• edgemaster72@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    He’s a narcissistic grifter. He gets satisfaction from making money and a feeling of superiority for screwing people over in the process. No amount of money will ever be enough to fill the void of his missing humanity.

    • the_wise_wolf@feddit.org
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      2 months ago

      Exactly this. He was born rich, and yet he came up with an endless stream of grifts throughout his life. This is unnecessary and reckless. I believe he does it because he has a deep inferiority complex and ripping off people gives him a feeling of superiority.

  • SacralPlexus@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    A lot of his value is tied up in assets that aren’t liquid (real estate). Also he is probably not worth as much as he says.

    But the main reason is that these “cheap crap” things you mention are probably vehicles for money laundering from foreign actors. The best example are the NFTs he was hawking for awhile. Costs next to nothing to make and foreign states can buy a ton of them to give him money without it being easy to detect. Even if it is detected it is still legal to buy silly NFTs, right? Certainly more so than a foreign government giving a candidate bags of cash for nothing.

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
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        2 months ago

        I believe that’s the fallout from the Citizens United ruling. There are also “Dark money” PACs that are called as such because they can keep the contributions anonymous, but these PACs are allowed to donate unlimited funds to the campaign as long as there’s no “coordination” between the PAC and the candidate…

        Our government is for sale.

      • SacralPlexus@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I believe that it is illegal, yes (I’m not a lawyer). But that is the point. They can “buy” a bunch of cheap useless stuff from him instead of giving him money. That’s the essence of money laundering. Do something that superficially looks legitimate so that you can move a bunch of money that would otherwise be illegal.

        • jumperalex@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Fuck it. Ship them. They still aren’t worth $100k and don’t cost more than 100c. The grift is complete.

          • voracitude@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            But then they’d have to spend money on shoes to send to Russia, instead of not paying their lawyers!

    • Ænima@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      That’s all his publicly-traded company was: a way to donate to tRump without visibly donating to tRump. No doubt the new crypto shit is the next grift now that the stock value has tanked.

    • mkwt@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Foreign nationals, let alone foreign governments, are not allowed to give money to political campaigns in the United States. Actually illegal. Bill Clinton got in trouble for it

      If you can prove that an NFT scheme was foreign campaign money laundering in court, people can go to jail.

      • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It’s not campaign money. It’s the “honest fruits of labor” that he “earned” by selling products. Even though every normal person can see that he’s a fucking grifter, maga morons can’t. So, now he has plausible deniability for any money “earned” in this “honest day’s work”.

      • The Giant Korean@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        How does one go about proving that money laundering occurred? Genuinely curious because I know it’s illegal. I guess you’d need to catch someone admitting that they did it?

      • SacralPlexus@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        For sure. But of course dude tried a coup on live tv and we are having trouble getting the justice system to hold him to account. So getting proof of the NFT scheme that I outlined as a hypothetical is probably going to be harder.

        • PunnyName@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Partially because the coup is coming from inside the house. Representatives, senators, and SCOTUS seats already planted.

      • sudo42@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Foreign nationals, let alone foreign governments, are not allowed to give money to political campaigns in the United States. Actually illegal. Bill Clinton got in trouble for it

        Don’t forget the Trump Hotel during his presidency that took huge “bookings” from foreign nationals during his presidency. The “Law and Order” party naturally jumped all over this as a violation of the Constitution…, oh wait.

  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Because he’s not actually a billionaire.

    Lists of rich people like Forbes primarily use number approved by the individuals through various means. We know for a fact thanks to the recent fraud case in NY that the Trump Org regularly inflated nearly every number about their business, especially real estate. They regularly inflated the value of property for things like loans and underestimated the value for taxes.

    Trump is well known for requesting people not question his finances in collaborative events like his Comedy Central roast where he can control it.

    People with actual money doesn’t care about that. And that’s just the tip of the monetary iceberg. We’ve learned a lot since Trump decided to run for President the first time. It was probably the worst thing he could have done to keep his grifts running smoothly.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I’m sure he was at one point, then as he began losing money on terrible ideas, because he’s an idiot, he started lashing out into any random crap he could to try and stabilize it. Taking out dozens of foreign loans with inflated numbers, and constantly ending up underwater in those, needing more to further the process, like a debt-based ponzi scheme where no one actually makes any money in the end, not even the banks.

        He managed to bankrupt a casino. They basically print money, yet he managed to run one right out of business.

        • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          And his dad only left him $400 mil which he completely lost through failed ventures and bankruptcies. What a goddamned terrible “business man”. Who the fuck bankrupts multiple casinos? How profoundly bad at business does one have to be to fail so hard over and over again?

  • walter_wiggles@lemmy.nz
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    2 months ago

    He has to create opportunity for foreign actors to funnel money to him.

    It’s not illegal to sell a $1,000 watch for $100,000. That way he doesn’t have to actually launder the money.

    • SnausagesinaBlanket@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I have 4 unrelated email addresses on 4 separate domains and I get solicited for Trump Wine at least once a month on all of them. His spam game is on point.

  • zcd@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    That’s his schtick, he’s actually just a billionaire cosplayer

  • Makeitstop@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Trump has a lot of wealth on paper, but a lot of it is tied in up in real estate, which isn’t the easiest thing to turn into cash when you need it. And a lot is tied up in stock, but since he got caught fixing the books for the Trump Organization, he can’t really use that as his personal piggybank without a lot of scrutiny. And Truth Social is worth over a billion on paper but will crash if he starts to sell any of his stock, which would cause a lot of new problems right now.

    Meanwhile, he is burning through money at an insane rate. I mean historically, he’s lost far more money than he’s ever been worth. He’s always had to have new businesses and schemes to cycle through as the old ones crumble. He basically never made a profit until the Apprentice, and that actually caused problems because he’d structured his operations around losing money, leaving other people holding the bag when things go completely south, writing off the loses for tax purposes, and, well, cooking the books.

    But with hundreds of millions in judgements against him, on top of the hundred million plus in legal fees, he’s in a bit of a bind. He already had to put a $175 million up for bond to appeal the judgment civil judgment against the Trump Organization. If he loses the appeal, he’s out not just the $175 million, but the full $489 million judgement, plus about $115k a day in interest. Plus he’s got the E Jean Carroll judgments and ongoing cases because he’s a dumb bastard that can’t stop himself from committing defamation every time he leaves a courthouse after losing defamation case.

    So, while he’s been funneling money from his PAC to cover his legal bills that only goes so far, and as I understand it, he can’t use that for actual judgements against him. If he loses the election, he may be fighting legal battles for years to come, that PAC money will likely dry up, and if he doesn’t have the cash when the court demands it, he could see his assets seized and auctioned off. If he wins the election, he can do basically anything and we’re all fucked.

    So to simplify this a bit, imagine that he spent almost all his money on a lot of properties without getting a single monopoly, while his opponent has hotels on the dark blue and green properties. He keeps trying to survive the gauntlet and pass go to stay in the game, and maybe he can survive by mortgaging everything, but it’s much easier for him if he has the cash to pay the bill.

  • modifier@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    The better question the media should really be asking him every single chance they get - when they aren’t continuing to grill him about Laura Loomer - is, “if the economy is so bad under Biden/Harris and your supporters are living paycheck to paycheck, why do you think there is a market for $100,000 watches?”

    • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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      2 months ago

      The media that he pays to provide him endless PR?

      Do you really expect regime whores to do journalism?

      • echo@lemmings.world
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        2 months ago

        The media don’t work for him. He works for the media. The media work for the billionaires.