[Liam-]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

How anyone can talk down trumps obvious play for autonomy is unbelievable. .. Surely even the reddest necks won't go for that in the US?

Of course they will, as long as the person in charge hates the same people they do

[arista]

Originally Posted by Liam-

Did she mention his name? No.

She’s allowed to tell people to vote, it’s very telling though that she says to reject hatred and people naturally assume she’s attacking Trump, is shows what people really think of him

NO
she attacked Trump years ago
First

[Liam-]

Originally Posted by arista

NO
she attacked Trump years ago
First

Ah, so he’s a petty bitch that holds grudges, got it

[The Slim Reaper]

[arista]

Originally Posted by Liam-

Ah, so he’s a petty bitch that holds grudges, got it

Everyone Knows if you Attack Trump
he Holds a grudge Forever

[arista]

Originally Posted by The Slim Reaper

Yes thats what many say.

[arista]

[Liam-]

[Beso]

Originally Posted by arista

Everyone Knows if you Attack Trump
he Holds a grudge Forever

Maybe hes still in the closet.

[Kizzy]

What I don't understand is why there's even the 'will you accept the decision' question anyway... if he is voted out of office he ceases to be chief in command of the army doesn't he? So he will simply be removed from the white house.

[bots]

even if he contests the election and it goes to court, his term ends in january, if there is no agreed president by that time, the speaker (probably Nancy) runs the country until a new president is installed. The term isn't extended to take account of a court battle

[The Slim Reaper]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

What I don't understand is why there's even the 'will you accept the decision' question anyway... if he is voted out of office he ceases to be chief in command of the army doesn't he? So he will simply be removed from the white house.

Pretty sure that it's until the next person is sworn in. Once the next person is sworn in, then he can be removed physically as none of the services are answerable to him. He does have the period between the election and signing day where he has powers to do all manner of crazy stuff, like forcing martial law as the easiest example, to try and make sure the next person can't be sworn in.

[bots]

Originally Posted by The Slim Reaper

Pretty sure that it's until the next person is sworn in. Once the next person is sworn in, then he can be removed physically as none of the services are answerable to him. He does have the period between the election and signing day where he has powers to do all manner of crazy stuff, like forcing martial law as the easiest example, to try and make sure the next person can't be sworn in.

executive orders can be over turned the moment his term ends by the speaker if there is no current president

[The Slim Reaper]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

executive orders can be over turned the moment his term ends by the speaker if there is no current president

He may not have to use executive orders, there are constitutional procedures he can use.

[Kizzy]

But don't the Dems run Congress? he won't get any laws passed will he?

[The Slim Reaper]

Dems hold the house, R's hold the senate and the court, 3 out of the 9 justices will owe their seats directly to him by the time the election comes around. 6-3 advantage to R's.

[bots]

there are certain non permanent things he can do unilaterally without needing to go to congress ... it all depends what the new shape of the houses are after the election

[The Slim Reaper]

It's actually pretty crazy that this is even a discussion. People wonder how germany ended up where they did; watching the US and UK today is how. Rights are being continually eroded, and laws are being increasingly ignored.

[Tom4784]

These next few months will determine the course of democracy worldwide. If Trump loses the election and manages to keep the presidency, then that will be noted by his peers all around the world. When Trump won the presidency in 2016, you soon saw Jair Bolsonero's rise to power in Brazil along with Racists and fascists gaining prominence in many western countries of which they had little to none before, if he holds onto power by ignoring the election, others will follow suit, or at least try to.

Donald Trump must be stopped.

[The Slim Reaper]

Good news.

[Tom4784]

Yes, that's good, but I do think that the republicans will soon ignore it if they get a whiff of Trump potentially getting away with remaining in power. They refused to hold him accountable in the impeachment hearings so if he can remain in power then they'll probably bend over backwards to keep it that way.

[The Slim Reaper]

If there's one thing R's love more than trump, it's their senate cash cow.

Some of those senators will be up for reelection in the mid terms in 2022, doesn't guarantee anything but it makes it a lot less likely they support trump in doing crazy stuff, when he'll do that on his own. Where it gets murky is the effort to delegitimize any voting.

Although if I remember correctly from bush/gore, I think all that goes through the house, not the senate.

[The Slim Reaper]

[bots]

trumps tax returns have leaked

The New York Times has obtained tax-return data for President Trump and his companies that covers more than two decades. Mr. Trump has long refused to release this information, making him the first president in decades to hide basic details about his finances. His refusal has made his tax returns among the most sought-after documents in recent memory.

Among the key findings of The Times’s investigation:

Mr. Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years that The Times examined. In 2017, after he became president, his tax bill was only $750.

He has reduced his tax bill with questionable measures, including a $72.9 million tax refund that is the subject of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service.

Many of his signature businesses, including his golf courses, report losing large amounts of money — losses that have helped him to lower his taxes.

The financial pressure on him is increasing as hundreds of millions of dollars in loans he personally guaranteed are soon coming due.

Even while declaring losses, he has managed to enjoy a lavish lifestyle by taking tax deductions on what most people would consider personal expenses, including residences, aircraft and $70,000 in hairstyling for television.

Ivanka Trump, while working as an employee of the Trump Organization, appears to have received “consulting fees” that also helped reduce the family’s tax bill.

As president, he has received more money from foreign sources and U.S. interest groups than previously known. The records do not reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.

It is important to remember that the returns are not an unvarnished look at Mr. Trump’s business activity. They are instead his own portrayal of his companies, compiled for the I.R.S. But they do offer the most detailed picture yet available.

Below is a deeper look at the takeaways. The main article based on the investigation contains much more information, as does a timeline of the president’s finances. Dean Baquet, the executive editor, has written a note explaining why The Times is publishing these findings.

The president’s tax avoidance
Mr. Trump has paid no federal income taxes for much of the past two decades.
In addition to the 11 years in which he paid no taxes during the 18 years examined by The Times, he paid only $750 in each of the two most recent years — 2016 and 2017.

He has managed to avoid taxes while enjoying the lifestyle of a billionaire — which he claims to be — while his companies cover the costs of what many would consider personal expenses.

This tax avoidance sets him apart from most other affluent Americans.
Taxes on wealthy Americans have declined sharply over the past few decades, and many use loopholes to reduce their taxes below the statutory rates. But most affluent people still pay a lot of federal income tax.

Thanks for reading The Times.
Subscribe to The Times
In 2017, the average federal income rate for the highest-earning .001 percent of tax filers — that is, the most affluent 1/100,000th slice of the population — was 24.1 percent, according to the I.R.S.

Over the past two decades, Mr. Trump has paid about $400 million less in combined federal income taxes than a very wealthy person who paid the average for that group each year.

His tax avoidance also sets him apart from past presidents.
Mr. Trump may be the wealthiest U.S. president in history. Yet he has often paid less in taxes than other recent presidents. Barack Obama and George W. Bush each regularly paid more than $100,000 a year — and sometimes much more — in federal income taxes while in office.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, is running a federal government to which he has contributed almost no income tax revenue in many years.

A large refund has been crucial to his tax avoidance.
Mr. Trump did face large tax bills after the initial success of “The Apprentice” television show, but he erased most of these tax payments through a refund. Combined, Mr. Trump initially paid almost $95 million in federal income taxes over the 18 years. He later managed to recoup most of that money, with interest, by applying for and receiving a $72.9 million tax refund, starting in 2010.

The refund reduced his total federal income tax bill between 2000 and 2017 to an annual average of $1.4 million. By comparison, the average American in the top .001 percent of earners paid about $25 million in federal income taxes each year over the same span.

The $72.9 million refund has since become the subject of a long-running battle with the I.R.S.
When applying for the refund, he cited a giant financial loss that may be related to the failure of his Atlantic City casinos. Publicly, he also claimed that he had fully surrendered his stake in the casinos.

But the real story may be different from the one he told. Federal law holds that investors can claim a total loss on an investment, as Mr. Trump did, only if they receive nothing in return. Mr. Trump did appear to receive something in return: 5 percent of the new casino company that formed when he renounced his stake.

In 2011, the I.R.S. began an audit reviewing the legitimacy of the refund. Almost a decade later, the case remains unresolved, for unknown reasons, and could ultimately end up in federal court, where it could become a matter of public record.

Business expenses and personal benefits
Mr. Trump classifies much of the spending on his personal lifestyle as the cost of business.
His residences are part of the family business, as are the golf courses where he spends so much time. He has classified the cost of his aircraft, used to shuttle him among his homes, as a business expense as well. Haircuts — including more than $70,000 to style his hair during “The Apprentice” — have fallen into the same category. So did almost $100,000 paid to a favorite hair and makeup artist of Ivanka Trump.

All of this helps to reduce Mr. Trump’s tax bill further, because companies can write off business expenses.

Seven Springs, his estate in Westchester County, N.Y., typifies his aggressive definition of business expenses.
Mr. Trump bought the estate, which stretches over more than 200 acres in Bedford, N.Y., in 1996. His sons Eric and Donald Jr. spent summers living there when they were younger. “This is really our compound,” Eric told Forbes in 2014. “Today,” the Trump Organization website continues to report, “Seven Springs is used as a retreat for the Trump family.”

Nonetheless, the elder Mr. Trump has classified the estate as an investment property, distinct from a personal residence. As a result, he has been able to write off $2.2 million in property taxes since 2014 — even as his 2017 tax law has limited individuals to writing off only $10,000 in property taxes a year.

The ‘consulting fees’
Across nearly all of his projects, Mr. Trump’s companies set aside about 20 percent of income for unexplained ‘consulting fees.’
These fees reduce taxes, because companies are able to write them off as a business expense, lowering the amount of final profit subject to tax.

Mr. Trump collected $5 million on a hotel deal in Azerbaijan, for example, and reported $1.1 million in consulting fees. In Dubai, there was a $630,000 fee on $3 million in income. Since 2010, Mr. Trump has written off some $26 million in such fees.

His daughter appears to have received some of these consulting fees, despite having been a top Trump Organization executive.
The Times investigation discovered a striking match: Mr. Trump’s private records show that his company once paid $747,622 in fees to an unnamed consultant for hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver, British Columbia. Ivanka Trump’s public disclosure forms — which she filed when joining the White House staff in 2017 — show that she had received an identical amount through a consulting company she co-owned.

Money-losing businesses
Many of the highest-profile Trump businesses lose large amounts of money.
Since 2000, he has reported losing more than $315 million at the golf courses that he often describes as the heart of his empire. Much of this has been at Trump National Doral, a resort near Miami that he bought in 2012. And his Washington hotel, opened in 2016, has lost more than $55 million.

An exception: Trump Tower in New York, which reliably earns him more than $20 million in profits a year.

The most successful part of the Trump business has been his personal brand.
The Times calculates that between 2004 and 2018, Mr. Trump made a combined $427.4 million from selling his image — an image of unapologetic wealth through shrewd business management. The marketing of this image has been a huge success, even if the underlying management of many of the operating Trump companies has not been.

Other firms, especially in real estate, have paid for the right to use the Trump name. The brand made possible the “The Apprentice” — and the show then took the image to another level.

Of course, Mr. Trump’s brand also made possible his election as the first United States president with no prior government experience.

But his unprofitable companies still served a financial purpose: reducing his tax bill.
The Trump Organization — a collection of more than 500 entities, virtually all of them wholly owned by Mr. Trump — has used the losses to offset the rich profits from the licensing of the Trump brand and other profitable pieces of its business.

The reported losses from the operating businesses were so large that they often fully erased the licensing income, leaving the organization to claim that it earns no money and thus owes no taxes. This pattern is an old one for Mr. Trump. The collapse of major parts of his business in the early 1990s generated huge losses that he used to reduce his taxes for years afterward.

Large bills looming
With the cash from ‘The Apprentice,’ Mr. Trump went on his biggest buying spree since the 1980s.
“The Apprentice,” which debuted on NBC in 2004, was a huge hit. Mr. Trump received 50 percent of its profits, and he went on to buy more than 10 golf courses and multiple other properties. The losses at these properties reduced his tax bill.

But the strategy ran into trouble as the money from “The Apprentice” began to decline. By 2015, his financial condition was worsening.

His 2016 presidential campaign may have been partly an attempt to resuscitate his brand.
The financial records do not answer this question definitively. But the timing is consistent: Mr. Trump announced a campaign that seemed a long shot to win, but was almost certain to bring him newfound attention, at the same time that his businesses were in need of a new approach.

The presidency has helped his business.
Since he became a leading presidential candidate, he has received large amounts of money from lobbyists, politicians and foreign officials who pay to stay at his properties or join his clubs. The Times investigation puts precise numbers on this spending for the first time.

A surge of new members at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida gave him an additional $5 million a year from the business since 2015. The roofing materials manufacturer GAF spent at least $1.5 million at Doral in 2018 as its industry was seeking changes in federal regulations. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association paid at least $397,602 in 2017 to the Washington hotel, where it held at least one event during its World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians.

In his first two years in the White House, Mr. Trump received millions of dollars from projects in foreign countries, including $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India and $1 million from Turkey.

But the presidency has not resolved his core financial problem: Many of his businesses continue to lose money.
With “The Apprentice” revenue declining, Mr. Trump has absorbed the losses partly through one-time financial moves that may not be available to him again.

In 2012, he took out a $100 million mortgage on the commercial space in Trump Tower. He has also sold hundreds of millions worth of stock and bonds. But his financial records indicate that he may have as little as $873,000 left to sell.

He will soon face several major bills that could put further pressure on his finances.
He appears to have paid off none of the principal of the Trump Tower mortgage, and the full $100 million comes due in 2022. And if he loses his dispute with the I.R.S. over the 2010 refund, he could owe the government more than $100 million (including interest on the original amount).

He is personally on the hook for some of these bills.
In the 1990s, Mr. Trump nearly ruined himself by personally guaranteeing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, and he has since said that he regretted doing so. But he has taken the same step again, his tax records show. He appears to be responsible for loans totaling $421 million, most of which is coming due within four years.

Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president. Whether he wins or loses, he will probably need to find new ways to use his brand — and his popularity among tens of millions of Americans — to make money.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/u...takeaways.html

[Kizzy]

I hope Americans find that information renders him unelectable!