The New York Post has confirmed what many of US already know. Prez-elect Donald Trump is not about to change his lying ways, which includes blatantly attacking anyone who threatens to uncover his many con games.
The Post just reported at a meeting of TV execs and reporters in Trump Tower: "It was like a f−−−ing firing squad," one source said of the encounter. "Trump started with [CNN chief] Jeff Zucker and said, 'I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,'" the source said.
This is from The Liar-In-Chief, who has been and continues to be caught in his own lies and deceitful behavior, whenever someone questions his statements. USA Today reports he has at least 75 lawsuits against him, not counting the tentatively settled 3 Trump University class action lawsuits, one of which was for charges of fraud and racketeering.
Why did he single out CNN in his rant? Because CNN caught him out. As Vox reported, Argentinian President Mauricio Macri and Argentinian officials denied there was any link between Macri's call to Trump and the revival of his Buenos Aires high-rise project, as soon as Trump won the Electoral College.
"But as CNN reports, the YY Development Group, the company meant to build the Buenos Aires tower, announced just three days after the Trump-Macri call that construction on the tower could begin in summer of 2017. The project has a $100 million budget, and is "only waiting final approval from the city government."
"The meeting was a total disaster," continued the Post source. "The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing-down," the source added. A second source confirmed the fireworks...
"Trump kept saying, 'We're in a room of liars, the deceitful, dishonest media who got it all wrong.' He addressed everyone in the room, calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars"
In fact, we know what he wanted to hide. Revealing his tax returns, for instance, could confirm his extensive foreign business connections. A Financial Times investigation has found evidence that one Trump venture has multiple ties to an alleged international money laundering network, said the Times.
"Title deeds, bank records and correspondence show that a Kazakh family accused of laundering hundreds of millions of stolen dollars bought luxury apartments in a Manhattan tower part-owned by Mr Trump and embarked on major business ventures with one of the tycoon's partners."
And this is after his now infamous interview with the New York Times, in which he maintained that "Presidents don't have conflicts of interest," which is blatantly false. The U.S. Constitution doesn't allow foreign governments to benefit a U.S. President, because it might influence our foreign policy, which could endanger all of US.
So now we know why he singled out CNN. Trump will accuse others of lying, in order to attempt to deflect attention from his own too obvious fabrications. It is classic con artist behavior as I discussed in my previous column, The Real Donald Trump--Part II.
In it Maria Konnikova implied that Trump was a classic Con Artist with her now famous New Yorker article:
"A grifter takes advantage of a person's confidence for his own specific ends--ends that are often unknowable to the victim and unrelated to the business at hand. He willfully deceives a mark into handing over his trust under false pretenses. He has a plan."
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has to be another classic con-artist to convince enough Wisconsin voters to back his plan to ban the collective bargaining of public school teachers (while exempting Police and Firemen's unions), which reduced teacher union-membership by half, which will in effect reduce their salaries and benefits.
This flies in the face of modern economic theory, which says reducing bargaining power reduces incomes, which decreases the aggregate demand for goods and services for the 80 percent of workers with wages and salaries, which in turn reduces economic growth.
Nobel economist Robert Shiller attributes such irrational behavior (behavior that is not in their best interests) in Trump's victory to a sense of economic powerlessness, or a fear of losing power, among his supporters. To them, his simple slogan, "Make America great again," sounds like "Make YOU great again": economic power will be given to the multitudes, without taking anything away from the already successful.
Really? The result for Wisconsin has been job and economic growth has consistently underperformed that of its neighboring states, while the budget deficit has ballooned. The expected shortfall for the next two-year state budget starting in July 2015 has risen to nearly $1.8 billion, or about half of what it was when Gov. Scott Walker took office in January 2011, according to the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Sentinel Journal.
This is also classic Republican Trickle-down economics, the theory that reducing taxes of the rich will credit more jobs and growth, whereas it has resulted in just the opposite since the 1980s--lower taxes and soaring budget deficits.
And it is part of the larger con game that has made so-called red states that suffer the most from Republican politics now overwhelmingly Republican. Nobelist Paul Krugman in a recent Op-ed seems puzzled by this.
"To be honest, I don't fully understand this resentment. In particular, I don't know why imagined liberal disdain inspires so much more anger than the very real disdain of conservatives who see the poverty of places like eastern Kentucky as a sign of the personal and moral inadequacy of their residents."
But it is understandable if their regions have deteriorated economically and socially to such an extent that drug use and suicide rates have soared. These are the people that have suffered most from the fast-changing modern economy that left them behind.
So why wouldn't they listen and be most susceptible to the siren call of such a snake-oil salesmen as Donald Trump or Scott Walker? How is it even possible for them to know what is in their best interest when blinded by the suffering of many in their own families and communities?
In fact, Trump's call to revolution is really a counter-revolution, a return to a misty-eyed, white nation with a level of corruption not seen since that time.
Harlan Green © 2016
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