"Shell companies, pseudonyms, shady lawyers, and secrecy: The president’s and his lawyer's business practices match the classic pattern of suspicious activity."
"Having gotten in the habit of lying regularly about matters big and small, Trump has set new records for mendacity while in office. The Post reports that he has made more than 3,000 false or misleading claims since the inauguration, and that his rate of deception has increased from 4.9 to 9 falsehoods a day. Does any of this matter? From a political perspective, probably not. Voters knew what sort of huckster Trump was when they elected him. But it should give us pause to consider what it says about America, circa 2018, that so many of us are so ready to accept a Jordan Belfort or Frank Abagnale — a con man, in other words — as our leader."
I just hope for our country that Donald Trump is not reelected in 2020 with an enormous margin, only to be found out a year or two later how truly crooked he really is. Americans deserve an honest government.
"A Higher Loyalty, by far the most consequential book yet in the literature of the Trump presidency, is arriving as political conflict roils every aspect of that presidency. Former FBI Director James Comey's scathing review will not settle the arguments about President Trump, nor will it calm the controversy over its author. But it will furnish mountains of ammunition for combatants on all sides. Comey fires countless fusillades against the president who fired him in May 2017, summing up at the end: "[T]his president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values." Trump's leadership, Comey says, is "transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty. He compares Trump's insistence on a "silent circle of assent" to the code observed in the Mafia crime family that Comey helped bust as a young prosecutor in New York City."
"Making this more problematic, Trump isn't someone who played close to the line a time or two, or once did a shady deal. He may well be the single most corrupt major business figure in the United States of America. He ran scams like Trump University to con struggling people out of their money. He lent his name to pyramid schemes. He bankrupted casinos and still somehow made millions while others were left holding the bag. He refused to pay vendors. He exploited foreign workers. He used illegal labor. He discriminated against African-American renters. He violated antitrust laws. He did business with the mob and with Eastern European kleptocrats. His properties became the go-to vehicle for Russian oligarchs and mobsters to launder their money."
"So it was no accident that when he ran for president, the people who joined him in his quest were also a collection of grifters, liars, and crooks — people like Paul Manafort. Those were the kind of operators Trump has attracted all his life. Honest, upright people with a deep respect for the law don't go to work for Donald Trump."