Category Archives: Donald Trump

Bill McCann| Special to the Advertiser

Have you heard about TRUTH Social? No, it isnt a dating app for singles seeking an honest relationship. Its former President Donald Trumps newly announced venture to compete with social media giants like Twitter and Facebook. He hopes for a test launch this month and full rollout in 2022.

An angry Trump apparently cooked up the idea for his own social media network after being kicked off Twitter and Facebook following an insurrection by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Trump helped instigate the insurrection by spreading election-fraud lies.

In an announcement on Oct. 20, Trump said his social network would stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech. The problem is to borrow a line from Jack Nicholsons character in the movie "A Few Good Men" Trump cant handle the truth. Trump used Twitter as a major megaphone of misinformation throughout his presidency. During Trumps four years in office, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims, according to Washington Post fact checkers.

Aside from the fact that the words truth and Trump dont belong in the same sentence, Trumps history of failed businesses does not bode well for his new venture. His companies have filed for bankruptcy six times. Plus, he has had a lengthy list of failures, including Trump Airlines, Trump Steaksand Trump Mortgage. Who would fly in a plane, buy meat or borrow money from this guy? And dont forget Trump University, his real estate training school that paid a $25 million settlement to duped students.

While TRUTH Social states it encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology, its terms of service prohibit users from using the platform to disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site, National Public Radio reported. In other words, you can say any crazy thing you want as long as you dont diss Trump. Its the kind of free speech that only Trumpublicans could love.

One ominous sign for Trumps new social network occurred last spring when he yanked a blog called From the Desk of Donald J. Trump after only a month due to low readership. But some critics think that even if TRUTH Social doesnt resonate with social media users, he might enrich himself anyway. And thats always Trumps priority.

TRUTH Social will be the first product of a new company called Trump Media & Technology Group, which is merging with a special-purpose acquisition firm to form a publicly traded company. Critics suggest that if Trump can convince enough of his supporters to buy stock, he could end up with a pile of money.

In any event, Trump needs to find a better name for his new network. TRUTH Social is dull. It doesnt say what its really about. I asked a friend for ideas. Heres what we came up with to make it more appealing and accurate.

McCann is a contributing columnist for the Advertiser. He is a retired journalist and may be reached at Easywriter12345@yahoo.com.

Read the original here:

Opinion: Donald Trump cant handle the truth - Austin American-Statesman

Molly Jong-Fast talks with Eric Boehlert of Press Run about how the hangover from the Trump years is lingering.

Everything has to be a churning drama now, says Boehlert, and, judging from the press stories, losing a big local race in Virginia basically marked the end of the Democratic Partyeven as COVID is coming down unemployment is down and the stock market is at 36,000. When Obama lost Virginia and New Jersey in 2009, he notes, The New York Times did not publish 10 stories the next day and The Washington Post website didn't have 16 stories upwe are so over the top.

As to Glenn Youngkin, Molly says the guy is Trump. Hes just dressed up as Jeb Bush.

Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Overcast. To listen to our weekly members-only bonus episodes, join Beast Inside here. Already a member? You can listen here and sign up for new episode email alerts here.

I dont know who talked to Trump and told them to sit it out, but he did, says Boehlert, and theres no way thats going to work next year: He is not going to sit on the sidelines. Hes just absolutely not. Hes an egomaniac and whoever was responsible for keeping him under lock and key deserves a medal because he stayed away and thats the only reason they were able to win. Do I think theyre going to be able to do that for the next 12 months? Absolutely not.

Plus, Molly talks with Harvard Prof. Lawrence Lessig, who says, I dont like to gloat a decade after his book Republic, Lost warned where American democracy was headed if we didnt pass real campaign finance reform. But the truth is its actually much worse a thousand times worse today.

And Emily Atkin of the newsletter HEATED talks about why the Glasgow climate summit shouldve been covered like insurrection, but its super-not.

Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

Original post:

Glenn Youngkin Is Donald Trump Dressed Up as Jeb Bush - The Daily Beast

BOISE, Idaho (AP) Idaho Republican Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin said Thursday she met earlier this week with former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

McGeachin in a statement said she spoke with Trump on Tuesday about Idaho-related matters and on continuing his America First agenda that involves nationalist tendencies and Trumps belief that the United States should stay out of world conflicts.

It is such an honor to meet personally with President Trump, McGeachin said.

McGeachin is challenging first-term Republican Gov. Brad Little, as are a handful of other candidates that include Ammon Bundy, the founder of a far-right anti-government group that has seen rapid growth.

In Idaho, the governor and lieutenant governor run on separate tickets.

Trump hasnt endorsed anyone in the race in the deep-red state that he won with nearly 64% of the vote in the presidential election.

Go here to see the original:

McGeachin meets with former President Trump in Florida - Associated Press

A Russia analyst who contributed key research to the so-called Steele dossier that detailed alleged ties between ex-President Donald Trump and Russia during the 2016 election was arrested Thursday as part of a probe by special counsel John Durham.

Igor Danchenko, the analyst, was charged in a grand jury indictment with five counts of making false statements to FBI agents during several interviews with agents in 2017 about his work providing information to former British spy Christopher Steele for the dossier.

Steele's controversial dossier on Trump became the basis for the application of an FBI warrant to tap the phone of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page a month before Election Day in 2016

Steele's inquiry was funded by the firm Fusion GPS, which itself had been hired by the Democratic National Committee to conduct opposition research on the then-Republican candidate Trump.

Danchenko, 43, is the third person criminally charged in Durham's investigation, which is focused on the origins of the federal probe into the Trump campaign's suspected coordination with Russian agents to influence the outcome of the 2016 race for the White House.

The Department of Justice said that Danchenko, a Russian national who lives in Virginia, was taken into custody Thursday morning. He later appeared in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, where he reportedly was released on a $100,000 bond.

Read more of CNBC's politics coverage:

The indictment charges that Danchenko lied when he told FBI agents he had never communicated with a public relations executive who was active in Democratic politics about allegations in Steele's reports, when in fact Danchenko had sourced at least one of those allegations to the executive.

That public relations executive is not identified by name in the indictment, but a lawyer for him confirmed to CNBC that he is Charles Dolan Jr., who most recently has worked at KGlobal in Washington. Dolan has worked on issues related to Russia.

Dolan also served as state chairman of the Virginia presidential campaigns of President Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and is a former executive director of the Democratic Governors' Association. An online biography shows he also was on the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy at the State Department.

"Chuck understands andappreciates your interest," Dolan's lawyer Ralph Martin told CNBC. "I can confirm that he is PR Executive-1 in the indictment.As he is a witness in an ongoing case, it would not be appropriate for Chuck to comment further on the allegations in the indictment at this time."

Danchenko also is accused of falsely telling agents that he received an anonymous phone call in July 2016 from a person he believed to be the then-president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce about information that later was described by Steele as a "conspiracy of cooperation" between Trump's campaign and Russian officials.

"The information purportedly conveyed by the anonymous caller included the allegation that there were communications ongoing between the Trump campaign and Russian officials and that the caller had indicated the Kremlin might be of help in getting Trump elected," Durham's office said in a press release.

The indictment says that Danchenko "never received such a phone call or such information" from that person and that he never arranged to meet that person in New York, as he has claimed to FBI agents.

The indictment charges that Danchenko's lies had a major impact on the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign.

It notes that the FBI's applications for warrants related to Page heavily relied on Steele's reports to Fusion GPS, which were based on information Danchenko had collected.

The FBI "ultimately was not able to confirm or corroborate most of their substantive allegations," the indictment says.

Some of Danchenko's alleged lies "deprived FBI agents and analysts of probative information" that would have helped them vet the reliability of the reports they received,the indictment says.

Christopher Schafbuch, a lawyer who represented Danchenko in a 2017 civil case, would not confirm or deny that he was currently Danchenko's lawyer.

In September, Durham obtained an indictment against then-Perkins Coie law firm partner Michael Sussmann for allegedly lying to the FBI when he offered a tip in 2016 about the possible secret electronic channel between Trump's company and a Russian bank. Sussmann has denied the allegation.

In January, a former FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, was sentenced to probation for having falsified a claim that was used to maintain surveillance of Page.

Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent in London where he speaks to the media for the first time, March 7, 2017.

Victoria Jones | PA Images | Getty Images

Trump and his allies have strongly criticized the Steele dossier, which contains unsubstantiated and refuted claims.

They have argued that the entire original federal probe into Trump's ties to Russia and possible obstruction of justice by Trump for seeking to undercut the inquiry was groundless and tainted by political motivations because of the Steele dossier.

The investigation by former special counsel Robert Mueller found that there was an aggressive effort by Russian agents to use social media and computer hacking to help Trump's bid to win the presidency over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. But Mueller said he did not find enough evidence to charge Trump campaign affiliates with conspiring with the Russians in that effort.

Mueller also did not charge Trump with any wrongdoing, but his final report pointedly did not exonerate the then president.

"If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so," Mueller told reporters in 2019.

Mueller did file more than 100 criminal charges against three Russian companies and nearly three dozen individuals, including half a dozen former Trump advisors, among them former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort.

Durham was tasked with investigating the roots of the Trump-Russia probe during the Trump administration.

Trump himself had repeatedly called the Mueller probe a "witch hunt." But he has also repeatedly expressed frustration with Durham's investigation, which to date has not resulted in criminal charges that seriously undercut the findings of Mueller's probe.

- Additional reporting by CNBC's Brian Schwartz

Correction: In September, Durham obtained an indictment against then-Perkins Coie law firm partner Michael Sussmann. An earlier version misspelled Sussmann's name.

Read the original post:

Durham probe: Analyst charged with lying to FBI about Christopher Steele's Trump-Russia dossier - CNBC

The CEOs started calling before President Trump had even finished speaking. What Americas titans of industry were hearing from the Commander in Chief was sending them into a panic.

It was Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, and things werent looking good for the incumbent as states continued to count ballots. Trump was eager to seed a different narrative, one with no grounding in reality: If you count the legal votes, I easily win, he said from the lectern of the White House Briefing Room. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.

The speech was so dangerously dishonest that within a few minutes, all three broadcast television networks spontaneously stopped airing it. And at his home in Branford, Conn., the iPhone belonging to the Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld began to buzz with calls and texts from some of the nations most powerful tycoons.

The CEOs of leading media, financial, pharmaceutical, retail and consulting firms all wanted to talk. By the time Tom Rogers, the founder of CNBC, got to Sonnenfeld, he had clearly gotten dozens of calls, Rogers says. We were saying, This is realTrump is trying to overturn the election. Something had to happen fast.

Read more: The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election

For decades, Sonnenfeld has been bringing business leaders together for well-attended seminars on the challenges of leadership, earning a reputation as a CEO whisperer. A committed capitalist and self-described centrist, he has informally advised Presidents of both parties and spoke at Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnells wedding. Now he suggested the callers get together to make a public statement, perhaps through their normal political channels, D.C. industry lobbies such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable (BRT). But the CEOs wanted Sonnenfeld to do it; the trade groups, they fretted, were too risk-averse and bureaucratic. And they wanted to do it right away: when Sonnenfeld, who issues invitations for his summits eight months in advance in order to secure a slot on CEOs busy calendars, suggested a Zoom call the following week, they said that might be too late.

The group of 45 CEOs who assembled less than 12 hours later, at 7 a.m. on Nov. 6, represented nearly one-third of Fortunes 100 largest companies: Walmart and Cowen Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Comcast, Blackstone Group and American Airlines. Disneys Bob Iger rolled out of bed at 4 a.m. Pacific time to join, accompanied by a large mug of coffee. (Sonnenfeld, who promised the participants confidentiality, declined to disclose or confirm their names, but TIME spoke with more than a dozen people on the call, who confirmed their and others participation.)

The meeting began with a presentation from Sonnenfelds Yale colleague Timothy Snyder, the prominent historian of authoritarianism and author of On Tyranny. Snyder did not beat around the bush. What they were witnessing, he said, was the beginning of a coup attempt.

I went through it point by point, in a methodical way, recalls Snyder, who has never previously discussed the episode. Historically speaking, democracies are usually overthrown from the inside, and it is very common for an election to be the trigger for a head of state or government to declare some kind of emergency in which the normal rules do not apply. This is a pattern we know, and the name for this is a coup dtat. What was crucial, Snyder said, was for civil society to respond quickly and clearly. And business leaders, he noted, have been among the most important groups in determining whether such attempts succeeded in other countries. If you are going to defeat a coup, you have to move right away, he says. The timing and the clarity of response are very, very important.

A lively discussion ensued. Some of the more conservative executives, such as Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, wondered if the threat was being overstated, or echoed Trumps view that late ballots in Pennsylvania seemed suspicious. Yet others corrected them, pointing out that COVID-19 had led to a flood of mail-in ballots that by law could not be counted until the polls closed. By the end of the hour, the group had come to agreement that their normal political goalslower taxes, less regulationwerent worth much without a stable democracy underpinning them. The market economy works because of the bedrock foundation of the rule of law, the peaceful succession of power and the reserve currency of the U.S. dollar, and all of these things were potentially at risk, former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer tells TIME. CEOs are normally hesitant to get involved in political issues, but I would argue that this was a fundamental business issue.

A business council convened by Trump, pictured in February 2017, broke up within months. From left: Michael Dell, Dell; Phebe Novakovic, General Dynamics; Juan Luciano, Archer Daniels Midland; Jared Kushner; Donald Trump; Kenneth Frazier, Merck; Mark Fields, Ford; Denise Morrison, Campbell Soup; Greg Hayes, United Technologies.

Olivier DoulieryBloomberg/Getty Images

The group agreed on the elements of a statement to be released as soon as media organizations called the election. It would congratulate the winner and laud the unprecedented voter turnout; call for any disputes to be based on evidence and brought through the normal channels; observe that no such evidence had emerged; and insist on an orderly transition. Midday on Nov. 7, when the election was finally called, the BRT immediately released a version of the statement formulated on Zoom. It was followed quickly by other trade groups, corporations and political leaders around the world, all echoing the same clear and decisive language confirming the election result.

Sonnenfeld thought the hastily convened Business Leaders for National Unity, as hed grandly dubbed the 7 a.m. call, would be a one-off. But Trumps effort to overturn the election persisted. So in the ensuing weeks, the professor called the executives together again and again, to address Trumps attempt to interfere with Georgias vote count and the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. This was an event which violated those rituals of America and created a visceral reaction, Nick Pinchuk, CEO of the Kenosha, Wis.based toolmaker Snap-on, tells TIME. Talking about this, it kind of transformed from the realm of politics to the realm of civic duty. CEOs wanted to speak out about this, and Jeff gave us a way to do that.

To Sonnenfeld, the effortmuch of which has not been previously reportedunderlined a generational shift taking place in the collective civic attitudes of the CEO class. Its effects are evident in Washington, where Big Businesss longtime alliance with the Republican Party is foundering. Congressional Republicans have divorced the Chamber of Commerce; the GOPs corporate fundraising is diminished; Fox News anchors and conservative firebrands rant about woke capital and call for punitive, anti-free-market policies in retaliation. Many of the companies and business groups that implacably resisted Barack Obama have proved surprisingly friendly to Biden, backing portions of his big-spending domestic agenda and supporting his COVID-19 mandates for private companies. Political observers of both parties have tended to attribute these developments to the pressures companies face, whether externally from consumers or internally from their employees. But Sonnenfeld, who is in a position to know, argues that just as much of it comes from the changing views of the CEOs themselves.

Read more: How Trumps Effort to Steal the Election Tore Apart the GOPand the Country

Snyder, the scholar of authoritarianism, believes the CEOs intervention was crucial in ensuring Trump left office on schedule, if not bloodlessly. If business leaders had just drifted along in that moment, or if a few had broken ranks, it might have gone very differently, he says. They chose in that moment to see themselves as part of civil society, acting in the defense of democracy for its own sake.

It was perhaps inevitable that Trump, the corporate-showman President, would force the private sector to reconsider its duty to societyand that Sonnenfeld would be the one to force the issue. For 2020 was not the two mens first confrontation. Back in the moguls reality TV days, the business guru was a harsh criticbefore burying the hatchet and giving Trump the idea for Celebrity Apprentice.

A Philadelphia native, Sonnenfeld, 67, was drawn from an early age to the human side of business. He was always irrepressible, uninhibitedjust a barrel of monkeys, recalls the public relations guru Richard Edelman, who rowed crew with Sonnenfeld at Harvard. You always knew he would be either a politician or a professor, not one of the gray-suited soldiers coming out of Harvard Business School.

Sonnenfeld authored several scholarly publications before his 1988 book, The Heros Farewell: What Happens When CEOs Retire, became a surprise best seller. CEOs sought his counsel, and he realized they were starving for such insights: surrounded by subordinates and yes-men, powerful executives had plenty of opportunities to pontificate but few venues for learning from their peers. Yet Sonnenfelds interest in leadership psychology was unfashionable in an M.B.A. field focused on the technical workings of companies and markets. Denied tenure at Harvard, he started his CEO College at Emory University in 1989. After a decade, he moved it to Yale, where his Chief Executive Leadership Institute helped put its School of Management on the map. Today, Sonnenfelds executive seminars have many imitators, including CEO summits put on by Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg and the New York Times.

Sonnenfeld with Trump in 2016

Courtesy Jeffrey Sonnenfeld/Yale school of Management

When The Apprentice premiered in 2004, Sonnenfeld reviewed it for the Wall Street Journal. The show, he wrote, was teaching aspiring leaders precisely the wrong lessons while fueling public disdain for business. The selection process resembles a game of musical chairs at a Hooters restaurant, he wrote. No new goods or services are created, no business innovations surface, and no societal problems are solved. A real-life leader who tried to run a business that way would quickly fail, he added.

Read more: How The Apprentice Shaped Donald Trumps Presidential Campaign

Trump fired back, insulting Sonnenfeld as a know-nothing academic. But he also tried to win him over, offering Sonnenfeld the presidency of Trump University, which he turned down, and an invitation to his Westchester golf club, which he accepted. Over lunch, Sonnenfeld said hed stop criticizing the show if the players were cranky B-list celebrities instead of earnest young strivers. Trump liked the idea, and the following season he transitioned to an all-celebrity cast.

Sonnenfeld finally gave in to Trumps pestering and invited him to one of his CEO summits at New Yorks Waldorf Astoria hotel. You would have thought it was the Pope, people were so amazed, Sonnenfeld recalls. But at the same time, the top tier of CEOs told me, When he walks in, were walking out. And they did. After Trump won the presidency, Sonnenfeld paid him a visit at Trump Tower and reminded him of the incident. Funny thing about that, Jeff, Trump said, theyre all coming by here now.

Over the course of the 2016 campaign, Sonnenfelds surveys of his seminar participants found that although around 75% identified as Republicans, 75% to 80% supported Hillary Clinton, he says. And while many were optimistic about Trumps pro-business Administration, their enthusiasm soon dimmed. It wasnt just the chaotic way he operated; he seemed determined to pit them against one another. I started hearing from the CEOs of Lockheed and Boeing, saying, Wait, hes trying, over chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago, to get a fight going between us over the cost of a fighter jet, Sonnenfeld recalls. It was the same with Ford vs. GM, Pfizer vs. Merck.

Sonnenfeld realized Trump was repeating the tactics from The Apprentice, the same zero-sum mentality that had buoyed him to political success: divide and conquer. Trumps whole modus operandi, his one trick his whole life, is to break collective action, Sonnenfeld says. The whole NAFTA battle was pitting Canada against Mexico. He constantly tried to divide France and Germany, the U.K. vs. the E.U., Russia vs. China. He tried to build up Bernie vs. Hillary, just like he did with the Republican primary candidates. As pathetically puerile a device as it is, with the GOP it worked magnificently well.

But business leaders, unlike the Republicans, banded together to resist. In August 2017, when Trump opined that there were very fine people on both sides of the deadly white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier, who is Black, announced that he would step down from Trumps American Manufacturing Council. Otherssome prodded by Sonnenfeld behind the scenesquickly followed. Within a few days, that council, along with another business advisory group, had disbanded. It was, Sonnenfeld says, the first time in history that the business community turned its back on a Presidents call to service.

He lost the business community in Charlottesville, says Matthias Berninger, who heads public affairs for Bayer. Ken leaving his council, that was the starting point of everything that followed. Deregulatory actions Trump expected Big Business to appreciate were rebuffed: oil and gas companies publicly opposed his repeal of methane regulations, and many utilities shrugged off his rollback of CO limits. The auto industry united against Trumps attempt to eliminate mileage standards, only to be investigated by the Department of Justice.

Trumps antagonism to immigration and free trade ran counter to businesss interests, says the D.C. corporate fixer and former GOP strategist Juleanna Glover. Many corporations and CEOs had an abiding fear of being attacked in a Trump tweet, so staying out of Washington was a good risk-mitigation strategy, she says. The Republicans have largely abandoned their pro-business values, and its hard to negotiate in good faith when one of the parties is seen as continuing to undermine democratic values.

Sonnenfeld with Biden in 2018

Courtesy Jeffrey Sonnenfeld/Yale school of Management

Trump may have been the catalyst. But the recent shift of the corporate class is only the latest in the long history of Big Businesss dance with Washington.

While many remember the robber barons of the Gilded Age, the same era produced a generation of innovative entrepreneurs (Thomas Edison, Luther Burbank) who were folk heroes. The business leaders of the early to mid-1900s were the original progressives, Sonnenfeld says. They were for infrastructure, sustainability, safe workplaces, urban beautification, immigration. Midcentury CEOs saw themselves as patriotic industrialists, allies of government and builders of society. During- the World Wars, they famously answered the call to contribute. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower appointed three sitting CEOs to his Cabinet.

By the 1970s, pollution and price-fixing scandals had tanked Big Businesss image. A few CEOs decided to break with the conservative politics of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers and came together to found the BRT. But the succeeding generation, in Sonnenfelds view, didnt live up to the BRTs original promise of civic virtue, focusing instead on attacking government interference and avoiding taxation. It wasnt that we had a few bad apples, Sonnenfeld says. Theres something wrong with the whole orchard in that period.

The tech bust, corporate scandals such as Enron and the 2008 financial crisis pushed Americans esteem of business to historic lows. When the Obama Administration tried to get health care companies on board with the Affordable Care Act, not a single member of the industry came to the table. They were like little kids throwing stones and hiding in the hedges, Sonnenfeld says. The business community was not trying to solve problems.

But over the past decade, Sonnenfeld believes, a new generation of leaders has stepped into the public sphere to do well by doing good. In 2015, opposition from corporations like Eli Lilly and Anthem helped kill a proposed Indiana state law that would have allowed businesses to refuse to serve gay people. The following year, American Airlines, Microsoft and GE were among the companies protesting a North Carolina ordinance barring transgender people from using their preferred bathrooms. Similar bills were defeated in Texas and Arkansas. The business leaders who thwarted these efforts werent just stereotypically liberal corporate behemoths like Apple, Starbucks and Nike, Sonnenfeld notes. It was the bedrock of traditional American industry in the heartland: UPS, Walmart, AT&T. Theyre the ones who led the charge, saying, This is not America. We dont want our workforces divided over this.

Today, Wall Street firms grade companies on their climate and diversity initiatives as well as their balance sheets. In the wake of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., both Dicks Sporting Goods and Walmart announced they would no longer sell assault weapons or ammunition. Dozens of companies cut ties with the NRA. In 2019, the BRT revised its charter to redefine the purpose of a corporation, saying companies should be accountable not only to their shareholders but also to the wider array of stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers and communities.

Read More: A Better Economy Is Possible. But We Need to Reimagine Capitalism to Do It

The role of the CEO has changed, and I dont think anyone can sit on the sidelines, says Paul Polman, the London-based former CEO of the consumer-goods giant Unilever, whose new book, Net Positive, argues that sustainability can go hand in hand with profitone of a raft of recent do-gooder tomes by CEOs (including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, the co-owner of TIME). Under Polmans leadership, Unilever set ambitious climate goals and sought to improve its human-rights record, lobbying against the death penalty for gay people in Uganda and deforestation in Brazil. Smart CEOs realize that their business cannot function in societies that dont function, Polman tells TIME. We have to be responsible and speak up, not just lobby in our own self-interest.

Skeptics on the left see this kind of talk as cynical posturing. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren denounced the BRTs stakeholder announcement as an empty gesture, and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called it a con. Many of the statements signatories, liberals note, still preside over abysmal working conditions, environmental violations and racially segregated workplaces, while employing armies of lobbyists to resist government attempts to hold them accountable.

The right has revolted as well. GOP Senator Marco Rubio decries woke corporate hypocrites, while Trump has taken up the slogan Go woke, go broke! In the new book Woke, Inc., Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur turned self-styled class traitor, decries corporate Americas game of pretending to care about justice in order to make money.

The public, too, appears skeptical. In recent research conducted by Edelman, 44% of Americans say they trust CEOs to do the right thing, about on par with government leaders (42%) but lagging behind clergy (49%) and journalists (50%). A far greater share, nearly three-quarters of employees, trust the CEO of the company they work for.

In the spring of 2020, as the spread of COVID and Trumps attempt to undermine the vote began to raise fears of an election meltdown, Sonnenfeld began privately raising the issue with prominent CEOs. He urged them to promote political participation to their employees and customers. For the first time, thousands of companies gave millions of workers paid time off to vote and volunteer at the polls. By October 2020, you could scarcely visit a retailer or open a mobile app without encountering a pro-voting, nonpartisan corporate message.

After the CEOs Nov. 7 statement, manyincluding Sonnenfeldassumed their work was done. Despite Trumps refusal to concede, dozens of courts rejected his challenges, all 50 states certified their electoral votes, and the presidential transition began. But on Jan. 3, the Washington Post published a recording of Trumps phone call to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, in which he cajoled and berated the election official to find the nearly 12,000 votes it would take to reverse his loss of the state.

So on Jan. 5, Sonnenfeld reconvened his executives. This Zoom was better attended than the first, with nearly 60 CEOsand more concerned. Nobody quibbled with the coup terminology this time. There were CEOs Sonnenfeld had never met who had demanded invites after hearing about the November call. There were right-wing executives and former Obama and Bush Cabinet secretaries. The group voted unanimously to suspend donations to the GOP members of Congress who contested the election.

The next day, Jan. 6, validated their fears. In the aftermath of the Capitol riot, the group met again, and this time, 100% of the CEOs favored impeachment, Sonnenfeld says. The National Association of Manufacturers, known as the most conservative of the major trade lobbies, subsequently called for impeachment publicly, to the political worlds astonishment. Nearly a year later, 78% of the companies that pledged to withhold donations have kept true to their word, according to Sonnenfelds analysis of the latest campaign-finance data. One D.C.-based fundraiser for Republican candidates tells TIME she has virtually given up seeking money from corporate PACs as a result.

Sonnenfelds efforts didnt end with Bidens Inauguration. He was particularly disturbed by the election law the Georgia legislature began considering in the spring, one of many GOP-backed measures to make it harder to vote and easier to interfere with vote counting in future elections. In 1964, it was the former president of Coca-Cola who publicly shamed the white Atlanta business community into honoring Martin Luther King Jr. after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Now Georgias 34 Fortune 1000 companies were largely silent in the face of a modern civil rights issue. In late March, Sonnenfeld and a former UPS executive penned a joint Newsweek op-ed calling out their cowardice.

On a subsequent Zoom, two leading Black executives, Mercks Frazier and Kenneth Chenault of American Express, got more than 100 fellow CEOs to sign on to a statement opposing the Georgia voting law, which was published as a full-page ad in the New York Times and Washington Post. The people who signed the letter did so because they didnt see it as a partisan issue, Frazier tells TIME. They felt, as business leaders, that they shouldnt stand on the sideline when our fundamental rights as Americans are at stake.

But these moves also sparked a political backlash. Executives who had interceded during the elections aftermath began to fall away from the group, leery of liberal activists seeking to apply similar pressure on other issues, like Texas new abortion law. The coalition that rallied with such alacrity to defend American democracy now appears splintered, unsure of the extent of the continuing threat or how to confront it.

I really thought Jan. 6 was a turning point, a tipping point, but now I think maybe it was just an inflection point, says Mia Mends, the Houston-based CEO of Impact Ventures at global foodservices giant Sodexo. Companies including hers that spoke out against voting restrictions in Texas faced threats of retaliation from state GOP officials. When that day of reckoning comes, on what side will you be? On what side were you?

There have been no more pop-up Zooms. Sonnenfeld is back to his old grind, gathering CEOs and nudging them toward public-spiritedness. On a recent Tuesday in New Haven, he led a frenetic virtual discussion with the leaders of Starbucks, United, Xerox, Dell, Pepsi, Kelloggs, Duke Energy and others, along with members of Congress and current and former Administration officials from both parties. Adam Aron, the CEO of AMC Entertainment, dialed in from his bedroom, looking disheveled, only to be hit with an aggressive Sonnenfeld question about whether the tech-stock mania that had sent his companys value skyrocketing was really a scam.

Sonnenfeld understands that the CEOs feel whipsawed by the political chaos. Theyre being pelted with so many different causes, he tells me after the Zoom, his town car speeding to the airport so he can make a board meeting in Miami. But he is scathing in his contempt for financiers who have ostentatiously embraced socially conscious investing while failing to speak up on voting and democracy issues. The sheer, screaming cowardice of these institutional investorsthey own 80% of corporate America, and they never miss a stage to proclaim their commitments to [environmental and social justice], he says. Where are they now? Why are they the last to take a stand?

Yet Sonnenfeld has no doubt that having stepped up for democracy at a crucial time, the CEOs would do it again. The GOP has created these wedge issues to divide society, and the business community is saying, Wait a minute, thats not us, those are not our interests, he says. That doesnt mean theyre going to rush off and support Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Party. But theyre trying to break free and find their own way.

With reporting by Simmone Shah and Julia Zorthian

More Must-Read Stories From TIME

Write to Molly Ball at molly.ball@time.com.

Originally posted here:

How Big Business Dumped Trump and Got "Woke" - TIME

So Donald Trump is now the odds-on favorite to be president of the United States in 2025.

I know that lede sentence was also the headline, but I wanted you to read it one more time just to let it really settle in the ol noggin before pressing forward.

The twice-impeached, disgraced loser who was schlonged in the 2020 election, tried to stay in power against the will of the people, and then came ten cowardly Republican senators away from being disqualified from ever running for office again, is now more likely than any other person in the world to take the next oath of office on the Capitol steps on January 20, 2025.

How is that for some weird shit?

Now Im sure some will roll their eyes when this headline comes across the Twitter feed. Attribute this article to my raging Trump Derangement Syndrome or The Bulwarks Cady Heron-level obsession with Mar-a-Lagos in-house wedding toastmaster.

But this aint about my compulsions. Its the actual, real-world reality being presented by those who have the most skin in the game.

Both the major off-shore gambling quants and the online trading markets have moved in Mr. Trumps favor in the past couple weeks.

Over at Predict-It, on the question of who will win the 2024 election, Trump was the most expensive bet going for $0.28 while the incumbent is selling for $0.26. At Smarkets.com, the worm turned on October 12 with Trump moving past Biden as most likely to win in 2024 and hes expanded his advantage in the past few weeks.

Id understand if you had some doubts about whether the same stonkheads who sent the DWAC SPAC behind Trumps nonexistent social media site to the moon can be trusted when it comes to handicapping elections, but the offshore bookmakers are singing from the same Wall Street Bets hymnbook.

Oddschecker has Trump at about a 3:1 chance of winning (+333) while Biden is at 4:1 (+400). PaddyPower, the famed Irish bookmaker that is now backed by FanDuel, gave Trump the third best odds in August, but now has him in pole position. BetOnline.ag is even more bullish on the former guy, putting his odds at +250, with Biden at +350.

So Im not a big politics gambler and hadnt realized this sea change had happened over the past few weeks until I went looking for it after this disturbing realization came to me mid-shower the other morning. (Aside: Dear God, grant me the ability to think about something besides the 2024 election during my morning scrubdown.)

During a thorough lather I did some quick arithmetic. I figured that the Democrats are about a 52/48 favorite over the Republicans in 2024 based on incumbency and the thirty-year streak of winning the popular vote all but once. But Im not that good at doing math in my head so I rounded the odds to 55/45 in order to make things easier and give Uncle Joe a bit of a boost.

From there I figured that Biden is about 60 percent likely to run in 2024, given that hell be almost a decade older than Ronny Reagan was when he ran as the longest-in-the-tooth person to be nominated on a major party ticket in 1984.

So take a 55 percent chance of his party winning, add a 60 percent chance of running and that gives Biden a 33 percent chance of being re-elected.

Now lets look at Trump. I think its more like an 80 percent chance that he runs. Heres why: Its hard to imagine him being alive and allowing someone else to get all the attention.

You are telling me Trump is gonna be sending out Truth Social regeets from the Al-Saw palace while occasionally showing up as a surrogate for the Hot New Thing? Our Donald J. Trump? Sorry, dont buy it. Maybe the hamburgers could catch up to himthe actuarial tables are the actuarial tables. Or maybe Im wrong. But if Im right and Trump is alive, has two thumbs, and a smart phone, then aint nobody beating him in a Republican primary. Especially given that nobody would actually be competing against him. (More on this in a second.)

So take the 45 percent chance of his party winning and match it to the 80 percent chance that hes the nominee and even with the lowball estimate for the GOPs chances, Trump still has a 36 percent chance of doing the Grover Cleveland deal. Which is better odds than Biden.

So whats the point of this exercise, besides a little post-Halloween fright?

Its a wake-up call that people should start taking really fucking seriously the notion that a guy who incited a deadly mob on the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow our democracy is the frontrunner to become president again. Once that reality is accepted, there ought to be a lot of downstream considerations being made by different participants in our politics.

(1) The Democrats might want to focus more on competency and broadening their appeal, rather than participating in an internecine murder-suicide over how many trillions of dollars they spend. In addition they might also want to consider focusing on the problems that people tell pollsters they care about, rather than on the whims of D.C. interest groups.

(2) The media should probably start treating Donald Trump like the frontrunner he is, rather than a drunk uncle whose deranged ravings can be ignored unless its convenient or theres a hole in the D-block.

But most importantly, (3) Republican politicians and commentators who claim they dont want a wannabe authoritarian lunatic to become president again should probably do something to try and stop it.

And on this last point, I am deadly serious.

Nine months ago almost all the leading figures on the right stated that Donald Trump should be removed from office because he was so deranged and dangerous.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board called for Trumps resignation saying that he has refused to accept the basic bargain of democracy and that January 6 probably finished him as a serious political figure. National Review ran, by my count, seven separate columns, including one from The Editors, calling for his impeachment. There must be a consequence and it should come from the nations legislature, they wrote.

Mitch McConnell railed against Trump, after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in serious danger. Even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters their president sent a further tweet attacking [Pence]. Kevin McCarthy said Trump bears responsibility for the riot at the capitol. Seven Republican senators voted to disqualify him from ever running for office again.

And yet just yesterday one of their ostensibly more sane colleagues Tim Scott, a potential presidential candidate in his own right (in a non-Trump world), preemptively endorsed Trump for 2024! Why, God, why?

The Atlantic ran a silly, made-for-Twitter column over the weekend about how Never Trumpers should support anti-vaxxer-in-chief Ron DeSantis now, because hes better than the bad orangina. And I guess thats true in the most narrow and literal sense. I mean, having a rabid raft of fire ants build a nest inside my ass is also preferable to President Trump Part Deux but Im not sure a TDSer endorsing Butthole Fire Ants will have a major impact on the Republican primary electorate.

So rather than turning to us Never Trumpers to save the hot mess that is the GOP. . . maybe the DeSantis 2024 movement should start with all the people who supported Trump in 2016 and 2020 but then, when they thought the coast was clear, called for his impeachment a few weeks later?

Maybe those guys could show some balls and start a concerted effort to defeat Trump? But of course, the question answers itself.

Because if Republicans in good standing dont do anything to change the current dynamic and instead continue their strategy of owning the libs while secretly praying that their god king gets a move-on to his eternal reward, well, then were going to be repeating the same nightmare that engulfed us for the past half-decade, all over again.

So heres my message both to the cowards who know better and to the people of good will who put it on the line because they care about our constitutional Republic:

Right now, today, Donald Trump is the favorite to win the presidency again. If you dont want that to happen, then start acting like it.

See the original post:

Donald Trump Is Now the Odds-On Favorite to Be President in 2025 - The Bulwark

Hes the new Trump tower.

Teenage former first son Barron Trump was photographed in the Big Apple this week towering over his 5-foot-11-inch mom, Melania.

The rarely photographed youngest son of former President Donald Trump is already 6 feet 7 inches tall even though he only just turned 15.

He looked every inch of it on Wednesday when he stood head and shoulders over his mom and their security detail as they were snapped leaving their Manhattan home, the suitably named Trump Tower.

The towering teen, wearing a dark, long-sleeve T-shirt tucked into his jeans, also appeared to show impeccable manners, with the Daily Mail saying he was carrying his mothers bag for her.

The rare Louis Vuitton x Richard Prince bag cost $3,995 when it was released in 2008, the outlet said paling in comparison to the $11,000 black Hermes Birkin bag his mom toted.

Former model Melania, 51, also wore a black button-down shirt with white pants that she paired with $645 Christian Louboutin pointy-toe flats.

The former president himself no slouch at 6 feet 3 marveled at a GOP event in North Carolina last month how his youngest is also already the tallest.

Barron is 6-foot-7, can you believe it? And hes 15, Trump said.

Eric is short hes only 6-foot-6, he joked of his 37-year-old son, who was previously the tallest in the family.

Read the original post:

Barron Trump shows off his 6-foot-7 height in NYC

WASHINGTON (AP) A congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection moved aggressively against close Trump adviser Steve Bannon on Thursday, swiftly scheduling a vote to recommend criminal contempt charges against the former White House aide after he defied a subpoena.

The chairman of the special committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said the panel will vote Tuesday to recommend charges against Bannon, an adviser to Donald Trump for years who was in touch with the president ahead of the most serious assault on Congress in two centuries.

The Select Committee will not tolerate defiance of our subpoenas, Thompson said in a statement. Bannon, he said, is hiding behind the former presidents insufficient, blanket and vague statements regarding privileges he has purported to invoke. We reject his position entirely.

If approved by the Democratic-majority committee, the recommendation of criminal charges would go to the full House. Approval there would send them to the Justice Department, which has final say on prosecution.

The showdown with Bannon is just one facet of a broad and escalating congressional inquiry, with 19 subpoenas issued so far and thousands of pages of documents flowing to the committee and its staff. Challenging Bannons defiance is a crucial step for the panel, whose members are vowing to restore the force of congressional subpoenas after they were routinely flouted during Trumps time in office.

The committee had scheduled a Thursday deposition with Bannon, but his lawyer said Trump had directed him not to comply, citing information that was potentially protected by executive privileges afforded to a president. Bannon, who was not a White House staffer on Jan. 6, also failed to provide documents to the panel by a deadline last week.

Still, the committee could end up stymied again after years of Trump administration officials refusing to cooperate with Congress. The longtime Trump adviser similarly defied a subpoena during a GOP-led investigation into Trumps Russia ties in 2018, but the House did not move to hold him into contempt.

Even though President Joe Biden has been supportive of the committees work, it is uncertain whether the Justice Department would choose to prosecute the criminal contempt charges against Bannon or any other witnesses who might defy the panel. Even if it the department does prosecute, the process could take months, if not years. And such contempt cases are notoriously difficult to win.

Members of the committee are pressuring the department to take their side.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who also sits on the Jan. 6 panel, said he expects the Justice Department to prosecute the cases.

The last four years have given people like Steve Bannon the impression theyre above the law, Schiff said during an interview for C-SPANs Book TV that airs next weekend. But theyre going to find out otherwise.

Schiff said efforts to hold Bannon and others in contempt during the Russia investigation were blocked by Republicans and the Trump administrations Department of Justice.

But now we have Merrick Garland, we have an independent Justice Department, we have an attorney general who believes in the rule of law -- and so this is why I have confidence that we will get the answers, Schiff said.

While Bannon has outright defied the Jan. 6 committee, other Trump aides who have been subpoenaed appear to be negotiating. A deposition by a second witness that had been scheduled for Thursday, former Defense Department official Kashyap Patel, was delayed, but Patel is still engaging with the panel, a committee aide said. The aide requested anonymity to discuss the confidential talks.

Two other men who worked for Trump former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and longtime Trump social media director Dan Scavino were scheduled for depositions Friday, but they have both been pushed back as well. Meadows, like Patel, has been given a short postponement as he is also engaging with the panel, the aide said, and Scavinos deposition has been rescheduled because there were delays in serving his subpoena.

It is unclear to what extent Trump has tried to influence his aides, beyond his lawyers attempts to assert executive privilege. In a statement Thursday, the former president said the members of the committee should hold themselves in criminal contempt and added the people are not going to stand for it!

Other witnesses are cooperating, including some who organized or staffed the Trump rally on the Ellipse behind the White House that preceded the riot. The committee subpoenaed 11 rally organizers and gave them a Wednesday deadline to turn over documents and records. They have also been asked to appear at scheduled depositions.

Among those complying was Lyndon Brentnall, whose firm was hired to provide Ellipse event security that day, and two longtime Trump campaign and White House staffers, Megan Powers and Hannah Salem. It is uncertain whether any of the others subpoenaed have complied.

Many of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 marched up the National Mall after attending at least part of Trumps rally, where he repeated his meritless claims of election fraud and implored the crowd to fight like hell. Dozens of police officers were injured as the Trump supporters overwhelmed them and broke through windows and doors to interrupt the certification of Bidens victory.

The rioters repeated Trumps claims of widespread fraud as they marched through the Capitol, even though the results of the election were confirmed by state officials and upheld by courts. Trumps attorney general, William Barr, had said the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have overturned the results.

The panel has also issued a subpoena to a former Justice Department lawyer who positioned himself as Trumps ally and aided the Republican presidents efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election.

The demands for documents and testimony from that lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, announced Wednesday, reflect the committees efforts to probe not only the insurrection but also the tumult that roiled the Justice Department in the weeks leading up to it as Trump and his allies leaned on government lawyers to advance his election claims.

Clark, an assistant attorney general in the Trump administration, has emerged as a pivotal character. A Senate committee report issued last week showed that he championed Trumps efforts to undo the election results and clashed as a result with department superiors who resisted the pressure, culminating in a dramatic White House meeting at which Trump ruminated about elevating Clark to attorney general.

___

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York, Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, and Farnoush Amiri and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

Go here to see the original:

Jan. 6 panel moves against Bannon, sets contempt vote - Associated Press

In this golden age of true-crime programming, most people are well aware of the fact that if youve done something you dont want anyone to know about, whether its illegal or just embarrassing, you dont proceed to bring it up unprompted to a room full of people, which would obviously be a blatant tip-off. Killed your neighbor with a shovel? You dont show up to the block party and announce, I did not murder Jerry and bury him in my backyard this morning. Went to a housewarming party and on the way to the bathroom made a pit stop in the hosts bedroom, tried on all their clothes, and then rolled around under their covers? You dont rejoin the group and declare, You know what I definitely did not just do?

We mention this because someonelets call him Donald Trumpis apparently unaware of this well-known rule. Per The Washington Post:

In a private speech at [a Republican donor] retreat Thursday, Trump cast himself as the GOPs savior, saying he had brought the party back from the brink of disaster and helped Republicans hold seats on Capitol Hillfailing to mention that the party lost the White House and control of both the House and Senate under his presidency. It was a dying party, Ill be honest. Now we have a very lively party, he said, to a room of senators, donors and lobbyists, according to a recording of the event obtained by The Washington Post, before boasting of all the endorsements and telephone town halls he had done in the 2020 cycle.

In Trumps address, one of the final events of the retreat, the former president focused on re-litigating grievances he has retained since leaving office. Unprompted, he brought up an unsubstantiated claim he had interactions with prostitutes in Moscow before he ran for president. Im not into golden showers, he told the crowd. You know the great thing, our great first ladyThat one, she said, I dont believe that one.

Trump, of course, was referring to allegations in the Steele dossier, opposition research compiled by a British former intelligence officer that claimed, among other things, there was video footage of prostitutes urinating in front of Trump in a Moscow hotel room in 2013, and which was debunked by Robert Mueller.

Which makes it curious that, years later, he still feels the need to insist to people, who probably havent thought about the alleged pee tape in quite some time, that he doesnt like golden showers. Also curious is the fact that while Trump claimed on Thursday that Melania didnt believe that one, according to former FBI director James Comey, Trump had been extremely concerned his wife would think the allegations were true.

As Comey told George Stephanopoulos re: Trumps insistence the FBI investigate the tape he swore didnt exist:

He said, If theres even a one percent chance my wife thinks thats true, thats terrible. And I remember thinking, how could your wife think theres a one percent chance you were with prostitutes peeing on each other? Im a flawed human being, but there is literally zero chance that my wife would think that was true. So what kind of marriage to what kind of man does your wife think theres only a 99 percent chance you didnt do that?

See more here:

Donald Trump, Unprompted, Tells GOP Donors He Doesnt Like Having Women Pee on Him - Vanity Fair

Thirteen days before he was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump spoke at the grand opening of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., accompanied by his children Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric.

For a 75-year-old billionaire, Donald Trump doesnt seem to have passed down much of his fortune to his children. Many tycoons give away their empires early, not just because its a nice thing to do, but also because it helps to spare their kids from a massive estate tax when they die. A review of documents suggests that in the Trump family, however, the heirs dont hold ownership stakes in any of their fathers major assets, except one: The Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The three eldest Trump childrenDon Jr., Eric and Ivankaall seem to have 7.5% interests in a lease on the property. Unfortunately for them, the asset has been performing poorly, losing so much money that one of Donald Trumps holding companies has had to inject additional cash to prop up the business, according to an analysis of financial statements that the House Committee on Oversight and Reform released last week. Representatives for the Trump family did not respond to a request for comment.

The heirs are partly to blame. Ivanka first identified the property as a potential investment opportunity. With her fathers support, the family decided to get involved, securing a deal in 2013 to lease the building from the federal government by promising that they would spend $200 million on the place.

Spend they did. Deutsche Bank provided $170 million of financing, and by August 31, 2017, the Trump Organizations financial statements listed $193 million for building improvements, $18 million for furniture and equipment, $5 million for operating supplies and $100,000 for tenant improvements, according to the House documents. Total tally: $216 million.

Don Jr. worked on leasing retail spaces, and Eric helped look after the operation, but things did not go well. Sure, plenty of lobbyists and foreign officials stopped by for drinks, but the financial performance was a mess. In the year ending August 31, 2018, operating profits (measured as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) were just $900,000, according to an analysis of the House documents. Net losses amounted to $13 million. One of Donald Trumps holding companies had to shift $4 million into the hotel to support the business. Twelve months after that, the small operating profit turned into a loss of $2 million, and the business bled $18 million on a net basis. Donald Trumps holding company, therefore, had to pump another $9 million into the hotel.

The following year, when Covid struck, things got even worse. Operating losses dropped to $9 million, and net losses hit $22 million. Donald Trumps holding company had to pony up an additional $11 million to stabilize the business, according to a review of the documents. At this point, the Trump family had invested an estimated $240 million$170 million of which came from Deutsche Bank and $70 million that seems to have come straight from the familys pockets.

Bad news, given that plenty of people dont think the place is worth $240 million. After speaking with seven real estate experts, Forbes estimated last month that the property was worth $173 million. Assuming the Trumps havent paid any of the principal back on their loan, that means their equity amounts to just $3 million, $67 million less than the amount of cash the family apparently invested into the place before August 2020. In other words, the only major asset where the Trump kids appear to have serious stakes looks like a rotten deal.

Or perhaps, looked like a rotten deal. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the former presidents family is in advanced discussions to sell its right to the hotel for a whopping $370 million or more. Some industry insiders questioned the credibility of that report, given the sky-high price. But if such a sale actually goes through, all of the financial problems that the hotel has caused for the Trumps would suddenly wash away.

The kids apparent 7.5% interestswhich would be worth just $225,000 after debt at a $173 million valuationwould grow to an estimated $15 million apiece. Thats a lot of money for Eric and Don Jr., who Forbes estimated were each worth $25 million in 2019. Its also a fair chunk of change for Ivanka, who shares a fortune estimated at $375 million with her husband, Jared Kushner, heir to a separate real estate dynasty.

Donald Trumpthe richest of them all, with an estimated $2.5 billion fortunewould receive the largest payday. His estimated 77.5% interest would amount to just $2 million after debt at a $173 million valuation, but it would balloon to $155 million if the place were valued at $370 million. That would surely be enough to convince the former president that the last four years of financial problems, not to mention ethical headaches, were all worth it in the end.

Go here to read the rest:

Trump's Kids Went Into A Terrible Deal With Their Dad. They Might All Get Bailed Out - Forbes