Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "Ex-GOP strategist on Trump's GOP: 'Burn it down and start over':" video.

  1. No need to worry, Trump began taking a blowtorch to the Republican party back in 2016. The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been  riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party,  that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone. The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means. Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy. Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party of today, isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want. Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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  2. In April 2018, a federal judge finalized the $25 million settlement between Trump and students of his now defunct fake Trump University with New York's attorney general claiming “victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve.” The order from a U.S. District Judge came a year after he first approved the settlement. It marks the end of two class-action lawsuits and a civil lawsuit from NY accusing Trump of "swindling thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars through Trump University," in the words of NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. "This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university," Schneiderman said in a statement. Trump University was not an actual university but a for-profit seminar scam, and former students waged a years-long battle claiming the course misled them with claims of teaching real estate success. The program ended in 2010. Some elderly plaintiffs who paid $20,000-plus in tuition died waiting to receive their checks from the settlement. November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign. Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment. The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests. Trump and his talentless children had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports. There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed. In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala. Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits. Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket.. The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University. In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
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