The Official "Damned Trump" Thread

[Bucky Ball]

Trump reported making more than $1.6 billion while president

Donald Trump reported making more than $1.6 billion in outside revenue and income during his four years as President of the United States, according to a review of his financial disclosures by CREW. While Trump publicly took credit for donating his taxpayer-funded salary, that ended up being less than 0.1% of the revenue and income he disclosed during his presidency. Far from being a sacrifice, the donation was merely a fig leaf to cover up four years of brazen corruption.

A major part of his Trump Organization revenue came from the marquee properties that he often visited during his presidency. The Trump Hotel in DC, his now “home” Mar-a-Lago and his golf courses Doral, Bedminister and Trump National Washington brought in a combined $620,709,659 over the last four years. He paid a combined 399 visits to these properties as president. 

Members of Congress, his administration, political supporters, special interests and foreign governments flocked to his properties in numbers never seen before. He also, over and over again, directed government spending to his properties, from his insistence on doing government business at Mar-a-Lago to Mike Pence staying at Doonbeg when he had meetings all the way on the other side of Ireland to his attempt to host the G-7 Conference at his struggling Trump National Doral property. 

People who wished to influence the president—lobbyists, politicians, foreign and state governments—paid a premium to see and be seen at the Trump Hotel, rubbing elbows with the president and his closest advisers. With Trump out of power, although threatening America with another run, it remains to be seen whether his businesses will still be seen as a new breed of corporate and foreign lobbying. In the wake of his attempted insurrection, many companies cut ties with his businesses. Only time will tell if that holds. 

When Trump failed to separate himself from his businesses—and in fact used the presidency to increase his business earnings—he made it clear that his top priority was his personal profits. In that regard, the Trump administration was a ringing success. 

However, as Trump constantly reminded us, he did donate his official yearly salary. All $400,000 of it.

https://www.citizensforethics.org/report...president/

Luxury travel group drops association with the Traitors Trumps.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/24/business/...index.html

[Silver]

Trump lashes out at Fauci and Birx after CNN documentary

Politico.com

Former President Donald Trump on Monday attacked Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, his administration’s top coronavirus advisers, in a highly personal — and at times inaccurate — statement released after the two criticized the administration for its response to the pandemic.

“Based on their interviews, I felt it was time to speak up about Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, two self-promoters trying to reinvent history to cover for their bad instincts and faulty recommendations, which I fortunately almost always overturned,” Trump said. “They had bad policy decisions that would have left our country open to China and others, closed to reopening our economy, and years away from an approved vaccine — putting millions of lives at risk.”

Read further:

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Trump’s statement amounted to a point-by-point rebuttal of comments from Fauci and Birx in a CNN documentary that aired Sunday, which featured former Trump health officials, some of whom were critical of the former president.

Fauci said the decision “to go all out and develop a vaccine” was “the best decision that I’ve ever made with regard to an intervention as director of the institute,” referring to his role at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The agency’s vaccine research center helped develop a key component of ultimately successful shots from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.

But Fauci’s characterization drew Trump’s ire. In his statement on Monday, the ex-president called the vaccines authorized for emergency use “American vaccines,” even though the first vaccine to be authorized in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration was developed by the Turkish immigrants who founded BioNTech in Germany, and later collaborated with Pfizer to bring it to market. Pfizer, which manufactures the vaccine, did not receive development money from the government.

“Dr. Fauci was incapable of pressing the FDA to move it through faster. I was the one to get it done, and even the fake news media knows and reports this,” Trump said, even though Fauci, in his capacity as NIAID director, did not have the authority to pressure the FDA to make such decisions.

Fauci also told CNN that Trump’s social media use ran counter to what the administration’s response should have been. Birx also criticized the inconsistent messaging from the federal government as “fault number one.”

“The thing that hit me like a punch to the chest was then all of a sudden he got up and says, ‘Liberate Virginia, liberate Michigan,’ and I said to myself, ‘Oh my goodness, what is going on here?’” Fauci told CNN, referring to a series of Trump tweets. “It shocked me because it was such a jolt to what we were trying to do.”

In his statement, Trump labeled Fauci as “the king of ‘flip-flops’ and moving the goalposts to make himself look as good as possible,” while adding that he ignored the recommendations of both Fauci and Birx. Because the coronavirus was unknown to the world before late 2019, scientists and health officials fighting the pandemic frequently revised their advice as they have learned more about the virus and the disease it causes. And one official who worked inside the Trump White House said the former president's criticisms were off the mark.

“Bit of revisionist history from the former president. We all had our issues with Fauci and his media marathons but very few people — including President Trump — had anything negative to say about Dr. Birx,” said the former White House official.

Birx told CNN that the Trump administration could have done more to prevent hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. So far, nearly 550,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus.

“I look at it this way — the first time, we have an excuse. There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge,” she said. “All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”

Trump criticized Birx for not following her own advice, citing a family trip she took the day after Thanksgiving, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was advising Americans not to travel over the holidays. Birx later announced that she would retire from her position.

In the past, Birx has said that she “always” thought of quitting the Trump administration over the hyperpartisan nature of the workplace.

“Dr. Birx was a terrible medical advisor, which is why I seldom followed her advice,” Trump said in his statement.

In the interview that aired Sunday, Birx also spoke about a phone call she received from Trump after speaking publicly on CNN in August about the spread of Covid-19.

“Everybody in the White House was upset with that interview and the clarity that I brought about the epidemic,” she said. “I got called by the president. It was very uncomfortable, very direct and very difficult to hear.”

Trump denied that there was a “very difficult” phone call, and criticized Birx for her policies, which he said “would have led us directly into a COVID caused depression.”

“Time has proven me correct,” he said. “I only kept Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx on because they worked for the U.S. government for so long — they are like a bad habit!”

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[Bucky Ball]

Donald Trump was so in favor of a vaccine that he and his wife hid the fact they had their doses in the White House. LOL
The companies that produced them took no research money from the Feds, and were already developing vaccines. Trump had nothing to do with them.
Trump had no distribution plan. As always, as during his entire life, his management of COVID was a total failure.
He failed at every business he tried, and he failed totally at the presidency. He will go down in history as THE worst president ever.
Donald Trump is a liar, and has always been a liar. Nothing he says can be taken seriously.
He lied about the election, (said he won in a landslide), the very same "landslide" that Republicans are hell-bent on changing the conditions for, so it can't happen again. LOL
Republicans trying to change election laws are telling Trump he's a liar. They think we're as stupid as they are. He lied about COVID, said it would go away.
There is pretty much nothing he didn't lie about. He told the insurrectionists he would be going with them to the capitol. He lied about that also.

He's still the NY real-estate con-man he's been his whole life. He tries to call a crap hovel a mansion. The sad thing is he's still bilking the suckers out of money.

[Bucky Ball]

Donald Trump was so in favor of a vaccine that he and his wife hid the fact they had their doses in the White House. LOL
The companies that produced them took no research money from the Feds, and were already developing vaccines. Trump had nothing to do with them.
Trump had no distribution plan. As always, as during his entire life, his management of COVID was a total failure.
He failed at every business he tried, and he failed totally at the presidency. He will go down in history as THE worst president ever.
Donald Trump is a liar, and has always been a liar. Nothing he says can be taken seriously.
He lied about the election, (said he won in a landslide), the very same "landslide" that Republicans are hell-bent on changing the conditions for, so it can't happen again. LOL
Republicans trying to change election laws are telling Trump he's a liar. They think we're as stupid as they are. He lied about COVID, said it would go away.
There is pretty much nothing he didn't lie about. He told the insurrectionists he would be going with them to the capitol. He lied about that also.

He's still the NY real-estate con-man he's been his whole life. He tries to call a crap hovel a mansion. The sad thing is he's still bilking the suckers out of money.

BTW, don't give any credit to the pharmaceutical companies for *not* taking Federal money for vaccine research and development. 
The thing is, it's a part of their *racket*. They get paid twice. They deduct all the research costs from their income taxes, and then on top of getting paid that way, 
they piss and moan in front of congress about why they "need" to charge astronomical prices to recoup the costs of development, when in fact they've already been paid once already for their development costs and get paid again very well with what they charge. There is a reason the pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry in the US. Do they really need 26% return annually on invested money ?

[Angrboda]

Vaccines in general aren't profitable. Covid is a special case, but thinking one can simply compare it to other pharmaceuticals as an apples to apples comparison is likely hasty.

[Bucky Ball]

Vaccines in general aren't profitable.  Covid is a special case, but thinking one can simply compare it to other pharmaceuticals as an apples to apples comparison is likely hasty.

Are you saying Big Pharma doesn't write off the cost of development for vaccines ? What exactly is your point ?

[Angrboda]

Vaccines in general aren't profitable.  Covid is a special case, but thinking one can simply compare it to other pharmaceuticals as an apples to apples comparison is likely hasty.

Are you saying Big Pharma doesn't write off the cost of development for vaccines ? What exactly is your point ?

The point is comparing BigPharma's business model on non-vaccine products to both vaccines in general and the Covid vaccine, in particular, is at best misleading.

[Bucky Ball]

Are you saying Big Pharma doesn't write off the cost of development for vaccines ? What exactly is your point ?

The point is comparing BigPharma's business model on non-vaccine products to both vaccines in general and the Covid vaccine, in particular, is at best misleading.

OK. Lets hear what the differences are.

[Fake Messiah]

And this is from a guy who has a special button on his table for Coke:

Donald Trump demands boycott of Coke, Delta, UPS in Georgia voter law fight

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-de...ht-1580906

[Rev. Rye]

The point is comparing BigPharma's business model on non-vaccine products to both vaccines in general and the Covid vaccine, in particular, is at best misleading.

OK. Lets hear what the differences are.

Well, once the R&D is taken care of, vaccines are relatively inexpensive to make and sell and, except for flu shots or tetanus boosters or shit like that, are only given out once or twice per person per lifetime.

Now look at drugs. They may be expensive or inexpensive, but they can easily be sold at a stupefyingly high profit margin, and, of course, if you have a prescription, there’s a good chance you’ll need it refilled, and, of course, depending on how much a given person needs to take it, we’re talking one drug with higher profit margins taken once (or several times) daily for what could very well be years.

And, funny thing is, this is backed up by data. The article I linked to points out that vaccines only give pharmaceutical companies about $24 billion per year. Of an industry whose revenues in 2019 were $1.25 trillion.