As part of Trump's blistering, unconventional and very unexpected rise to the top of the Republican presidential nominee ranks, he has seen his share of threats - some serious, most in jest - to both his person, and in some cases his life. Apocryphally, some commentators have predicted that a Trump presidency would be such a shock to the status quo that if successful in winning the presidency, he would never make to inauguration day alive.
Today, such concerns were once again inflamed when a mysterious tombstone on behalf of Donald J. Trump (the date of death is blank: 1946 - ...) was erected in Central Park.
As Gothamist first reported, "someone erected a very classy Trump tombstone in the middle of Central Park this weekend, and were kind enough to leave his expiration date open to the fates."
Gothamist adds that "tipster Annie Reiss came upon the beautiful tribute to the presumptive GOP presidential candidate this morning near Sheep's Meadow. "There were people taking pictures which is why I stopped," she told us. "It was definitely provocative, strange for Easter morning."
The tombstone has the inscription, "Made America Hate Again."
As Mashable adds, plenty of people shared photos of the tombstone on social media, but no one seems to know what it means, other than "being a prank of questionable taste."
By evening, the tombstone had been removed by park officials.
According to Trump's latest Tweets, he is either unaware, or doesn't seem too worried about this implicit threat or poorly made joke; instead he is focusing his energy on the previously noted lawsuit which the real estate billionaire threatens to file against Ted Cruz for "stealing" delegates...
Just to show you how unfair Republican primary politics can be, I won the State of Louisiana and get less delegates than Cruz-Lawsuit coming
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 27, 2016
... as well as the ongoing "wife-gate" involving Heidi Cruz and Melania Trump:
Once again, we can only imagine the shocked media reaction if a tombstone mysteriously emerged in one of the world's busiest venues for any of the other presidential candidates.
Magda Hassan Wrote:Apart from himself I wonder who else is dynamiting Ted Cruz's campaign? Apparent Trump spokes person is one of the women Cruz had had sex with. Was she acting on her own accord and sent in seeking ammunition? Another woman is supposed to be Carly Fiorini's campaign manager. And Cruz did give $500,000 to the Carly Pac. Is this hush money? And why isn't the MSM covering this? Well, one of them Amanda Carpenter, big Cruz supporter, is also supposedly one of the women. The MSM and RW blogosphere have had all the information and sat on it for weeks.
No one is denying any thing and no one is threatening to sue. The National Enquirer has a good track record on some things (John Edwards, Tiger Woods, Gary Hart, Jessie Jackson - though don't think they are correct about Hilary actually adopting the space alien ) and would be treading carefully after the recent gargantuan Gawker pay out re Hulk Hogan.
And then there is Roger Stone....
Haven't followed this story very closely, but it fits Roger Stone's modus operandi.
The relationship map is coming along nicely. I keep finding more S&L links, as well as more Singlaub links. I would say Pete Brewton's book is the key here, as well as researching Singlaub's anti-communist organizations. Everything else should fall into place from there.
Can anyone get contact info for Pete Brewton? I have a feeling he'd be interested in this, considering they sabotaged his chance to take down both presidential candidates by delaying his book. Little did he know that his book would ensnare two more presidential candidates 20+ years later...
Magda Hassan Wrote:Apart from himself I wonder who else is dynamiting Ted Cruz's campaign? Apparent Trump spokes person is one of the women Cruz had had sex with. Was she acting on her own accord and sent in seeking ammunition? Another woman is supposed to be Carly Fiorini's campaign manager. And Cruz did give $500,000 to the Carly Pac. Is this hush money? And why isn't the MSM covering this? Well, one of them Amanda Carpenter, big Cruz supporter, is also supposedly one of the women. The MSM and RW blogosphere have had all the information and sat on it for weeks.
No one is denying any thing and no one is threatening to sue. The National Enquirer has a good track record on some things (John Edwards, Tiger Woods, Gary Hart, Jessie Jackson - though don't think they are correct about Hilary actually adopting the space alien ) and would be treading carefully after the recent gargantuan Gawker pay out re Hulk Hogan.
And then there is Roger Stone....
Haven't followed this story very closely, but it fits Roger Stone's modus operandi.
The relationship map is coming along nicely. I keep finding more S&L links, as well as more Singlaub links. I would say Pete Brewton's book is the key here, as well as researching Singlaub's anti-communist organizations. Everything else should fall into place from there.
Can anyone get contact info for Pete Brewton? I have a feeling he'd be interested in this, considering they sabotaged his chance to take down both presidential candidates by delaying his book. Little did he know that his book would ensnare two more presidential candidates 20+ years later...
Last I heard he was teaching at Texas Tech Uni in Lubbock.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
by John McMurtry
On the face of it, Trump is Reagan on steroids. His towering size, his nativist US supremacism, his down-home talk, and his reality-show confidence make him ideal for the role of bullying and big lies from the oval office. He is America come to meet itself in larger-than-life image to rejuvenate it as its pride slips away in third-world conditions and a multi-polar world.
While Trump's narrative is that the American Dream seeks recovery again, the dominant media and political elite relentlessly denounce him as an implicit fascist and disastrous fake. Something deeper is afoot. An untapped historic resentment is boiling up from underneath which has long been unspeakable on the political stage. Trump has mined it and proposed a concrete solution always denied of his candidacy. From his promise to halve the Pentagon's budget to getting the Congress off corporate-donation payrolls, the public money that the big corporate lobbies stand to lose from a Trump presidency are off the charts. But his attackers dare not recognize these explosive issues because they are all part of the problem.
The public money stakes may be bigger than the US corporate stakes behind the foreign wars the US state has initiated since 1991. The takeaway promised by Trump's policies threaten almost every big lobby now in control of US government purse strings. It grounds in the military-industrial complex spending close to $2,000,000,000 a day for its endless new untested weapons and foreign wars both of which Trump opposes. But the cut-off of hundreds of billions of public giveaways to the Big Corps do not end here. They hit almost every wide-mouthed transnational corporate siphon into the US Treasury, taxpayers' pockets and the working majority of America. Masses of American citizens increasingly without living wages and benefits and in increasing public squalor and insecurity are paying attention to what the political establishment and corporate media have long buried and continue to silence.
Trump has raised the great dispossession from impotence into the establishment's face, and this is why he is a contagion on the American political scene. He is pervasively mocked, accused and slandered in non-stop public fireworks of ad hominem hits, but the counter-attacks never engage what Trump has set his sights on the long stripping of America by
corporate globalization selecting for the limitless enrichment of the very rich living off an ever-growing take from public coffers and the impoverishment of America's working people. A primal rage unites the political establishment across party lines, but they can't say why. No defaming scorn and abuse is off limits, but Trump's underlying betrayal of the ruling game remains unspeakable on the stage.
The electoral dynamite of all the Americans who have lost all their good blue-collar jobs, social benefits and public infrastructures is recognized only in class condescension. But the facts cannot be denied of a corporate globalization effectively stripping the lower middle classes and the public realm itself with no-one in Washington establishment saying a word against the greatest transfer of wealth to the 1% in history.
Trump may deserve back as bad he gives. But this understanding keeps our eyes on the ego-contest which is the standard spectacle to avoid the real issues. The personal attacks only tells us how deep the rupture has become between Trump's campaign and the establishment on the issues kept out of sight. This is why the corporate politicians and media are almost as wound into one-way demonization of Trump as they are when they beat the drums of war against a designated Enemy abroad.
In the end, it may get to him as when he tries to find angry millions again from onside with an evangelical trumpet of abortion-is-murder just before the primary in Wisconsin.
Trump is a shameless opportunist, no doubt. Yet we continue to revolve within an ad hominem circle until we go deeper than the establishment morality tale of the evil of the stigma object the oldest propaganda trick in the book. The major money interests that are really at stake in the conflict between Trump and the political-economic establishment remain unconnected and blocked out. "Who will stop Trump' is not only now asked across America, but the world's media in China too. But nothing is less talked about than the globally powerful interests he has promised to rein back from the public troughs bleeding the country's capacities to build for and to employ its people. On this topic, there is only silence or abusive distortion frothing from the mouth. Joining the Dots of the Great Silence
Eventually people may ask why the establishment unanimously abhors Trump across party divisions which are otherwise unbridgeable. Even if he is a caricature of American privilege and self-promotion, who else could fight the corrupt corporate-state and media establishment? Who else could ever get public support from dispossessed masses and from inside the Republican Party base itself? Who else could take on the supra-dominant corporate interests of the war state, drug monopoly, health insurance racket, lobby-run foreign policy, off-shore tax evasion, and global trade with only corporate rights to profit taking jobs in the tens of millions from home workers, and still hold a large and right-wing voter base onside?
Conversely, what else than Trump's threat to the corporate-state establishment can explain the unity of voice and venom against an American paragon of wealth and chupzpah? What else could motivate a cross-party and corporate media hate campaign where there is nothing else in common across the condemning voices? Only those citizens depending on the deep system corruptions he promises to reverse are really threatened by Trump's candidacy. But how do these huge private interests go on getting away with a corporate-lobby state transferring every more public wealth and control to them at the expense of the American majority and their common interest when most people already dislike and are systemically exploited by them? They get away with it by no-one being able to do anything about it.
Trump represents a threat to these gargantuan public-trough interests that even the super clean and informed Ralph Nader candidacy for president never did. The corporate media and party machines just shut him down on the electoral stage so few even knew he was a presidential candidate. You can't do that with Trump. That is the very big problem for the otherwise seamless political and media establishment who are all in on the fabulous payoffs of this corporate state game. Trump's entire strategy is based on getting public attention, and he is a master at it, unbuyably rich, and the most watched person in America across the country and the world. He can't be shut up. Personal stigmatization and attack without let-up are the only way to gag his policies and turn the tide against him at the same time.
Maybe it will work in the end. It's how disastrous and bankrupting foreign aggressions and wars have been sold whatever the ruinous costs to the public paying for them. Until Wisconsin
When you join the dots to Trump also preaching a policy revolt against the insatiable corporate jaws feeding on trillions of dollars of public budgets in Washington, the meaning becomes clear. But that connected meaning is blacked out. In its place, the corporate media and politicians present an egomaniac blowhard bordering on fascism who preaches hate, racism and sexism. But the silenced policies he advocates are more like jumping into a crocodile pit. He is on record saying he will cut the Pentagon's budget "by 50%". No winning politician has ever dared to take on the military-industrial complex, with even Eisenhower only naming it in his parting speech. Trump also says that the US "must be neutral, an honest broker" on the Israeli-Palestine conflict as unspeakable as it gets in US politics. Big Pharma is also called out with "$400 billion to be saved by government negotiation of prices". The even more powerful HMO's are confronted by the possibility of a "one-payer system", the devil incarnate in America's corporate-welfare state.
Trump even challenges "the Enemy" cornerstone of US ideology when he says "wouldn't it be nice to get along with Russia and China for a change?" Not very fascist of him. He was also open to nationalizing the Wall Street banks after 2008. None of this sees the light of day in the hate-Trump culture that been effectively mounted across even left-right divisions. Most of all, Trump rejects the whole misnamed "free trade" global system because it has "hollowed out the lives of American workers" with rights to corporations to move anywhere to get cheaper labour and import back into the US tariff-free. But again the connected meaning is repressed. That Trump also wants to get the US out of foreign wars at the same time, the other great pillar of corporate globalization, is the real danger to the transnational corporate state he has set in motion.
All these policies threaten only the ruling money interests of America that depend on the superpower public purse to extend their transnational monopolies and multiply their wealth. This is the real establishment interest that has so far evaded the glare of publicity and critique of the Donald Trump phenomenon, bigger now with Bernie Sanders than any political challenge to the US system since the 1960's. Trump is certainly not a working-class hero. He is a pure capitalist, with all the furies of private interest and greed that capitalism selects for. But at this time he is a capitalist who is not rich from looting the public purse as the biggest annual cash flow, nor from exporting the costs of labor and taxes to foreign jurisdictions with subhuman standards that come back to the US as "necessary to compete". Trump has initiated a long overdue recognition of parasite capitalism eating out the life capacities of the US itself.
Even though both Cruz and Trump are closely connected to CNP, they endorsed Cruz. This made me wonder if Cruz was just as closely connected to the criminal element of the CIA.
Then I came across the Wayne Madsen story, claiming to show Cruz's father with Lee Harvey Oswald when he was handing out the Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets.
The man does resemble Cruz, and his biography fits the bill. Fighting with Castro, then against Castro, working in petroleum software in New Orleans and Dallas at critical times. So I've been digging into Ted's parents a bit, and I keep finding things that suggest Madsen may be correct...
RB Cruz and Associates was renamed Veritas and absorbed into the Schlumberger empire.
Quote:"He was traveling extensively ..." one of his friends Mrs. Igor Voshinin, would tell the Warren Commission.
The commission took notice that de Mohrenschildt was acquainted with several powerful people in Houston.....Lyndon Johnson: oil millionaire John Mecom...Another friend of de Mohrenschildt was Jean De Menil of Schlumberger Wells Services Company, who in 1961 permitted his New Orleans branch to be used as an ammunition conduit for the CIA.
...
In many respects, Halliburton seems to be an "American" version of Schlumberger...
Schlumberger also helped bring Fidel Castro to power by helping overthrow the Batista regime. It was involved in the assassination of Kennedy through company president Jean de Menil, the White Russian husband of Schlumberger heiress Dominique Schlumberger de Menil, acting through the New Orleans office of the Swiss-based company Permindex. Permindex had also organized several attempts on the life of French President Charles de Gaulle.
There are indications that both Halliburton and Brown & Root were also involved in Permindex. According to the Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal manuscript written under the nom de plume "William Torbitt," both Halliburton and George and Herman Brown were among the principal financiers of Permindex, along with Jean de Menil, mob lawyer Roy Cohn, Dallas oilman H.L. Hunt, and others.
Aside from Jean de Menil, Schlumberger comes up in another interesting way...
I'm not sure if that man will turn out to be Rafael Cruz, but aside from the photo I think it's plausible that Ted's parents were involved somehow. I'm far from an expert on the topic though, so any input is welcome.
That quote you point to is worthy of note. It is taken from no less than Garrison's Heritage of Stone:
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
With the Republican National Convention opening in Cleveland in less than two weeks, the party's presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, is facing a new round of controversies. On Saturday, his campaign tweeted an image showing Hillary Clinton, a pile of $100 bills and six-pointed stars shaped like the Star of David, along with the words "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!" The tweet immediately drew criticism for being anti-Semitic. Trump later deleted the tweet, then retweeted the same image, but with the star replaced by a circle. The original image shared by the presumptive Republican presidential candidate came from a Twitter user whose feed includes a number of violent and offensive images of African Americans, Muslims and immigrants. This comes as the Council on American-Islamic Relations is warning Donald Trump's comments are putting Muslim women in danger after his comments last week at a town hall when he was questioned by a supporter about Muslims working for the TSA.
TRUMP SUPPORTER: Just to mix quickly homeland security and jobs. Why aren't we putting our retireeour military retirees on that border or in TSA? Get rid of all these "hibijabis" they wear at TSA.
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I
TRUMP SUPPORTER: I've seen them myself.
DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, I understand that. Yeah.
TRUMP SUPPORTER: We need the veterans back in there to take it. They've fought for this country and defended it. They'll still do it.
DONALD TRUMP: OK.
TRUMP SUPPORTER: Thank you.
DONALD TRUMP: You know, and we are looking at that. And we are looking at that. We're looking at a lot of things.
AMY GOODMAN: At that same town hall in New Hampshire, Donald Trump joked about Mexico attacking the United States.
DONALD TRUMP: Mexicoand I respect Mexico. I respect their leaders. What they've done to us is incredible. Their leaders are so much smarter, so much sharper. And it's incredible. In fact, that could be a Mexican plane up there. They're getting ready to attack.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Part 2 of our in-depth look at Donald Trump. Last week, Democracy Now!'s Juan González and I visited Wayne Barrett, considered the preeminent journalist on Donald Trump. He has been tracking Trump for decades. His 1991 biography of Donald Trump was just republished as an ebook with the titleTrump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention. On Thursday, we aired Part 1 of the interview. Today we bring you Part 2 for the hour. We visited Wayne Barrett at his home. He talked about Trump's longtime lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn, who once served as a top aide to the red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy.
WAYNE BARRETT: I knew Roy Cohn. I knew him very well. And you just cannot understand how Donald could have been this close. I write in the book that they talked 15 times a day. One of the two stories hereI can't remember which onesaid it was five times a day. It's probably somewhere in between. Roy himself told me they talked 15 times a day. But there's no question that next to Fred Trump, Roy Cohn was the single greatest influence in Donald's life. And Roy is incandescent evil. I mean, I would sit with him, and Iyou know, it was enough to make you rush back to church, the Satanic feeling that he would give you. He would eat with his fingers. And we would be at 21. He would eat with his fingers. He wouldhe carried a little glass in his jacket that he would take out and drink in this little glass. He would pop a white pill when he didn't think you were looking. And hehis house was filled with frogs. He was the weirdest guy. He was into the strangest stuff. He was a chicken hawk after little boys, and yet he was the most virulently anti-gay guy you could imagine. And so, that was Donald's mentor and constant sidekick, who represented all five of the organized crime families in the City of New York.
AMY GOODMAN: For young people who don't know Roy Cohn's background, back to McCarthy
WAYNE BARRETT: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: can you explain who he is and what it meant for Donald Trump to learn at his knee?
WAYNE BARRETT: Yeah, well, he starts out asI think he was 23 years old when he was the chief counsel to Joe McCarthy doing all those hearings. He was extremely wired into the Reagan White House. He helped make Donald Trump's sister Maryanne a federal judge in 1983. He was the ultimate fixer power player in New York for a whole period of time. He died of AIDS in 1986. But for a particular block of time, he was extremely influential with the Beame administration, because, even more so than Fred Trump, he was totally wired into Abe Beame, because he had knocked Mario Biaggi out of the race. Mario Biaggi was a very popular, charismatic congressman from the Bronx. And Roy leaked that he had been before a federal grand jury. And initially Biaggi denied it, and ultimately it was established that he had been. And that's why he couldn't run. And that was Roy getting Biaggi out of the race for Beame. So Beame was incredibly beholden to him. So he had enormous influence in the city underground.
I would write stories about his parking lots. Strangely enough, his cash cow was city-owned parking lots by the water, which were leased by the Bureau of Marine and Aviation, and he controlled the companies that had the parking lots that were city-owned. And it was just an enormous amount of money. He never paid any taxes. He pretended to have no income. He had an incredible cash empire. And the guy who actually leased those parking lots to him, Rick Mazzeo, wound up under federal investigation, and they found his body in the trunk of a car. And all he did was give parking lots to Roy Cohn. That's what he did for a living.
And so, you just look at theas I said, you know, he was the middle man between Donald and all these mob guys. You asked about the apartments at Trump Tower. John Cody gets an apartment at Trump Tower. John Cody is a Gambino crime family associate who I had lunch with while I was doing the book. I had lunch with him at Windows on the World. And
AMY GOODMAN: On top of the World Trade Center.
WAYNE BARRETT: Yes. And it must have been under federal surveillance, because, two weeks after the lunch, they busted him for trying to kill the guy whoBobby Sasso, who had taken over Local 282, which was his union. That was the concrete delivery men. They delivered all the concrete to all the sites in New York, totally mob-controlled. And so they busted him for trying to kill a guy. He had already been in jail. He goes back to jail. Well, he had ahe denied it was a mistress, but he certainly told me that they were very close, Verina Hixon. I talk about her in the book. She got not only an apartment in Trump Tower, it's the only apartment with a pool. It's right underneath Donald's apartment, right? And all of it built for John Cody, because Trump Tower is a total concrete structure. It was the first concrete structure like that built in New York. So, John Cody had complete control over this. And so he gets this apartment. He actually invested in the apartment himself, as I established in the book. And Verina Hixon is there, who I met with a few times. She used to meet me in Central Park. She didn't want to meet me in Trump Tower. But we talked many times. And, you knowand there's John hanging out in Trump Tower all the time, right underneath Donald Trump's apartment. And he's a total wise guy. He's a total wise guy. And, you know, he said to me
AMY GOODMAN: You mean by that a mob guy.
WAYNE BARRETT: Yeah. He said to me, "Oh, I always used Roy as the go-between with Donald. Roy was the guy whoRoy Cohn was the guy who set us up." You know, so this is the relationships that flowed throughyou know, the FBI did an affidavit saying that the heads ofthe commission, the heads of the five crime families, would meet in Roy Cohn's office, because the government couldn't eavesdrop. It was a lawyer-client relationship. That's what they did.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: And you're talking here about the five families in New York, but, of course, Donald Trump's signature developments occurred in Atlantic City, where, as I recall, the Philadelphia mob was in charge of whatever happened in Atlantic City. Can you talk about his relationship there in Atlantic City?
WAYNE BARRETT: Yeah, well, no question. I mean, Nicky Scarfo
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: Nicky Scarfo.
WAYNE BARRETT: Nick Scarfo, that's the bloodiest crime family in the history of the United States. It's undervalued because it wasn't based in New York. It didn't get the coverage, you know? But they controlled Local 54, which was the hotel workers' union. This is not me talking, this is a finding in federal court, that Nicky Scarfo controlled the hotel workers' union. And when they would strike all the casinos in Atlantic City, they wouldn't strike Donald. You know, when he first goes down there into Atlantic City to acquire his first parcels, he buys them at a premium, overpays, from underbosses of the Nicky Scarfo crime family. He has a relationship with these guys throughout the early days of his time down there. And it'sit was really a pretty remarkable set of deals that he did. Now, you hadMike Matthews was the mayor of Atlantic City, who was totallyproven in court, went to jailtotally owned by the Nicky Scarfo crime family. And he was Donald's number one ally. They were feeding him money, contributions, illegal contributions, but they were feeding Matthews money. And that's just one part of this intricate relationship that gave birth to Donald's casino empire in Atlantic City.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this casino empire and what it meant? You actually, unlike most people in this country, got to see Donald Trump's tax records?
WAYNE BARRETT: Yeah, I did. I did.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you get to? Because he's refusing to reveal them.
WAYNE BARRETT: Well, they werethey were part of the record of the Casino Control Commission in the '70s. He would have to submit his tax returns for the first casino that he did down there, at least, Trump Plaza. I mean, one of the great ironies is that his second casino, Trump Castle, was actually built by the Hiltons. And the Hilton family, out of Chicago, was denied a license by the Casino Control Commission, which was all done to benefit Donald. Donald then gets Trump Castle. And the rationale for denying it, which is what they stated in their decision, was that he wasthat the Hilton family was represented by a mob lawyer out of Chicago. Here he's got Roy Cohn, and that's no bar at all. That's no bar at all. And so, the irony of it, that's how he got his second casino.
And so, the casino empire there, what's so interesting to me is, you know, when we had the Nevada primary, he was always at the Trump Hotel down in Las Vegas. But that's only a hotel. You know, there's no casino there. Right? Why is there no casino there? His partner in it, Phil Ruffin, already owns a different casino, so he can qualify for a license. But they build a hotel without a casinoin the heart of Las Vegas. BecauseI mean, my only conclusion is that he couldn't get a license in Nevada. The guy might be president of the United States, but here they have this hotel without a casino in the heart of Vegas. Right?
I mean, I hadwhen my book came out, I started getting visited by these state troopers from Missouri, because he had applied for a riverboat casino license in Missouri. And these guys were so thorough. They came, and they met me in my house in Ocean City, New Jerseywe call it the house Trump bought, with the book advance, you know. And then they would meet me in my house and at The VillageI mean, my office at The Village Voice. They'd go through all mythey werethey came back and forth. They denied himthey were about to deny him, I should say, a riverboat license in Missouri.
You realize he's not gotten a casino license since he got one for the Taj. He had the DGE, the Division of Gaming Enforcement, and the Casino Control Commission in New Jersey fixed. He had ait was rigged for Donald. I don't think there's any question in my mind about that. And what wouldn't be? It's a company town. The only thing in it is casinos. He owned four of them. He was only legally allowed to own three of them, so when he bought the fourth one, that just became a hotel, and, you know, they closed down the casino in it and just ran it as a hotel. But, to me, there's no other explanation that I can find as to why he does not have a casino in his hotel in Las Vegas, other than he couldn't go through the licensing procedure. He was given in 2004 some kind of a clearance by the casino regulators there of suitability. But that's just a preliminary step. If you're actually going to get a license, you've got to go through an intensive background. And he withdrew before he was going to be denied in Missouri. And he's never applied for a license in Nevada, where he has a giant hotel. It's kind of ironic to me that a guy who wants to be president of the United States is afraid to go through a gaming commission licensing procedure.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
AMY GOODMAN: We conclude our conversation with Trump biographer Wayne Barrett, who has tracked the Republican presumptive presidential nominee for decades. His biography of Trump has been republished as an ebook; it's calledTrump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention. Juan González and I interviewed him last week at his home in Brooklyn. I asked Wayne about those harmed by Trump's business practices, from the Polish workers who built Trump Tower to the investors in the casino he never built in Mexico.
WAYNE BARRETT: His pathway to success is littered with bodies. You know, I hear him talk about the thousands of Latinos he's employed. You know, I don't know what he's talking about. I'm sure, Juan, you're aware there are almost no Latinos in Atlantic City. You couldn't employ Latinos in Atlanticthere's a lot of black people there, but it has no significant Latino population. I was in and out of his casinos all the time. I never saw many Latino workers. I don't know where these thousands of Latinos that have supposedly worked for him have worked for him, but it wouldn't be Atlantic City, and I don't know where else he ever employed thousands of people.
And certainly, the Taj, for examplejust talk about the Taj, which was, at the time, you know, this ishe had this incredible downfall where his personal lifethis is when he dumps his wife and children, and goes with Marla. At the same time, when he was on this fast track, '87, '88'88 was the disaster year, you know, where he makes one bad judgment after another. So, he is trying to get the City of New York, Ed Koch, to support the building of the tallest skyscraper in the history of the country on the West Side Yards forNBC headquarters, and at the same time he takes on the Taj, which will be the largest casino in the history of the world. So he doesn't get the approvals from Koch, so he doesn't build the NBC tower on the West Side, but he goes ahead and tries to build the Taj. And he so overleverages everythingjunk bonds, adding to cost all over the place, just one bobble after another. It was justso it was doomed from the day it opened. It could never make the payments. It could never make the bond payments. And so they stiffed all the bondholders. But they also stiffed all the small contractors in Atlantic City, you know, guysyou know, mom-and-pop shops who did all the work there. I used to walk through it while it was under construction, and the place was just filled with contractors. I talked to many of them. And they didn't know they were all going to get stiffed in the end, but they got 20 cents, 30 cents on the dollar or nothing. And he just stiffed so many of them. So, small businesses went out of business.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the Polish workers at Trump Tower?
WAYNE BARRETT: The Polish workers at Trump Tower became a kind of famous case. And the Bonwit Teller building was part of the site. And thisyou know, when you look at that site, this is the genius of Donald Trump, how he managed to assemble that site. You know, I don't think he can find a better site in America, maybe in the world, than the location that he had. So, that was part of his genius at the time, was assembling these kinds of sites and making these acquisitions. But he was completely unconcerned about the workers who worked in the demolition of the Bonwit Teller building, who literally slept there. And they were all immigrant Polish workers, hundreds of them, many of whom got very sick as a result of working on that site. He's always tried to put some distance between, but his office was right across the street. His office wasyou know, how he could claim that he didn't know what was going on in that site, which has been his claimand there's no question but that these workers were abused to an enormous degree.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, as we continue our look at Donald Trump. About a thousand housekeepers, cooks, bellmen and others at Trump's Taj Mahal Atlantic City casino went on strike Friday and through the weekend, demanding reinstatement of health, pension and other benefits eliminated during one of Trump's bankruptcy proceedings. We return now to our conversation with Wayne Barrett, considered the preeminent journalist on Donald Trump. Wayne Barrett has been tracking Trump for decades, his 1991 biography just republished as an ebookits title, Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention. Juan González and I spoke to Wayne Barrett at his home, where he's largely been confined due to his battle with lung cancer. We asked Wayne Barrett about Donald Trump's unkept promise to build affordable housing in Atlantic City in order to build larger projects.
WAYNE BARRETT: Yeah, well, I mean, I think that's one of the undercovered parts of the Atlantic City story. And I actually think that the Times and The Washington Post have done excellent stories on hisand Politicoon his Atlantic City debacle, really. But he made a commitment in Atlantic City. And you remember Tony Gliedman. Tony Gliedman was the city's housing commissioner who went to work for Donald. Housing was his specialty, and Gliedman helped negotiate these agreements with Atlantic City. Four out of five of the mayors went to jail during the period that Donald was dominant there, and he had incredible relationships with most of them. But he signed these agreements, because he was getting city-owned property near the Taj. He was getting all kinds of agreements from the city regarding roadways and access to Trump Castle, which is out at the marina. It's not on the boardwalk. And so, for these favors from the city government, he agreed to build low-income housing. And he had the guy to do it. He had the guy who'd done it in New York. And they made all kinds of commitments that were written right into agreements with the city of Atlantic City.
And then he failed on all of them. I mean, you know, people don't realize it, but, you know, you drive into Atlantic City, you can go right intoTrump Plaza is right off of the highway. It's really the best site in Atlantic City. You can drive right into the garage. You walk out of the garage, they have this moving platform that will carry you right into the casino. Now, it doesn't exist anymore, but I'm talking about when it did. And then there's no windows. So, you don't even have to look out at this poverty that's just cataclysmic. And it's right outside the window. It's like an alternative universe located right within a city that's decimated, that's desolateright?and withso poverty-stricken. And he never built any of the units. And he leaves town. From being the king of Atlantic City, here's a guy who now laughs about how he got out and, you know, with all of his cash flow, got out just in time.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: I wanted to ask you about a subject that's been raised quite a bit during the campaign, even by some of the top Republican leadersMitt Romney, for oneDonald Trump's tax returns. Why do you think he's resisting so much being able to make his tax returns public?
WAYNE BARRETT: Well, I don't think we have to speculate about it. And the reason I say that is Tim O'Brien, who was my research assistant on my book and subsequently wrote his ownTrumpNation, and he is now at Bloomberg. He's the editor of the opinion section of Bloomberg Media. And he has seen the tax returns. Now, he hasn't seen them for the most recent year, but he saw them for a number of years. Donald Trump sued him over his book. And, you know, it was sort ofwhen my book came out, he publicly threatened to sue me, but he never did. Now, I name 25 mob associates of Donald Trump or whatever, and that doesn't motivate him to sue. But if you say he's not worth what he claims to be worth, that's what Timhe sued Tim because Tim said he was only worth $200-$300 million. Now, Tim was a business editor at the Times. He was a young guy, just got an MBA from Columbia when he was my assistant, but he has an incredible business head. And so, he sued Tim over that. The litigation went on for six or seven years. And Tim prevailed. But during the course of the litigation, Tim's lawyers demanded that Donald make the tax returns available. And they did for a number of years. And so, Tim signed a confidentiality agreement, so he can't specifically reveal what is in the tax returns, but he wrote a piece for Bloomberg very recently that said Donald's not releasing his tax returns because the income will be far less than he claims it is, the assets will be worth far less than what he says it is, and his charitable contributions are virtually nonexistent. So those are the three primary reasons why he won't release these returns.
You know, he has made a careerwhen I say I don't know why he's never been prosecuted, maybe the prime time that he could have been prosecuted was at the time of his downfall in 1990 and '91. Well, you know, the banks kept him alive, as he was too big to fail. So they kept him alive. But I wrote in the bookhe certainly didn't sue when I said itI didn't say that he had madesubmitted false financial statements to the bankers to get a billion dollars in personally guaranteed loans. I said he submitted fraudulent ones. Right? And I lay out a case for that in the book. He was engaged in completely defrauding the banks, and the banks knew it. OK? And they were giving him the loans anyway. So, they kept him alive. But even more so than that, the House Banking Committee wanted to do public hearings about it; the banks wouldn't cooperate. The district attorney of Manhattan was a big friend of Donald's. Donald was his second-biggest giver. Robert Morgenthau's second-biggest giver was Donald Trump. Donald was the chairman of the Police Athletic League, which was Morgenthau's biggest charity. So he was extremely close. He hiredAndy Maloney was the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District. He hired Maloney's brother. Right? Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, and we know how close they got. I wrote a whole story about how their relationship developed. I was at Rudy Giuliani's first fundraiser when he decided to run for mayor, and there's Donald at the main table. He's the co-chair of the first Rudy Giuliani fundraiser for the mayorality in 1989. So his relationships with prosecutors and the fact that the bankersthey were embarrassed by what they had done; they didn't want any investigation of this. So the combination of the two gavegave them a passgave him a pass.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about his relationship with prosecutorsChris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, formerly a prosecutor. What about this close alliance? As so many Republicans are running away from Trump, Chris Christie has wrapped himself around Trump.
WAYNE BARRETT: Yeah, I don't think Chris Christie, you know, has hadDonald has had extraordinary relationships, when he was the power in Atlantic City, with a series of governors, and it didn't matter which party. I mean, he had an incredibly close relationship with Tom Kean. But remember hisyou know, his political adviser all these years has been Roger Stone, who ran Tom Kean's campaign for governor the first time down in New Jersey. And so, he's always had an in. Roger has always had a special relationship with Jersey politicians. I don't know if he has one with Chris Christie. I frankly don't know. But he has a long history of that. And so, Roger Stone, who is really the walking, living son of Roy CohnI mean, absolutely raised by Roy Cohnlived in the townor spent a great deal of time in the townhouse that Roy Cohn ran the law firm out of.
And so, but as to Christie and Donald, it sort of has surprised me. I can't really quite figure out why this embrace. I mean, I think the ultimate thing, since he's already said Christie will be his chief of staff, I'm predicting that Rudy will be his vice-presidential candidate. And so, then, between the three of them, you know, we'll have thisyou know, maybe Newt figures in there somewhere. I don't know. But, you know, Newt, RudyRudy has already said he's going to be in charge of homeland security. This is a group Ithe relationship with Rudy is deep and very disturbing.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: Let me ask youpull back a little bit for the big picture. I mean, this is a sordid story of somebody who had been buying politicians, been involved with the worst criminal elements in American society, at the same time, a crony capitalism of the worst sort. Why do you think he's been able to gather so much support in the public imagination? You say at one point in your introduction, everyonethis is when Trump was announcing for president"Everyone else in the movie that Donald is making with his lifethat morning and beyondis just an extra."
WAYNE BARRETT: Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it'sthe thing that maybe disturbs me the most about the media coverage of him, particularly television, is to call him a populist. You know, we're now saying that what just happened in Britain was supposedly a populist expression. Well, the whole history of populism is against elites, you know, and what's driving the Trump campaign, and what I think drove the Brexit vote, is not animosity towards elites. That may be a small part of it, but what's really driving it is antagonism towards immigrants, mostly minorities. That's what's driving the Trump campaign. I thought it was pretty remarkable, when you will listen to the Dana Bashes and the other commentators on CNN, one election after another, when he carried all but Texas of the old Confederacy, and they would, one night after another, say, "Isn't it remarkable that a kid from Queens is winning in Alabama?" instead of offering the logical explanation for it, which is that it's naked racism that he is appealing to. They instead say, "It's the thirst for an outsider. It'swhat's driving this is the thirst for an outsider," when on the same day they renominated Richard Shelby, who actually had a right-wing opponent and who was the chair of banking in the Senate and who was getting all of his money from Goldman Sachs and every other house, you know, contributing to him. He's an embodiment of the insider, and they nominated him overwhelmingly, so he didn't even face a runoff. There were two candidates running against him. And theyso, these people who were attracted by an outsider were all apparently simultaneously attracted by the ultimate insider.
Well, what explains that? I mean, I think it is so clear that race is the driving motive of this campaign, the driving cause for its success. The scapegoating of everybody who's not a white male is what'sis what's driving this candidacy, and it's led to its success so far. Whether or not there's enough of that to elect him president, I mean, this still is the same country that elected Barack Obama twice and, after four years of experience with him, re-elected him in 2012. It's not a dramatically different country than it was in 2012, so I got to believe that there are limits to this race card. But that's the only explanation, to me, for going from one unbelievably manipulative, contrived, false statement after another, attacking a judgeI actually think that attacking the judge may have been not a mistake on his part, but something very consciously done to say, "Look, even a big guy like me, they're screwing with even me, these Mexicans. You know, look, I know what you've got. I know you got a problem back there, but they can even take me on!" You know, and so I think that race is the absolute undercurrent of this. It shouldn't be an undercurrent. For a brief period of time there, when the Mexican judge thing appeared, the television media seemed to be willing to talk about race. I think, you know, we're seeing that change again. But they have to keep thistelevision people have to keep this thing alive. If she's ahead by 13 points, how many millions do they lose?
AMY GOODMAN: Wayne Barrett is an investigative reporter. He worked with The Village Voice for 37 years. His biography of Donald Trump has just been republished as an ebook; it's called Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention. We'll be back with Wayne Barrett in a minute.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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) and would be treading carefully after the recent gargantuan Gawker pay out re Hulk Hogan.