October 17, 2020

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” This is a famous phrase said by Polonius in Act-I, Scene-III of William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. The complete phrase is “Neither a borrower nor a lender be; / For loan oft loses both itself and friend.” This is a quaint phrase we typically take figuratively and not literally. If we took it literally, it would be the end of international finance as we know it. Which gets me to Trump. Trump owes $421,000,000 in personally guaranteed loans, which he calls peanuts and being under leveraged. Maybe not, or maybe so and that is the point. Trump may be what he claims, a multi- billionaire using a judicious amount of debt to finance his projects. If this were so, it would be easy enough to prove. Show us a balance sheet. A billion dollars in assets supported by a billion dollars in debt doesn’t make you a billionaire. It makes you broke.

Successful real estate developers don’t have to personally guarantee loans. Lenders have enough confidence in the projects and their borrowers to make straightforward business loans backed by hard assets and future income. Even Trump’s bank, Deutsche Bank, which has its own dark history of questionable dealings, didn’t trust Trump because of his track record of multiple bankruptcies and stiffing vendors.

If Trump was in great financial shape, he would show us the money. He would be releasing his tax returns. Being rich is essential to his feeling of self esteem. Financial worth equates to self worth. He would have no compunction putting up his net worth against Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and others. He would be bragging to Forbes magazine. The value of his assets are questionable, and the SDNY is looking into it. We may see a fire sale of golf courses, resorts, and hotels. The Russians will have no more use for him, and will cut him loose. His brand will have lost its value. This may be a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

October 13, 2020

“Ya got trouble. Right here in River City.” And that rhymes with Trump. The Music Man in the White House is just about finished selling his fake wares to the American people, and is ready to skip town with our money. He tried to sell us on a wall that Mexico would pay for. He tried to sell us on caravans. He is trying to sell us on law and order. He has tried to sell us with far more lies than trombones in a marching band.

He has used his properties to extract dollars from his supplicants in return for political favors. As the New York Times said, Trump didn’t drain the swamp, he reinvented it. He will be in Mar-a-Lago, and we will be left with the fiscal and pandemic messes he did little to address. His type is as old as time. He is a grifter and snake oil salesman, who blew into town to take advantage of people looking for hope, and with little money. His betrayal of his base is epic. Unfortunately, unlike Harold Hill, he will not have an epiphany before Election Day. Kazoos and tin plates will have to do in lieu of a military parade. “Ya got trouble. Right here in River City.” It begins with Trump, and that rhymes with fool.

October 9, 2020

I would like to think that everyone is horrified about the attempt by white supremacists to kidnap, try, and kill the Governor of Michigan. They apparently took objection to her stay at home and mask wearing orders in the face of a public health crisis. She put the responsibility directly on Donald Trump because of his “Liberate Michigan” tweets, his Charlottesville comments, his refusal to denounce the KKK and David Duke, his shout out to the Proud Boys, and his law and order rhetoric. As she said, words have consequences. What I find ironic, however, is that these gun-wielding, fake freedom fighters wear masks when they are in public. They wear masks to protest their right not to wear masks.

The motivation behind these actions is not the pandemic and the restrictions it has required. If it wasn’t the coronavirus, Trump and his followers would find some other pretext to get ginned up. Law and order, rigged elections, the Second Amendment, and immigration are all places he could and has gone to. The FBI has identified white supremacy as our number one domestic terror threat. That is not quite accurate. Trump is our number one threat.

October 8, 2020

Donald Trump is clearly into domination. He recently said that we can dominate the coronavirus when we get it. I am not sure how you dominate an invisible, deadly enemy, but it is an odd way to describe battling a pandemic. Earlier, he talked about dominating peaceful protesters in major metropolitan areas like Portland and Kenosha. “We will dominate the streets,” he says. These were protesters armed with cell phones and face masks. He talks about dominating women, and his ability to grab them when and where he wants to. We have all heard Stormy Daniels, who described Trump’s pleasure in being spanked and dominated by a copy of Time magazine with his picture on the cover.

However, the only thing that Don the Dominatrix aka Don Daddy dominates is the amount of attention he focuses on himself. He doesn’t dominate the pandemic. It dominates us. He doesn’t dominate Putin. Putin dominates him. He doesn’t dominate Nancy Pelosi. She owns him. Don the Dominatrix needs to take his fake leather and whips, and go back to where he came from.

October 6, 2020

Trump is on steroids, and I am enraged. “I feel better than I did twenty years ago,” he says. How bad did he feel twenty years ago? I would give anything to feel the way I think I did twenty years ago, but that is not going to happen no matter how many steroids I take. That’s not leadership. That’s buffoonery. The President may recover the same way someone playing Russian Roulette doesn’t kill himself. He says that he gets it. He should have said that he got it. Donald Trump, Super Spreader, is the Typhoid Mary of our times, and needs to be separated from the herd.

Trump has given up on winning the election. His only objective now is to make it as bad as possible for the incoming administration. He wants to crater the economy and keep the pandemic going so he can say I told you so. He walked away from a stimulus bill that devastated his precious stock market. He will take the rigged election, bad economy, pandemic, and his martyrdom to TrumpTV, which he will need to pay off his mountains of debt.

October 5, 2020

Despite his false claims to the contrary, Trump wants to eliminate health care coverage for millions of Americans along with pre-existing conditions. Is stupidity a pre-existing condition, because, if it is, a lot of people in Trump world are going to find themselves without medical coverage? The rest of us have been wearing masks, socially distancing, washing our hands, and staying home while these yahoos decided to flout CDC guidelines. All of these yokels could be in line for the annual Darwin Awards, which go to people who have contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool from dying via their own actions. These people are President’s, Senators, Governors, and university presidents. This is our leadership.

October 4, 2020

It seems like old news, but we now why Trump didn’t want to release his tax returns. Trump was very good at making money, but he was far better at losing it. As we used to say in my old business, “It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep.” Trump has tried to spin the fact that his use of legal tax deductions made him smart. I guess the rest of us are dumb. Losing more money than you make does not make you smart, even at Wharton.

Now we have to speculate whether some of his tax strategies were in fact legal. Ivanka’s consulting fees, his aggressive write-offs of expenses related to a personal residence, and a sketchy tax refund are mentioned. I will give him that he probably needed $70,000 for his hair. However, why is it up to us to prove that he is a tax cheat. The burden of proof should be on him to prove that he is not a tax cheat. He is what we would call an indefensible client. Trump University was a fraud, and he settled for $20,000,000. The state of New York shut down his fraudulent foundation. He is guilty of illegally paying hush money to a porn star. He needs to show us everything. We need to know the names of the creditors associated with his $421,000,000 in personally guaranteed loans. We need to know the names of Russian oligarchs buying condos in his buildings. We need to see his books. Show me the money.

Now, in an all too familiar scenario, he is refusing to disclose his medical details. He is feeling fine, he says. Is that one of his 20,000 plus lies? Let us see his medical chart. We need to know why he visited Walter Reed on a Saturday six months ago. He accused Hillary Clinton of being in poor health. He accused Joe Biden of being on drugs. Put up, or, as Joe Biden said, shut up Mr. President. It must be killing him that the media continuously refers to him as obese. Prove that they are wrong. Like a punch drunk prize fighter before a fight, get on the scale. The scales of justice will judge you accordingly.