Kai EL’Zabar
Executive Editor
Apology Demanded
“He has shown us who he is, and now we expect something different from him. Puh-Leeze!”
So you know by now that over the weekend, the president-elect took time out from choosing his Cabinet to tweet to the “Hamilton” cast: “The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behavior.”
First of all, who is he to reprimand anyone on terrible behavior? Second, he needs to be focusing on the business at hand instead of chasing folks down on Twitter. True to form, V.P -elect Mike Pence said he wasn’t offended by the message. In fact, he took a different path. Instead, he encourages everyone to try to see the sold-out show. Pence told ‘‘Fox News Sunday’’ that he told his daughter, ‘‘That’s what freedom sounds like.’’
Of course, his president-elect stayed in the mix and tweeted “The Theater must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!”
So I will share with you what I shared with my Facebook community:
I think he (Donald Trump) owes the American People and the world an apology for being an irresponsible, rude, disrespectful ass during the presidential campaign, causing us all such great anxiety. He has to regroup and apologize for the name calling, making fun of people, his lewd, vulgar remarks and total disregard for women as human beings (who do not need men making any decisions for them /us), his direct threats as well as the implied to Madam Secretary Hillary Clinton.
This and more he has done. Yes, he has shown us who he is, and now we expect something different from him. Puh-Leeze! Look at him parading himself as well as the men and women, I assume who take the potential appointments for a cabinet position in his administration seriously, as beauty contestants in one of his Miss Universe pageants or, better still, his reality TV show “The Apprentice.”
Truth is, what he is good at is marketing/selling a dream, but in his lifetime as a real estate businessman, he’s not always delivered what he promised. Instead, he has used his salesmanship to rob others while manipulating his knowledge of the law to take advantage of those who entrusted him to render them their dream. In the end, they lost money, a dream and others were not paid (workers, real estate agents). He filed bankruptcy to manipulate the IRS tax laws, thus avoiding paying taxes. He has managed to parlay himself to the top again by selling his celebrity.
Just this week he resolved the Trump University lawsuits. The suits asserted fraud claims on behalf of approximately 6,000 former students who had enrolled in the president-elect’s seminar and what many would label a faux online “university.” He settled for a cool $25 million.
“I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award because as president I have to focus on our country,” he said.
Really? Well, then he needs to act like it, rather than spending time tweeting. What’s interesting about this settlement is that it’s exactly what he did when charged with housing discrimination:
“When I was really young, I went into my father’s company, we along with many, many, many other companies, throughout the country, it was a federal lawsuit, were sued. We settled the suit with zero — no admission of guilt. It was very easy to do. But they sued many people.” — Donald Trump
During the debate, he was quick to tell the world that they settled without admitting any guilt, which is what he said about his recent Trump University settlement.
So neither Trump nor his father ever admitted any wrongdoing; however, they did submit to a court order changing their rental practices — only after accusing the Justice Department of “Gestapo tactics” and a failed countersuit against the government agency. That’s his M.O.
Settles Lawsuit on Bogus University
He always deflects his actions and projects wrongdoing upon those who call him out.
Still the Trump University settlement may be a good deal for the students. Most will recover at least 50% of the tuition they paid for taking the Trump courses. This significant compensation publicly affirms the common-sense validity of their accusations of fraud, no matter why Trump says he settled. Imagine legitimate universities like Trump’s alma maters Fordham and Penn issuing 50% tuition refunds to students in response to class-action lawsuits alleging fraud.
Yeah, picture that.
Trump also said the $25 million settlement was much less than his potential financial exposure in the cases, which alleged Trump defrauded people who enrolled in real estate seminars he started in 2005.
This is actually another story because Trump blurted out in a tweet that had he gone to court he would have won. What he didn’t tweet is that class actions almost always settle if they have been “certified” by the court as non-frivolous matters. The students might even have won at trial if supported by credible evidence. As for The Trump University lawsuit, they were not only “certified” but had also survived motions to dismiss. All of this supports that these cases were destined to go to trial if not resolved out of court.
The vast majority of “certified” class actions settle with good reason. Legal defense costs are exorbitant, and if the defendants lose the case, the verdict can be catastrophically high. So figure this. Multiply $25,000 times 6,000 students and the figure award adds up to $150 million. That does not include the lawyer’s fees, which could have been at least $5 million for them, bringing the total award to at least $155 million.
Point is Trump is up to his usual manipulation of the laws, which he does not respect, to get away with paying the least amount of his money.
I think that we have to ask ourselves, who are these people? And face the truth about who they are. That is Trump and all his loyal supporters, even those elected Republicans who denounced him and now extend a hand.
What we know so far is that the Republican elected members of Congress met on the evening of President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2008 and vowed to not only not support him in anything that he presented, but also make sure that he fail as a president of substance.
So as we observe the business shenanigans of Trump in the days before his swearing in as the 45th president in January 2017, we know that he is tipping the scales as protocol, good faith, respect for constitutional laws and transparency go.
He has never produced his tax return, he has not put his business in a blind trust or sold the properties and he has requested security clearance for Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, when clearly the law states that it is illegal to hire a family member, including a son-in-law.
This total disregard of the laws in place that protect the country as a democracy is not to be ignored or taken lightly. Please read history and note that such a man, Adolf Hitler moved into power voicing the fears of the German people, making promises to give them back their pride, power and place in the world as leader.
They missed all the clues. Keep your mind open people, and let’s move together. Let’s finally do this. Let’s unite and win against Fascism in any form.
About Post Author
