Month: December 2022

Categories
Business Donald Trump

Value Of Trump’s ‘Digital Trading Cards’ Collapses – Down 78% In One Week

 

When he released them in mid-December, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump’s digital trading cards sold out in a single day for $99 each, netting the failed ex-president $4.4 million. Not bad for a so-called “investment” that actually carries no real value whatsoever.

As Forbes noted at the time:

Former President Donald Trump’s line of digital trading cards sold out in a day, netting millions despite the massive ongoing slump in nonfungible tokens and cryptocurrency and a fair bit of mocking from some of his allies.

Sounds like a major success for the “great businessman,” right?

But as it turns out with nearly everything that carries the now tainted Trump name, those cards have lost 78% of their value in a week’s time.

Finbold.com reports the bottom has indeed fallen out of the Trump trading card market, meaning lots of the owners how have almost worthless holdings that are likely to be worth nothing in the near future.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s non-fungible token (NFT) collection, known as Trump Digital Trading Cards, are currently owned by a total of 15,075 owners, which equates to a 34% unique owner rate.

The value of the recently launched NFT line dropped by 78% as the floor price fell from 0.84 Ethereum (ETH) on December 18 to 0.186 ETH, according to OpenSea data as of December 30.

Many of the cards were resold after the first run, driving up their value to a high of 0.82 ether, or $999. In the last week, the volume is 380 ETH down (-95%), sales are 1,564 (-93%), and the floor price is down -11%, however, in total each card has still gained significant value since they were first sold.

Much like other digital assets such as cryptocurrencies, the market seems to be in complete freefall, with owners trying to dump them as quickly as possible.

A few days after its release, the floor price began to drop in tandem with widespread criticism of the NFT line for issues including internal minting, licensing errors, and claimed design copying. It is worth reminding that Trump wasn’t always this open to the cryptocurrency sector, the former president referred to Bitcoin (BTC) as a ‘scam,’ stating that he didn’t like it “because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.” 

The biggest scam of all, of course, is believing anything Donald Trump says.

Categories
China Donald Trump The Trump Adminstration

Trump Took $6.5 Million From China While He Was President

The release of six years of failed former president Donald Trump’s taxes by the House Ways and Means Committee makes it clear that while he was in the White House, the Trump Organization took millions from over a dozen foreign countries, including $6.5 million from China.

Politico reports that Trump had multiple conflicts of interest, and since he refused to place his assets into a blind trust, we may never know exactly how those millions from other nations may have impacted U.S. foreign policy in the Trump administration.

The six years of tax returns disclosed Friday show that Trump received extensive income from Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom — including gross business income of at least $35.3 million from Canada in 2017, the year he entered office.

That year, Trump also brought in $6.5 million from China, $5.8 million from Indonesia and $5.7 million from India.

By 2020, his last full year in office, Trump reported $8.8 million in income from the U.K. and another $3.9 million in Ireland.

Trump also stuck his snout into the U.S. Treasury by submitting outrageous bills for lodging and travel during his four years in office.

The former president was known for fusing his business interests with America’s highest public office, drawing allegations of using his role to promote his private resorts, direct federal money to his hotels and encourage foreign governments to spend money that would directly benefit the Trump family interests.

His far-flung concerns, foreign and domestic, are nested in more than 400 separate business entities. A 2019 report by the watchdog group OpenSecrets said he had more than $130 million in assets in more than 30 countries.

Additionally, the returns from 2015 to 2020 call into doubt Trump’s claims that he was donating his presidential salary of $400,00 a year to charity, according to The Independent:

Donald Trump donated nothing to the Department of Health and Human Services during the height of the pandemic, despite claiming publicly to have done so, his tax returns revealed on Friday.

The release of his returns came as the result of the end of a years-long legal battle between the now-former president and the House Ways and Means Committee, which released its final report this week after recently obtaining the returns when the Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case.

The picture painted by the documents is crystal clear: Donald Trump claimed zero charitable donations throughout 2020, meaning that his tax burden was not reduced at all (at least in that regard). He would still go on to pay $0 in income tax for the year in total.

Trump’s taxes show what we’ve long suspected about him: He’s a grifter, a liar, a tax cheat, and a scumbag.

 

Categories
Donald Trump Elections GOP

The GOP Is Facing Four ‘Doomsday Scenarios’ In The 2024 Election

The Republican Party discovered in the recent midterm elections that the shadow of Donald Trump hanging over the GOP is an albatross that cost them a bigger majority in the House and control of the Senate.

But 2022 could wind up looking like a landslide victory if one of four “doomsday scenarios” take place two years from now.

David Byler, a political data analyst for the Washington Post, explains in a fascinating op-ed what may be awaiting the GOP with Trump running for president once again in 2024, and none of them is the least bit positive. In fact, any one of them could lead to the complete collapse of the party, Byler notes.

“Many believe GOP voters are ready to move on from the former president, but we all remember the 2016 primary. In that race, Trump had roughly 35 percent of Republican voters behind him, and multiple opponents split an anti-Trump majority. Trump won state after state — and the nomination — with just a plurality of the vote. Trump’s foes are right to fear a repeat of 2016, but they’re thinking too small. There are so many other ways the primary could turn out badly for them.”

Here are the four scenarios to look for in 2024:

Trump loses, storms off and sabotages the nominee: Since Trump has never really been a “loyal Republican,” he might just decide to create his own party and run against both the Democratic and GOP presidential nominees, which would be fatal for whoever winds up winning the Republican nomination. Byler explains, “If a hurt, petulant Trump shaved just a couple of percentage points off the Republican vote share, he could hand the Democrats another term in the White House.”

Trump gains a weak lead — and the 2012 clown car returns: 2012 was the year Mitt Romney won the GOP nomination and proceeded to lose to President Barack Obama by an electoral vote margin of 332-206. “Even if they coalesce behind one candidate and avoid the mistakes of 2016, their champion might not have staying power.”

Republicans stick with a flawed Trump alternative: Who would be the flawed Trump alternative? Probably Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who doesn’t wear well over time and is widely hated among a majority of independent voters.

Trump plays the hits and wins outright: This is the worst scenario for the GOP, because it would guarantee that the Republican Party officially becomes the Party of Trump. “This would be a true worst-case scenario for the anti-Trump GOP. The majority of voters would have rejected them and thrown a scandal-ridden candidate with a dismal 34 percent overall favorability rating into yet another general election.”

In other words, Trump may wind up fully destroying the GOP with his 2024 bid to be their nominee. How’s that for the ultimate irony?

 

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Taxation

Trump’s Tax Returns Show At Least 26 Instances Of Fraud That He Can Be Prosecuted For

Now that we have six years of former president Donald Trump’s tax returns, experts say he should be very worried about upcoming criminal charges against him on multiple counts of tax fraud.

The returns show that Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, have been taking advantage of massive tax breaks that he vigorously lobbied Congress for over the decades.

David Cay Johnston, author of “The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family,” said Friday during an appearance on CNN that one thing stood out to him upon initial inspection of Trump’s tax returns from the years 2015 to 2020:

“They don’t show he’s successful at all.”

Johnston then elaborated:

“They clearly show that he took advantage of every lawful method of tax avoidance including ones he lobbied Congress for in 1992, successfully lobbied them for, that were enormously beneficial to him but also show at a minimum 26 examples of where Donald crossed the line. and engaged in what I believe can be prosecuted as criminal tax fraud.”

Asked for specifics, Johnston explained:

“Donald in 1984 filed tax returns that showed businesses — a business with zero revenue and $600,000 of expenses, while the city of New York and the state of New York, after trials Donald demanded, the judges held these were civil tax fraud. Well, that put him on notice he can’t do that. He did it 26 times over the six years and that is powerful evidence of criminal intent, he knew he shouldn’t do it, he did it anyway.

“And why did he get away with it? Well, being in control of the federal government, he blocked the turning over of his tax returns, he blocked the audits that are required by law and for years he didn’t receive any serious mention from the IRS auditors.”

Categories
Donald Trump Social Media Taxation

Trump Posts Threats As His Tax Returns Are Released: ‘Going To Lead To Horrible Things’

The House Ways and Means Committee released six years of failed former president Donald Trump’s tax returns this morning, and at first blush it certainly appears that the ex-president may well have manipulated the numbers to keep his tax burden low, including not paying a dime in taxes some years.

CNN reports that during the first and last years Trump was in the White House, he paid almost nothing in taxes.

The returns, long shrouded in secrecy, were released to the public on Friday by the House Ways and Means Committee, the culmination of a battle over their disclosure that went to the Supreme Court. They confirm a report issued from the Joint Committee on Taxation that Trump claimed large losses before and throughout his presidency that he carried forward to reduce or practically eliminate his tax burden. For example, his returns show that he carried forward a $105 million loss in 2015 and $73 million in 2016.

The committee also included an analysis of Trump’s tax returns, and it too raises all sorts of questions about how he and his company, the Trump Organization, managed to have such a miniscule tax liability.

Included with the committee’s report was an analysis of the numbers from each of the six Trump tax returns by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. Among the JCT’s findings, the then-president paid very little federal income tax in 2017 – just $750 – and nothing in 2020. The report also showed Trump paid a combined $1.1 million in federal income taxes in 2018 and 2019, a stark contrast to the $750 he paid in 2017 and $0 in 2020.

For many years, prior to his running for president, a New York Times investigation showed that Trump had claimed huge net operating losses that he was allowed to carry forward and apply to future tax years, which greatly reduced or simply wiped out his annual income tax liability.

For example, the JCT report noted that Trump carried forward $105 million in losses on his 2015 return, $73 million in 2016, $45 million in 2017 and $23 million in 2018.

Minutes after the tax returns were made public, Trump issued a statement via his spokesperson, Liz Harrington, which at times reads like a threat.

“The Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people. The great USA divide will now grow far worse. The radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”

There was also this:

“The ‘Trump’ tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.”

He sounds furious and nervous. That alone tells you the tax returns contain evidence of criminal behavior.