Trump SoHo - The Kids Are Not Alright

The family that lies together, stays together?

Trump's latest hissy-fit over NBC 's report that he stunned members of his national security team in a July 20th meeting by calling for a "ten fold" increase in America's nuclear arsenal strains the boundaries of hypocrisy.

"It's frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write" Fake President fumed to reporters - apparently not understanding that he basically just defined the 1st Amendment right to Freedom of Expression.

Obviously there's nothing funny about his empty threat to try and use his executive power to revoke NBC's broadcast license, but there's a reason he's kicking up a fuss over a news story.

The old saying "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree" might best sum up the overtly unethical and illegal actions of Donald Trump, Jr. and his sister Ivanka as revealed in a joint investigation conducted by reporters from The New Yorker, WNYC and ProPublica that was released last week.

After listening to a WNYC segment on the story last weekend, it made Fake President's incessant tiresome whining about the NFL last make a lot more sense.

It also sheds light on why he flew down to Puerto Rico last week and made a complete ass of himself while trying to defend his administration's bungled response to the devastating hurricane damage in PR that left millions without power or fresh water before tossing paper towels into an audience of people waiting for him to announce some kind of federal aid package.

By now, Trump's bizarre modus operandi is pretty clear.

Whenever legitimate news stories that are not flattering to him, his family or advisers (current or former) are released, or about to be released, he immediately takes to Twitter to say something astronomically stupid and outlandish.

Or, he uses an appearance at a live televised event or press conference to lob some kind of red-meat statement (out to the 30-some percent of the American populace that still approve of what he's doing) like a grenade and waits for it to blow up.

Not to make an actual point or policy statement, but simply to try and change the media narrative.

The troubled Trump SoHo - which isn't
actually located in SoHo 

Pick any of his weekend Tweets, there's a reason he doesn't care whether it's true, factually accurate or even makes any sense - it could be total gibberish (remember "Covfefe"?).

If you take some time to read the expose on how Donald Trump, Jr. and Ivanka avoided a criminal indictment for blatant real estate fraud written by Jesse Eisenger, Justin Elliot, Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz, Fake President's erratic behavior last week seems more rational.

At the center of this latest Trump-themed debacle is the 46-story hotel-condominium called the Trump SoHo.

The name of the property is basically a lie since it's located on Spring Street and Varick in the Hudson Square neighborhood.


Local residents of the West Village have protested the construction of the $450 million boondoggle since construction started in 2006.

Not just because it's immense size is totally out of scale with the character of the buildings in the neighborhood on the lower west side of Manhattan - located well west of the actual SoHo.

The soulless 391-unit building, which the 5th edition of the AIA Guide to New York City described as a "banal glass box", was built on the site of the former Spring Street Presbyterian Church, and the discovery of human remains during excavation for the building temporarily halted construction until archaeologists determined they were from the 1800's-era church burial vault - did you see Poltergeist?

Two construction workers were killed in 2008 on the site when sub-standard wooden forms used to make concrete molds collapsed - including a Ukrainian immigrant construction worker named Yuriy Vanchytskyy who tumbled 42 stories to his death and was decapitated.

Russian fixer Felix Sater and Donald Trump

The troubled building was a partnership between the Georgian (USSR)-born real estate investor Tamir Sapir and the Bayrock Group, run by the sketchy Russian businessman Felix Sater.

He's the guy who wrote in a 2015 email that he could arrange the construction of a Trump Tower Moscow in Russia that would help Trump win the presidency.

As a New York Times article by Matt Apuzzo and Maggie Haberman back in August noted, Sater wrote in an email to Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, "Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it, I will get all of Putin's team to buy in on this, I will manage this project."

Like many "Trump" building projects, Trump Soho is a licensing opportunity, so the brilliant "deal" Fake President made is to take some money for having his name plastered on the exterior of the building.

So while the Trump family didn't put a dime of its own money into the project, it bears all the hallmarks of Trump's sketchy carnival-huckster business ethics.

As Joey Arak reported in a 2011 SoHo News article, the project got a zoning exception that allowed the builders to make the building even higher in exchange for agreeing to build a relatively small section of public space at the base of the building - a little stretch of concrete plaza.

After getting their zoning exception, the operators then petitioned to turn the "public space" into an outdoor dining area for the exclusive use of hotel-condo guests / residents - MAGA!

Fraudsters: Ivanka Trump and Donald Jr.

After all the trouble associated with this project that Fake President didn't design, build or finance, what does he do?

In 2010 he decides that Trump SoHo will be a "New York real estate coming out" party for his eldest children Donald, Jr. and Ivanka.

Like many residential construction projects in Manhattan, Trump SoHo's bank loans and financing hinge on selling at least 15% of the condos.

Because the area in which it's constructed isn't licensed for residential, people who buy condos in Trump SoHo can't legally live in them more than 120 days out of the year - the rest of the time they can lease their condo out as hotel space.

Who in his or her right mind would pay truckloads of money for a pricey Manhattan condo where they can only live 120 days out of the year? Exactly.

As the joint investigation by ProPublica, The New Yorker and WNYC revealed, as part of their father's New York real estate "coming out", both Donald, Jr. and Ivanka - then in their early 20's - were both tasked with selling condos to prospective buyers in Trump SoHo.

To attract the high-end buyers, they both flagrantly (and knowingly) lied about the occupancy of the building in order to lure potential buyers into believing that the condos were selling like hotcakes - but they weren't.

Their lying about the property attracted the attention of the Major Economic Crimes Bureau of the Manhattan District Attorney's office, which opened an investigation into their activities in 2010.

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr.

Ten condo owners filed a lawsuit against the Trump SoHo owners accusing them of "fraudulently" misrepresenting condo sales figures.

The owners quickly settled the lawsuit out of court in 2011, paying the ten condo owners 90% of their deposits back.

Despite the Trump Organization hiring a cadre of pricey criminal defense lawyers to protect Donald, Jr and Ivanka's privileged behinds, the Manhattan DA's investigation dragged on.

Which evidently angered Fake President - who brought his personal lawyer of ten years Marc Kasowtiz into the case to make it go away.

Kasowitz, who'd personally donated $25,000 to the reelection campaign of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. in early 2012, went to straight to the DA's office on May 12, 2016 and asked him to drop the case against Donny Jr. and Ivanka.

But just before that May 16th meeting, Vance's reelection campaign mysteriously returns the $25,000 Kasowtiz had donated just months before - three months after that meeting the DA overrules the recommendation his own assistant attorneys and drops the case against the Trump children.

Despite clear evidence that they'd both lied about the sales figures of Trump SoHo with the intent of duping potential buyers - a clear violation of the Martin Act.

It gets even sketchier.

6 months after Vance dropped the case, Kasowtiz makes another LARGER donation of $35,000 to Vance's campaign - and then helps arrange an additional $15,000 in donations to the sketchy DA's reelection campaign.

One really doesn't have to look far to see where the eldest Trump children get their predilection towards playing fast and loose with the truth in order to manipulate people into getting something they want or need.

Lying is apparently just a part of the Trump brand, which makes Fake President's unsubstantiated accusations about the media making things up all the more laughable - and indeed, pathetic.

PEOTUS Falls Flat In Front of the Fourth Estate

Trump & props at the podium   [Photo - Getty Images]

From the moment incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer took the stage Wednesday morning to vent righteous conservative outrage over "fake news" I knew I wasn't going to make it through Donald Trump's first press conference since July.

It wasn't easy trying to swallow my lingering resentment and listen, but I gave it my best shot.

Hell it was a crapshoot whether the newly crowned PEOTUS would even show up.

His transition team abruptly cancelled a press conference back on December 15th that was intended to quell the growing unease about the unprecedented conflicts of interests his wide-ranging business interests would represent.

But as many pundits noted, there was no way that Trump's gargantuan ego and paper-thin skin could resist doing something to try and seize the media headlines from President Obama after he delivered an eloquent, stirring and emotional farewell address on Tuesday night in Chicago that made many pine for the class, intelligence, thoughtfulness and grace of the 44th President even before he departs the White House after two terms.

So after Spicer's angry repudiation of BuzzFeed's release of as-yet unverified documents allegedly written by a British intelligence agent showing that Russian intelligence has proof of PEOTUS in some disturbing compromising situations (think R-Kelly...), and a wet dishrag introduction by incoming VP Mike Pence - there Trump was at the podium.

Don Jr. & Eric get the keys to the business? Really?

In just the latest example of the orange-haired one's bogarting of Ronald Reagan's best moves, Trump stood next to a table theatrically piled high with folders of documents that we can only assume are his version of "proof" of his cutting his ties to his businesses.

It was meant to ape Reagan's use of big stacks of continuing resolutions as props as he did in the 1988 State of the Union address.


But for Trump it looked like a really cheap stunt, made worse by his assertion that he won't sell his assets, but instead put his two sons Don Jr. and Eric in charge of his hundreds of businesses.

(Funny, I don't seem to recall the indignant Sean Spicer expressing outrage over "fake news" when Eric Trump was re-Tweeting a phony story back in October about a man who claimed he was paid to protest at a Trump rally...)

In a scathing op-ed posted on The Guardian's Website Richard Wolffe eloquently summed up the impressions of many who watched some, or all of today's press conference.

He pronounced it an unequivocal "train wreck." 

Trump's tax attorney Sheri Dillon

As Wolffe observed, "After a rambling introduction about carmakers, veterans affairs and his inaugural celebrations, Trump finally arrived at his desired topic of the day: the non-resolution of the conflicts of interest that will embroil his presidency from now until he leaves the Oval Office."

When Trump said, "I will be the greatest jobs creator God ever created.", I considered turning it off.


Then when he brought attorney Sheri Dillon up to the podium to outline the plans for him to cut his ties to his business interests by placing his assets into a trust to be managed by his sons and executive Allen Weisselberg, I started shaking my head in disbelief.

Moments later when Trump returned to the podium and said he would have no conversations with his sons about any aspect of his businesses during his presidency, I just turned it off.

Overall my impression of Trump's performance at his press conference today is best summed up by a quote from a really interesting essay written a month ago by Sarah Kendzior on the Website TheCorrespondent.com that looks at how his controversial cabinet picks are shaping up to form a kleptocracy in the White House.

As she observed of Trump:

"He has a look I see on a lot of faces these days as people take in the news: the raw panic from knowing both too little and too much."

Internet Trolls and a Noose in Mississippi

Writer & Alt Right target David French

If you're unfamiliar with the alarmingly far-right branch of conservatism on the American political spectrum known as the alt-right, then I'd recommend that you spend a few minutes listening to the interview Terry Gross did with National Review writer David French yesterday on Fresh Air.

Who is David French? For starters he's both principled and fairly conservative in his worldview.

He's a married Iraq War vet with three children, Harvard-trained lawyer and conservative writer for one of the more conservative periodicals out there.

That's why it's all the more remarkable to listen to him describe the extent of the virulent backlash of online hate and vicious internet trolling he, his wife and young daughter were subjected to after he emerged as one of the leading conservative thinkers in the "never Trump" camp.

According to his interview yesterday, it really started after he criticized the far-right racist xenophobe nutbag author Ann Coulter; you really should read the National Review article he wrote last week detailing the extent of the alt-right campaign against him.

It's not just shocking and disturbing.

It offers insight into a largely younger-skewing demographic that has oepnly embraced an aggressive white-identity movement with decidedly white supremacist leanings, one that is largely organized around social media and is far right enough to be hostile towards, and totally contemptuous of the Republican establishment in Washington.

Oh and they love Trump.

Trump campaign guru Steve Bannon 

Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon deserves a large measure of credit for building a large online tent-community where those who identify as alt-right could gather and reinforce their extremist views.

As the chairman of Brietbart Media, the Goebbels-like propaganda specialist turned Brietbart News into an online hub for racism, xenophobia and white supremacy.

Is it surprising that Trump tapped Bannon to head up his campaign?

Trumps' son Donald, Jr. (he of the quasi-mafioso 80's-esque Gordon Gekko hair style) is young enough, internet-saavy enough and enamoured enough with the language of the white identity movement to have likely been one of the insiders to suggest that Bannon would be a good pick to run the Republican front-runner's campaign.

You may recall Junior as the brainiac who tried to ape his father's use of Twitter to offend millions of people by trying to illustrate the "danger" of Syrian refugees fleeing civil war by comparing them to a bowl of Skittles.

Arguably one of the main reasons Bannon was hired by Trump was that he brought with him a ready-made online audience of haters aching to attach themselves to a mainstream political candidate who talked their talk and walked their walk.

After all, as Sarah Posner wrote in an August article about Bannon for Mother Jones, before Trump gave them a feeling of legitimacy and belonging, the alt-right was "a once-motley assemblage of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, ethno-nationalistic provocateurs who have coalesced behind Trump and curried the GOP nominee's favor on social media."

Brietbart tech editor & Net Troll Milos Yiannopoulos

And use social media they have, in some truly alarming ways.

With a disturbing combination of anger, group-think and internet trolling, the alt-right has developed something of a "hive-mind", taking to their keyboards, cell phones and electronic pads to swarm en-masse upon unsuspecting victims who displease them.

Remember the unprecedented Twitter attack on SNL's Leslie Jones in the wake of many fanboys displeasure over Sony's all-female Ghostbusters remake this summer?

The outspoken Milos Yiannopolous, one of Bannon's Brietbart lieutenants, was largely responsible for fanning the flames on social media and encouraging the onslaught of flagrantly sexist and racist hate directed against Jones; Yiannopolous was finally booted from Twitter for his obnoxious online campaign - and Jones closed her Twitter account.

What's more troubling than the idea of a bunch of people developing an organic online campaign against an actor because they didn't like a movie, was that swarm mentality taken to a different level with writer David French.

With individuals posting offensive Photoshopped images of his young Ethiopian-born daughter and making threats against an Iraq war veteran's family simply because he criticized Donald Trump.

Miss. NAACP Pres. Derrick Johnson with Stacey
and Hollis Payton, parents of the victim

What's the broader impact of large numbers of often anonymous alt-right followers using technology and the internet to spread the message that virulent hate is okay?

Does it reach a point where it goes beyond the internet and starts to morph into reality?

Actions like the one taken against Jones and French aren't happening in a bubble; what kind of message is that sending to the millions of susceptible young minds who spend so much time on the internet?

Given the terrible and violent legacy of lynching in America, it was troubling to read about charges leveled in a press conference on Monday that a group of four white high school students from Stone High School in Wiggins, Mississippi snuck up behind a 16-year-old African-American boy sitting in a locker room, slipped a noose around his neck and then tightened it.

If that was some kind of sick joke it's certainly not remotely funny, and if it was an actual attack then those responsible need to be held accountable - especially since the incident took place on school grounds.

According to statements from Stacey and Hollis Payton, the parents of the boy, they contacted the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP after officials at Stone High School took no action against any of the four students involved - one of whom is the son of a local former police officer.

Stone High School, Wiggins, Mississippi

In a statement read by Derrick Johnson, the President of the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP, the same four students were supposedly part of a group of students who recently drove to the high school with Confederate flags draped on their vehicles.

The story has gone national so pressure to conduct a proper investigation will be ratcheted up on local school and county officials.

More details on this incident will likely emerge in the next few days.

As a former Boy Scout who spent time learning how to tie a variety of knots, I can tell you that it's not easy to tie rope into the kind of noose used to hang or lynch someone; where did those four high school kids learn to do that?

Did they learn that skill from parents, relatives or friends? And why would they do it?

Did they pick up that kind of toxic anger online while hanging around the fringes of the alt-right community?

I'm certainly not the only one who wants answers to those questions; and it's not unreasonable to surmise that the openly hostile racial climate fostered by Trump and his alt-right followers online, on TV and in rallies over the past months played some kind of part in making those four kids think that slipping a noose around a 16-year-old black American student's neck was okay.

Or maybe it was just a local-thing, after all Mississippi is the only American state left with a flag that contains the image of the Confederate battle flag on it.

My money is on those four kids having been exposed to the same kinds of intolerance we saw at Trump rallies all throughout the spring and summer - my guess is they're simply wannabe spawn of the Orange-Haired One and his alt-right legions.

Help Trump Prep For the 1st Debate!

Feeling left out of the upcoming first presidential debate?

Feeling like your voice isn't being heard, or that the topics important to you won't be raised when Hillary and Donald square-off this Monday night?

Then follow the advice of talk show host Steven Colbert and take advantage of the Trump campaign's offer to take the Trump-Pence Debate Prep Survey!

That's right folks, just click this link and go to the GOP Website to add your voice to the list of topics that you want Trump to speak about when he faces off against Hillary Clinton this Monday!

This is NOT a joke folks, I just spent about ten minutes telling the Donald exactly which topics he should talk about!

It's easy and fun!

Just select "Other" in the list of answers to each question and fill in your own answer where it says "please specify".

And boy did I - I made sure to tell the good folks over at Trump central that I wanted to hear the Donald talk about his tax returns, his sham university and the fact that his own charitable foundation channels money (given by people who want to do business with Trump) to charities associated with, wait for it...his own businesses!

Now be sure and act fast, the first debate of 2016 kicks on at 9pm EST this Monday September 26th live on NBC and MSNBC moderated by Lester Holt.

By now this GOP Website is being inundated with advice and feedback from people who absolutely despise Trump and everything he stands for, so click the link above and weigh in!

Seriously, how often do you get a chance to speak directly to the Alt-Right brain trust running the Trump campaign?

Tell 'em what you think!

If they're desperate enough to actually solicit ideas from the internet on how Trump can win the first debate, you owe to yourself to sit down share your feedback before they take the thing down!

Act now!  https://gop.com/DEBATE-PREP-SURVEY/