Today we continue with one more post on the hodge podge stew of bullshittery that we are about to embark on. While the task force was being announced also just over a week ago over 60 million people watched or at least logged in and tried to watch a 58 year old Mike Tyson fight a YouTube fighter named Paul. Mike Tyson lost the fight to the much younger Paul. Thankfully no one was seriously hurt in the making of this production. I had no interest in nor did I watch the fight, but I did witness two things that were remarkable. One, the American public despite seemingly unlimited channels, websites, podcasts, TikTok videos, and dusty books in libraries around the country were so starved for content that they thought this would be good entertainment. People be stupid. Secondly, and more interesting to me was that everyone wanted to see Mike Tyson win, not everyone I just don’t run in the adolescent girls’ circles that support Paul who hooked them with his dance videos and online antics. I was flabbergasted that so many people were cheering for a scary convicted rapist that once said in an interview that he wanted to eat his opponent’s children. What has happened is one of the more remarkable makeovers in history. I think they call it rebranding these days but whatever. Mike has become this lovable old rapist that makes hangover movies and talks about his feelings. Meanwhile the villain in this fight has done nothing more sinister than make YouTube content for teenage girls. I repeat again, people be stupid.
Since I walk through life knowing that this fact is a given, I find it important here at the cooperative to shine a light on certain things that might be overlooked. President Bernadette Trump has named his Treasury Secretary, and his name isn’t Bernie Madoff, but instead his name is Scott Bessent. He is a renowned short seller but first, I want to bring you a quote from Elon Musk in an interview with Chris Isidore speaking about liberal donor George Soros from CNN from May of 2023, “When a Twitter user defended Soros as having good intentions which are criticized by those who disagree with his politics, Musk responded, “You assume they are good intentions. They are not. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.”
I bring this up because George Soros is pretty much ole numero uno, the most hated man by the Republican party. I don’t want to discuss whether he should be or not, but the fact remains he is way up that list. Here comes Scott Bessent who joined Soros Fund Management in 1991 and was a leading member of the team that helped Soros become an investing legend when their team bet against the British pound. Soros became know as the man that broke the bank of England. Bessent continued work there for the rest of the 1990’s. In 2000, he hosted an Al Gore fundraiser at his home and donated to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton thereafter. After striking out on his own and having mixed results at best, he rejoined Soros from 2011 to 2015. Then he started his own fund again in 2015 with $2 billion from…wait for it…the white knight the Soros Fund. The man has a dependence on ole numero uno it seems.
Now let’s not forget Elon here either. In 2016 Tesla and Solar city, Musk’s other company weren’t doing very well, so Tesla took over the flaming diaper fire known as Solar City, which produced solar panels, and we largely never heard of that problem again.. Remember when Musk said that he was revolutionizing housing shingles? It was owned by Musk’s cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive, and Elon was the chairman. During the acquisition process it was still raising capital. This from Michael Krey in 2016 from the Investor’s Business Daily, “SolarCity said it raised $305 million in a cash equity transaction from a private investment fund affiliated with Quantum Strategic Partners and advised by hedge fund Soros Fund Management, which is led by George Soros. The fund invested in a portfolio of residential, commercial and industrial solar projects, SolarCity said in its release. The transaction also included a fully amortizing, 18-year loan that was syndicated to five institutional investors.” So he was acquiring financing for a company inside of a takeover of a failed company with Money from Soros right when his companies were failing. It would seem Soros could be viewed as a white knight.
Here is a fun article from 2021from Lora Kolodny and Jeniece Pettitt at CNBC checking up on Solar City, ““The goal is to make solar roofs that look better than a normal roof, generate electricity, last longer, have better insulation, and actually have an installed cost that is less than a normal roof plus the cost of electricity. Why would you buy anything else?” Musk said at the event in October 2016.
The roof tiles were going to be the next big thing in residential solar, according to Musk, and once Tesla and SolarCity combined, the product would juice the company’s growth while delivering clean energy to homeowners.
After the deal went through, however, new installations by Tesla-SolarCity plummeted… In the first and second quarters of 2021, Tesla installed 92 and 85 megawatts of solar, respectively. That’s less than half of what SolarCity was installing per quarter before the acquisition.
Tesla moved some solar employees to work on building the company’s electric cars and batteries, fired other solar employees, and moved others who had been doing new installations to work on repairs and remediation.
Some of the solar rooftops the company installed caught fire. One employee who raised fire safety concerns internally and filed whistleblower complaints to federal government offices sued Tesla saying it wrongfully terminated him as an act of retaliation.”
So, when I see Trump’s two biggest hires having ties to funding by the enemy of the Republican party, I have to scratch my head and say that’s strange. But wait, why am I tying Don Trump in with these other two guys that have ties to ole numero uno or as I like to call him white knight Soros? Well for that we have to go back to Chicago and 2004. This from the Chicago Tribune “Donald Trump has lined up three New York hedge funds, including money from billionaire George Soros, to invest $160 million in his Chicago skyscraper, a key piece in perhaps the largest construction financing in the city’s history, according to real estate sources and public documents. Despite reports about the project’s record-breaking sales, most of them from Trump himself, many Chicago real estate developers and lenders have expressed doubts about whether the 90-story tower would ever be built.
“It is such a huge project, and the prices he said he was getting were so outside the norm,” said Robert Glickman, president and chief executive of Chicago-based Corus Bank.
“It was reasonable to say, `Is this real?’” he said.”
Glickman is basically stating that a project this size at this cost didn’t seem even remotely realistic to build and show anything near a profit. Well, you don’t know Don Trump Rob.
Let’s fast forward to Kate Duffy in a Business Insider piece, “President Donald Trump had $270 million worth of debt forgiven by lenders that he failed to pay back for a 92-floor skyscraper in Chicago, according to The New York Times.
An analysis of his tax returns by the newspaper revealed that when construction of Trump International Hotel & Tower hit financial trouble, a big bank and a hedge fund granted years of extra time to pay back his debts. And much of this debt was forgiven, the Times reported.
Trump tweeted Wednesday morning that he was “able to make an appropriately great deal with the numerous lenders” on the tower. “Doesn’t that make me a smart guy rather than a bad guy?”
Trump got the majority of the money — $640 million — from Germany’s Deutsche Bank, the report said, while the rest came from Fortress Investment Group, a private equity firm.
When the loans were due in 2008, the Trump International Hotel & Tower was still unfinished. Deutsche Bank initially granted Trump a six-week extension to repay the money, according to the report. At this point, Trump’s company owed Deutsche Bank around $334 million in principal and interest, and Fortress $130 million, not including interest and fees, the Times report said. When the bank declined his second request for extension, Trump sued Deutsche Bank for “predatory lending practices” and sought $3 billion in damages, according to the report.
The bank then filed its own lawsuit demanding immediate repayment of the loan, the report said.
In July 2010, lawyers for Trump, Deutsche Bank, and Fortress reached a private settlement, but didn’t disclose the terms. But tax return records and loan documents viewed by the Times show that the lenders forgave Trump for $270 million worth of debt.”
You see Mr. Glickman, the project pencils just fine when you have no intention of paying back what you borrowed in the first place. That’s the Bernadette Trump way. When you get the project built and not pay back 40% of the mortgage, the thing pencils great. Now what was happening to the real estate market in 2008 when these loans were due? The housing crisis and the real estate developer was losing billions and he couldn’t pay, and didn’t pay and he gets his debt forgiven by the White Knight, George Soros. Hello. Hello.
The worst thing about having a memory and reading newspapers for 40 years is constantly having to recall when Trump, Bessent, and Musk got traded from the blue team to the red team? This is a better makeover than Mike Tyson. I think George Soros has about $130 million reasons to hate Don Trump. Or does Trump have a big favor to repay? It would seem that Musk has a big favor to repay Soros. That 18-year loan included in a going broke company that is being acquired doesn’t smell right. Bessent owes his whole damn career it would seem to Soros? Soros once broke the bank of England. Is he putting his blue pawns that appear red on the chessboard to do the same to the US dollar? Or does he know it is going to happen anyway and will just profit from the happening?
Let’s just explore the Soros connection a little further. This from Devon Pendleton at Yahoo Finance in November, 2020, “Soros Fund Management, which revealed that it owned 18.46 million shares of Palantir Technologies Inc., said it made the investment in the data-mining company in 2012 and wouldn’t do the same again today… Soros, 90, has used his vast wealth to become one of the world’s largest funders of groups promoting justice, democracy, human rights and progressive politics through his Open Society Foundations. He’s poured billions into his philanthropic efforts, and most of his firm’s assets now belong to the foundations rather than to the Soros family.
In recent years he’s taken a more aggressive stance on tech companies and artificial intelligence. He has slammed Facebook Inc. and Google, comparing the social-media giants to gambling companies that foster addiction among users and saying they exploit the data they control… Palantir relies on contracts from government entities, including the U.S. Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, for much of its revenue. The company has drawn criticism from human rights activists for selling software that facilitates the deportation of immigrants and aggressive policing. Its data-scraping has also raised concerns among privacy advocates. The stock has more than doubled in value since it went public.”
Do you know it went public in 2020 at $10 a share. Do you know what it is trading on Monday? The all-time high of $71.53. This stock was trading below $20 9 months ago. One of the company’s founders and current chairman is Peter Thiel, who worked with Musk back at Paypal. Peter Thiel was also the head of the venture capital firm Mithril Capital. Why is that important you ask? Because one of his principals in 2016 was none other than our VP elect JD Vance. In 2019, when Vance started his venture fund it was with money from Peter Thiel. During this time Vance also served on the board of directors for AppHarvest. This company would go bankrupt in 2023 owing over $340 million. Luckily before the Titanic sank, Vance shifted gears in 2021 and ran for Senate. His campaign was kickstarted by $10 million in superPac money from Peter Thiel. He was running in a solid third place for that Senate seat while he was holding opinions like this from Snopes, “In a 2016 text message to his former law school roommate, Vance wrote: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a****** like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler. How’s that for discouraging?” Well, he switched gears again and kissed the Don’s ring. After asking for Trump’s blessing, he vaulted to the Senate Win and the hillbilly was soon saying dilly dilly. He won. JD is bought and paid for, but is that really who Trump listens to? No, his most trusted advisor most would say is his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Following the Venture Capital money we go to the Wall Street Journal Venture Capital edition and a piece from 2017 written by Jean Eaglesham, Juliet Chang, and Lisa Schwartz, “Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, is currently in business with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and billionaires George Soros and Peter Thiel, according to people familiar with the matter and securities filings. The previously undisclosed business relationships with titans of the financial and technology worlds are through a real-estate tech startup called Cadre that Mr. Kushner cofounded and currently partly owns.
Goldman and Messrs. Soros and Thiel, as well as other billionaires’ firms, also have stakes in the company, which is based in a Manhattan building owned by the Kushner family’s company, according to people close to Cadre.
The Cadre stake is one of many interests—and ties to large financial institutions—that Mr. Kushner didn’t identify on his government financial-disclosure form, according to a Wall Street Journal review of securities and other filings. Others include loans totaling at least $1 billion, from more than 20 lenders, to properties and companies part-owned by Mr. Kushner, the Journal found.”
That can’t be true, that would make him in bed with the devil…Let’s verify. This from Veronika Bondarenko at Business Insider “Jared Kushner didn’t disclose his business ties with George Soros, Peter Thiel, and Goldman Sachs, or that he owes $1 billion in loans, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
The top White House adviser and son-in-law of Trump failed to identify his part ownership of Cadre, a real-estate startup he founded, which links him to the Goldman Sachs Group and the mega-investors George Soros and Peter Thiel, sources told The Wall Street Journal… A source told The Journal that Kushner planned to recuse himself from anything that concerned Deutsche Bank or RBS, two lenders that have given him money for his properties or companies and to which he has provided personal guarantees on loans.
He still owes money to Bank of America, Blackstone Group, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, and RBS, all of which were not disclosed, according to The Journal.”
Hold on, Daddy in Law forgot to pay Deutsche and Soros not 8 years earlier and now the son-in-law is in hock for more? I haven’t had this much trouble trying to entangle strange bedfellows since reading about P Diddy. Forgive me for not shouting yeah Red Team from the mountain tops when I read a starting lineup that goes something like this info courtesy of Mike Allen and Jim Vanderhei at Axios , sarcasm all mine… “A pro abortion rights Kennedy running HHS, a pro-union centrist running Labor Lori Chavez-Deremer of Oregon, A former elected Democrat as director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a former George Soros Adviser, who now promises Trumponomics will turn around the economy, running the Treasury, Scott Bessent.” Let’s not stop there, we have a FoxNews weekend cohost running the military, a Fox news contributor running the FDA Dr. Marty Makary, and let’s not Matt Gaetz already dropped out for having sex with underage girls and facing an ethics panel had he stayed in the nomination.
Forgive me if I don’t believe that this outfit is just as bad as the last outfit. I am sick of hearing about this red wave already. Trump has a mandate, my red ass. The house is 220 to 214 last I looked so there is only a 2 vote edge there, its 53 to 47 in the Senate, and if we look at the popular vote its 77 mil to 75 million. That’s 50.75%, or put another way 23 percent of the country’s total population voted for Trump or put another way his 2, 287,209 vote difference amount to .0068 percent difference in our total population aka less than 1%. Now it is their turn to shit in Americans hats and tell them Merry Christmas and the Dems will have to hold the hat, but the Republicans have had to do the same for the last four years. Just don’t tell me WE won cause I ain’t on either side.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
Also born on this date… Francisco Franco, the Spanish general who overthrew the government in 1939 and ruled until 1975 as a dictator.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.