Donald Trump’s middle-of-the-night tweets about a beauty queen sex tape are frustrating Republican supporters, who worry once again that their candidate’s lack of discipline and temperance will hamper his campaign.

Trump sex tape comments frustrate GOP supporters



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Donald Trump’s middle-of-the-night tweets about a beauty queen sex tape are frustrating Republican supporters, who worry once again that their candidate’s lack of discipline and temperance will hamper his campaign.

They say Trump needs to keep his focus on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, prepare for their second debate, on Oct. 9 in St. Louis, and quit taking the bait from Democrats.

“It’s unlikely the Miss Universe flap is hurting Trump with current supporters, but it’s hard to see how it helps grow our vote,” said one GOP lawmaker who supports Trump.

“Maybe it's quaint conventional wisdom. But it seems he would help himself to talk about the real world problems that every day voters face,” the lawmaker said.

Trump has not been able to let go his feud with former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.

In a series of tweets beginning at 3:19 a.m. on Friday and ending at 5:30 a.m., the New York billionaire sought to discredit Machado by drawing attention to tawdry details about her past, including allegations — debunked by fact-checkers — that she has filmed a “sex tape.”

Those allegations reignited Democratic attacks against Trump over his treatment of Machado just as the issue seemed ready to peter out.

Clinton already had been doing everything she could to keep the Machado story going, believing Trump’s fat-shaming of the Venezuelan would help her with both women and Hispanic voters.

She responded to Trump’s tweet-storm with her own series of tweets, calling Trump “unhinged.”
“What kind of man stays up all night to smear a woman with lies and conspiracy theories?,” Clinton tweeted.

“When something gets under Donald's thin skin, he lashes out and can't let go,” she said. “This is dangerous for a president. To Donald, women like Alicia are only as valuable as his personal opinion about their looks.”

Machado followed with a Spanish-language post on her Instagram account accusing Trump of “defamations and false accusations.”

“The attacks are slander and cheap lies generated with bad intentions and no basis that have been spread by tabloids,” Machado wrote. “This, of course, is not the first time I've faced a situation like this. Through his campaign of hate, the Republican candidate insists on discrediting and demoralizing a woman, which is definitely one of his most terrifying characteristics.”

Trump’s supporters believe he has once again been blown off course at a critical juncture in the race.

“We should be talking about the 33,000 emails,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a top Trump supporter and surrogate, told The Hill.

She said the GOP nominee needs to focus on Clinton’s weaknesses.

“We should be talking about the fact that the House had to do another hearing yesterday with James Comey about this issue,” she said. “We should be talking about new information on the Iran deal. We should be talking about what is happening with the Clinton Foundation and how in heaven's name two people leave the White House saying they are dead broke and a few years later they're worth several hundred million dollars and it seems like the Foundation is a conduit for that activity.”

Democrats are basking in Trump’s response, believing they’ve baited him into another ill-fated fight. It comes as the GOP nominee faces a critical stretch in which he needs to make up ground on Clinton in the polls. New surveys from Suffolk University released on Friday showed him trailing Clinton in Florida, Michigan and Nevada.

“Trump must grow his base of support to win ... and specifically he needs to grow the vote with college-educated women,” said the GOP lawmaker.

Many conservatives are angered that the media has run with the Clinton campaign’s narrative that Machado is an innocent victim in the right’s long-running war on women.

They point to media reports from the late 1990s that indicate Machado was once suspected of driving the getaway car for her boyfriend after he attempted to murder someone at a funeral.

Machado was never charged, but the judge in the case later accused her of threatening him. She dodged questions about the incident in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper this week.

Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly has challenged Machado’s assertion that Trump drove her to anorexia and bulimia, reading from an old Washington Post story quoting Machado as saying she developed eating disorders before becoming Miss Universe.

Machado claims the paper made the quote up.

Trump on Friday entertained conspiracy theories bouncing around far-right websites about Machado having filmed a sex tape, as well as allegations that Clinton helped the Venezuelan become a U.S. citizen for the express purpose of attacking him at the debate.

Machado was photographed topless for Playboy and appeared in a Spanish reality TV show that featured a risqué scene of her in bed with a male contestant.

But fact-checkers have rated claims that she appeared in a sex tape as “ false,” saying that searches for Machado porn videos turn up women who look like her but are someone else.

Democrats are having a field day with the ordeal.

“I'm almost @realDonaldTrump's age, so get the urge to get up in the middle of the night, but impt safety tip: don't reach for your phone,” tweeted Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

And the largest super-PAC supporting Clinton, Priorities USA, resurfaced a campaign ad it ran several months earlier featuring an actor playing Trump tweeting and “zinging another loser” at 3 a.m. in the White House while ignoring an urgent call on a red ringing phone.

Trump responded over Twitter: “For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o'clock in the morning, at least you know I will be there, awake, to answer the call!”

Ben Carson’s former campaign manager, Barry Bennett, who has advised the Trump campaign in the past, said the controversy won’t move the needle on votes but that the opportunity cost for Trump can’t be overstated.

“It’s sucking up time and time management at this point in the race is critical,” Bennett said. “By tweeting last night, he just guaranteed another day of coverage when he should be telling voters he understands all the problems they face.”

Donald Trump and his Foundation of Fakery :Trump Foundation is no charity at all: New York AG says Trump lacks certification to collect funds.The Washington Post is out with another blockbuster report on Trump's "foundation of fakery"

Trump Foundation is no charity at all: New York AG says Trump lacks certification to collect funds.The Washington Post is out with another blockbuster report on Trump's "foundation of fakery"


(Credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson)


Two weeks after New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced he had opened a broad inquiry into Donald Trump’s troubled foundation, a new report alleges the Republican nominee never actually obtained the certification that the state requires before charities can legitimately solicit money from the public.

According to exhaustive reporting by David A. Fahrenthold of The Washington Post, the Donald J. Trump Foundation never obtained the necessary certification to solicit money from the public during its nearly 30-year existence, an investigation by the state’s attorney general’s office has found.

ABC News has also confirmed the report.

New York law states that any charity that asks for more than $25,000 per year needs to obtain a special registration before soliciting offers. The Post, citing tax filings, reported that the Trump Foundation had raised more than $25,000 from outsiders in each of the last 10 years. The Post specifically detailed cases involving $2.3 million that raise questions about whether the money should have been taxed as income and whether that income was properly reported:

If New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) finds that Trump’s foundation raised money in violation of the law, he could order the charity to stop raising money immediately. With a court’s permission, Schneiderman could also force Trump to return money that his foundation has already raised.

Despite claims of giving away millions of dollars of his own money, Trump has not donated to his namesake foundation since 2008.

Another Post report earlier this week claimed Trump spent $258,000 from his foundation to settle lawsuits that involved his businesses – an apparent violation of laws against “self-dealing,” which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves.

Of course, the Trump Foundation has adopted a very charitable definition for its charitable giving, which included a $25,000 campaign donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi just four days before her office decided not to participate in a lawsuit against Trump University.

The Daily Beast also reported Friday that in 2010, the Trump Foundation gave $10,000 to Jenny McCarthy’s Generation Rescue, a nonprofit group whose primary goal is to promote false links between vaccinations and autism.

“McCarthy’s charity promotes ‘alternative vaccination physicians’ and has a grant program to provide families with autistic children with vitamins, minerals, and supplements; urine testing; and ‘dietary intervention training,’” The Daily Beast noted.


I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied. Save our children & their future.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2014

So many people who have children with autism have thanked me—amazing response. They know far better than fudged up reports!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2014

The silence of the lambs: Why sheepish GOP leaders have been conspicuously quiet since Donald Trump’s debate debacle Before Monday's debate, top Republicans were starting to vocally support Donald Trump, but since then? Crickets

The silence of the lambs: Why sheepish GOP leaders have been conspicuously quiet since Donald Trump’s debate debacle
Before Monday's debate, top Republicans were starting to vocally support Donald Trump, but since then? Crickets


Mitch McConnell; Paul Ryan (Credit: AP/Alex Brandon/J. Scott Applewhite/Photo montage by Salon)


Early last week, if you squinted hard enough it was possible to see the Republican Party beginning to unite behind presidential nominee Donald Trump. It was not overwhelming support. Nor was it the full-throated endorsement a partisan might want for the party’s nominee. It was more tepid, trending toward lukewarm.


Still, it was possible to read in the narrowing polling gap between Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton the possibility that Republicans who had spent months declaring themselves #NeverTrump were now coming home to the GOP. Prominent elected officials like Sen. Marco Rubio, who just a few months nearly broke down in tears over Trump’s success, and radio talk-show host Mark Levin, among others, decided the mogul was the lesser of two evils after all and gave him their grudging endorsements.

For crying out loud, even Ted Cruz endorsed Trump, after the latter had derided Cruz’s wife’s attractiveness and suggested the Texas senator’s father might have been an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald. The endorsement was likely a craven career move by Cruz more than it was a sign of newfound warmth towards his party’s nominee. But considering his antics on the stage of the Republican National Convention two months ago, this might as well have been the Camp David accords.

Then came Monday night, and a Trump performance that ranked as likely the worst ever turned in by a major party nominee in a presidential debate. All of a sudden, you could not find anyone besides Rush Limbaugh and congressional back benchers like Marsha Blackburn to defend the GOP’s standard bearer.

For example, RNC chairman Reince Priebus has been missing in action since Monday. Ahead of the debate he tried his hardest to put a positive face on the pile of rotted orange peels in a suit that his party had nominated by suggesting that 14 season finales of Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice” had prepared him for the debate. Priebus’ Twitter feed, which he has regularly used to slam Clinton, has been almost entirely silent.

GOP congressional leaders have said as little as possible. House Speaker Paul Ryan, whose relationship with Trump has been tenuous, tried to have it both ways. Hecalled the nominee’s performance “a unique Donald Trump response to the status quo” — but also suggested he should actually, you know, prepare for the next debate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConell said Trump did “just fine,” which is what a Southerner says when he means the exact opposite.
McConnell’s caucus wasn’t much more forthcoming. Sen. John McCain, who has almost never met a reporter he wouldn’t chat up, would only say the debate was “interesting.” Sen. Lindsey Graham echoed Ryan by telling Trump to practice more. Rubio tried the time-honored dodge of telling reporters that he had missed the debate because he had been on a plane at the time but would catch the “highlights” later. As the British might say, pull the other one.

About the only well-known Republican to defend Trump, besides Limbaugh, was Cruz. The Texas senator, who seems to have gotten over his alleged hatred of the nominee, lavished praise on him while speaking to radio host Hugh Hewitt. But considering how low Cruz’s approval ratings are in Texas, this seems like a transparently desperate move.

If debates are an opportunity to excite your base, then Trump seems to have completely whiffed with the first one. But more than that, it seems that his terrible night may have repelled already-skittish allies who were just starting to finally come around to his candidacy. Now they are distancing themselves as fast as possible, and not worrying about how awkward they might look while doing so.

Meanwhile, newspapers that had not endorsed a Democrat for president in decades or even over a century are endorsing Clinton while calling Trump’s myriad character flaws “disqualifying.” Anonymous leaks from the campaign on Wednesday painted a picture of its staff second-guessing itself and the boss while suggesting that Trump’s kids are unhappy enough to push their father to fire his top lieutenants and start over. And it doesn’t look as if there is anyone in the Republican Party who can step in and smooth things over.

This does not happen with campaigns that are confident of impending victory.

With six weeks to go until the election, it seems likely that the Republican elite will now completely hunker down, smile politely while keeping Trump at arm’s length (so that he doesn’t drag down with him members locked in tight re-election battles) and hope that the GOP can hold onto its Senate majority. Then assuming he goes down to a resounding defeat, the Republican elite can maybe reclaim the party from the virulent Trumpism that has infected it.

It is not much of a plan. But at this point, even a sudden discipline and yen for practice is probably not going to help Trump give even a moderately competent performance in a debate with Clinton. Even if he could suddenly turn into the second coming of Stephen Douglas, this is unlikely to make a difference with the voters. The GOP, after a brief moment of hope, is trying to get clear of the explosion to minimize the damage. We will see if it is a successful effort.

Donald Trump :Fat-Shamer in Chief ( NY Times assessment on his physical being but hey let's not straight jacket him until November 9th. Let the disconnect between his brain and mouth and political reality continue unabated.

Fat-Shamer in Chief by Timothy Egan ( republished with permission of the Author and the NY Times )


Donald Trump at a campaign event in Iowa on Wednesday. CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

Apparently, millions of Americans don’t care that a man now within a nose-hair of the presidency may be the most prolific liar in modern political history. Nor do they care about the authoritarian policies he espouses, his truly scary embrace of dictators abroad and crackpots at home, or his monumental ignorance on every subject.

But as the impact of this week’s debate and the after-chatter have settled in, it’s clear that blood can boil across the land on at least one topic: We care about appearances. With little more than a month to go until the election, the fact that Donald Trump now finds himself in a very public fight with a beauty queen tells you everything you need to know about the sick soul of this man.

So, in the spirit of the discourse that Trump has brought us to, let’s objectify the Republican nominee on his terms. This guy is fat. Bigly. He’s got an extra chin, a gut you wouldn’t want to see riding above a bathing suit, and a rear that serves no purpose but ballast.

At 6-foot-2, the height that he has long given profile writers, Trump weighs 236 pounds, he told Dr. Oz. Not quite Taftian — he ballooned to 354 pounds by his inauguration  — but not healthy, either. By government guidelines, Trump is obese. In a weasel move to avoid that classification, Trump now says he is 6-foot-3, which makes him merely overweight. How he grew an inch, at the age of 70, is a story that has escaped his hagiographers at Fox.

Trump’s ducktail hairdo, colored in a hue unknown to nature, is a complicated comb-over inspired by Dr. Seuss. He wears a silly cap at outdoor rallies to keep the nest in place. It makes him look like “the warm-up guy,” Garrison Keillor wrote, “the guy who announces the license number of the car left in the parking lot, doors locked, lights on, motor running.”

His fingers, as Spy magazine first noted decades ago, are unusually short. At 7.25 inches from the tip of his middle finger to the wrist (according to sleuthing by investigative reporters), Trump’s hands are smaller than 85 percent of American men. No surprise he lies about that as well. “Look at these hands,” he said during a debate earlier this year, holding the dwarf-size digits up for all to see. “Are they small hands?”


I bring all this up because Trump brings it up — constantly. For someone who is fat, short-fingered and strange-looking, he is obsessed with looks. During his decades in the spotlight, he has bullied and shamed women for their weight. And more — he has had people fired, at his golf courses, for not being pretty enough, The Los Angeles Times reported this week.

In the days after the most watched political debate in history, Trump didn’t talk about trade policy, war and peace, or health care. Instead, his fetish for the superficial dominated his talking points, trying to fat-shame anew the former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado. Hillary Clinton baited him for calling the young woman “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping.” Machado is getting her revenge.

Trump “always treated me like a lesser thing, like garbage,” she told reporters on a conference call. Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich, another guy you wouldn’t want to be seated next to in a cramped row of a commuter plane, explained that beauty queens should not be fat. Fair point. But nor should beauty queens be so belittled, as Machado said, that the insults triggered a relapse in her bulimia.

You certainly shouldn’t have to be height-weight perfect to work at a golf course. But a catering director at a California course said under oath that she was told to fire an employee “because Mr. Trump doesn’t like fat people,” according to a 2012 deposition.

Trump also revealed his apparent obsession with the obese in dismissing Russian sabotage of the election. More likely, he said during the debate, “it could be someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,” giving techies a great hashtag to play with on Twitter.

This fat-shaming episode by a man who wants to lead the country is deeply resonant because most Americans struggle with their weight. More than two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese. It’s a serious problem — life threatening, for many people — with multibillion dollar health care consequences.

Trump could express sympathy or offer some solutions. Instead, he stuffs his puffy face with junk food for the cameras, while making fun of anyone who isn’t a cover model. As for exercise, he burns most of his calories by giving speeches, he says. Seriously. Aerobic insults, the Trump diet.

“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life,” Dean Wormer told a pledge in “Animal House.” Trump would certainly agree, even though he has two of the three attributes. A look in the mirror would give him more than enough to talk about.

As America Sleeps, Donald Trump Seethes on Twitter .The tweets started around 3:20 a.m. on Friday. Inside Trump Tower, a restless figure stirred in the predawn darkness, nursing his grievances and grabbing a device that often lands him in hot water.

As America Sleeps, Donald Trump Seethes on Twitter .The tweets started around 3:20 a.m. on Friday. Inside Trump Tower, a restless figure stirred in the predawn darkness, nursing his grievances and grabbing a device that often lands him in hot water.

On his Android phone, Donald J. Trump began to tap out bursts of digital fury: He mocked Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe and a popular Latin American actress, as a “con,” the “worst” and “disgusting.”

In a final flourish, before the sun came up, the Republican presidential nominee claimed — without offering any evidence — that she had appeared in a “sex tape.”

The tirade fit a pattern. It is when Mr. Trump is alone with his thoughts, and untethered from his campaign staff, that he has seemed to commit his most self-destructive acts.

“There has always been this dangerous part of him that will go too far and do something that backfires,” said Michael D’Antonio, the author of “The Truth About Trump,” a new biography of the real estate mogul.


Interactive Graphic: The 1,024 Ways Clinton or Trump Can Win the Election
“His worst impulses,” he added, “are self-defeating.”

Over the past few days, those instincts have been on vivid display. In quick succession, Mr. Trump has repeated his critique that Ms. Machado gained a “massive amount of weight” after she won the Miss Universe crown in 1996; suggested that former President Bill Clinton’s infidelities are fair game for campaign attacks; and urged his followers to “check out” a sex tape that may not exist. (Ms. Machado appeared in a risqué scene on a reality television show, but fact-checkers have discovered no sex tape.)

The eruptions could further damage Mr. Trump’s reputation with women and Latino voters at a time when he can scarcely afford to alienate either group, five and half weeks before Election Day.

Yet for close students of Mr. Trump’s career and campaign, it all has a familiar ring. Over the years, he has issued a stream of needlessly cruel and seemingly off-the-cuff insults — both on and off social media — that have inflamed the public. He declared on Twitter that Kim Novak, a reclusive 81-year-old actress at the time, “should sue her plastic surgeon,” sending her into hiding. He derided the appearance of a rival, Carly Fiorina, angering female voters by asking: “Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” And he criticized the mother of a slain American soldier, musing that as a Muslim woman, she was not “allowed” to speak.

Such fulminations have almost always arisen from Mr. Trump’s wounded pride, after he has been attacked or has suffered a setback. And they have frequently played out on Twitter, at hours of the day when much of America is asleep.

The early-morning tweets about Ms. Machado were a reminder, said the Republican strategist Charles Black, that Mr. Trump “cannot let something drop until he proves he’s right, and it’s beside the point who’s right.”

Around midnight one night during the primary campaign, he posted an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz, the wife of a Republican rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Early one morning, he alleged a sexual affair between two well-known television anchors who had criticized him. Early one Saturday, he distributed an image of Mrs. Clinton, surrounded by falling cash and a six-pointed star that many said was a Star of David and was anti-Semitic. And at 11 one evening, he shared a digitally altered image of Jeb Bush appearing to pick his nose.

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“Late night Twitter-drunk Donald is back at it!” an aide to Mr. Bush replied at the time.

On Friday, Mr. Trump was at it again between 3:20 and 5:30 a.m., issuing a series of indignant messages that mocked Ms. Machado and Mrs. Clinton, who raised the experience of the former beauty queen to hurt Mr. Trump during the debate.

Mrs. Clinton, he wrote “was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an “angel” without checking her past, which is terrible!”

A few minutes later, Mr. Trump theorized — again, without offering any evidence — that Mrs. Clinton had helped Ms. Machado become a United States citizen so that the Democratic nominee could mention the beauty queen in the debate to hurt Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump, in an interview on Friday afternoon, said he remained proud of his tweets.

“Why would I have regrets? I’m a very truthful person, and I’m telling the truth. Now people understand it. And before the tweets, people didn’t understand it.”

It is unusual for a major party presidential nominee to directly control any online communications, let alone issue provocative, unsubstantiated claims without the filter of a campaign aide.

But Mr. Trump is fixated on Twitter. He has nearly 12 million followers and has reveled in watching his stray thoughts become viral sensations on the social media platform. He has been fond of quoting a fan on Twitter, who described him as “the Ernest Hemingway of a hundred and forty characters.”

So like a car careening down a highway with no guardrails, Mr. Trump on Friday sent out one message after another. His suggestion of a sex tape featuring Ms. Machado sent his most zealous followers hunting for images. A few of them posted pornographic images of women who they believe resembled Ms. Machado.

Ms. Machado on Friday called Mr. Trump’s online assault “cheap lies with bad intentions” and said that she would not be intimidated.

Aides to Mrs. Clinton, who have long warned of his reckless ways on Twitter, said Mr. Trump’s behavior had once again bolstered their argument that he is mentally unfit for the presidency.

“I mean, his latest Twitter meltdown is unhinged, even for him,” Mrs. Clinton said on Friday.

“Really, who gets up at 3 o’clock in the morning to engage in a Twitter attack against a former Miss Universe?” she asked.

Many wondered aloud on Friday whether Mr. Trump’s erratic late-night behavior is the result of disorienting insomnia, since he regularly boasts of needing only a few hours of sleep. But Mr. Trump quickly rejected that theory.

“For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o’clock in the morning, at least you know I will be there, awake, to answer the call!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

Not everyone in his life seems so sure. Asked this year which habit she wished her husband would quit, Melania Trump gave a one-word answer: tweeting.

How Donald Trump's Company Violated the United States Embargo Against Cuba

How Donald Trump's Company Violated the United States Embargo Against Cuba

It begins, as viewers of Rachel Maddow know, like this.A company controlled by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, secretly conducted business in communist Cuba during Fidel Castro’s presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings.

Executives of his organization traveled to Cuba, attempting to hide the $68,000 expense of the trip by masking it through a charity. At the time, specific permission to do such travel was required from our government:

Without obtaining a license from the federal Office of Foreign Asset Control before the consultants went to Cuba, the undertaking by Trump Hotels would have been in violation of federal law, trade experts say.

Trump did not do so:

OFAC officials say there is no record that the agency granted any such license to the companies or individuals involved, although they cautioned that some documents from that time have been destroyed. Yet one OFAC official, who agreed to discuss approval procedures if granted anonymity, said the probability that the office would grant a license for work on behalf of an American casino was “essentially zero.”

Meanwhile, after the trip, Trump appeared before a Cuban-American group while seeking their support for his possible attempt to obtain the 2000 Reform Party nomination for President, at that time committing to no lifting the embargo before the Castros were gone.
Why did this trip occur?


The goal of the Cuba trip, the former Trump executive said, was to give Trump’s company a foothold should Washington loosen or lift the trade restrictions. While in Cuba, the Trump representatives met with government officials, bankers and other business leaders to explore possible opportunities for the casino company. The former executive said Trump had participated in discussions about the Cuba trip and knew it had taken place.

Why did it occur when it did, towards the end of the Clinton administration? Perhaps because there were indications the policy toward Cuba might be changing.


The first signs that American policy might be shifting came in March 1998, when President Bill Clinton announced several major changes. Among them: resuming charter flights between the United States and Cuba for authorized Americans, streamlining procedures for exporting medical equipment and allowing Cubans in the U.S. to send small amounts of cash to their relatives on the island. However, Americans and American companies still could not legally spend their own money in Cuba.

That fall, as critics pressured Clinton to further loosen the embargo, Trump Hotels saw an opportunity. Like the communist regime, the company was struggling, having piled up losses for years. In 1998 alone, Trump Hotels lost $39.7 million, according to the company’s financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its stock price had collapsed, falling almost 80 percent from a high that year of $12 a share to a low of just $2.75. (After multiple bankruptcies, Trump severed his ties with the company; it is now called Trump Entertainment Resorts and is a subsidiary of Icahn Enterprises, run by renowned financier Carl Icahn).

Eichenwald goes through the transactions of the trip in detail, has talked with former Trump executives and examined documents, and takes great pain to explain the relevant law and policy in effect at the time.

For Trump, it was not a lot of money. But it represented an opportunity to get a head start on a huge amount of money if the embargo were lifted.

Eichenwald concludes this piece with these two paragraphs:


Though it has long been illegal for corporations to spend money in Cuba without proper authorization, there is no chance that Trump, the company or any of its executives will be prosecuted for wrongdoing. The statute of limitations ran out long ago, and legal analysts say OFAC’s enforcement division is understaffed, so the chances for an investigation were slim even at the time.

And perhaps that was the calculation behind the company’s decision to flout the law: the low risk of getting caught versus the high reward of lining up Cuban allies if the U.S. loosened or dropped the embargo. The only catch: What would happen if Trump's Cuban-American supporters ever found out?

Besides reading the article, you might consider the tweet that announced its posting:




A quick reaction — it is hard to see this story having a major impact. Perhaps the use of a charity after the fact will connect with the misuse of the personal charity as shown in the stories by David Farenthold at the Washington Post. Also, the fact that Trump has a pattern of pushing the legal system, and trying to get away with whatever he could get away with.

I do think that targeted ads in Florida could have some impact: there are still a chunk of Republican-leaning older Cuban-Americans so hostile to Castro, and the story makes clear that Trump was not only willing to violate the law to get set for a business advantage, but also to lie to Cuban Americans for political support.

While I think Trump will lose Florida anyhow, this makes it somewhat harder for him to catch Clinton there. And without Florida, he has no path to 270 electoral votes.

How Donald Trump's Company Violated the United States Embargo Against Cuba

How Donald Trump's Company Violated the United States Embargo Against Cuba

It begins, as viewers of Rachel Maddow know, like this.A company controlled by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, secretly conducted business in communist Cuba during Fidel Castro’s presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings.

Executives of his organization traveled to Cuba, attempting to hide the $68,000 expense of the trip by masking it through a charity. At the time, specific permission to do such travel was required from our government:

Without obtaining a license from the federal Office of Foreign Asset Control before the consultants went to Cuba, the undertaking by Trump Hotels would have been in violation of federal law, trade experts say.

Trump did not do so:

OFAC officials say there is no record that the agency granted any such license to the companies or individuals involved, although they cautioned that some documents from that time have been destroyed. Yet one OFAC official, who agreed to discuss approval procedures if granted anonymity, said the probability that the office would grant a license for work on behalf of an American casino was “essentially zero.”

Meanwhile, after the trip, Trump appeared before a Cuban-American group while seeking their support for his possible attempt to obtain the 2000 Reform Party nomination for President, at that time committing to no lifting the embargo before the Castros were gone.
Why did this trip occur?


The goal of the Cuba trip, the former Trump executive said, was to give Trump’s company a foothold should Washington loosen or lift the trade restrictions. While in Cuba, the Trump representatives met with government officials, bankers and other business leaders to explore possible opportunities for the casino company. The former executive said Trump had participated in discussions about the Cuba trip and knew it had taken place.

Why did it occur when it did, towards the end of the Clinton administration? Perhaps because there were indications the policy toward Cuba might be changing.


The first signs that American policy might be shifting came in March 1998, when President Bill Clinton announced several major changes. Among them: resuming charter flights between the United States and Cuba for authorized Americans, streamlining procedures for exporting medical equipment and allowing Cubans in the U.S. to send small amounts of cash to their relatives on the island. However, Americans and American companies still could not legally spend their own money in Cuba.

That fall, as critics pressured Clinton to further loosen the embargo, Trump Hotels saw an opportunity. Like the communist regime, the company was struggling, having piled up losses for years. In 1998 alone, Trump Hotels lost $39.7 million, according to the company’s financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its stock price had collapsed, falling almost 80 percent from a high that year of $12 a share to a low of just $2.75. (After multiple bankruptcies, Trump severed his ties with the company; it is now called Trump Entertainment Resorts and is a subsidiary of Icahn Enterprises, run by renowned financier Carl Icahn).

Eichenwald goes through the transactions of the trip in detail, has talked with former Trump executives and examined documents, and takes great pain to explain the relevant law and policy in effect at the time.

For Trump, it was not a lot of money. But it represented an opportunity to get a head start on a huge amount of money if the embargo were lifted.

Eichenwald concludes this piece with these two paragraphs:


Though it has long been illegal for corporations to spend money in Cuba without proper authorization, there is no chance that Trump, the company or any of its executives will be prosecuted for wrongdoing. The statute of limitations ran out long ago, and legal analysts say OFAC’s enforcement division is understaffed, so the chances for an investigation were slim even at the time.

And perhaps that was the calculation behind the company’s decision to flout the law: the low risk of getting caught versus the high reward of lining up Cuban allies if the U.S. loosened or dropped the embargo. The only catch: What would happen if Trump's Cuban-American supporters ever found out?

Besides reading the article, you might consider the tweet that announced its posting:





A quick reaction — it is hard to see this story having a major impact. Perhaps the use of a charity after the fact will connect with the misuse of the personal charity as shown in the stories by David Farenthold at the Washington Post. Also, the fact that Trump has a pattern of pushing the legal system, and trying to get away with whatever he could get away with.

I do think that targeted ads in Florida could have some impact: there are still a chunk of Republican-leaning older Cuban-Americans so hostile to Castro, and the story makes clear that Trump was not only willing to violate the law to get set for a business advantage, but also to lie to Cuban Americans for political support.

While I think Trump will lose Florida anyhow, this makes it somewhat harder for him to catch Clinton there. And without Florida, he has no path to 270 electoral votes.