This story just blows my mind.
It doesn't blow my mind.
I've known about him since the mid-80's, and I've been publicly calling book on this fool for more than a decade, right here at DT.
NYC businesses have treated him like The Bubonic Plague since around the 1990's. NYC banks haven't floated him a loan in decades. Not because Manhattan is "Anti-Trump/Liberal Coastal Elites," but because
they actually KNOW him- better than the rest of us. Hell, some of the world's biggest movers & shakers are still around- and have watched him grow up in this milieu. He's always been 'downriver,' and shady af.
A man who lies by breathing, cheats at business,
and cheats at golf is a Yutz to be avoided, at all costs. Reputations are maintained by the quality of company one keeps.
I told this board when I first started mentioning him that he was a low-character con man, a liar and cheat... and that was way back in 2011.
In the following decade+, Shade and Sketch has followed him every step of his journey. Because Shade and Sketch and "one step ahead of the law" has been the way he's run his entire adult professional life. I didn't need to be Nostrodamus to predict that he'd be impeached, that he'd be under investigation by myriad law enforcement agencies, that his entire time in the national spotlight would be hallmarked by controversy, contentiousness and chaos. All I had to do was look at his entire public record, pre-politics to call what his political career would look like. Here we are, an entire 12 years after he launched his political incarnation with 'birther' tweets... and I'm still batting 1.000.
How was I able to call this dude's public political trajectory with such accuracy? It wasn't Divine Knowledge, dropped from on high. It wasn't 'blind hate for Trump gets lucky'. Quite the opposite, truth be told: I was raised by a WWII Army veteran and career cop- who actually cared enough to teach his son how to spot scam artists... by taking him on a guided tour of the Allen County Fair midway when he was 11-12 years old. Those 2-3 days taught me who and what to spot. From that point on, it's been embarrassingly easy for me. Trump is the Midway Barker. Always has been/always will be. Misdirection. Weighted felt cats. Smaller-than-regulation basketball rims, at higher-than regulation free-throw dimensions, with larger-than regulation, lopsided basketballs. "Look over here- not at what you see before your very own ('lyin') eyes..."
I've never been shocked/surprised by anything 45* has ever said/done. And I've called him since Day One.
Because My Father, RLOne, trained his son, RLTwo- to know a scammer when he presents himself to the rest of us.
Expect stuff like this from him... from now, until there is no longer a him.
This leopard's spots were tattooed upon him before he exited puberty... and they are still indelibly etched upon his hide for all to see.
The idea that millions of Americans weren't given the education that My Father gave me might be the key to why this incredibly flawed, manifestly unworthy man ever made it to the Oval Office in the first place, shakes me to my core.
Because if this dolt could manage what he did... imagine what a smarter, savvier, less knuckle-dragging version of him could do.
Defense of Democracy is a full-time occupation.