dagblog - Comments for "Saving face: How Donald Trump silenced the people who could expose his business failures" http://dagblog.com/link/saving-face-how-donald-trump-silenced-people-who-could-expose-his-business-failures-28403 Comments for "Saving face: How Donald Trump silenced the people who could expose his business failures" en Wow. So much for the vetting http://dagblog.com/comment/268757#comment-268757 <a id="comment-268757"></a> <p><em>In reply to <a href="http://dagblog.com/comment/268753#comment-268753">Beginning excerpt:</a></em></p> <div class="field field-name-comment-body field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Wow. So much for the vetting power of our free press.<br /> And of course anyone with such a penchant for lies and self-aggrandizement wouldn't pause a second to go get illegal healp from Russia &amp; the Saudis.</p> <p>While this particular aspect isn't specifically impeachable, it along with so much convinces me that expediting the path to impeachment is needed - except we're still stuck with the reluctant Senate and a public that's halfway supportive.</p> </div></div></div> Tue, 18 Jun 2019 10:43:32 +0000 PeraclesPlease comment 268757 at http://dagblog.com Beginning excerpt: http://dagblog.com/comment/268753#comment-268753 <a id="comment-268753"></a> <p><em>In reply to <a href="http://dagblog.com/link/saving-face-how-donald-trump-silenced-people-who-could-expose-his-business-failures-28403">Saving face: How Donald Trump silenced the people who could expose his business failures</a></em></p> <div class="field field-name-comment-body field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Beginning excerpt:</p> <blockquote> <p>How did Donald Trump, a self-serving promoter who lost billions of dollars for his investors, convince the world that he is a financial genius? It wasn’t just by fabricating tales of his success. It was also by bullying and silencing people who could have stopped those deceits — particularly reporters and Wall Street analysts — forcing all but a very few into a conspiracy of silence.</p> <p>These tactics, which form a core element of his politics, were something I saw him hone firsthand in the 1980s and 1990s as Trump’s company was imploding.</p> <p>I was the lead real estate wealth estimator for the Forbes 400 list in its early years. Trump called me twice in 1984, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-lied-to-me-about-his-wealth-to-get-onto-the-forbes-400-here-are-the-tapes/2018/04/20/ac762b08-4287-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html?tid=a_inl_manual" title="www.washingtonpost.com">posing</a> as his fictional “VP of finance” John Barron and professing the kind of riches that ought to land him on the list, despite failing to document them. So when a New York Times exposé last month <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/07/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes.html" title="www.nytimes.com">showed</a> that Trump had lost $1.1 billion between 1985 and 1994, I looked back at my archives and began calling old colleagues to compare these figures with what Trump was telling journalists three decades ago.</p> <p>First, I turned up <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/in-1989-as-his-empire-was-drowning-in-debt-donald-trump-said-he-had-tremendous-cash-reserves/e6e74bbb-a9bd-4992-b2eb-23ba3f149f15/?utm_term=.00490c679255">three never-before-published</a> letters from Trump to Forbes from 1989, in which he claimed to be worth $3.7 billion. We now know that he reported losses of about $100 million that year and that he was treading near insolvency.<strong> </strong>Then I started to contact other people who had collided with Trump in those years. Journalists told me how he’d tried to block their reporting on his empire [....]</p> </blockquote> </div></div></div> Tue, 18 Jun 2019 08:11:43 +0000 artappraiser comment 268753 at http://dagblog.com