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Thread: Trump: Illusion, Mist and Bought?

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    Trump rails about the problem of illegal immigrants, but a Federal Judge found he had, "conspired to avoid paying pension and welfare-fund contributions by hiring the immigrants to demolish the old Bonwit Teller building on East 57th Street at Fifth Avenue to make way for Trump Tower."


    http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/27/ny...ion-funds.html

    Judge Says Trump Tower Builders Cheated Union on Pension Funds
    By CONSTANCE L. HAYS
    Published: April 27, 1991

    They were Polish immigrants who suffered low wages and long hours, lived on junk food and sometimes slept at the work site -- all in the interest of meeting the deadline to build Trump Tower, the gilded centerpiece of Donald Trump's real-estate empire, which has all but disintegrated in recent months.

    But now, after years of legal wrangling, the empire must pay.

    In a ruling released on Thursday, a Federal judge found that Mr. Trump, a group of his associates and a union official conspired to avoid paying pension and welfare-fund contributions by hiring the immigrants to demolish the old Bonwit Teller building on East 57th Street at Fifth Avenue to make way for Trump Tower.

    The ruling, by Judge Charles E. Stewart Jr. of the Southern District, found, in the behavior of the various defendants, "a conspiracy to deprive the funds of their rightful contribution."


    The case began eight years ago when a retired member of the union, Housewreckers' Local 95, sued to collect the contributions for the Polish workers, who were not members of the union but were employed in numbers dwarfing those of union members on the job.

    Lawyers for the plaintiff, Harry J. Diduck, said they expected a judgment of $1 million to $2 million, which will be deposited in the union pension and welfare funds. No awards will be made to individual workers.

    Mr. Diduck charged that Mr. Trump, who was desperate to meet both the deadlines for the project and for his complex financing requirements, overlooked the use of the undocumented workers, who put in 12-hour days, 7 days a week and in some cases even slept at the site. Mr. Trump was named as a defendant in the lawsuit, along with the Trump-Equitable Fifth Avenue Company, a partnership he formed with the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, which was also named. William Kaszycki, a contractor who supplied the Polish workers, and his company, Kaszycki and Sons Contractors, were also named. Trial Took Place Last Summer

    A 16-day trial took place last summer in which Mr. Trump testified that he did not know that undocumented workers were on the job and that Kaszycki and Sons did all the hiring. But in his ruling, Judge Stewart wrote that the Trump employee overseeing the demolition, Thomas Macari, was well aware of their existence.

    "The Polish workers were obvious not only in numbers but also in appearance," the judge wrote in his decision. "In contrast to the union workers, the nonunion Polish workers were distinguished by the fact that most of them did not wear hard hats." Mr. Macari would appear on the site with cash to pay the Polish workers, the judge's decision said, and at times the Polish workers staged "very visible work stoppages because they were not being paid their wages," which at $4 or $5 an hour were at least less than half what union workers were paid.

    The union's shop steward on the job, in charge of submitting reports showing how many workers were there, reported 12 to 16 union workers a week when there were "considerable numbers of Polish workers doing demolition covered by the contract," sometimes as many as 150, the judge wrote. Pension fund administrators were dependent on those reports to cross-check what was being reported by the Trump contractors. Mr. Trump's lawyer, Fran Jacobs, did not respond to two telephone messages left for her at her office yesterday.

    Here is a prior article in the New York Times regarding this case, which has more detail about the UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT WORKERS.

    http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/14/ny...pagewanted=all

    After 15 Years in Court, Workers' Lawsuit Against Trump Faces Yet Another Delay
    By SELWYN RAAB
    Published: June 14, 1998

    Eighteen years ago, Wojciech Kozak helped build Trump Tower, the skyscraper jewel in Donald J. Trump's real-estate empire. Today, Mr. Kozak recalls that time with nightmare memories of backbreaking 12-hour shifts and of being cheated with 200 other undocumented Polish immigrants out of meager wages and fringe benefits.

    ''We worked in horrid, terrible conditions,'' Mr. Kozak said of the six months he spent in 1980 wielding a sledgehammer and a blowtorch in demolishing the Bonwit Teller Building on Fifth Avenue to make way for Trump Tower. ''We were frightened illegal immigrants and did not know enough about our rights.''

    Mr. Kozak, like other laborers on that job, has no hope of collecting about $4,000 in back wages from a contracting company that began the demolition and later became insolvent. But after almost two decades, the demolition workers are still struggling to compel Mr. Trump and his business associates to compensate a union's welfare funds and thus increase pension and medical benefits for some of the Polish workers.

    Mr. Kozak is now a party and witness in a class-action lawsuit that has meandered through the Federal courts for 15 years and charges that Mr. Trump owes $4 million to the union welfare funds for the work the Poles performed. Filed in 1983, the suit has been bogged down by a torrent of motions and appeals of judicial decisions and by the deaths of a judge, a lawyer, the original lead plaintiffs, an important witness and two of Mr. Trump's co-defendants.

    In an effort to resolve the tangled case -- one of the oldest on the civil dockets of the Federal District Court in Manhattan -- Judge Kevin T. Duffy last month warned lawyers for both sides to be prepared to begin a jury trial on 48 hours' notice.

    But on Thursday, in a development that could delay the trial yet again, Judge Duffy ordered the case assigned to another judge. Lawyers for both sides said the 48-hour notice was still in effect, but that it was unclear when the trial would start.

    Mr. Trump denies that he was aware of the working conditions at the site in 1980 or that any of the demolition workers were undocumented immigrants. He is also chal lenging claims that he is liable for payments to the union that were evaded by the demolition contractor.

    ''All we did was to try to keep a job going that was started by someone else,'' Mr. Trump, in an interview, said of his company's efforts to guarantee that the demolition contractor paid wages to employees. ''In fact, we helped people and it has cost a lot of money in legal fees.''

    Mr. Kozak and other Polish immigrants who were hired for the demolition said in interviews that they often worked in choking clouds of asbestos dust without protective equipment. They accepted the conditions because they thought the job would pay 10 times as much as they could earn in Poland, said Mr. Kozak, 56, a slightly built man who became an American citizen and joined a laborers' union.

    Julian Nalepa, 63, who suffered a head injury in the demolition, said he and fellow workers were baffled by the unending suit. ''It makes you think that only the rich have rights in the courts,'' he said.

    The demolition project on Fifth Avenue and 56th Street lasted from January to June 1980. It cleared the way for an ornate 68-story glass-sheathed structure containing shops and an atrium on the lower floors and 263 condominium apartments above that originally sold for $500,000 to $10 million each.

    The tower was financed and built by Mr. Trump's development company, the Trump Organization, and the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States.

    According to court records and testimony, the Trump-Equitable joint venture hired Kaszycki and Sons Contractors Inc. at a fee of $775,000 to raze Bonwit Teller's 10-story flagship department store although the contractor had little demolition experience. Demolition Workers Local 95 of the Laborers' International Union of North America had a collective bargaining agreement with the Kaszycki company, of Herkimer, N.Y., requiring it to pay specified wages to union and nonunion workers at the Trump Tower site and to make additional payments for each worker into the local's pension and medical insurance funds.

    Wendy E. Sloan and Lewis M. Steel, lawyers for current and retired Local 95 members in the suit, assert that William Kaszycki, owner of the contracting company, hired about 200 Polish immigrants who were not Local 95 members and agreed to pay them $4 to $5 an hour on 12-hour shifts seven days a week.

    The Kaszycki company, the plaintiffs said, violated the union's $11-an-hour minimum wage scale and made payments to the local's welfare funds for only 12 to 15 employees. The contractor also failed to pay the 200 Poles their full wages, causing work stoppages and delays.

    The plaintiffs contend that Mr. Trump was desperate to meet demolition and construction deadlines and that his company in May 1980 began supervising the demolition, assuming full responsibility for adhering to the union contract and for the payments to the union welfare funds.

    When the suit was filed in 1983, the lead plaintiff was Harry J. Diduck, a dissident member of Local 95. Mr. Diduck had not worked at Trump Tower but maintained that that he and about 500 Local 95 members and retirees lost medical and pension benefits because Trump-Equitable and the Kaszycki company owed the union funds more than $300,000.

    After eight years of arguments and a nonjury trial on some of the issues, in 1991 Judge Charles E. Stewart of Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that Mr. Trump and his associates conspired with Local 95's president, John Senyshyn, to withhold payments to the funds. He determined that Trump-Equitable owed $325,415 plus interest.

    Both sides, however, appealed the findings and each won partial victories. A Federal appeals court upheld most of Judge Stewart's decisions but ruled that Trump-Equitable had been denied a full opportunity to rebut the charge that the funds had been damaged by the loss of contributions for the Polish workers.

    The appeals court also ruled that Judge Stewart wrongly dismissed a claim by the plaintiffs that the Trump group was responsible for payments to the funds because it had been the workers' actual employer.

    Judge Stewart died in October 1994 and the case, with new issues at stake, was assigned to Judge Duffy. But progress was further hampered by the deaths since 1991 of Mr. Diduck, the original plaintiff; Burton H. Hall, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, and Mr. Kaszycki and Mr. Senyshyn, who were co-defendants.

    Before ordering lawyers to be ready for trial on two days' notice, Judge Duffy recently denied motions for further delays.

    Admonishing both sides, he said, ''There must be an end to all litigation: even Jarndyce v. Jarndyce ground down to a conclusion.'' He was referring to an estate dispute in Charles Dickens's novel ''Bleak House'' involving generations of the Jarndyce family that was so convoluted no one understood it.

    Edwin G. Schallert, the chairman of the Federal Court Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, described the Trump case's longevity as ''extraordinarily rare'' for the District Court. Mr. Schallert said records show that the average civil suit in the court takes 29 months and that 90 percent of cases are tried within four years.

    At different stages, Mr. Trump has retained four prominent Manhattan law firms to represent him. ''The legal history of this case is a jigsaw puzzle,'' said Thomas A. Bolan, Mr. Trump's latest lawyer and a former partner of the late Roy M. Cohn. ''We are now back to square one on the key issues.''

    Mr. Trump, who is expected to testify at the trial, said he had resisted efforts to settle the case out of court. ''It would be cheaper, but on principle I won't,'' he said. ''We did nothing wrong.''

    Ms. Sloan, the plaintiffs' lead lawyer, said she would be paid for 15 years of legal work only if her side won. The fees would be set by by the court, she added, and would be paid by Mr. Trump and his co-defendants. She estimated that if the $300,000 judgment, and accumulated interest, is upheld a second time, the payments would reach about $4 million.

    ''When you are facing large firms, it tends to make the litigation protracted,'' said Ms. Sloan, who is a solo practitioner specializing in union and civil rights law. ''But we are stubborn.''

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    Quote Originally posted by jimmer View Post
    from what I've been following, that's why Trump has gained traction.
    he wants to get things back inline, a reset.
    I think you're right, jimmer, I think it's apparent, and I think many see it. But there are some huge problems with the 'take back America' and 'make America great again' sentiments when so much of it is directed towards that 'permanent Republican majority' they love to talk about which is so very undemocratic.

    I fail to see how one man can get things back in line when Congress is so dysfunctional. I can easily see Trump embracing a one party solution.

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    http://www.factcheck.org/2016/03/tru...is-university/

    Trump’s Defense of His ‘University’
    By D'Angelo GorePosted on March 1, 2016 | Updated on March 8, 2016


    Businessman Donald Trump has made false and misleading claims in response to attacks on “Trump University,” a now defunct program that offered tips on real estate to paying customers.

    -Trump said that the so-called university “had an A rating from the Better Business Bureau.” Actually, it once had an “A+” rating, according to a Better Business Bureau spokeswoman. But its most recent rating was a “D-.”
    -Trump claimed that “many of” the university’s instructors were “handpicked” by him. That’s not true. In a 2012 deposition, a top executive for Trump University said that “none of our instructors” was picked by Trump himself.
    -Trump said that “98 percent of the people that took the courses … thought they were terrific.” That’s misleading. A class-action lawsuit against Trump alleges that the surveys were not anonymous and were filled out during or immediately after sessions when participants were still expecting to receive future benefits from the program.

    Trump, who is campaigning for the Republican Party’s nomination for president, made each of those claims during an interview Feb. 28 on “Fox News Sunday.” Anchor Chris Wallace had asked Trump to respond to an ad from American Future Fund, an issue advocacy group, that features Sherri Simpson saying that the program she paid to participate in turned out to be “a fake.”

    Trump and his “university,” which was never officially licensed as such and eventually had to change its name to The Trump Entrepreneur Initiative in May 2010, are the subjects of three ongoing lawsuits alleging fraud. One $40 million lawsuit was filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in 2013, and two other class-action lawsuits have been filed by former participants who paid thousands of dollars for the courses and are seeking reimbursement.

    Wallace, Feb. 28: A super PAC that is opposed to you is running this ad. Take a look.

    (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

    Sherri: All of it was just a fake. America, do not make the same mistake that I did with Donald Trump. I got hurt badly and I’d hate to see this country get hurt by Donald Trump.

    (END VIDEO CLIP)

    Wallace: Now, Trump University ads promised that these instructors on your real estate genius would be handpicked by you but in fact, the story is that a lot of them were picked just so they could get people to sign up and one of them was a manager from a Buffalo Wild Wings. So did you handpick these instructors or not?

    Trump: OK. Many of them we were handpicked and I handpicked top people. And the people I think did a good job. And they ran a good school.

    And I’ll tell you about the school. It had an “A” rating from the Better Business Bureau and the people I think that you even have on there have given a great report card, because everybody — just about everybody that took a course, almost everybody signed a document and they rated the school. …

    Trump: Listen to me, 98 percent of the people that took — Chris, 98 percent of the people that took the courses, we have report cards from everybody. They report carded on the course.

    Ninety-eight percent of the people that took the courses, 98 percent approved the courses, they thought they were terrific.
    Better Business Bureau Rating

    Trump told Wallace that his program “had an ‘A’ rating from the Better Business Bureau,” a nonprofit organization that reviews millions of businesses by request and rates them on a scale from “A+ to F.”

    The BBB website does not currently list a rating for The Trump Entrepreneur Initiative. It says that is “because BBB has information indicating it is out of business.”

    But, in a statement to a reporter with PolitiFact.com, a Better Business Bureau spokeswoman said that “over the years, the company’s BBB rating has fluctuated between an ‘A+’ and a ‘D-.’ ” The spokeswoman declined to say when the program received the “A+” rating.

    However, the most recent rating that we could find for the program was a “D-” in 2010. That is based on news reports from the Washington Post and the New York Times in 2011, and the New York Daily News and the BBB’s own website in 2010, as recorded by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

    Updated, March 8: The BBB issued a statement on March 8 saying that Trump University received a D- rating in 2010. That was the last year that the school accepted new students. For more about the BBB’s statement see our item, “Trump University’s D- Rating.”

    Instructors Not Handpicked by Trump

    In a video promoting the old Trump University, which was formed as a for-profit company in 2004, Trump said that the educational program would have “professors and adjunct professors” that were “handpicked” by him.

    Trump: We’re going to have professors and adjunct professors that are absolutely terrific. Terrific people. Terrific brains. Successful. We’re going to have the best of the best. And, honestly, if you don’t learn from them, if you don’t learn from me, if you don’t learn from the people that we are going to be putting forward — and these are all people that are handpicked by me — then you’re just not going to make it in terms of the world of success.
    But Trump didn’t personally select “all people” on staff, as he claimed in the promotional video, or even “many” of them, as he said during the recent interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
    Michael Sexton, the former president of Trump University, who was deposed in 2012 for a civil case against Trump and the real estate program, admitted that the course instructors were not personally approved by Trump.

    Questioner, July 25, 2012: And were any of these other speakers at any of those events hand picked by Donald Trump?

    Sexton: None of our instructors at the live events were hand picked by Donald Trump.
    98 Percent Approval?

    Trump’s attorneys have created a website called 98percentapproval.com, which claims to provide “over 10,000 surveys from Trump University students demonstrating their overwhelming satisfaction with the program.” The website states that “98% of Trump University students rated the program ‘excellent.’ ” On Twitter, Trump says, “Trump University has a 98% approval rating.”

    That includes surveys filled out by Kevin Scott and Bob Guillo, two men who each spent more than $30,000 to attend seminars offered by “Trump University” and who are featured in separate ads also paid for by the American Future Fund. In the ads, Scott and Guillo voice their displeasure with having paid to take the classes and say that they were “scammed” by Trump and call him “a fraud.”

    In response, the Trump campaign has pointed out that both Scott and Guillo gave the program positive reviews, and the campaign has called on the American Future Fund to retract the advertisements.

    While it may be the case that many attendees initially filled out positive evaluations, one of the class-action lawsuits alleges that the surveys were filled out under pressure or with the expectation that participants would receive additional benefits in the future.

    Tarla Makaeff v. Trump University, complaint, Sept. 26, 2012: While Trump University’s website has publicly claimed that 95% to 98% of students are satisfied with its course, this figure is far from the truth. While it may be true that Trump University received some positive ratings in surveys given to the students while the Seminars were in session or immediately afterward, at this point, many of the students actually still believe that they will eventually get the information and mentoring they need, since they have been promised a one-year apprenticeship or one-year mentorship. Also, these surveys are not anonymous, but have the students’ names on them, and students are often reluctant to criticize the instructors and mentors who they have paid a lot of money to help them throughout the year. It is not until later, when students see that the help and information they need is never coming — that they realize they have been scammed.
    As the Washington Post Fact Checker pointed out, Scott said that he gave his course instructor a positive review “because I did not think that the problems with the mentorship were his fault.” Scott added that he told his mentor that “he was courteous and professional, but that I did not see any results.”

    Guillo, on the other hand, said that he gave his instructor a positive assessment “because I believed that that was the only way to get my Certificates of Completion for the seminars that I attended.” Guillo stated that “the evaluations did not reflect my actual opinions on the courses.”

    So, Trump isn’t telling the whole story when he says that “98 percent of the people that took the courses … thought they were terrific.”

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    I can easily see Trump embracing a one party solution.
    I always thought, to stop the political stalemate and DC wars, it would take someone the could bridge both sides
    and still do a great job for america (as it was founded).

    from what I've seen, Trump is that person. why? because he's not a hardliner.
    throughout his professional life, he's worked with both parties, all comers.

    and what about a Trump presidency?
    I suspect that once the commotion settles down, both sides (maybe not the radical left) will figure a way to drop
    the hate and act like grown-up legislators, again.

    if anyone at the highest level can turn things around (slow turn), investigate and audit the Fed,
    investigate and stop chemtrailing, establish term limits and all the rest, it would be an outsider like Trump.

    for years people had groused about the political class and the need for smart citizens to run for higher office.

    well, it's happened and could inspire more. that's the revolution.

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    I can easily see Trump embracing a one party solution.
    If it ever does come to that, then the "crypto" prefix in the term "crypto-fascism" will have become obsolete. The USA is already a de facto fascist regime as it is, so all that's still needed in order to make into an official one is a single-party government. Communist regimes are also single-party governments, but then again, there's a very fine line between communism and fascism, even though they appear to be on opposite sides of the (outdated) political horizon. The differences are mainly economical.

    Both our brother bsbray and myself have already amply elaborated on why the USA is actually a covertly fascist regime, so I'm not going to list all of the arguments again here and now, but let's just say that from where I'm sitting, Donald Trump looks a lot like Benito Mussolini in the days before he became Hitler's puppet, or perhaps Francisco Franco.
    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

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    http://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...ticized-219881

    Trump ‘university’ becomes campaign target
    By KIMBERLY HEFLING and MAGGIE SEVERNS 02/26/16 05:06 PM EST

    Donald Trump’s Republican presidential rivals are seizing on fraud allegations made by former students of his Trump University to paint him as a sleazy businessman.

    Trump University, a now defunct get-rich-quick set of real estate courses, was never a university — in fact, New York officials pressured Trump to ditch that part of the name. And the courses are now the target of a class-action lawsuit in federal court in San Diego and ongoing legal scrutiny from the New York attorney general, who sued Trump, the program and its president in 2013 for $40 million to repay thousands of former students.

    Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who are trailing Trump in the polls, used the latest developments as an opening to attack Trump’s character at the Republican debate Thursday night.

    Rubio accused Trump of starting “a fake university” that people borrowed $36,000 to attend. “And you know what they got? They got to take a picture with a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump,” Rubio said, echoing the complaints of some former students.

    In the lawsuits, former students say they were given lessons that were useless or even illegal and that they were badgered into taking course after expensive course.

    After New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie spectacularly endorsed Trump at a press conference Friday, Trump dismissed concerns about the class-action lawsuit and his attorneys have long denied any wrongdoing.

    “It’s a peanuts case, it’s a very small case,” Trump said. Many students gave their Trump University courses high marks, Trump said, and they’re just looking for their money back. Trump also claimed that “much of the case has already been won.”

    But the class action case filed in California in 2010 by former students hasn’t been resolved. No trial date has been set, but Trump’s name has appeared on witness lists for both sides and court records indicate it could come to trial later this year.

    “I want you to think about, if this man is the nominee, having the Republican nominee on the stand in court, being cross-examined about whether he committed fraud,” Cruz said during the debate. “You don’t think the mainstream media will go crazy on that?”

    Trump University launched in the mid-2000s as an Internet venture owned by Trump. For several years, it also offered weekend classes in hotel ballrooms across the country to teach financial tips. Some students paid more than $30,000 for a chance to learn Trump’s investment magic and participate in mentorship programs, court records show. (Trump also sold Trump University merchandise, according to an archived website, including hats.)

    It’s disputed how much Trump was involved in the program’s operation. But he wasn’t entirely removed. In a blog associated with the courses Trump offered everything from his take on why the now-divorced celebrity couple Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey should get a prenuptial agreement to complaints about Judith Miller’s reporting in The New York Times ahead of the 2003 Iraq invasion.

    In the grip of the real estate crisis, advertisements for Trump University boasted that students could learn how to make millions from real estate foreclosures and glean insider secrets. One ad tied in Trump’s reality-show success, boasting that Trump University was “the next best thing to being his Apprentice.”

    One New York woman, Patricia Rodriguez, said in an affidavit in the New York case that she paid about $9,500 for a tax lien course, research tools software and a real estate class because she was “misled in thinking that I was going to be enrolled in a structured course, such as in a college or university,” she said.

    She also mistakenly thought she’d meet Trump.

    “At the seminar, Donald Trump’s photograph hung from the entrance of the hotel ballroom, but Mr. Trump was nowhere to be seen. I was looking forward to taking a picture with him personally, not with a cardboard cutout of him, like I ultimately wound up doing,” Rodriguez said.

    A single mother and two other people describing themselves as Trump University victims are featured in new ads unveiled Friday by the conservative American Future Fund targeting Trump as a “fraud.”

    The San Diego class-action lawsuit alleges the university didn’t resemble the educational experience and mentoring opportunities promised in marketing materials. Students were promised mentoring and apprenticeships and assured they would make back the thousands of dollars they shelled out on Trump University through a robust career in real estate. Such support from real estate gurus was scarce in reality, the plaintiffs allege, and Trump University went so far as to ask students to prepare financial statements that it used to measure how much students could pay for follow-up courses.

    The lead plaintiff, former student Tarla Makaeff, enrolled in a three-day workshop for $1,495 called “Fast Track to Foreclosure Training.” She didn’t learn as much as she’d hoped — but Trump University instructors successfully pitched her on a more extensive training called the Trump Gold Program, with a price tag of $34,995.

    Like other Trump University students, Makaeff was encouraged to raise her credit limit so she could begin buying property, according to filings. Instead, she wound up using it to buy Trump University courses.

    After interest and late fees, Makaeff spent nearly $60,000 on Trump University. She said one of the lessons she learned during her time studying under the real estate mogul wasn’t even legal in the state of California: She posted signs by the highway that listed her phone number and was ordered to take them down by the Orange County district attorney, court records say.

    In a counter-claim, Trump University alleged that Makaeff is financially troubled, did little to use her training from Trump University and had been defaming Trump University on the Internet. She also indicated she had positive experiences with Trump University at the time she was enrolled, the claim says.

    “It is common sense that Trump University cannot guarantee riches any more than Harvard University can guarantee a Rhodes Scholarship, or MIT can guarantee a Nobel Prize,” the claim reads.

    Makaeff recently filed a motion to withdraw herself from the case, saying she is grieving the death of her mother and has developed health problems and anxiety since the case was filed. The last pre-trial conference for the case is set for May.

    “I could settle it right now for very little money, but I don’t want to do it out of principle,” Trump said during the Thursday night debate. “The people that took the course all signed — most — many — many signed report cards saying it was fantastic, it was wonderful, it was beautiful.”

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    Quote Originally posted by Aragorn View Post
    Donald Trump looks a lot like Benito Mussolini in the days before he became Hitler's puppet, or perhaps Francisco Franco.
    okay, let's add mussolini with hitler if you want to lose an argument.

    let's stop all this hyperventilating.

    if you're pining for a marxist or radical leftist, you'll have a very long and frustrating wait.

    so now, let's sit back and enjoy this revolution, already in progress...

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    Quote Originally posted by jimmer View Post
    I always thought, to stop the political stalemate and DC wars, it would take someone the could bridge both sides
    and still do a great job for america (as it was founded).

    from what I've seen, Trump is that person. why? because he's not a hardliner.
    throughout his professional life, he's worked with both parties, all comers.

    and what about a Trump presidency?
    I suspect that once the commotion settles down, both sides (maybe not the radical left) will figure a way to drop
    the hate and act like grown-up legislators, again.

    if anyone at the highest level can turn things around (slow turn), investigate and audit the Fed,
    investigate and stop chemtrailing, establish term limits and all the rest, it would be an outsider like Trump. [...]
    Isn't going to happen. Ron Paul was far more eligible for that position than Donald Trump, and the Repuglicans refused to let him run for office.

    Either way, I consider this whole debate academic. People in positions of power are people who want to be in positions of power. And that's exactly what makes them unsuitable for the job. I've worked for the local authorities here, and I've also (very briefly) been in politics — as a supporting party member, not as someone running for any office. I've seen enough.
    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

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    Quote Originally posted by jimmer View Post
    okay, let's add mussolini with hitler if you want to lose an argument.
    I'm afraid you're misinterpreting Godwin's law, jimmer. It simply states that in a debate, one party will inevitably end up comparing the other party to Hitler, and therefore, lose the argument.

    Besides, Mussolini was not genocidal, whereas Hitler was. Hitler originally took Mussolini as his example, but then after Hitler himself rose to power and started World War II, he degraded Mussolini to merely a propagandist for Hitler's own ideology.

    Quote Originally posted by jimmer View Post
    let's stop all this hyperventilating.

    if you're pining for a marxist or radical leftist, you'll have a very long and frustrating wait.

    so now, let's sit back and enjoy this revolution, already in progress...
    You call it a revolution. I call it a "dog & pony" show. And at this point in time, it has already long stopped amusing me.
    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

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    Please note, there are so many Trump errors, exaggerations and flat-out falsehoods documented in the article, it needs to be split in two pieces.

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...sehoods-213730

    Trump’s Week of Errors, Exaggerations and Flat-out Falsehoods
    POLITICO Magazine subjected the GOP front-runner to our fact-checking process. This is the result.

    By DANIEL LIPPMAN, DARREN SAMUELSOHN and ISAAC ARNSDORF March 13, 2016

    Donald Trump says he is a truthful man. “Maybe truthful to a fault,” he boasted last week at a North Carolina rally where one of his supporters sucker punched a protester.

    But truthful he is not.

    With the GOP front-runner scooping up delegates in a march toward the Republican nomination, POLITICO subjected a week’s worth of his words to our magazine’s fact-checking process. We chronicled 4.6 hours of stump speeches and press conferences, from a rally in Concord, N.C., on Monday to a rally on Friday in St. Louis.

    The result: more than five dozen statements deemed mischaracterizations, exaggerations, or simply false – the kind of stuff that would have been stripped from one of our stories, or made the whole thing worthy of the spike. It equates to roughly one misstatement every five minutes on average.

    From warning of the death of Christianity in America to claiming that he is taking no money from donors, the Manhattan billionaire and reality-show celebrity said something far from truthful many times over to the thousands of people packed into his raucous rallies. His remarks represent an extraordinary mix of inaccurate claims about domestic and foreign policy and personal and professional boasts that rarely measure up when checked against primary sources.

    Many were straight-up wrong, such as his claim that the United States has a “$500 billion a year trade deficit with China,” which has been debunked over and over by fact checkers, and his statement that he never settles lawsuits, when in fact he has.

    In other instances, Trump stretches the limits of reality to distort the records of his rivals. Marco Rubio was a main target last week and saw Trump twist the truth about his immigration position to warn voters that the senator is “totally in favor of amnesty.”

    Then there are the seemingly small falsehoods, piled one atop another. Trump misstates the timing of things – an omnibus spending bill, for example, was called “the craziest thing I’ve ever seen six weeks ago” when in fact it was a spending package passed in December. He exaggerates polls and rankings of other things – such as his position among Hispanics and how he performs in Wall Street Journal polls. He even claims ownership of a successful winery that denies any ownership tie to the GOP front-runner.

    That Trump so frequently ventures so far from the truth perhaps shouldn’t surprise given how much of his campaign is unorthodox. Offensive barbs against Muslims, Mexicans, women and people with disabilities would have quickly sunk the fortunes of other White House candidates but they haven’t hurt the real estate mogul’s standing in the polls, or, more importantly, with Republican voters.

    Certainly, many politicians stretch the truth – the practice of political fact-checking began long before the 2016 election cycle. But none so much as Trump. These untruths – strung together as they are in all of his speeches – have helped drive one of the most rapid ascents in modern presidential campaign history. Stephen Colbert once invented a word to define the political discourse of the time. “Truthiness,” the comedian declared on his debut episode in 2005, was the truth as felt in one’s heart and gut, not what was written up in reference books. A decade later, Trump has taken the idea and run (for president) with it.

    The Trump campaign did not respond to attempts to get comment for this story or these individual instances of inaccuracies.

    Here’s POLITICO’s run-down of a week in the life of a Donald Trump fact-check:

    ***

    “WE DON’T WIN ANYMORE”: TRADE AND ECONOMICS

    “$500 billion a year trade deficit with China.” (March 7 rally in Concord, N.C., and at least four other times last week)

    That’s overstating the case by $134 billion. The imbalance peaked at $366 billion in 2015.

    “You have Japan, where the cars come in by the hundreds of thousands, they pour off the boats. ... [W]e send them like nothing. We send them nothing, by comparison, nothing.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C. and at least one other time)

    The United States exported $62 billion worth of goods to Japan last year.

    “We have a trade deficit with Japan of over $100 billion a year.”
    (March 8 victory press conference in Jupiter, Fla. and at least one other time)

    The trade deficit with Japan in 2015 was about $69 billion.

    “We’re losing our jobs and the politicians don’t tell you that.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C.)

    Politicians from both parties rail against unemployment and outsourcing. For example, the Obama White House in 2012 put out a fact sheet with “outsourcing” in the title.

    “We don’t win at trade. We lose to everybody at trade. Trade we lose to everybody.” (March 11 in St. Louis)

    In 2015, the U.S. had trade surpluses with a number of countries including Hong Kong, the Netherlands, the UAE and Australia.

    “Remember we used to have Made in the USA, right? When was the last time you’ve seen it? You don’t see that anymore. You don’t see that anymore.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C.)

    The U.S. Economics and Statistics Administration authored a report called “What Is Made In America?” in 2014 that found that U.S. manufacturers sold $4.4 trillion of goods that classify as “Made in the U.S.A.” Manufacturing contributes $2.17 trillion to the U.S. economy and employs 12.33 million Americans.

    “We have lousy health-care, where it’s going up 35, 45, 55 percent.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C.)

    Premiums rose by an average of 5.8 percent a year since Obama took office, compared to 13.2 percent in the nine years prior, Politifact found in October.

    “If you look at the jobs reports, which are totally phony, because if you stop looking for a job you are essentially considered employed.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C.)

    In the way the unemployment rate is calculated, discouraged workers who give up on looking for a job leave the workforce so they don’t count toward unemployment, but they don’t count as employed either.

    “I know there are some companies where the people were full time for 25 years. Now they’re part-timers and they go out and get another job, and that has to do solely with Obamacare.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C. and at least one other time)

    There are many reasons Americans tend to change jobs more often and work on a part-time basis more than they used to, and the trend predates Obamacare.

    ***

    “LIKE SWISS CHEESE”: IMMIGRATION

    “The migration, they’re coming across. Obama wants to bring thousands and thousands of people in. He has no idea who they are.”
    (March 7 in Concord, N.C. and at least one other time)

    No one has suggested accepting refugees without screening them for security, a process that refugee advocates currently call daunting and far too time consuming.

    About Rubio: “He’s totally in favor of amnesty.” (March 9 in Fayetteville, N.C.)

    Rubio opposed amnesty while running for Senate but, in an effort to draft compromise legislation, co-sponsored a bill that included a path to citizenship. That’s not the same as blanket amnesty, he said in the Jan. 28 debate.

    “Really they’ve shut Christianity down.” (March 7 in Madison, Miss.)

    Seven in 10 Americans identify as Christian, according to Pew.

    ***

    “SELF-FUNDING”: CAMPAIGN FINANCE

    “I’ve spent the least money and I’m by far number 1. So I’ve spent the least.”
    (March 7 in Concord, N.C.)

    As of Jan. 31, Trump’s campaign had spent $23.9 million, more than John Kasich’s campaign, which has spent $7.2 million, or $19.5 million if you include outside groups supporting him.

    “I’m self-funding my campaign.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C., and at least two other times)

    “I’m not taking money. ... I’m not taking. I spent a lot of money. I don’t take.” (March 7 in Madison, Miss.)

    “I’m not going to take any money. I don’t want any money. ... You know, I’ve self-funded my campaign. ... Right now, I’m into, you would know better than me, maybe $30 million, maybe more.” (March 11 press conference in Palm Beach)

    There’s a big blue “DONATE” button in the top right corner of his campaign website. As of Jan. 31, his campaign had accepted $7.5 million from donors not named Donald J. Trump. Trump gave his campaign only $250,318. He lent another $17.5 million, but that’s repayable at any time until shortly after the election.

    “I’m already in for $30 million cash.” (March 7 in Madison, Miss.)

    Not unless he’s made a lot more contributions since Jan. 31. As of then he had only contributed $250,318, plus the loan of $17.5 million.

    “I think I have $50 million of negative ads against me in Florida. $50 million. Somebody said $50 million.”
    (March 7 in Madison, Miss.)

    As of last Friday, outside groups had spent $15 million in Florida.

    “So many horrible, horrible things said about me in one week. $38 million worth of horrible lies.” (March 8 in Jupiter, Fla.)

    Every Republican dollar not spent by Trump on TV and radio from March 1 through 7 comes to $10.57 million, according to The Tracking Firm, a service that monitors media buys. And not all of that money was negative against Trump.

    “How many times do you think Marco and Ted and all of them were calling their super PAC? Is that right? It’s called life. ... They talk to their super PAC. They’re not supposed to but that’s the way life works.” (March 8 in Jupiter, Fla.)

    Trump provided no evidence that Rubio and Cruz talk to their super PACs. Candidates coordinating with super PACs is against the law; Trump has not filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission.

    “In New Hampshire, as an example, I spent $1.5 million and somebody else spent $48 million. I was one, the other person was number five.” (March 8 in Jupiter, Fla.)

    Trump actually spent $3.1 million in New Hampshire, not $1.5 million, according to Politifact. The Bush campaign and super PAC actually spent $36 million in the state, not $48 million. Bush also came in fourth in New Hampshire, not fifth.

    “Countries have lobbyists also. They have lobbyists. They have their donors.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C.)

    Foreign countries can and do hire representatives in Washington, registered under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act. But foreign nationals are not allowed to contribute to political campaigns.
    Article continued in next post.
    Last edited by lift the veil, 18th March 2016 at 17:24.

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    Quote Originally posted by Aragorn View Post
    Ron Paul was far more eligible for that position than Donald Trump...
    maybe so, but Trump is electable.

    Quote Originally posted by Aragorn View Post
    I'm afraid you're misinterpreting Godwin's law
    quite splitting hairs, aragorn.

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    Continued from above.

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...sehoods-213730

    ***

    “NASTY GUY”: ATTACKING HIS RIVALS

    “I have not even focused on Hillary yet. ... I haven’t even started with her other than four weeks ago.” (March 8 in Jupiter, Fla.)

    Months ago, in December, Trump said Clinton’s bathroom break during a Democratic debate was “disgusting” and Barack Obama “schlonged” her in the 2008 primaries.

    “Little Marco Rubio. You know, he’s a no-show in the U.S. Senate. He never goes to vote.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C.)

    Rubio missed 229 of 1,517 votes between January 2011 and March 2016, according to GovTrack.us. That’s 15 percent. The median record for missed votes for senators currently serving is 1.7 percent.

    “Wasn’t that funny last night when Cruz said, ‘I’m the only one that can beat Donald Trump. I have demonstrated that I can beat him. I won five states.’” (March 11 in St. Louis)

    Cruz correctly stated he won eight states, not five, according to the debate transcript.

    “Ohio got lucky because they struck oil. And the budget of Ohio went up more than any budget in the entire United States. Higher than any budget.” (March 11 press conference in Palm Beach)

    Ohio’s budget increased from $55.9 billion in 2010 to $64 billion in 2015. North Dakota’s increased more in percentage terms, and New York’s in dollar terms, according to data from the National Association of State Budget Officers.

    ***

    “EVERYBODY LIKES ME”: POLLS


    “One of the polls just came out, and a number of them have just come out. I’m beating Hillary Clinton quite easily, thank you.”
    (March 7 in Concord, N.C. and at least one other time)

    Trump is likely referring to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll from mid-February, which showed him two points ahead of Clinton. A clear majority of other polls show she would beat him.

    “After Paris, all of a sudden it started changing. We started getting polls in. And everybody liked Trump from the standpoint of ISIS, from the standpoint of the military.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C. and at least one other time)

    After the Paris attacks, fewer than half (42 percent) of GOP respondents in a Washington Post-ABC poll said Trump was the best candidate to best handle the threat of terrorism.

    “They do a poll in South Carolina, [Lindsey Graham] endorses somebody else and the poll in South Carolina has me at 47.”
    (March 8 in Jupiter, Fla.)

    Trump never topped 42 percent in all the polls collected by Real Clear Politics and won the state with 32.5 percent of the vote.

    “Upstate New York I poll higher than anybody ever.” (March 8 in Jupiter, Fla.)

    Hillary Clinton would beat Trump 56 percent to 33 percent in upstate New York, according to a recent Siena College poll. The same poll found that the only region in New York he would win is by 5 points in the state’s suburban areas.

    “They [the WSJ/NBC poll] had me practically dying in South Carolina the day before. ... And it looked like I was really in trouble and then I won in a landslide. The poll was wrong.”
    (March 8 in Jupiter, Fla.)

    The last South Carolina NBC/WSJ poll had Trump at 28 percent versus Cruz at 23 percent. A national WSJ/NBC poll around the same time had Cruz ahead of Trump 28 percent to 26 percent.

    “Then all of a sudden they [WSJ/NBC] come up with this poll that was very close. They put it on the front-page of the Wall Street Journal, front-page. They never do that. ... I never do well in the Wall Street Journal polls; it’s set against me.” (March 11 in St. Louis)

    The Journal routinely covers polls on its front page, and Trump does well in many of them. For example, a headline from mid-January reads: “Poll: Donald Trump Widens His Lead in Republican Presidential Race”.

    “We’re winning every poll with the Hispanics.” (March 9 in Fayetteville, N.C.)

    A Washington Post-Univision poll in February found that 8 in 10 registered Hispanic voters viewed Trump unfavorably.

    ***

    “NOBODY IS GOING TO MESS WITH US”: SECURITY

    “We have tremendous problems with crime and other things.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C.)

    Crime rates have declined dramatically since the 1990s and remain at historically low levels.

    “If you look at the Iran deal, where we give a terror nation $150 billion” and “got nothing”. (March 11 in St. Louis and March 7 in Madison, Miss.)

    Credible estimates vary for the value of sanctions relief to Iran, topping out at $100 billion. But it’s false to suggest the U.S. gains nothing from the deal. Iran agreed to ship uranium out of the country, dismantle two-thirds of its centrifuges and accept rigorous inspections.

    “The Gulf states aren’t spending. The Gulf states have so much money, they’re not spending anything. By the way, they’re not taking anybody, they’re not taking, they’re not spending.”
    (March 7 rally in Madison, Miss.)

    At a February London aid conference, Gulf states pledged at least $537 million to help mitigate the Syrian crisis, and the United Arab Emirates has accepted more than 100,000 Syrian nationals since the civil war began in 2011.

    ISIS drowns “people in these massive steel cages where 40, 50, 60 people they dump it and they pull it up half an hour later with 50 people dead.” (March 9 in Fayetteville, N.C.)

    Last June, ISIS released video of the group drowning five Iraqis in a cage. There are no reports of 40 to 60 victims.

    “Eight weeks ago, they signed a budget that is so bad. It funds ISIS.” (March 9 in Fayetteville, N.C.)

    The omnibus spending bill, passed in December, is not strictly a budget, and it’s not clear what part of it Trump thinks gives money to ISIS. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for a reference on this specific claim.

    ***

    “BIGGEST,” “BEST,” “MOST BEAUTIFUL”: PERSONAL BOASTS

    “It turned out I’m much richer than people think.” (March 7 in Madison, Miss.)

    Trump says he’s worth more than $10 billion. Forbes Magazine says he’s worth $4.5 billion. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated his net worth at $2.9 billion.

    “By the way, four times on the cover of Time Magazine over the last number of months. ... I think I was on the cover of Time twice over 30 years and now I think I’ve been almost, I think it’s four times in the last three or four months.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C.)

    “It is a movement. It’s been covered on Time magazine covers many many times.” (March 11 in St. Louis)

    Trump has been on the cover of Time three times since he started running for president nine months ago, not four times over the last three or four months. Before his presidential run, he was on the cover just once, in 1989, not twice. In the last four months, he’s been on the cover twice, not three times.

    “I built an unbelievable, some of the greatest assets in the world, very little debt, tremendous cash flow, tremendous. ... Almost all of my businesses work.” (March 7 in Madison, Miss. and at least one other time)

    Four of Trump’s companies have declared bankruptcy, meaning they could not repay their debts. For example, the Trump Plaza Hotel declared bankruptcy in 1992 with $550 million in debt. The Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts filed for bankruptcy in 2004 carrying an estimated $1.8 billion in debt. In December 2008, Trump Entertainment Resorts couldn’t pay a $53.1 million interest payment for a bond.

    “I don’t settle lawsuits. ... I don’t do it.”
    (March 8 in Jupiter, Fla.)

    In 2013, Trump settled with condo buyers who had sued over a project in Baja California.

    “It’s the largest winery on the East Coast. I own it 100 percent. No mortgage. No debt. You can all check. You have to go check the records, folks. In fact, the press, I’m asking you, please check.” (March 8 in Jupiter, Fla.)

    Trump Winery in Charlottesville is not the largest vineyard or winery on the East Coast, according to the National Association of American Wineries.

    And the winery’s own website denies that Trump owns it. “Trump Winery is a registered trade name of Eric Trump Wine Manufacturing LLC, which is not owned, managed or affiliated with Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their affiliates.”

    “We make the finest wine. As good a wine as you can get anywhere in the world.”
    (March 8 in Jupiter, Fla.)

    None of the wines from Trump Winery made the top 100 list of the best wines in 2015 as ranked by Wine Spectator Magazine. Looking at just Virginia wines, none of Trump’s wines were finalists in the flagship 2016 Governors’ Cup.

    “I’ve been hearing from virtually everybody in the Republican Party and they’re congratulating me and they’re saying, we’re going to get together.” (March 11 in Palm Beach)

    There are many Republicans who are not engaging with Trump or congratulating him.

    ***

    “ABSOLUTE SLEAZE”: THE PRESS

    “The only way, now everybody’s talking about how massive these crowds are, the only way they find out about the crowds, the only way is with the protestors.” (March 9 in Fayetteville, N.C.)

    The press has long noted the size of Trump’s audiences with or without protestors. For example, last August, CNN covered Trump’s crowd of 30,000 at an Alabama football stadium.

    Daniel Lippman is associate editor for states and a reporter for Politico, working on Politico Playbook and contributing to political coverage.

    Darren Samuelsohn is a senior policy reporter for Politico.

    Isaac Arnsdorf is a Politico reporter.

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    http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...127-story.html

    Donald Trump settles lawsuit over Baja condo resort that went bust

    By Stuart Pfeifer

    November 27, 2013

    Donald Trump has settled a lawsuit with more than 100 would-be condo buyers who lost millions of dollars when a Trump-branded luxury condominium project in Baja California failed.

    Bart Ring and Daniel King, attorneys who represented the buyers, declined to discuss details of the settlement because of a confidentiality agreement.

    "The group of plaintiffs is very pleased with the outcome," Ring said.

    A Trump spokesman declined to comment.

    The Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico, south of Tijuana, was planned as a luxury high-rise resort with panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean, swimming pools, tennis courts and fine dining spread over 17 acres of coastal property.

    Would-be condo buyers, many from Southern California, paid millions of dollars in deposits to secure units in the development. But the project failed in 2008 amid the financial crisis that curtailed real estate lending. The property was foreclosed on before construction began.

    More than 100 would-be condo buyers filed suit in 2009 against Trump and his developer partners in the project. Last year, the developers agreed to pay $7.25 million to resolve their liability in the case.

    Trump told The Times that the developers were to blame, saying he merely licensed his name to the 525-unit oceanfront project and was not involved in building it.

    It was not an unusual arrangement for Trump. He made his name in real estate and casino development but now is best known for his reality TV hit, "The Apprentice," and frequently licenses his name to real estate projects that are managed by other developers.

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    This article has some background on the Baja, California condo lawsuit that was settled (see above post) and as a bonus, the article also talks about Trump "university."

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/ny...name-only.html

    Buying a Trump Property, or So They Thought

    By MICHAEL BARBAROMAY 12, 2011

    For many middle-class Americans, it is the most coveted brand in real estate, synonymous with sky-piercing luxury and can’t-miss quality: Donald J. Trump.

    Far from the New York City towers that bear his name, in cities like Tampa, Fla., and Philadelphia, house hunters clamor to buy into his developments, sometimes exhausting credit lines and wiping out savings for a chance to own a piece of his gilded empire.

    But as Mr. Trump, who is weighing a bid for the White House, has zealously sought to cash in on his name, he has entered into arrangements that home buyers describe as deliberately deceptive — designed, they said, to exploit the very thing that drew them to his buildings: their faith in him.

    Over the last few years, according to interviews and hundreds of pages of court documents, the real estate mogul has aggressively marketed several luxury high-rises as “Trump properties” or “signature Trump” buildings, with names like Trump Tower and Trump International — even making appearances at the properties to woo buyers. The strong indication of his involvement as a developer generated waves of media attention and commanded premium prices.

    But when three of the planned buildings encountered financial trouble, it became clear that Mr. Trump had essentially rented his name to the developments and had no responsibility for their outcomes, according to buyers. In each case, he yanked his name off the projects, which were never completed. The buyers lost millions of dollars in deposits even as Mr. Trump pocketed hefty license fees.

    Those who bought the apartments in part because of the Trump name were livid, saying they felt a profound sense of betrayal, and more than 300 of them are now suing Mr. Trump or his company.

    “The last thing you ever expect is that somebody you revere will mislead you,” said Alex Davis, 38, who bought a $500,000 unit in Trump International Hotel and Tower Fort Lauderdale, a waterfront property that Mr. Trump described in marketing materials as “my latest development” and compared to the Trump tower on Central Park in Manhattan.

    “There was no disclaimer that he was not the developer,” Mr. Davis said. The building, where construction was halted when a major lender ran out of money in 2009, sits empty and unfinished, the outlines of a giant Trump sign, removed long ago, still faintly visible.

    Mr. Davis is unable to recover any of his $100,000 deposit — half of which the developer used for construction costs.

    Another casualty: his admiration for Mr. Trump, whose books and television show Mr. Davis had devoured. “I bought into an idea of him,” he said, “and it wasn’t what I thought it was.”

    Alan Garten, a lawyer for Mr. Trump’s company, said that, regardless of what Mr. Trump himself or any marketing materials had suggested, his role was disclosed in lengthy purchasing documents that buyers should have carefully scrutinized. But in an interview, Mr. Garten acknowledged that, “without a lawyer, it can be difficult” to understand such documents. He suggested that the housing market collapse, not Mr. Trump, was the cause of their troubles.

    “They are people who lost money and are looking for somebody to blame,” Mr. Garten said.

    Mr. Trump’s Midas touch as a businessman, sometimes real, other times perceived, is central to his presidential aspirations, which have become increasingly hard for Republicans to ignore, even as some of them cringe at his blunt remarks and boastfulness. In the next month, he is scheduled to visit two key primary-season states, South Carolina and Iowa, as he further tests the waters. “I have made myself very rich,” he said recently, sitting in his palatial suite at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. “And I would make this country very rich.”

    But regardless of whether Mr. Trump ultimately seeks the presidency, his attempt to promote himself as a savvy financial manager who can lead America out of its economic rut is bringing new scrutiny to his own business practices.

    Despite high-profile stumbles, like the bankruptcy of Atlantic City casinos bearing his name, Mr. Trump has nurtured plenty of successful projects, in real estate and beyond: memberships to his golf clubs sell briskly, his men’s suits are a hit at Macy’s, and his NBC series, “The Apprentice,” is a ratings smash. Mr. Trump, in an interview, said the show had earned him well over $100 million.

    Yet in recent years, as his brand has experienced an “Apprentice”-fueled resurgence, it appears that Mr. Trump, 64, has taken an expansive approach to putting his name on products big and small. There are Trump mattresses, Trump ties, Trump video games, Trump bottled water and Trump chocolates (designed to resemble bars of gold, silver and copper.)

    But it is Mr. Trump’s real estate and education products that have enticed many Americans to invest life savings and dreams of quick riches. And it is with these products, according to a string of lawsuits and complaints filed around the country, that Mr. Trump has disappointed his fans most deeply.

    Opening a ‘University’

    As the American housing market climbed toward its peak, in 2005, Mr. Trump opened a for-profit school, called Trump University, to impart his wisdom about real estate and moneymaking to the general public.

    In marketing materials, he promised students that his handpicked team of instructors would “teach you better than the best business school,” according to the transcript of a Web video. The same year, Mr. Trump licensed his name to an affiliated program, called the Trump Institute, which offered similar classes.

    Dozens of complaints about both schools have rolled into the offices of attorneys general in Florida, Texas, New York and Illinois, officials said. And last year, the Better Business Bureau gave Trump University a D-minus, the second-lowest grade on its scale, after it fielded 23 complaints.

    A lawsuit filed in 2010 by four dissatisfied former students, who are seeking class-action status, accuses Trump University of offering classes that amounted to extended “infomercials,” “selling nonaccredited products,” and “taking advantage of these troubled economic times to prey on consumers’ fears.”

    According to the court papers, the university used high-pressure sales tactics to enroll students in classes that cost up to $35,000, at times encouraging them to raise their credit card limits to pay for them. It promised intensive one-on-one instruction that often failed to materialize. And its mentors recommended investments from which they stood to profit.

    “It was almost completely worthless,” said Jeffrey Tufenkian, 49, who along with his wife, Sona, enrolled in a $35,000 “Gold Elite” class at Trump University to jump-start a career in real estate.

    Mr. Tufenkian, who lives in Portland, Ore., was especially drawn to what Trump University described as a year-long mentorship. But he said that it amounted to a real estate expert from California taking him on a tour of homes in Portland that he could have seen on his own, for free.

    At one point, he said, the mentor suggested an educational trip to Home Depot, an idea he found comical; at another, he said, the mentor recommended a sales technique (selling the option to buy a house), that several lawyers later told Mr. Tufenkian he was ineligible to perform because he lacked a real estate license. He recalled how, during a much cheaper Trump class on foreclosure, he and his wife were encouraged by instructors to raise their credit card limits, ostensibly in anticipation of investing in real estate, only to have the accounts maxed out with the purchase of the next $35,000 class, a charge mirrored in the lawsuit. The fee, and the resulting credit card interest payments, have wiped out much of the couple’s savings. Mr. Tufenkian’s requests for a refund have been rejected.

    “You can understand how a business makes mistakes,” he said, “but a proper business will do what it takes to make it right. Trump University has no interest in taking care of its customers.”

    George Sorial, a managing director and lawyer at the Trump Organization, the company that oversees Mr. Trump’s various businesses, said that the school had a “very generous” refund policy — and that less than two percent of students ask for their money back.

    Mr. Sorial called claims that instructors took students on tours of Home Depot and asked students to raise their credit limits “ridiculous” and “unsubstantiated.” He said mentors were prohibited from profiting from their advice. According to student evaluations, he said, Trump University has a 97 percent customer satisfaction rate with its 11,000 paying students around the country.

    “I guarantee that if you went out and surveyed Harvard grads, you would find some who are not happy. It’s inevitable,” he said. “You cannot look at the exception to the rule.”

    Students said the evaluations must be put into context: they were told to fill them out using their names, often in the presence of the instructors they were assessing. Mr. Tufenkian, for example, said he gave high marks to the program after his mentor told him he would not leave until Mr. Tufenkian did so. “I had to fill it out right in front of him,” Mr. Tufenkian said.

    The school has repeatedly sought to use such evaluations to raise questions about the credibility of unhappy former students. After Tarla Makaeff, who spent about $37,000 on Trump classes, joined the lawsuit against the school, the company released raw footage of a Trump University videographer approaching her in a hotel conference room, asking her to assess the program and her mentors. On the video, her mentors can be seen standing beside her, clearly within earshot. While warning that “we just got started,” Ms. Makaeff, 37, calls the mentors “great” and “awesome.”

    In retrospect, Ms. Makaeff said, university employees “were trying to cover themselves,” by putting her on tape. Trump University is now suing her for defamation, seeking at least $1 million in damages for her public criticism of the school in letters, e-mail and online. “That just shows you how low they will go to silence people,” Ms. Makaeff said.

    The school’s troubles are intensifying. Last year, the Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, opened a civil investigation into Trump University’s practices. Since then, the company has agreed not to operate in Texas indefinitely, said Thomas Kelley, a spokesman for the attorney general. (Mr. Sorial said there was no formal agreement.)

    And last March, New York state officials demanded that Trump University change its name, saying its use of the word university “is misleading and violates New York education law,” joining Maryland, which issued a similar warning in 2008.

    The school has since changed its name to the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative, but has not held a new class in seven months as it reworks its curriculum. “It’s on hiatus,” Mr. Trump said in an interview.

    The Trump Institute, meanwhile, shut down in 2009. “It doesn’t meet our standards,” Mr. Sorial said. “Our standards are very high.”

    Selling the Name

    Even as his empire has expanded into reality television and the clothing aisle, Mr. Trump remains, at least in the public imagination, primarily a real estate developer.

    But to a remarkable degree over the last five years, Mr. Trump has retreated from that role, becoming, instead, a highly-paid licensor, who leases his five-letter brand name to other developers in Toronto, Honolulu, Dubai and even his own backyard, New York City.

    The arrangements allowed Mr. Trump, who is notoriously competitive, to remain a player in the world of big-city builders without risking his own money — a prospect that seemed especially appealing as the economy began to crater.

    “When things got over-inflated in the world,” Mr. Trump’s son Donald Jr., said in an interview, “we removed ourselves from the ground-up development world, where we are risking a lot more.”

    “We switched more to a license model,” he said, describing several of the projects, including the Honolulu building, as “big successes.”

    However it was that kind of license deal — in places like Baja California, Mexico, and in Tampa and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. — that led to disappointment and anger among those seeking to buy a home carrying the Trump name, according to the lawsuits.

    John Robbins, 62, a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Army who is among those suing Mr. Trump, recalled being dazzled by the amenities available in the nearly 2,000-square-foot apartment that he and his wife, Rosanna, bought six years ago at the Trump Tower Tampa: granite countertops, sweeping views of the Tampa Bay, and room service from a high-end ground-floor restaurant.

    The most important amenity of all, though, was the name on the side of the building. “With the Trump name,” Mr. Robbins said of his $756,000 unit, “we thought it would be a quality building and address.”

    The marketing materials left little doubt that Mr. Trump was a driving force behind the 52-story tower: “We are developing a signature landmark property,” Mr. Trump declared in a news release unveiling it, which described him as a partner. In a marketing video, Mr. Trump called it “my first project on the Gulf of Mexico,” and even showed up to mingle with potential buyers at a lavish, catered event. “I love to build buildings,” Mr. Robbins recalled Mr. Trump telling the audience.

    A confidential agreement, later made public in court filings, told a different story: Mr. Trump was not one of the developers or builders. For $4 million, plus a share of any profits, he had licensed his name. As for the mingling with buyers? He was required to do it, up to two times, in the agreement, which spelled out that the appearances last “for no more than six (6) working hours each.”

    According to the document, the very existence of the license agreement was to be kept confidential. And it remained that way, buyers said, long after they bought their units. “If at any point I had known this, I would have walked away,” said Mr. Robbins, who put down a deposit of about $150,000 — half of which, under Florida law, the developer could use for construction costs.


    A similar situation unfolded in Baja, where Mr. Trump licensed his name to another glamorous-sounding waterfront property: the Trump Ocean Resort Baja.

    As financing for the building froze in 2008 and the developer missed key deadlines, Mr. Trump exercised his right to terminate the license agreement and remove his name. According to a lawsuit, the partners behind the deal burned through $32 million worth of buyer deposits, even though little, if any, construction was done.

    One of the buyers suing Mr. Trump, Donald Isbell, said he has lain awake countless nights trying to figure out how he erred. He has lost his entire deposit of $147,000. “I have come to the conclusion,” he said, “that what I did wrong was to trust Donald Trump.”


    Mr. Trump and his advisers seem unapologetic about how they handled the three deals. Asked, in a deposition with lawyers for the Tampa buyers, if he would be responsible for any shoddy construction, Mr. Trump replied that he had “no liability,” and said that he was unsure whether his licensing arrangements were disclosed to buyers. Pressed during the deposition as to why he did not return his license fee after the development fell apart, Mr. Trump replied: “Well, because I had no obligation to the people that signed me to give it back.”

    But what has most galled people like Mr. Robbins, who sank much of their life savings into their dream homes, was Mr. Trump’s suggestion that the collapse of the project was a blessing — because it had allowed buyers to avoid the housing crash and the resulting plunge in home values.

    “They were better off losing their deposit,” Mr. Trump said.

    “Better off?” asked Mr. Robbins, who lost $75,600, the half of his deposit spent on construction. “No. I would be better off if he had been truthful and honest with us from the beginning. I would be better off if he returned my deposit.

    “But he will never do that. He is looking out for Donald Trump and the dollar.”

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    But there are some huge problems with the 'take back America' and 'make America great again' sentiments when so much of it is directed towards that 'permanent Republican majority' they love to talk about which is so very undemocratic.

    I fail to see how one man can get things back in line when Congress is so dysfunctional. I can easily see Trump embracing a one party solution.
    The republican party of recent years is horrified by Trump to the point where they're still not sure if they should even back their own front-runner, and there's been talk of a split in the party, so I'm not sure how his own party is even going to embrace him. These are politicians still bought and sold by families like the Bushes and Rockefellers, except for maybe a small few, and Trump apparently among them.

    Even if Hillary gets in at this point (which I doubt), the message has already been sent and people have already been riled up. If Hillary wanted to enact the fascist policies she's been talking about openly (taking an aggressive military stance in the Middle East, re-alienating Iran, de facto gun bans domestically, etc.), she'd have all the anger we've already seen in the population against her, and then some. The real problem for the establishment here isn't Donald Trump. The real problem is the anger for which he's become the lightning rod. That anger has been building up for years, tremendous suppressed popular anger under both the Bush and Obama administrations, with people (slowly... but steadily) beginning to realize that neither party is going to fix anything. Just giving people the opportunity to act out on that anger in the political system has made everyone remember that we are capable of taking back control of our own government.

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