first tweet in more than two years, including his mug shot.
On Truth Social, some users expressed frustration at what they argued was a betrayal of their pro-Trump corner of the web. One user, with the handle “45MAGA2022,” posted on Truth Social the night the interview aired, “How is this Tweet remotely beneficial to” the merger deal “and/or beneficial to #Truth?”
Trump, however, said he isn’t going anywhere and that Truth Social was his “home.” In a post there Monday, he wrote, “TRUTH SOCIAL IS THE GREATEST & ‘HOTTEST’ FORM, SYSTEM, & PLATFORM OF COMMUNICATION IN AMERICA, & INDEED THE WORLD, TODAY. THAT’S WHY I USE IT — THERE IS NOTHING THAT COMES EVEN CLOSE!!!”
wishing evil or harm to another or others; showing ill will; ill-disposed; malicious:His failures made him malevolent toward those who were successful.
evil; harmful; injurious:a malevolent inclination to destroy the happiness of others.
The often startling numbers behind Trump’s indictment in Georgia
The indictment of former president Donald Trump, his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others in Georgia is the biggest of all the indictments against Trump, at least by volume.
Below are some remarkable and instructive numbers behind the indictment brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D).
19 The number of people charged, including Trump. Each is accused of racketeering and at least one related crime.
41 The number of individual counts in the indictment, many of which involve multiple people.
13 The number of counts faced by both Trump and Giuliani, tied for the most among the defendants.
5 of 6 The number of unnamed individuals identified as unindicted co-conspirators in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump who have been charged in Georgia: Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jeffrey Clark. (The identity of the sixth unindicted co-conspirator in Smith’s case has not been confirmed but doesn’t appear to match those indicted in Georgia.)
30 The number of unindicted and unnamed alleged co-conspirators in the Georgia indictment. As occurred after Smith presented his indictment, efforts to identify the co-conspirators and glean who might have cooperated in the investigation began almost immediately Monday night.
3 The number of Trump lawyers present at the infamous Nov. 19, 2020, Republican National Committee news conference who are now indicted: Giuliani, Powell and Jenna Ellis. The news conference featured bizarre stolen-election conspiracy theories involving Venezuela, Cuba and China. RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel later remarked (presciently) that she was concerned about legal liability arising from the event.
2 The number of Trump lawyers now charged with crimes that they focused extensively on proving that others had committed. Giuliani was a pioneer of pursuing federal racketeering cases when he was a prosecutor and is now charged under a Georgia racketeering statute. Powell falsely claimed to have proof of widespread election fraud in 2020 and is now charged with conspiracy to commit election fraud in an alleged voting machine breach in Coffee County, Ga.
161 The number of overt acts listed as being part of the racketeering conspiracy. Overt acts aren’t necessarily crimes in and of themselves — many sound innocuous, while others are charged as crimes — but instead demonstrate the furtherance of an alleged crime. (To make a racketeering case, prosecutors must prove at least two “predicate” crimes and establish a pattern of activity geared to the advancement of the alleged criminal enterprise.)
127 The number of times “false statement” is mentioned in the indictment. Georgia law has a broad prohibition on making “a false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation … in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of state government.”
13 The number of false statements Trump is accused of making to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) in their Jan. 2, 2021, phone call alone.
1 The number of Trump White House officials charged. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows becomes the first, for his participation in the Raffensperger call.
12 The number of Trump tweets the indictment lists as overt acts by the former president. Trump’s unwieldy social media persona has long been viewed as a potential legal liability, and his tweets have been used against him in legal proceedings. The tweets cited include those making false claims of voter fraud, urging people to watch a hearing featuring Giuliani’s false claims, applying pressure on Raffensperger and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), and urging then-Vice President Pence ahead of the Jan. 6 certification in Congress to help overturn the election.
2 The number of state Republican Party chairs who have been indicted. Former Georgia GOP chairman David Shafer joins former Michigan GOP co-chairwoman Meshawn Maddock, an alternate elector who was indicted in that state last month. Alternate Trump electors in Arizona, including former state GOP chairwoman Kelli Ward, also are facing legal scrutiny.
3 of 16 The number of alternate electors charged: Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathy Latham. In Michigan, all 16 alternate electors were charged with crimes including forgery, but in Georgia, some took immunity deals to cooperate with prosecutors.
91 The total number of felony counts Trump now faces in his four indictments.
