More about Donald Trump ( )

Journalist David Cay Johnston has been reporting on Trump since his days as the owner of an Atlantic City casino. He has written 2 previous books on Trump. In the first, published shortly before the 2016 election he laid it all out for us to see--the corruption and the scamming, the lies, the lack of business acumen that is the real Donald Trump. Unfortunately, the electorate did not listen or care. His second book, published in 2018 focused on some of the Trump administration's policies, and how harmful they are to America. The book was aptly titled, It's Even Worse Than You Think. Johnston's reportorial focus over the years was tax and economic policies, and I first came across his work when I was a practicing tax attorney in the early 2000's. He won a Pulitizer for reporting on tax loopholes in the Internal Revenue Code. With his background and expertise, I generally trust his reporting.

In this his latest book, while there is some discussion of Trump's harmful policies, and his lies regarding those policies, the focus in on how and to what extent Trump, his family and certain members of his administration personally enriched themselves over the four years of the Trump presidency and scammed the American taxpayer. Johnston provides a massive amount of detail, and in most instances the conclusions are incontrovertible. In some cases, however, where the known facts are skimpier, Johnston may provide the known facts, and ask us to draw conclusions based on those facts, plus what we know about Trump's character. So, many of the cases of "self-enrichment" can be said to have been established beyond a reasonable doubt. Those that are not conclusively established, however, certainly rise above a mere suspicion.

Some of the issues covered in detail, each in a chapter devoted to the subject include: the family's charitable foundations and self-dealing; the inauguration donations largely unaccounted for, the illegal "emoluments" received by Trump businesses; the conflicts of interest and the continuing overseas business development despite Trump's promises to the contrary; the scam of the Trump tax cuts; dealings with William Koch; the "build the wall" fund-raising scam. One item I found interesting was relates to the PPP Program. In the first covid relief bill passed by Congress it provided for "Payroll Protection" loans--forgiveable loans intended to keep people employed. Throughout his remaining presidency Trump resisted making available information about who received these loans and how much. Various news organizations sued, and finally, 7 weeks before the Biden inauguration we learned that Trump and Kushner family interests received more than $3.6 million of these loans. (Ivanka and Jared seem to have made out extremely well during the Trump presidency in their respective businesses). There are also separate chapters on Elaine Chao and Wilbur Ross who also particularly well in their respective roles as Secretary of Transportation (and Mitch McConnell's wife) and Secretary of Commerce, respectively.

All in all the book is very informative, although as I mentioned elsewhere, occasionally it sounded a bit shrill to me. But we tend to forget what an aberration many of the things Trump did really are, and how rampant and widespread his misconduct was. When there is so much there to decry, it's bound to feel a bit over the top.

4 stars ( )

Cheaters and grifters surround themselves with cheaters and grifters. That's exactly what Trump did during his four years in the White House. Trump saw to it that the middle class and the poor, including the suckers who voted for him and his fellow Republicans, got screwed, while his fellow cheaters and grifters (family members, Cabinet members, greedy billionaires and insanely profitable corporations) made out like the bandits they are. Probably the happiest conman on earth is Vladimer Putin. Trumpushka and the GOP did all of murderous Putin's work for him during those four years. Putin just sat back with his feet up on his desk while he watched Trump and the Republicans weaken our American democracy, economy, national security, middle class, voting rights, fair elections, ethics, and values. Even if you can't stand the thought of focusing any more of your time on loser Trump, Johnston's book is well worth the read. ( )

Wow. I have read many books on Trump, but this one shows you the money trail. I knew it was bad but did not realize more than 1.7 billion flowed into Trump's back account during his presidency. Also, was not aware of how the rest of the family and others in cabinet made money. ( )