What I like about Donald Trump

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]BG, if Phil Ruffin sent a $1 million check, Trump had to return it because there are limits to direct contributions. Look it up.
Contributors are responsible to make sure they comply. Ruffin has lawyers and he’s not dumb.

It was a stunt made for TV so Trump can claim independence from big money, and you fell for it.[/quote]I didn’t “fall” for anything, FIH. Did you read the interview of Ruffin provided in the link?

…They were having dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, Fla., when the subject came up, according to Ruffin. For Ruffin, there was one vital question: Why would Trump want to subject himself to a potentially bruising political campaign given all he had accomplished?

Trump responded that the country was broken and he knew he could fix it, Ruffin said in an interview Tuesday at his Treasure Island office. Despite Ruffin’s initial advice against the campaign, he vowed to give $1 million to his friend’s presidential run, if it ever came to pass — a promise he said he fulfilled after Trump’s campaign launched last year.

But Trump didn’t take the money.

“He immediately sent it back,” Ruffin said. Trump reiterated a standard campaign bragging point — that he’s a self-funded candidate — and said he wouldn’t budge on that, even for Ruffin.

While Trump would not accept a big campaign contribution, according to Ruffin, the candidate did accept help in another way. Last week, Ruffin and his wife donated $1 million at a Des Moines, Iowa, fundraiser for veterans that Trump held instead of participating in the Republican debate.

Ruffin said he made the donation because “it was a good cause” and was in line with his other charitable interests. He said the donation was more about charity than supporting Trump as a candidate.

Still, Ruffin’s donation and presence at the Des Moines event made him a crucial supporter during a key moment in his friend’s highly controversial campaign. Ruffin’s contribution was among about $6 million raised by that event, including $1 million from Trump and $500,000 from investor Carl Icahn, owner of the mothballed Fontainebleau Las Vegas project, according to media reports…

http://vegasinc.com/business/gaming/2016/feb/03/interview-with-phil-ruffin-why-he-thinks-trump-wou/

Okay, it’s not clear here whether this check from Ruffin (which Trump sent back) was actually a $1M check or a smaller one with the promise of more to come (from Ruffin’s various enterprises). I’m SURE BOTH of these billionaries are aware of the legal limits on the various types of campaign contributions. They’re both very successful businessmen. Based upon how close Ruffin states he and Trump were in the interview, I don’t see him promising to donate $1M to the Trump campaign for publicity for himself or to create a “publicity stunt” for Trump to stump on. But Trump ended up using the incident in the Iowa caucus because he could, which made Ruffin “come out of the closet” about it in this early February interview.

Ruffin is 80 years old and is a “dust bowl refugee.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Ruffin

These folks aren’t wired to bring undue attention to themselves.

[bearishgurl]

Here is another article which fills in the details of Ruffin’s $1M “campaign contribution.”

http://www.readingeagle.com/ap/article/longtime-trump-friend-seeded-pro-trump-super-pac-with-1-million

[FlyerInHi]

I don’t doubt that phil Ruffin can afford and will support his friend.
But I don’t believe the simple $1 million narrative sold to the public.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=bearishgurl]Whether Protestant or Catholic, there are a LOT of “evangelicals” and very conservative Christians as well as a large Mormon population in South County SD. This is more in the Republicans’ favor than the dems, I would think. We’ll see how the voter registrations, precinct by precinct wash out by June. It’s going to be an interesting election year, to say the least :=0[/quote]

I believe that in another decade, the evangelical mask will come off. Talking about the emperor having no clothes, that’s pretty much evangelicals. Their lives are no more righteous. Eventually, they will have to confront the facts that despite their Christian fundamentalism, their lives are just as fvucked up, or even more so than the general population(substance abuse, divorce, teenage pregnancy, tooth count, education, etc.. ). . . . [/quote]Uh, yeah, I could name off a couple of extremely conservative, proselytyzing families who are now chipping away at inflated 40-yr mortgage mods due to taking way too much equity out of their homes, but I won’t. One of them even bragged to me back in the “fog-a-mirror-get-a-loan days about their “Christian” loan officer who just approved them for a $150K HELOC (the 3rd TD on their home at that time, lol). They called and asked me if I’d like him to visit me so I could make application for a “home equity loan” after he was finished at their house and I politely declined. A second, rental home in another state and a luxury vehicle they purchased with some of the “funny money” they rec’d from ATMing their home to death are both history now, lost years ago to foreclosure and repossession. In addition, the “self-employed” parents haven’t paid income taxes in five years as evidenced by several IRS liens filed in their names. The woman (mom) in the family is the most prolific, in-your-face proselytizer I have ever met in my life :=0

In my mind, these people are nothing more than scammers and thieves. People like them are the ones who made it rough for everyone who manages their money and abides by the law.

[FlyerInHi]

BG, affinity fraud is a very effective way of separating people from their money.

Most often it’s not outright fraud but selling goods and services to people who listen to you.

[FlyerInHi]

I’m being a couch potato watching you tube this afternoon.

I’m impressed with trump’s plane
http://youtu.be/vF1JDNOLaYg

[Coronita]

The presidential candidate debates…. A soap opera filled with ugly and old people. No thanks.

[svelte]

While he calls his rivals liars, Trump says this:

“I’m being audited now for two or three years, so I can’t do it until the audit is finished, obviously. And I think people would understand that,” the Republican front-runner said at Thursday night’s Republican debate in Houston.

The Internal Revenue Service and tax experts, though, say he can.

“Nothing prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information,” IRS spokesman Anthony Burke said in an e-mail.

If he said “won’t” instead of “can’t”, that would be truthful to me. But “can’t”, that’s not truthful.

Further in the article:

“I’m always audited by the IRS, which I think is very unfair — I don’t know, maybe because of religion, maybe because of something else, maybe because I’m doing this, although this is just recently,” Trump told CNN. “Maybe because of the fact that I’m a strong Christian, and I feel strongly about it, and maybe there’s a bias.”

Seriously. Audited because he’s a Christian? As is most of America? This man is not dumb, he knows that is not the reason. He is trying to rally the troops but getting them riled up, that’s what he’s doing. I would consider this another white lie to stir the pot.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article62756312.html

[FlyerInHi]

I had lunch with my brother and we discussed Trump. What does “Make America Great Again” mean?

I think that the across the aisle, one thing that angers “real Americans” is that English is not the official/national language.

That has been a grievance for a long time, with promises made by Republicans but nothing has been delivered so far. In fact, there is more and more bi-lingualism because businesses know that it’s more profitable to provide services in people’s native languages.

I don’t mind (because I learned Spanish and have a working knowledge and I find the language sexy, depending on who speaks it) but I know quite a few Democrats and Republicans who are fed up with it. They don’t like having to choose been English and Spanish. And they don’t like to listen to Spanish on radio and TV. They see their own place in America as being eroded.

[zk]

[quote=zk][quote=poorgradstudent]
So Hillary doesn’t elicit visceral hatred from the right? Really? [/quote]

I clearly remember lots of visceral hatred from the right towards Hillary. I remember wondering where it came from.

I think I figured out where it came from. The same place where the visceral hatred that the right wing has for so many people came from: The right-wing noise machine is constantly filling the brains of the gullible with whatever it takes to make them viscerally hate whomever it is that the right-wing noise machine wants them to hate.

[/quote]

Here’s an interesting article on why Hillary is so reviled:

https://thepolicy.us/thinking-about-hillary-a-plea-for-reason-308fce6d187c#.48jzbkas9

[Anonymous]

http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000004533191/unfiltered-voices-from-donald-trumps-crowds.html

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=harvey]http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000004533191/unfiltered-voices-from-donald-trumps-crowds.html

[/quote]
That short video compilation by NYT is very telling. The attitudes reflected are not new — they have been enabled for decades. Trump is just the culmination.

[scaredyclassic]

i want to be more like trump.

brash.
always right.
self promoting.
people who dont get me ate losers.
etc.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=scaredyclassic]i want to be more like trump.

brash.
always right.
self promoting.
people who dont get me ate losers.
etc.[/quote]

I trained myself to be more like that especially for business because that what people look up to and fear, and sometimes it’s necessary. It doesn’t really work for me because I talk too softly and too long winded like a professor. Trump is the CEO type that barks out short orders.

I think there are soft spoken lawyers and barking lawyers.

I had a college friend who speaks in a Trumpian way. Everyone is a moron, blah blah. I was getting sick of his shit and gave it back him. Because that’s not the genuine me, he got offended and won’t talk to me anymore. People like Trump are actually thin skinned. It’s all about them being superior to others. If Trump lost his money, he wouldn’t have any friends left. I would love to see Trump poorer and meet his match.

[La Jolla Renter]

Come on… thin skinned? No Way.

The guy is a New Yorker. Brash and loud is the norm.

[Author]

Posts