I've had people say it's a hardening, actually ~ US presidential election 2016 part 9/11 never forget

I know it's old news, but this Florida AG thing is incredible.

Giving back the contribution also was never seriously considered, she said.

"If I had returned it, you would have reported, 'Bondi accepted bribe, got caught, and returned it,'" she said. "There was nothing improper about it, so there was no reason to return it."

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/pam-bondi-breaks-silence-says-she-has-no-regrets-about-taking-donald/2294336

Even supposing that it wasn't a bribe, it was an illegal donation, so there was something improper about it. Basically she's saying that she for the sake of her own image she didn't care about correcting a misappropriation of charitable funds.

I think Trump is ultimately going to find that running for president was his biggest strategic mistake. He could have continued being a venal choad relatively under the radar for the rest of his life, but now he has all eyes on him and people publicly picking apart his entire life, business and otherwise. Sure, he now has a slew of similar human shitbags hanging on his every word, but what does that ultimately gain him when he loses the presidency? A lot of them are going to lose interest once he's been undeniably branded a loser. The Trump brand is garbage with a sizable percentage of people now. As seems to be perpetually the case, he's his own worst enemy, and I hope he reaps every last bit of the shit he's been sowing.

No way. He's going to make millions out of this.

he's not going to live to be 90, and there seems to be little evidence that he gaf when anyone thinks poorly of him

how so? I would think this damages his brand pretty badly. plus lawsuits.

xp

howbout that Trump News Network rumor? or was it started here, bcz i suspect many of you wd watch whenever possible.

yeah he's probably learned that right-wing figureheads/pundits can actually make money from the followers --- there's a whole cottage industry devoted to whipping up the base that doesn't exist on the left

sometimes i like to tell myself that trump's whole campaign is just his own 'springtime for hitler'

It changes his brand. He can make millions in the event driven economy. True though the fallout for his current businesses could be expensive and hard to unwind.

im hesitant to do the armchair diagnosing that we all like to do but i think a true narcissistic dude like trump will never view anything he does as a mistake... any struggle, challenge or failure is someone else's fault or malice against him hence "the system is rigged" "the failing nytimes is so unfair" etc

This is the reason why gop primary season is such a shitshow. It's so profitable to run for their nomination.

I think Trump is ultimately going to find that running for president was his biggest strategic mistake.

i disagree, he's become a hero to 40% of the population and im sure he finds that very gratifying

was it profitable for Jeb! ?

No but he wasn't part of the shitshow in that sense. I'm talking about trump and the kids table debaters. Fox et al have created financial incentives for weak/insane candidates to run.

xxpost Like I say, let's see how many hangers-on he has when he's no longer running for president.

There have been real-world (read: non-ILX) rumors about a Trump news network floating for a while, but I can't see it happening. Dude's an idiot who thinks he's a smart, and his approach to everything he wants to do is "I'm gonna do that." You ask him how he's going to make this new network a reality and he'll say something like, "Hard work. I'm gonna build the most beautiful news network, the best." He doesn't have a fucking plan or any idea of what's actually entailed in reifying something like that.

has anyone had a glass of Trump wine?

He didn't have a plan for running for president either. His target market doesn't require one.

If Trump paying off his legal bills with Charity money doesn't pop off as a story we are truly fucked

it hasn't and it won't

seemed like it had momentum this morning

People don't care about those things, nor the 40-year, $3 billion Clinton hustle.

the new york times seems to have studiously avoiding covering anything that seems like a washington post scoop, so they're not running with it

yeah I noticed that too, some weird territorialism going on - WaPo's aggressive stance against Trump has been fairly admirable, I must admit.

Fifty mor p eople Trump will ignore: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/us/politics/donald-trump-business-reaction.html

*more people

lol @ Wolfowitz being concerned about conflicts of interest in the White House

There have been real-world (read: non-ILX) rumors about a Trump news network floating for a while, but I can't see it happening. Dude's an idiot who thinks he's a smart, and his approach to everything he wants to do is "I'm gonna do that." You ask him how he's going to make this new network a reality and he'll say something like, "Hard work. I'm gonna build the most beautiful news network, the best." He doesn't have a fucking plan or any idea of what's actually entailed in reifying something like that.

trump will have almost nothing to do with building it. someone w/ an actual plan will license his name, just like everything else 'trump' in the universe.

I'm not sure how Trump is "relatively under the radar" - relative to who? This only worked because of his fame compared with everyone else on stage.

I hear roger ailes is available to run this piece of shit network.

is launching a TV network in this day and age actually a money-making proposition? seems like a loss leader to me

glenn beck has his own 'over-the-top' channel; i'd think a trump + breitbart thing would work easily

I think I saw Venal Choad open for Dinosaur Jr at the 9:30 back in '85.

if it kept production costs low (mostly talking heads sitting behind desks or in armchairs) then a trump cable channel could probably make a profit just fine

I think Trump is ultimately going to find that running for president was his biggest strategic mistake.

Less for his sake than for his legacy (Jr, Ivanka, Eric & Barron). Hospitality firms can't run for long with a 60% drop in revenue.

amazing

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37421886?ocid=socialflow_twitter

he's become a hero to 40% of the population and im sure he finds that very gratifying

That may be gratifying right now, but a) once he loses the election (and he will lose the election), a big majority of those people are going to drift away, the same way fans of certain bands only pull out the T-shirt when the band is touring; and b) the bulk of his death-cult is made up of broke motherfuckers who can't afford anything Trump-branded more expensive than one of those stupid fucking red hats (which are gonna be buried in landfills en masse like the E.T. video game, you watch, on November 9 it's gonna be harder to find admitted Trump voters than ex-Nazis), and they're no way gonna make up for the losses his business has taken, and will continue to take. The killing blow will be if/when Deutsche Bank, the only bank that'll do business with him, decides to stop.

not that it fucking matters though

Maybe it's temporary but the media definitely seems to be picking up on this stuff a lot more lately and focusing less on go-nowhere stories about the Clinton Foundation. There were always whispers about how corrupt the Trump Foundation was but you'd never heard about it in the MSM until a couple of weeks ago. Also I've noticed that a lot of outlets are much more willing to straight up say, "Trump is lying about this". Which you almost never see from a news organization. Who knows what affect it'll have but I imagine if nothing else it'll scare a few 3rd party/independents into voting Clinton

Is straight-up calling someone a liar a potential libel issue or something? I don't know why news orgs have been so timid until recently about calling Trump of all people a liar over and over and over.

Deutsche Bank, the only bank that'll do business with him

You know who else Deutsche Bank did business with? Hitler.

Just sayin.

I don't know why news orgs have been so timid until recently about calling Trump of all people a liar over and over and over.

because they're craven shills who don't actually have an interest in communicating facts as much as they do on reporting "controversy"

For specificity's sake, I think Deutsche are the only bank with a US presence that still does business with Trump. But he's such a staunch patriot, I can't imagine him seeking funds outside of the good ol' US of A oh wait.

Herr Drumpf, amirecht?

Ultimately what it comes down to is that there's two types of negative coverage, either they espouse an offensive viewpoint, or they get caught in some sort of corruption or scandal. Trump is getting nearly all the former whereas Clinton gets mostly the latter. This is a problem for her because a lot of people actually agree with Trump's offensive viewpoints - they mostly come off as negative for people who won't vote for him anyway, while there's no positive spin to the other stuff. Lately it's flipped - Clinton is taking heat for "basket of deplorables" but ultimately I don't think it'll hurt her because nobody who doesn't support Trump already is really gonna be offended by that (in fact I think it's going to help her but that's another story). Meanwhile the flood of "Trump is a liar/con man" stories can only hurt him, since who likes being lied to?

Trump supporters think they're doing the conning, is the thing

ie "well that's what *I* would do if I was that rich!"

'Basket of deplorables' has definitely helped her. Anytime you can get awful supporters of your awful opponent to proudly self-identify as such, it's a win.

b) the bulk of his death-cult is made up of broke motherfuckers who can't afford anything Trump-branded more expensive than one of those stupid fucking red hats (which are gonna be buried in landfills en masse like the E.T. video game

The bulk of that cult actually consists of wealthier white people.

Skittles photographer = refugee story is so stunning. that one tweet has turned out to be a perfect distillation of a lot of things: https://theintercept.com/2016/09/20/nazi-who-originated-donald-trump-jr-s-skittles-metaphor-was-hanged-at-nuremberg/

I saw that post but... nazis didn't invent the "one bad apple ruins the bunch" analogy, that's some weak sauce.

idk if this is wishful thinking or not this time around but it is interesting

https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/778284299653033985