There were plenty of inaccuracies in Trump’s speech (we are not the most taxed nation in the world; Trump was not a brave, lonely voice against the Iraq war), as well as wild misdirection. For example, Trump said that Clinton had accepted fifty-eight thousand dollars in jewelry from the Sultan of Brunei; as with all such official gifts, however, she turned it over to the National Archives. (The Sultan’s wife gave Michelle Obama an even more expensive piece of jewelry, which she, too, handed over.)
.. At the same time, it is true that the Sultan of Brunei gave between a million and five million dollars to what was originally called the William J. Clinton Foundation, and was renamed, after Hillary Clinton resigned from the State Department, in 2013, the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. It is also accurate that Hillary Clinton earned twenty-one million dollars in speaking fees between the time that she left State and when she announced her candidacy for President.
.. One of Trump’s key moves in his speech was to erase all distinctions between the two Clintons and their Foundation.
.. Trump, though, seems to take it for granted that a charity bearing a person’s name is not much more than a self-aggrandizing, financially convenient vanity project.
.. Clinton’s supporters point out that many of the allegations related to her finances would be better described as politically motivated innuendo and insinuation, and that they come from a man facing a fraud trial who has refused to release even his tax returns.
.. Trump calls Clinton a “world-class liar” while slandering whole communities and exhibiting a very tenuous hold on the truth. This is a disorienting campaign, and one of its many dangers is that a disregard for reality can come to seem normal.
Donald Trump’s Habit of Lying About Charitable Donations Could Land Him in Legal Trouble
His bait-and-switch scheme of a real-estate school? A large part of its proceeds went to those in need. Same with his terrible vodka company, his branded board game, and his campaign book, Crippled America. Or so the GOP nominee has claimed. In truth, there is no evidence that a man who self-describes as “greedy, greedy, greedy” decided to run most of his business ventures like nonprofits. And that could put him in violation of New York State regulations on deceptive business practices and charitable solicitations, Politico reports.
.. The GOP nominee is extremely good at taking credit for things. So it seems safe to assume that if he’d funneled his book profits into cancer research grants or mosquito nets we would have heard about it by now.
.. Early in his candidacy, Trump boasted about giving $102 million to charity in just the last five years. But when the Washington Post examined the candidate’s 96-page list of contributions, they couldn’t find a single cash gift delivered from Trump’s own pocket.
Trump fights racketeering claim in Trump University suit
Attorneys pressing the suits against Trump on behalf of former Trump University students say the program fraudulently advertised that instructors were hand-picked by Trump and that students would learn the real estate mogul’s “secrets.” Even calling the program a “university” was a fraud, the lawsuits contend.
.. Trump’s lawyers say claims that students would be told Trump’s “secrets” or that he was personally involved in selecting teachers were, at worst, marketing “puffery” not intended to be taken literally.
A Corporate “Thankyou”? No, Thanks
Citigroup isn’t asserting the right to use “thankyou” in all contexts—just when it comes to loyalty and rewards programs. But what it is asserting is bad enough, since in effect it’s saying that subtracting the space between “thank” and “you” (and using lowercase letters) is enough to make one of the most common phrases in the English language its private property, in this use. As such, the case illustrates just how out of control intellectual-property rights have become in the U.S.
.. Let’s hope the judge’s ruling is a simple “No, thanks, Citigroup.”
.. LinkedIn’s current operating cash flow is a little more than six hundred million dollars a year. Now, obviously, Microsoft did not buy LinkedIn for its current profits.
.. The fundamental economic issue here is that the stock prices of technology companies, with few exceptions, already reflect the market’s often-outsized expectations of fast earnings growth in the future. When you buy a share of Amazon or Facebook, you’re not paying for the company’s current earnings. You’re paying for its earnings over the next twenty-five or thirty or even fifty years, because that’s how far out the market is, in effect, looking.