The Smoking Gun: Trump, The Least Charitable Billionaire

"David Cay Johnston won a Pulitzer Prize for his New York Times reporting on the American tax system. Since 2009 he has taught the business, property and tax law of the ancient world at Syracuse University’s law and graduate business schools."

Just What Were Donald Trump's Ties to the Mob?

I've spent years investigating, and here's what's known.

By David Cay Johnston, POLITICO Magazine, May 22, 2016

Quote:

In his signature book, The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump boasted that when he wanted to build a casino in Atlantic City, he persuaded the state attorney general to limit the investigation of his background to six months. Most potential owners were scrutinized for more than a year. Trump argued that he was “clean as a whistle” — young enough that he hadn’t had time to get into any sort of trouble. He got the sped-up background check, and eventually got the casino license.

But Trump was not clean as a whistle. Beginning three years earlier, he’d hired mobbed-up firms to erect Trump Tower and his Trump Plaza apartment building in Manhattan, including buying ostensibly overpriced concrete from a company controlled by mafia chieftains Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano. That story eventually came out in a federal investigation, which also concluded that in a construction industry saturated with mob influence, the Trump Plaza apartment building most likely benefited from connections to racketeering. Trump also failed to disclose that he was under investigation by a grand jury directed by the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, who wanted to learn how Trump obtained an option to buy the Penn Central railroad yards on the West Side of Manhattan.

Why did Trump get his casino license anyway? Why didn’t investigators look any harder? And how deep did his connections to criminals really go?

These questions ate at me as I wrote about Atlantic City for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and then went more deeply into the issues in a book, Temples of Chance: How America Inc. Bought Out Murder Inc. to Win Control of the Casino Business. In all, I’ve covered Donald Trump off and on for 27 years, and in that time I’ve encountered multiple threads linking Trump to organized crime. Some of Trump’s unsavory connections have been followed by investigators and substantiated in court; some haven’t. And some of those links have continued until recent years, though when confronted with evidence of such associations, Trump has often claimed a faulty memory. In an April 27 phone call to respond to my questions for this story, Trump told me he did not recall many of the events recounted in this article and they “were a long time ago.” He also said that I had “sometimes been fair, sometimes not” in writing about him, adding “if I don’t like what you write, I’ll sue you.”

I’m not the only one who has picked up signals over the years. Wayne Barrett, author of a 1992 investigative biography of Trump’s real-estate dealings, has tied Trump to mob and mob-connected men.

No other candidate for the White House this year has anything close to Trump’s record of repeated social and business dealings with mobsters, swindlers, and other crooks. Professor Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, said the closest historical example would be President Warren G. Harding and Teapot Dome, a bribery and bid-rigging scandal in which the interior secretary went to prison. But even that has a key difference: Harding’s associates were corrupt but otherwise legitimate businessmen, not mobsters and drug dealers.

This is part of the Donald Trump story that few know. As Barrett wrote in his book, Trump didn’t just do business with mobbed-up concrete companies: he also probably met personally with Salerno at the townhouse of notorious New York fixer Roy Cohn, in a meeting recounted by a Cohn staffer who told Barrett she was present.

This came at a time when other developers in New York were pleading with the FBI to free them of mob control of the concrete business.

From the public record and published accounts like that one, it’s possible to assemble a clear picture of what we do know. The picture shows that Trump’s career has benefited from a decades-long and largely successful effort to limit and deflect law enforcement investigations into his dealings with top mobsters, organized crime associates, labor fixers, corrupt union leaders, con artists and even a one-time drug trafficker whom Trump retained as the head of his personal helicopter service.

Now that he’s running for president, I pulled together what’s known – piecing together the long history of federal filings, court records, biographical anecdotes, and research from my and Barrett’s files. What emerges is a pattern of business dealings with mob figures — not only local figures, but even the son of a reputed Russian mob boss whom Trump had at his side at a gala Trump hotel opening, but has since claimed under oath he barely knows.

Neither Trump’s campaign spokesperson, Hope Hicks, nor Jason Greenblatt, the executive vice president and chief legal officer at the Trump Organization, responded to several emailed requests for comment on the issues raised in this article.

Here, as close as we can get to the truth, is what really happened.

The two-page article continues here:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910

http://us.blastingnews.com/news/201...-for-lying-about-vet-fundraiser-00932817.html
MARINES PLAN HISTORIC PROTEST, DEMAND TRUMP APOLOGIZE FOR LYING ABOUT VET FUNDRAISER

https://www.donaldtrumpforvets.com
OVER $1,670,000 RAISED ONLINE

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/280865-former-marine-plans-anti-trump-protest
A Marine Corps veteran is organizing a protest on Monday against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, demanding he apologize for overstating his donations to veterans groups.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...1127a8-1d1f-11e6-b6e0-c53b7ef63b45_story.html
"Campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said the fundraiser actually netted about $4.5 million, or 75 percent of the total that Trump announced.

Lewandowski blamed the shortfall on Trump’s own wealthy acquaintances. He said some of them had promised big donations that Trump was counting on when he said he had raised $6 million. But Lewandowski said those donors backed out and gave nothing.

Trump apocalypse watch
21/2 horsemen
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.slat..._s_trump_apocalypse_watch.html?client=safari#

http://www.ascandaladay.com/

" Trump agreed on a whim to debate Bernie Sanders, but then backed out. Slate's Jim Newell thinks he would've benefited from such a stunt; personally, I think Trump was smart to back out, because the debate would have been an opportunity for someone with nothing to lose (Bernie) to attack the exact kind of person he's spent his whole career denouncing (Trump) for two hours on national television."
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/05/26/today_s_trump_apocalypse_watch.html

".....that we would all be eating lizards in a nuclear wasteland a year from now. "

Introducing NomiNation, the Political Docuseries That Charts the Rise of Trump | Vanity Fair

Watch Episode 1 of the new series from Vanity Fair and First Look Media, and find out which candidate can’t grill a pork burger to save his life.



Is the American presidential-primary system broken? It’s a question worth asking in a year when the nation’s two major political parties have produced the most unpopular presumptive nominees in history.

For answers, look no further than NomiNation, a new docuseries from First Look Media and Vanity Fair, whose first episode premieres right here, right now.

The director of the series, AJ Schnack, previously directed Caucus, a feature documentary that tracked Rick Santorum’s surprise victory in the 2012 Iowa contest. This time, he’s creating a series of short-form docs that will follow the entire process, all the way from the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire to the conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia, where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are expected to emerge as their respective parties’ standard-bearers.

Episode 1, above, focuses on Joni Ernst, the motorcycle-riding junior senator from Iowa whose endorsement was one of the most sought-after prizes among Republican presidential hopefuls this cycle. From there, Schnack will turn his gaze to New Hampshire, Nevada, and beyond.

VF.com sat down with Schnack to talk about Trump rallies, Sad Jeb, and why Ben Carson can’t cook a pork burger to save his life.

<snipped>

What’s a Trump rally like?

I actually was at one where people were escorted out. There’s a sense that it’s somewhat akin to a show. I think some people have compared it to a pro-wrestling. At the height of those rallies — where there’s always someone getting thrown out, or someone trying to interrupt — it seemed almost like it was all fitting into a specific script, like in wrestling. There needs to be the bad guy and there needs to be the good guy. There was a certain element almost where — not that they would think [this] at all — the people were showing up to see someone get thrown out or to see someone get punched.

It fit the narrative.

Yeah, it fit the narrative. We’ve seen political events where people react to something like they’d just been at a boxing match or a hockey game, which is nothing I’ve ever seen before at a political rally.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/05/nomination-series-election-aj-schnack

Trump will be the next president I'm afraid to say. Brace yourself Ethel, this is going to hurt.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/na...-california/NFdjQgFwOs0FFeogiZq7mM/story.html
Donald Trump tells California there is no drought

I'd welcome him producing polices that touch that third-rail of western state politics, Colorado River water rights, but that shit-stain is never going to produce any policies for review, only empty talking points.

Californians in the Central Valley are loosing almond orchards ( take too much water) Southern Californians are loosing citrus orchards ( use too much water) and some towns have to get water in by trucks. It's hard to imagine what those folks thought while Trump pontificated.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/na...orm-streets/TUpasN0UrOqhrpWAOh7yQO/story.html

Note to Donald: In November, in a worst-case scenario, you'd only be the President-Elect, who wouldn't take office until January. And you know what? You would still have to stand trial.

Hillary or Trump? Faith in humanity is lost.

WTF is this?

Documents In Trump University Case Unsealed in San Diego | NBC 7 San Diego

The class-action lawsuit involving Trump University is scheduled to be heard in November 2016 in San Diego federal court.

Several playbooks used by Trump University were released to the public Tuesday and detail how much students paid to attend the now-closed school.

The Washington Post asked U.S. Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel to intervene in order to ask for thousands of pages of documents to be unsealed in one of the class-action lawsuits against Donald Trump and Trump University. The judge agreed issued the unsealing Friday in a San Diego courtroom.

In the class action lawsuits, Trump University is accused of misleading students with unfulfilled promises of teaching them the secret to being successful in the real estate business. The allegations outlined in court documents include Trump University, which took in over $40 million, was fraudulent and deceptive. Students paid up to $35,000 for real estate seminars, according to court documents.

Two class-action lawsuits against the now-closed Trump University are being heard in San Diego courtrooms, another lawsuit is based in a New York court. The San Diego cases include: Cohen v. Trump, a nationwide class action lawsuit and Makaeff v. Trump, a class action in California, Florida and New York.

Trump denies the allegations in the lawsuits. His attorney, Daniel Petrocelli said, “the case is unwarranted; (Trump) will defend himself fully."

The documents released Monday are associated with the Cohen v. Trump case.

The article includes a PDF file, here:
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/loc...ersity-Case-Unsealed-San-Diego-381415021.html

Judge unseals documents on Trump University | TheHill

Excerpt:

Lawyers for the real-estate magnate turned likely GOP nominee had argued to keep the documents secret after a request by The Washington Post to turn the documents over to the public. But Judge Curiel swatted their arguments down on Friday, asserting that the defense had not met the bar to keep the documents out of the public eye.

He also added that Trump’s station as the GOP frontrunner, as well as the fact that he’s “placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue” bolstered the argument to make the documents public.

Trump has launched a tirade against Judge Curiel in the days before the release of the documents. He chided the judge as a “hater” and “very hostile” on the stump on Friday and has implied that he’s biased because he’s “Mexican.”

Curiel is of Hispanic heritage but was born in Indiana.

The release of the documents came hours after Trump held a press conference on his donations to veterans groups, where he chastised the media for criticizing him on the donations. A flurry of media reports noted discrepancies in the money promised by Trump and the money he actually sent to groups.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box...3-judge-unseals-documents-on-trump-university

Inside the Trump University 'playbooks' | CNN Money

Excerpt:

What the playbooks show

The playbooks contain instructions for "Trump team members" on everything from how to dress, how to run a Trump U event, how to deal with travel expenses and how talk to the media.

But big portions are dedicated to how to bring in customers, encourage students to sign up for more courses and counter any objections or doubts they may have.

Finding "buyers" for the programs:

Potential students would fill out profiles, and include a list of their assets.

In a section called "identifying buyers," the playbooks instruct Trump team members to sort student profiles according to those who had the most liquid assets (over $35,000) to those who had the least (less than $2,000).

Elsewhere in the playbooks, Trump team members were advised to "close the deal" after having one-on-one sessions with potential students and to push Trump University's most expensive package -- Gold Elite for $34,995 -- when feasible. "If they can afford the gold elite don't allow them to think about doing anything besides the gold elite."

Pitching credit cards to buy property:

Finding lending sources for real estate investing were among the topics taught at Trump University's "Creative Financing Retreat," according to materials in the playbooks.

A description of the retreat promised students they would learn more details about hard-money lenders, land contracts and seller-carried mortgages.

It also covered the use of credit cards. "If a seller will take $10,000 down on a fixer-upper that you expect to make $20,000 on, why not use credit cards?"

Addressing objections and doubts:

Team members are given scripted rebuttals to address students and prospective students who express doubt about whether they should enroll or sign up for a more expensive package. For example:

I don't like using my credit cards and going into debt: "[D]o you like living paycheck to paycheck? ... Do you enjoy seeing everyone else but yourself in their dream houses and driving their dreams cars with huge checking accounts? Those people saw an opportunity, and didn't make excuses, like what you're doing now."

I'm going to try this on my own: "The risk isn't spending 35K - it's entering into the world of REAL ESTATE without specialized knowledge, guidance and trained professionals in the field holding your hand. WE are the safe decision. Fear is preventing you from investing in yourself."

http://www.wptz.com/money/trump-university-playbooks-to-be-revealed/39800826

Relevance?

New York attorney general slams Donald Trump's 'phony' and 'shameless' Trump University the same day hundreds of pages of internal documents were unsealed

Excerpt:

Before the documents were released, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman slammed Donald Trump and his eponymous Trump University, Politico reported.

His remarks followed a court decision by Judge Gonzalo Curiel ordering the documents be unsealed by Thursday, June 2.

Calling Curiel a "hater," Trump has argued the judge's Mexican heritage makes him biased and that he should be removed from the case.

Schneiderman hit back at this point, according to Politico:

Every judge has said these are valid fraud claims. You [Trump] defrauded people out of money. They're entitled to their day in court. He [Trump] keeps saying it's an easy case to win but he keeps losing. All he's doing is delaying.

When explaining the disclosure, Curiel pointed to a previous case that states courts must consider if a public official benefits from confidentiality and if the documents involve issues of public interest. He also noted that Politico published one of the "playbooks" from 2010 in its entirety in March.

Notably, the book instructed Trump University employees to rank students by their liquid assets to target those who could afford more coursework.

Schneiderman didn't mince words on the issue, as Politico reported.

If you look at the facts of this case, this shows someone who was absolutely shameless in his willingness to lie to people, to say whatever it took to induce them into his phony seminars. It was shameless. It was heartless. It's important information to get out there.

Continued here:

To no one’s surprise, Trump University was a con. | New Republic

Nearly 400 pages of testimony and “playbooks” related to a class action lawsuit against Trump University were released on Tuesday, and they suggest that the unaccredited institution was a mix between a time share seminar, Amway, and the Church of Scientology.

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/133853/no-ones-surprise-trump-university-con

Trump University: A Scam, But a Familiar One | The Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/davidhalperin/trump-university-a-scam-b_b_10237880.html

Ex-Employees Criticize Trump University, Calling It ‘Scheme’ and ‘Total Lie’ | Wall Street Journal

http://www.wsj.com/articles/several-ex-employees-at-trump-university-call-it-a-scheme-1464787317

Former Employees Say Trump University Was a 'Fraudulent Scheme' | VICE

https://www.vice.com/read/new-docum...scammed-its-students-out-of-their-money-vgtrn

Trump University a Scam Just Like Trump Campaign | NYMag

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/06/trump-university-a-scam-just-like-trump-campaign.html

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/05/fake-trump-fan-frames-protesters-video
Trump unites America.
One of his supporters tries to stage a flag stomping by the Antis and gets chased off by pro and anti Trump protestors.
Hes a YouTube personality.
https://m.youtube.com/user/JoeySalads2

Glenn Beck Suspended After On-Air Talk Of 'Patriot' Taking Out Prez Trump (AUDIO)

By Katherine Krueger, Talking Points Memo

SiriusXM radio suspended conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck this week after a recent guest on his show warned Donald Trump poses an “extinction-level” threat to the country and suggested a “patriot” might need to remove him from office by any means necessary, Politico reported.

During Wednesday’s “Glenn Beck Radio Program,” fiction writer Brad Thor said he “guarantees” Trump would temporarily suspend the Constitution during his possible presidency and is a “danger to America.”

“With the feckless, spineless Congress we have, who will stand in the way of Donald Trump overstepping his constitutional authority as President?” Thor said. “If Congress won’t remove him from office, what patriot will step up and do that if he oversteps his mandate as President, his constitutional-granted authority, I should say, as President.”

Beck replied that these were conversations that they had had off-air before.

The remarks were broadly read as Beck and Thor wondering out loud if Trump would be assassinated.

In a statement to Politico, the network said the comments “may be reasonably construed by some to have been advocating harm against an individual currently running for office, which SiriusXM cannot and will not condone.”

Beck is suspended for a week, the statement said.

Listen to Beck and Thor’s full conversation via the Blaze Radio, starting around four minutes in:

https://soundcloud.com/glennbeck/beck-blitz-brad-thor-our-extinction-event

Source:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/glenn-beck-suspended-brad-thor

Trump Has a Conflict-of-Interest Problem No Other White House Candidate Ever Had
He owes at least $100 million to a foreign bank that's battled with US regulators.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/trump-german-loan-deutsche-bank

https://www.google.com/amp/m.huffpo...s_574ef24de4b02912b24151bd/amp?client=safari#
Trump closed the public space in his tower for campaign rallies however it is public space and can't be closed w/o city permission. He gave the public space in return for allowances for more stories. He built a kiosk selling trump merchandise where a public bench was. He paid $4000 fine. If he pays a $4000 fine per rally it's a great deal for him.

Trump makes me glad to be Canadian.

GOP Hopes to Pass This Bill Before Trump Wins | NYMag

Quote:

Congressman Blake Farenthold of Texas once lamented the House’s failure to impeach Barack Obama. As of 2013, Farenthold was still questioning the authenticity of the president’s long-form birth certificate and, thus, his qualifications for the presidency. But now the right-wing representative is trying to pass a bill promoting free speech online before the illegitimate tyrant leaves office — because he doesn’t trust the great patriot he’ll be voting for in November to support his conception of the First Amendment.

The legislation, co-sponsored by California Democrat Anna Eshoo, would make it harder to sue people for what they say online. About half of the states currently have statutes protecting individuals from what are known as “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” (or SLAPP) — frivolous acts of litigation designed to intimidate someone into silence. Farenthold and Eshoo co-sponsored federal anti-SLAPP legislation after a Virginia carpet cleaner’s attempt to punish Yelp reviewers for defamation garnered national headlines.

The bill boasts the support of Silicon Valley titans looking to protect online speech — and conservative politicians looking to antagonize trial lawyers. But the bill’s greatest enemy might be Farenthold’s favorite presidential candidate.

“Obama will sign this. I don’t think Trump will,” the Texas Republican told Politico Wednesday.

But why wouldn’t the GOP nominee support legislation that prevents the powerful from using their financial resources to suppress free speech online? I mean, besides the fact that he loves using his financial resources to suppress free speech online.

After a New York Times business editor published a book that called his stated net worth into question, Trump boasted, “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more … I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”

Trump lost that case. Politico catalogues some of the mogul’s other frivolous lawsuits from just the past four years:

Continued here:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/06/gop-hopes-to-pass-this-bill-before-trump-wins.html

I don't believe that!

US regulators actually clashed with a bank??

Too Bad For You! The Sleazy Moves Revealed In The Trump U Court Docs

A federal judge on Tuesday unsealed hundreds of pages of documents in a class action lawsuit against Trump University, revealing the craven moves the school founded by Donald Trump used to convince people to drop tens of thousands of dollars for seminars on the real estate business.

In testimony for the case, Ronald Schnackenberg, a former employee at the school tasked with selling courses, said he resigned in 2007 because he felt Trump University "was engaging in misleading, fraudulent, and dishonest conduct."

"Based upon my personal experience and employment, I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme, and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money," he said.

The "Playbooks" for sales employees at Trump University unsealed on Tuesday, along with testimony from former employees, show the aggressive tactics the school used to convince people to purchase courses.

The article continues with the following headings:

Encouraged People To Max Out Credit Cards To Buy Courses

Targeted People Struggling Financially

Used Instructors Without Significant Real Estate Experience

Used Aggressive Language To Combat Potential Customers' 'Excuses'

Encouraged Students To Borrow From Retirement Accounts

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-university-court-documents

Alleged Billionaire

I've been working on a piece on the many substantial, albeit circumstantial, reasons to believe that Donald Trump is not only not worth $10 billion but quite likely not a billionaire at all. In other words, Trump's vaunted alleged wealth seems to be a fraud.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/alleged-billionaire

The article below was shared in this thread when it was first published, but it's worth posting again for any who missed it.

Donald Trump Is the L. Ron Hubbard of Politics

The pair's mutual mantra: “Don't ever defend. Always attack.”

By James Kirchick, The Daily Beast, April 2, 2016

Is Donald Trump the new George Wallace? Silvio Berlusconi? Adolf Hitler?

Could be. But at least as much as a southern segregationist, rich pervert turned politico, or genocidal fascist, Trump resembles L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the pyramid-scheme-masquerading-as-religion known as Scientology.

Consider: both men are (or, in Hubbard’s case, were) narcissistic, autocratic, money-obsessed, pathological liars and would-be sexual conquerors who built business empires for the primary purpose of self-enrichment under glitz-drenched brands maintained by fraud and advanced by uncompromising litigiousness and occasional physical aggression against critics.

Hubbard died in 1986, though perhaps only corporeally. He claimed he was Cecil Rhodes in a previous life and today may be inhabiting the soul of Donald Trump for all we know; at the least the two men bear some resemblance.

Both are defined by compulsive acquisitiveness. “MAKE MONEY. MAKE MONEY. MAKE MORE MONEY,” Hubbard wrote to underlings in an early Scientology “Governing Policy” document. “MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MONEY.”

Trump’s complaints of being unfairly audited by the IRS echo Scientology’s decades-long battle with the taxman; Hubbard was himself named an unindicted co-conspirator to a covert, 1973 Scientology operation dubbed “Snow White” aimed at infiltrating the agency.

Hubbard was also one of the great frauds of the 20th century. A man who lied about nearly every aspect of his biography and repeatedly bragged about imaginary feats of daring and physical bravery, his breathless, downright Trumpian testaments to his own genius and courage were mere preparation for the greatest lie of them all: that he had unlocked the secrets of the human mind in the form of “Dianetics,” the pseudoscience at the heart of Scientology. Hubbard used to claim that “auditing,” a process in which one holds onto electrically charged metal cans and talks about past life experiences, could raise people’s I.Q. by one point per hour.

In one of the many legal cases brought by the Church against ex-Scientologists or critics, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge deemed Hubbard “a pathological liar” driven by “egotism, greed, avarice, lust for power and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile.” Sound familiar?

Much as Trump surrounds himself with sycophants and media supplicants, Scientologists venerate Hubbard as a sort of man-god; his portrait, which followers salute while shouting “hip hip hooray,” is ubiquitous in Church establishments.

One distinction: Whereas Trump’s a talker, Hubbard was a writer, one who started out as a pulp fiction novelist and churned out hundreds of works of science fiction, crime potboilers, and sham sociology and religious texts over the course of his long career. For both men, the overflow of words is a function of an insatiable appetite for money, power, and acclaim.

When not making up stories about themselves, both men lied about the world around them. Trump persists with his false claim of witnessing “thousands” of Muslims celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers, one of countless fibs he has repeated effortlessly on the campaign trail. Hubbard, bitter at the psychiatric profession’s designation of Dianetics as crankery, declared psychiatry a devious plot to destroy humanity.

Trump also resembles Hubbard as a self-help guru who mostly helps himself. Like all religions, Scientology promises its followers spiritual illumination, the apex of which is the revelation that, 75 million years ago, a galactic warlord named Xenu planted the bodies of billions of aliens around the Earth’s volcanoes and detonated them with hydrogen bombs. The immortal spirits of these beings now adhere to humans in the form of “Thetans” that one can only release with the help of Scientology teachings.

Trump’s Art of the Deal is to Trumpism what Hubbard’s Dianetics is to Scientology: a load of bullshit pretending to teach you how to fix yourself, just replacing the new-age homilies with odes to avarice.

What distinguishes Scientology from most other organized religions is — still more shades of Donald — its unambiguously transactional relationship with adherents. In exchange for moving up its ladder of enlightenment known as “The Bridge to Total Freedom,” Scientologists pony up ever-increasing amounts of money to the Church, which often pressures them into maxing out credit cards, taking on loans they cannot afford, or driving themselves into bankruptcy.

The most succinct and accurate description of Scientology remains that offered by investigative journalist Richard Behar in his 1991 Time magazine investigation, “The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power.” Scientology, Behar wrote, is a “hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner.”

For Trump and Hubbard respectively, politics and religion are extensions of business empires. Trump University, the now-defunct branch of the many-tentacled Trump Organization that most clearly resembles the Scientology swindle, preyed upon unsuspecting consumers by guaranteeing them future riches in return for the money they handed over now. Today, Trump University, (which, despite its name, was never an accredited educational institution), is the subject of a class action lawsuit in three states; the New York State Attorney General has condemned it as a “bait-and-switch scheme.” A recent New York Times story revealed how instructors pressured students to turn in positive evaluations, much like how Scientology brainwashes and intimidates its own followers. “The surveys themselves were a central component of a business model that, according to lawsuits and investigators, deceived consumers into handing over thousands of dollars with tantalizing promises of riches,” the Times reports.

Hubbard and Trump — camp figures to the core — also share a chintzy aesthetic. Scientology videos, promotional materials and edifices all share a grotesquely ersatz style that’s been described as a pastiche of an Ikea catalog with a “romanticized nineteenth-century English countryside.” This is eerily similar, in tastelessness if not actual design, to Trump’s gaudy and soulless properties. Visiting Trump’s New York penthouse apartment a decade ago, Daily Beast founding editor Tina Brown memorably noted its “Ba’ath Party décor.”

Most ominous is the connection between the two men’s misogyny, racism, authoritarianism and the physical violence encouraged by their organizations.

“A society in which women are taught anything but the management of a family, the care of men, and the creation of the future generation is a society which is on its way out,” the (like Trump) thrice-married Hubbard wrote in his Scientology: A New Slant on Life.

For several months in 1966, inspired by his belief that he was the reincarnation of imperialist Cecil Rhodes, Hubbard traipsed around Rhodes’s eponymous, white-ruled country, posing as a “millionaire financier.” Hubbard was also an admirer of the apartheid government in neighboring South Africa, and his writings from the time are full of racist ramblings. The following observation characteristic of the whole ignoble oeuvre: “The Zulu is only outside the bars of a madhouse because there are no madhouses provided by his tribe.”

Trump, like Hubbard, brooks no dissent within his organization, or of it.

“If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace. Peace is bought with an exchange of advantage, so make the advantage and then settle. Don’t ever defend. Always attack. Don’t ever do nothing. Unexpected attacks in the rear of the enemy’s front ranks work best.”

That’s Hubbard, articulating a callous philosophy the two men share. Scientology for decades operated under his ruthless “Fair Game” doctrine, which declared that church critics “May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.”

Trump, meantime, day dreams out loud about creating a federal slander law as president “so when The New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected… We’re going to open up libel laws and we’re going to have people sue you like you’ve never got sued before.”

Over its decades-long existence, countless ex-Scientologists have come forth to recount horrifying tales of mental and physical abuse, imprisonment and torture at the hands of church officials, many of them recounted in a landmark Tampa Bay Times series and in New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright’s recent book Going Clear. The Trump organization’s shameful treatment of Michelle Fields, the former Breitbart reporter manhandled by campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and who then saw her reputation dragged through the mud by Trump and his acolytes, was ripped straight from the gaslighting playbook of Scientology.

Trump’s Manichean worldview, in which everyone who criticizes him is an evil “loser” and everyone who praises him is a “terrific” “winner,” calls to mind Hubbard’s personal vindictiveness towards Scientology’s detractors, whom he labeled “suppressive persons.”

But the greatest similarity between these two egotistical, vamping monsters is that they have both tried to perpetrate a giant scam. With any hope, the American people will laugh away Donald Trump’s nightmare vision of the world as soundly — and with as much humor — as they have the science fiction space opera spewed by Scientology’s “Bare-Faced Messiah.”

Quoted from:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/03/donald-trump-is-the-l-ron-hubbard-of-politics.html

I'm sorry....really...tin foil alert. But...
This circus is on purpose. Hillary and dollar trump go way fucking back and our next president will be a corrupt greedy old white person with an agenda and the other will be balding and blonde.

Dis better ?