Investigative Journalists

"Trump has... lived a life of thumbing his nose at conventions and law enforcement, learning... from his father, Fred, whose business partner was an associate of the Gambino and Genovese crime families. He has long been in deep with mobsters, domestic and foreign, along with corrupt union bosses and assorted swindlers. Trump even spent years deeply entangled with a major international drug trafficker who, like many of the others, enjoyed their mutually lucrative arrangements."

"Instead of a president of specific duties and constitutionally limited authority, Trump and his aides talk as if he is an absolute ruler, or should be, to whom all must bend the knee."

"Trump has himself reduced his life philosophy to a single word—revenge. ...Repeatedly he has said in talks and in books that destroying the lives of people he considers disloyal gives him pleasure. That Trump does not recognize ethical limits on conduct... derives from his fundamental character, narcissism."

"Over many years in paid public appearances and in books bearing his name... Trump rejected the idea of turning the other cheek, saying that those who do are "fools" and "idiots." This philosophy was ignored by the many pastors who endorsed Trump and accepted... that he is a Christian. ...[R]evenge is explicitly rejected by Jesus and runs counter to the whole theme of the New Testament."

"The Golden Rule has no place in the life of Donald Trump."

"Revenge is the philosophy of dictators and mob bosses... used to keep others in line with threats of economic ruin, violence, or worse."

"[T]he Trump presidency is unlike anything that came before, a presidency built on open public contempt for Constitutional principles."

"[H]e brought into the White House a host of people with fringe ideas, some of them Islamophobes... white nationalists... xenophobes, and many... sharing Trump's ignorance of science. ...[M]any ...had no qualifications ...for the posts ...he got the advice and consent of ...senators despite testimony revealing some as ...know-nothings and one ...determined to destroy the agency he now runs."

"Trump has left the vast majority of positions under his control vacant."

"The Trump administration deposited political termites throughout the structure of our government. Their task, in the words of Steve Bannon, is the "deconstruction of the administrative state." ...[H]e means to undo the tax, trade, regulatory, and other means... [T]he end game is... a government that looks first after the best-off... not those most in need of a helping hand in the form of a sound education, clean water, and other basics of a healthy society... These termites operate out of sight... to bully or scare scientists into leaving, remove from public access... public records... necessary to enforce environmental, worker safety, and other laws."

"Few things benefit Trump more than ignorance. ...Unless and until some fact they cannot reconcile slaps them hard in the face, the con's marks will keep seeing the world through the credulous and distorted lens..."

"He has boasted about not paying banks that loaned him billions of dollars. He conned thousands of people desperate to learn... paying up to $35,000 to attend . ...[T]hese professors turned out to be fast-food managers and others with no experience in real estate, the focus of the "university." Because of... law suits Trump paid back $25 million... so the scam would not follow him into the White House."

"Many of those who believe in Trump come from the 90 percent whose economic fortunes have dwindled over that last half century... [P]olicies embraced by both parties ignored their plight or made it worse."

"The Chinese have seized upon Trump's erratic behavior and his cancellation of the to promote their own trade deal, orienting fifteen economies and India away from Washington and toward Beijing."

"Trump used illegal immigrants with sledge hammers (but no hard hats or safety gear) to demolish a... Manhattan department store so he could build . A federal judge... held that Trump engaged in a conspiracy to cheat those men out of their full $4 an hour pay."

"Trump started a faux university named for himself that taught nothing of value and collapsed in scandal."

"Questions of corruption and foreign influence are on the front burner... because of the extensive business holdings of Donald Trump and his actions encouraging foreign powers, lobbyists, and other favor seekers to spend money at his Washington hotel and other properties."

"The domestic emoluments clause... states that beyond his government salary the president may not receive "any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them." Those... words bar payment from the federal government or any of the fifty states... Trump has been profiting from spending at his properties by foreign governments... Also Trump has been profiting from federal, state, and local governments spending money at his properties as part of presidential security details. When Trump stays at [his properties]... these governments... pay full retail prices."

"Lawsuits accusing Trump of violating the Constitution's s have been filed by attorneys general from sixteen states and by 196 senators and representatives,... a bipartisan ethics watchdog organization called ... and a growing list of business owners who compete with Trump hotels and restaurants."

"The s... go to the very nature of... America and whether we are a nation of laws... whether elected office is for public service or it permits profiteering."

"Trump is the first president to pose numerous questions about whether he is receiving income from foreign governments, which the Framers felt was inherently corrupting. He is also the first to present the issue of profiting from spending by federal, state, and local governments with payments that the Framers denied... How these cases are resolved will likely have an enormous influence on whether the American Republic endures..."

"Trump's private and Justice Department lawyers narrowly define emolument. ...[A]nything short of an flat-out bribe is legal ...so long as the transaction is run through one of the ...companies owned by the president."

"During the Constitutional Convention... [d]ictionaries from the era... show that emolument had a broad meaning, including profit, gain, benefit, and advantage. John Mikhail... found that "the majority of Blackstone's usages of 'emolumnent' involve benefits other than government salaries and or perquisites," including profits from business and rents from land."

"and ... as leaders of CREW]... describe Trump's conduct as a "flagrant abuse" of the Constitution for personal profit. ...Painter, the Bush ethics chief... is almost apoplectic at Trump's conduct and the failure of his fellow Republicans to speak up."

"Trump bought the Doral with $104.8 million he borrowed from ... infamous for laundering money for Russian oligarchs. ...When Trump took office, the Doral was under a foreclosure order. Trump, as he often does, refused to pay contractors in full. ...Most contractors just walk away when Trump refuses to pay... because Trump will spend far more to litigate than the amount in dispute to discourage contractors and small business owners he cheats from suing for what they are due."

"[I]n modern language we think of "idiot" as someone who is stupid or a fool. That is not the classical meaning... An idiot is someone who cares only about himself and has no regard for anyone else, and that's terribly important when you think about tyrants. ...[W]e think of tyrants as people who are horrible... oppressors. ...[I]n its classic historic meaning, tyrant was simply someone who ceased power."

"The Founders of this country are in two groups... [W]e live in the second American republic because the first American republic under the Articles of Confederation failed, because it had no power to tax."

"[A] government that can't tax ...is no government at all."

"Governments throughout history have been run by tyrants."

"Whose society lasted 3,300 years? It was the [Egyptian] Pharaohs. ...They figured out through public works how to keep people busy and out of trouble, and every high-born Egyptian was taught... how far you can oppress people before they would strike back. ...[T]hey also learned one other lesson. You've all heard of the ?"

"The is a grant of tax relief. ...[E]ssentially it says... I, Pharaoh so and so... hereby make this grant of tax relief to these priests."

"[W]hat's happened in our society is we have seen this experiment, this crazy idea of self-governance which had very few antecedents, atrophy."

"The Haudenosaunee people, the People of the Longhouse, the ones we call the created a democracy. ...[T]hey had the equivalent of state legislatures. ...[O]nly men ran for office. Only women voted, and women could remove from office men who misbehaved, and they did."

"The other old democracy... was in Athens. ...Aristotle said democracy means "to rule and to be ruled in turns"... because the system... was designed to ensure that nobody would... cease power. ...Different clans had to be together. You couldn't be segregated. ...[E]very month a different group was in charge. ...[I]t worked for 200 years. [Much of] our Constitution is based... on the experience of Ancient Athens, of ."

"All of the Founders of this country... were well steeped in the history of the ancient world. ...[T]hey were very concerned about the rabble... about people being inflamed, and making bad decisions, and ruining this idea they had. ...In many places you weren't allowed to vote if you were just a wage earner. The theory, and this came out of the horrible system of the Dutch in Hudson Valley, where ordinary people would be told by their boss, who to vote for. But if you were a no one could tell you what to do."

"[O]ur Consitution... is designed to be slow and hard to change. It takes six years to get rid of all the scalawags in office today. ...[I]t's designed to be conservative, and it has a very interesting backstop. ...The has a second purpose... to have an ultimate backstop if the people went for a zealot, or a crazy person, to be president of the United States. ...[T]hat [the elector] would vote [his] conscious and say "No, the popular will here is wrong. This person will destroy our democracy.""

"And then we get a man who hasn't done a single day of public service in his life, and he has a rabid following. This is a man whose lawyers... in court two weeks ago said that "Yes... if he were to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue no law enforcement agency could investigate. He is immune.""

"There are always people who want a tyrant. Democracy requires work if it's going to work."

"One of the things that changed was [that] the institutions that supported working people have been decimated. ...[T]he Democrats, the party of the working people, played a role in this. They allowed the weakening... of unions. They bought the argument that unions are bad for companies."

"Japan has mandatory unions. ...It's in their Constitution, and who wrote their Constitution? ...The staff of... General Douglas MacArthur, because he knew that if Japan had unions it would democratize the country, it would tend to equalize incomes, and it would help resist the bellicose tendencies of the aristocratic class in Japan. And it's worked brilliantly."

"We're all interdependent. Don't think about exploiting and mining other people because we're all interdependent. ...You say that today and people say, "Oh, you're a socialist!""

"Bill O'Reilly... called me a socialist, and I said "Interestingly, my books champion competitive markets," but I understand people like Bill think that competitive markets are a socialist scheme, because they just want to mine the public and make all the money they can, with no regard for anybody else."

"Those organizations that were focused on the New Testament and the idea that you have an obligation to your fellow man and to provide people with a means to interface with government... That's just shriveled away like unions have. ...[W]hat's risen in their place? Corporate America."

"Corporations are good things. They encourage people to take risk. They're smart vehicles for building wealth, but they also have to be controlled. ...[T]he reason is, they are soulless entities. A corporation has no morals and its purpose is to make money. ...If we have to induce diabetes in millions of children by getting them to drink sugary soft drinks and eat too many french fries and greasy hamburgers, [corporations will] do that."

"We have to... channel... greed so that it becomes useful to our society."

"Our system for identifying and promoting military officers for leadership actually works. In my biography of Donald Trump I cite the Army Field Manual 6, which is the selection of officers for promotion because they have leadership skills. ...[S]omeone ...had reduced this to 6 basic lessons. Do you take responsibility for what you do? Do you credit other people? Are you open to recognizing a mistake and correcting it, etc. ...Donald Trump flunks every one of those measures. ...But, because he doesn't have real leadership skills, he's who he is. He's a con man and a con artist. He's not a business man, he's a cash extractor who gets a hold of a business, takes cash out of it and puts it aside. He's not capable of being a tyrant and taking over the country. ...But we need to worry about what happens when someone comes along who has a really deep philosophy."

"Adolf Hitler had a really deep philosophy. ...It came out of a hundred years of German and Polish and Austrian and Russian and Belarus and Ukrainian philosophy about the "Demon Jews" and the Romanis and the "cripples""

"What about competent managers? ...Vladimir Putin seems to be a reasonably competent manager... the leader of the biggest international gang in the world. These are the criminals who stole the wealth of the old Soviet... and the way that criminal gang leaders work... "This is your territory, that's your territory. Don't bother me. If there's a problem I'll intervene. If necessary I'll have one of you wacked. Because I want to do what I want to do." By the way, that's the way the s operated in Egypt. "I don't want to deal with people's petty problems." So they set up the equivalent of a modern wage and hour court in 1350 BC. You delegate... you set certain boundaries. That's how tyrants operate."

"[T]here are people in this country looking at what's going on... and either for themselves or someone they think they can put in that [tyrannical] position. ...Every politician has people around them who are going to promote them. ...There are people... that realize that Americans have become so disconnected... so amenable to messages like "all taxes are bad."... Tax is the most vile three-letter word in America."

"Trying to get people to understand, as I'm going to try and do in my next book, that we can have a wholly different tax system that will actually make us wealthier... 'The Prosperity Tax'... It's going to be a tough sell because so many people have been brainwashed on this. ...Trying to tell them that we created this country so that we could tax ourselves."