The End Times for Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party
The End Times of Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party
The Beginning of the End Times
According to Genesis I: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." (King James version).
For Americans, this verse seems appropos to the events of the past 3 years:
Three years ago on January 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump swore the same oath 44 other presidents did:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Perhaps, the country was more divided than was realized. For how could an entire section of the country know the Trump reputation as a grifter and the greater sections be totally oblivious to the danger of allowing someone with such a shady past to run for the highest office in the country?
For those unfamiliar with the word "grifter" it is defined in the Webster and Oxford dictionaries thus:
A person who operates a side show at a circus, fair, etc., especially a gambling attraction; a swindler, dishonest gambler, or the like.
So it is that for many decades Donald J. Trump, a self created figment of his own imagination was considered a grifter. Make no mistake that Trump designed who he is to the last tiny detail.
He was born in Bronx, New York in 1946 to Fred Trump Sr. and Mary Anne MacCleod Trump. Neither were born wealthy. Their five children were not particularly high achievers; but like many parents of the 40s and 50s wanted success for all five.
Their children in order of birth include:
Mary Anne, now a retired federal judge.
Fred Trump, Jr. who died of alcoholism at age 43
Robert Trump, a retired business executive
Donald J. Trump, self proclaimed billionaire real estate mogul
Elizabeth Trump Grau, also a retired business executive
The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York Daily News and New York Post newspapers have carried news about the Trump family on a regular basis for more than six decades.
Fred Trump, Sr. began a small real estate office in the borough of Queens and another in Brooklyn where he brokered in small apartments and row houses in the 1920s which he built into the Trump real estate empire eventually known as Trump Organization.
Contrary to Trump's statement that life was not easy for him growing up, the facts belie his statements. He was raised in a a 23-room, nine bathroom mansion in the leafy middle-class suburb of Jamaica Estates. Not exactly the hardship Donald J. Trump claims.
Trump the Businessman
When he was ready to go into business, his father gave him $1 million. He spent that trying to compete in real estate with his own father.
His father had purchased Steeplechase Park from the City of NY with the intent to restore Coney Island's popularity as an amusement park. Fred Sr. instead leased some of that real estate to the Mafia and never completed the refurbishment of Steeplechase Park.
This may be the origin of the End Times of Donald Trump. He and his father were not above cheating tenants in their rentals to increase their wealth. They had the assistance of one of the most notorious lawyers in US history, Roy Cohn as their adviser. Cohn is widely known as the McCarthy era hound dog who caused the suicides of two CEOs for his claim their were Communists. But then, Cohn also claimed the famous comedian, Lucille Ball, was also a communist because she was married to Desi Arnaz, a Cuban immigrant.
It may seem as if the Trump motto from those days forward was "It's all part of business."
Forever after, Trump has been involved in over 3500 lawsuits in his business career involving contract disputes, defamation claims, and allegations of sexual harassment.
Of these cases, 60 were settled out of court by Trump lawyers Cohn, Felder, Dershowitz and Kasowitz, top defense lawyers with a reputation for defending high profile criminals.
Good Times, Bad Times and Trump Competitions
Between the 1970s and until 1998, Trump spent almost as much time amassing wealth in real estate as he did hungry for press releases about him and his scandalous affairs. Trump never seemed in the least fazed by negative optics.
He projected an image of a very vain and self centered man who lusted for attention from whatever source he could find. Most often in the early days before social media, it was newspaper reports.
From early in his childhood, the Trump family was generally not accepted by the New York City's most elite. This would be the cause of Donald Trump aggressively trying to barge into a high society that wanted no part of him. Even as he struggled to demand he break into a world he simply lacked the class for.
This was also when he discovered there were "other ways" to get what he wanted. he had his lawyers dredge up information he knew was scandalous enough to destroy reputations. A talent he learned from Cohn.
By 1998, he had gone on wild spending sprees even his accountants at Mazars warned him about. He bought a huge yacht he called the Princess named for his daughter, Ivanka for whom he seemed to have an unusually strong fixation.
However, that fixation did not occur in the early years of the birth of his 3 children, Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric, children of his first of three wives, Ivana Zelniova, a Czech born model. Ivana, 3 years younger than Donald married in 1990 and became a socially acceptable hostess. As Ivana told the press, "The Donald was an absentee father who demanded dinner be on the table promptly as he walked through the door."
His fixation for his daughter as a teen can be seen in numerous highly pedophilic, objectionable photos in his bedroom and in public. Or the worst interview question Trump asked during his Vanity Fair interview, "Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your 14 year old daughter than your wife?" (Marla Maples was his wife and the woman Ivanka claimed was not Trump's girlfriend during the 18 months they ruled the NY papers with a cat fight between Trump's first wife and soon to be second wife.)
In New York City, there are two major groups, the elite upper class of Knickerbocker pedigreed and the socially elite who spend most of their time night clubbing and partying.
Through numerous social associations of Ivana Zelnikova Trump as a much desired hostess of the social scene, her husband was able to break through the walls of the most moneyed class in New York.
For Donald Trump, Optics and Public Image Is Vital
It was in the 1990s that Wall Street reinvented itself to become the obsessive compulsive addiction to money and the acquisition of wealth at any price. But the disease of greed began to grow in might by the late 1990s and by that time Donald Trump purchased Mar-a-Lago, the mansion in Florida owned by the former heiress, Majorie Merriweather Post.
For Trump, the acquisition of the historic 1920s mansion built by Edward Post of Post foods, was proof he had risen to the ranks of the elite he so craved to be part of.
The mansion by sea has 58 bedrooms, 33 bathrooms with gold-plated fixtures (believed by heiress Post to be easier to clean,) an 1,800-square-foot living room with 42-foot ceilings. Its 110,000 square feet glinted with gold leaf, Spanish tiles, Italian marble and Venetian silks. All told, the Posts spent $7 million around $90 million in today's currency.
The Trumps purchased it in 1985 after it had gone on the market
Trump has referred to Mar-a-Lago as "The Winter White House" where he wrote his 2017 inaugural speech. However, that was the original name heiress Post gave it when she offered to sell it to the US Government who declined the offer.
Ref: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-mar-a-lago-180965214/
Donald Trump is well known for his massive ego that rarely is sated. It is only through his enormously competitive nature that he finds some egotistical satiation.
But, the bad times were coming as surely as the 2020 Corona Virus came. Trump is a man who never gambled at his own tables. But he is a gambler of a different kind.
He gambles his ability to control others like the infamous gambler, William Lee Bergstrom, known for placing the largest bet in history in the 1980s.
Trump dabbles in associating with those from whom he picks up bits and pieces of skills he considers valuable and then keeps them for his own even to insisting HE is the one who originated the skill. One of them he wrote about in his book, "The Art of the Deal."
Those he has stolen ideas from and stiffed refer to it as "The Art of the Steal."
The worst for Trump happened back in 1998 as a result of his wild and careless spending. He borrowed $220 billion from six of the US's top banks.
He claimed to have a real estate empire worth $990 billion; but as the world now realizes, with Trump, big talk is only that.
So it was that in 1998, he was threatened with jail and had 24 hours to come up with the $220 billion. It believed he borrowed from the only 2 banks still willing to approve a loan to him: Deutschebank and the Bank of Chicago.
It is easy to explain why the Bank of Chicago would lend him money when no other banks would, he claims to owe $50 million to an unexplained Chicago Acquisition Unit of which Trump is the owner.
More curious is the side of mouth goading remark he made in the 2016 Presidential debate, "I donated $100 million to MY campaign. How much did YOU (Hillary Clinton) donate to yours?"
This was a mere 2 years after he received a money laundering fine of $10 million and filed 6 corporate bankruptcies to pay the fine. This was not the first time he was found guilty of money laundering.
According to FinCEN of the US Treasury, "In 1998, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts paid a $477,700 fine to the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for currency transaction reporting violations at the Trump Taj Mahal in 1990 and 1991, in keeping with Bank Secrecy Act statutes designed to thwart money laundering."
Apparently, even after the first offense, Trump refused to obey the law. Yet, he swore an oath on Inauguration Day to protect and defend the US Constitution which is the very foundation of the US Government's rule of law.
The US Without Form, and Void; Darkness Upon the Face of the Deep
Since before the Civil War, southern and Midwestern states have pounded out the same battle cry "States' Rights." Yet, that twisted interpretation of the 10th Amendment caused a Civil War and split the country in two.
Many Confederate patriots to this very day still say the Civil War was about states' rights. During the Civil War, the south was Democratic in typical obstinacy to a Republican president, Abraham Lincoln assassinated by four Confederate dissidents who intended to kill the entire Lincoln cabinet because they lost the Civil War.
Today, these states are solidly Republican only to be obstinately defiant of the US Constitution right to vote our consciences in a two party system that gives all citizens the right to vote.
The end result of this demand for Republican total control is a one party system of rule that will never exist.
Because of their choice of Donald J. Trump to represent the Republican Party, his morbid failures of the last 3 years now have the eyes of the world on all Republicans.
There are protests today that could have been avoided with true leadership.
If Republicans claim they are doing the will of their party and Republican people, the world is watching a failure like Trump hide in a bunker in fear of his life for using Twitter to incite right wing fascism that ended in a vicious murder of a black man named George Floyd. The world has seen the way this man died.
The world heard what a foolish MN cop said. Videos do not lie. Every American is entitled to be innocent until proven guilty. Trump has several times in 3 years inferred guilt on innocent people even to making utterly ridiculous false claims about President Obama.
This is the end times for Trump. It doesn't have to be the end times for Republicans if they have a shred of honor and integrity and openly speak directly and publicly to Trump about his inflammatory statements.
Yet, Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, AG William Barr, SOS Pompeo and top Republicans know what they saw as we did and their only response is to bash protesters.
So, let's look at what they are really bashing. They are saying by their silence of that black man's murder that no one should expect justice for a man who is begging for his life.
We should not protest a government our taxes fully fund when we see a lawless cop with an audience of cops getting pleasure from asphyxiating a black man who has not been found guilty of a crime?
That kind of Dodge city lawlessness may be fine in the south and Midwest. It will not be paid for by the rest of the states who have a right to deny funding to states who encourage injustice and uncivilized behavior.
The US Constitution was written long before the south and Midwestern culture emerged. If that is their culture, it is time to face that Trump's days in the Oval Office are over and their Republican Party will never see another Republican president for a very very long time.
57% of the country is the majority. Not the 43%. 57% is the majority who feeds most of the federal taxes into the government.
That 57% power is the End Times for these Trump supporters to face.
