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As I wrote in February, Putin, Trump (and Rudy and Steve Bannon and corrupt Republicans like Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson) understood early that Trump’s relentless corruption as President would be lethal to the GOP as the most criminal President in history sought re-election.
In 2016, Putin knew that Trump could be taken down by revelations about his pussygrabbing, perving on teen pageant contestants and alleged sexual assaults and rapes. So in 2016, the Kremlin pushed a ridiculous anti-Hillary storyline around “Pizzagate” and pedophile sex-trafficking.
In 2020, it was clear that Trump’s and his family’s rapacious corruption and relentless grifting (combined with ongoing tax fraud investigations and the looming threat of prosecution for obstruction of justice) would be a turn-off for many voters. So in a desperate attempt to inoculate Trump from being seen as The Literal Embodiment of Corruption, Trump and his minions have been teaming up with assorted criminals and Russian agents to dig up and manufacture dirt on Biden.
The plan is to inoculate Trump against charges that he is nothing more than a mobbed-up developer who became Putin’s useful idiot only to stumble into a Presidency that allowed him to put his criminal activities on steroids.
Last time, Donny and Vlad used the National Enquirer as their media outlet of choice.
This time around, it’s Rupert Murdoch’s trashy tabloid The New York Post, reinforced by Tucker Carlson and the Fox News multiverse. But in 2020, the Post and Tucker have about as much credibility as Bat Boy and that old Weekly World News story about a baby that was born pregnant and gave birth at age two. As The New York Times reports: “Bruce Golding, a reporter at the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid since 2007, did not allow his byline to be used because he had concerns over the article’s credibility.” Meanwhile Fox News lawyers are literally arguing in court right now that no one in their right mind should ever believe anything that comes out of Tucker Carlson’s racist, disinformation-spewing pie hole.
So let’s set aside the Hunter Biden scandal for the moment and look at a real, proven scandal instead, one that’s not only been reported by reputable news outlets, but even by Fox News!
Trump Corruption™: A Scandal Made In China
Amid all the hype about what Russian spies may have planted on the computer that Hunter Biden dropped off with America’s only blind computer repairman before it fell into Rudy Giuliani’s lap, one actual scandal looms so large that even Fox News is talking about it:
Starting in 2017, the Chinese government signaled exactly how they planned to approach their “trade negotiations” with the Trump Administration. In April of that year, the very night that Ivanka sat down to dinner with President Xi, the Chinese government approved three trademarks for Ivanka’s businesses.
But that was just a trial balloon to test how seriously the Party of Trump would take the Emoluments Clause. When Speaker of the House Paul Ryan simply winked at this blatant criminality, Ivanka and her dad knew they had a greenlight for unlimited corruption.
In another case of suspicious timing, in June 2018, Ivanka Trump received approval for 3 Chinese trademarks on the very same day Trump agreed to lift sanctions on Chinese telecommunications company ZTE.
Amid ongoing trade talks, the Chinese continued to fast-track Ivanka’s trademark requests. By April 2019, they had approved a total of 41 trademarks to companies linked to Ivanka Trump.
But while White House Senior Adviser Ivanka was pocketing these tremendously valuable “gifts” from China, things weren’t going so well on America’s farms.
Trump would, of course, try to repair the damage by hitting taxpayers with the bill for massive socialist bailouts for American farmers. As Politico reported in July, “direct farm aid has climbed each year of Trump’s presidency, from $11.5 billion in 2017 to more than $32 billion this year—an all-time high, with potentially far more funding still to come in 2020.”
Much of the aid, was of course, too little too late. As I’ve previously reported, a Farm Bureau report that showed that the number of farms filing for bankruptcy in 2019 surged by 24%, the worst levels since “the heights of the the 1980s farm crisis.” In Wisconsin alone, 818 dairy farms went bankrupt in 2019, an all-time high.
Corruption Is A Family Business
As Jason Sattler (@LOLGOP) wrote in USA Today in 2019, if Trump truly cared “about even the appearance of family members wringing cash from a president or vice president who shares their name,” he would start by investigating his own adult children. (Don’t even get me started about “Sheep Killer” Don, Jr.)
As Sattler concludes, Trump is not serious about fighting corruption. His only interest in corruption is his desire to do more of it.
In the case of Ivanka, even as her daddy has sent the US economy plunging into a possible multi-year recession, she’s now the proud owner of dozens of Chinese trademarks, including those for sunglasses, handbags, shoes, jewelry, beauty services, child care centers, wedding dresses, art valuation services, and even voting machines.
“Because nothing says a commitment to democracy like a Trump Voting Machine™.”
The election is just days away. In the midst of the pandemic and the economic crisis, it’s an “all-hands-on-deck” moment for US democracy. Not everyone can afford a subscription to a newsletter like this right now. That’s why I’m making all issues free until the election. But if you can afford to support on a month-to-month or annual basis, today’s a great time to subscribe. Thanks!
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