Democrats have way fewer drooling brain donors than the Republicans do. I’m sure he’ll get some votes, but he’d never be able to pull the kind of crowds Trump was able to on the conservative side. Democrats are also way less likely to support a DNC candidate at any cost as they don’t see politics as a team sport where their “side” has to win at all cost (for better or worse). If the DNC truly did run a candidate as horrible as him in the general election they would 100% lose because a significant portion of liberal voters would vote 3rd party while the conservatives would fall in line like the good little serfs they are.

Yeah at a fundamental language level every word has implications. Any given word is less one specific meaning than it is one or more primary meanings with a whole constellation of associated concepts. Picking to use a specific word means one thing but its associated concepts also shade the surrounding words and sentence. The word “female” is not offensive any more than a word like “red” would be, but it carries a clinical connotation as well as being problematic with regards to trans people and the trans movement in general. Depending on how it’s used it could offend someone, but with the right tone or context so could asking someone “How old are you?”. So it’s wrong to say in absolute sense that “female” is offensive, but like many words it can be used in an offensive manner.

Not generally, although “preachy” is. Saying females or women are mostly interchangeable, although using females in this case is an odd choice as there’s no real reason to pick that specific word. Generally you’d use female in a scientific or medical context where the biology in question is relevant (E.G. when talking about disease statistics or similar). Saying women would be a bit more inclusive but since he’s being an asshole anyway not sure a little extra inclusivity is going to make any difference.

Unfortunately while they can seize anything in NY, property in other states requires them to go through the federal government. It can be done, but it’s a whole separate legal process.

Let’s keep going, with everyone’s help we can shrink that even smaller. Lets shoot for the negatives.

So I dug into it a little deeper and it looks like the answer is kind of. Government still gets first crack at the value of whatever the property is, but leftover funds may be distributed to other creditors. It also depends on the kind of loan in question as to whether the government will repay them or if they have to sue Trump.

Overall the process works much like bankruptcy does, creditors get ranked based on various criteria (generally the more money you’re owed the higher you’re ranked) and higher priority creditors get first dibs and whatever is left over goes to the next creditor in line. Government pretty much always goes first. Once they’ve gotten their money next would be anyone who has an actual lien on the property. It’s also possible to have given a loan whose terms are tied to the property but doesn’t result in an actual lien being issued for it. Those creditors are just fucked in this case. They’ll have to chase Trump through court to get their money back as it’s essentially a contract dispute at that point.

What’s highly likely to happen is we’ll see a panic recall on any outstanding loans Trump has as nobody wants to be on the bottom of the pile fighting for scraps after the financial corpse of Trumps assets has been picked over.

There’s a reason no banks have been willing to loan to him for 30 years, and when he went looking for a bond the ones who were willing to give him one were demanding double the amount in property as collateral. They wanted to make sure that there would be enough left over for them to get their money back after the government took their cut.

As for what you cited, that’s for civil asset forfeiture which is a little different. In that case the government isn’t treated as a creditor since you don’t owe them anything, they’re just straight stealing your property. In the case of property with a lien on it they repay the lien holder essentially the full value of the lien as there’s no valid claim to those funds by the government.

At the end of the day the government will just keep seizing property until both they and all Trumps creditors are paid off or until there’s no more property to seize whichever comes first. What’s definitely not going to happen is the government goes “This property isn’t worth it because it has too many loans on it, we’ll just let Trump keep it”.

That’s not how it works. The courts get first crack at that property. If something is worth $100 million, and it’s used as collateral on a $50 million loan, the courts can seize it and sell it for $100 million and keep all the money. The one who issued the loan for $50 million can then sue Trump for the $50 million along with any other creditors who Trump owes money to.

So, Trump can’t sell his properties without paying off the loans, but the courts can seize them for their full values.

Trump is, was, and has always been, a conman. It’s his bread and butter. It was critical to the facade of “highly successful businessman” that he put up that he appear ridiculously wealthy. Not just wealthy, but ultra wealthy. While he has always had hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, and owned many properties that when combined would total over a billion dollars in value, he has never at any point in his life had access to the kind of wealth that the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Bill Gates have. Even worse for him, he’s actually an incredibly bad businessman, nearly every venture Trump has directly been involved in (rather than just licensing his name for someone actually competent to use) has failed utterly.

In an effort to shore up his image Trump has for decades inflated the value of all his properties, and then used those inflated values to take out loans and mortgages that he then blows on bad business decisions. There’s a very real chance that he might actually be telling the truth for the first time in his life and he can’t actually scrape together the nearly $500 million even if he sold every piece of property he owns. He may have already over leveraged it all so badly that there’s just not $100 million of value left to squeeze out of it.

Of course it’s also possible he actually could come up with the money but doing so would require him to liquidate every property he owns and would also expose just how badly he has managed the wealth left to him by his father. Something he desperately wants to avoid lest it utterly shatter his “successful businessman” facade forever (not to mention legitimately bankrupt him for once in his life).

Either way it’s about time a lifetime of fraud and lies caught up to him.

I saw a comment somewhere that claimed the RNC only has like $10 million in funds, wouldn’t even put a dent in what he owes.

It’s funny how badly he has screwed himself. He’s spent decades overinflating the value of his properties and then taking loans and mortgages out on them and using that to claim he’s a billionaire. Now the courts used his own claims of how rich he is to issue a fine and he’s struggling to pay it because his actual net worth is a tiny fraction of what he has claimed it is. He’s basically created his own personal sub-prime mortgage bubble and it’s teetering on the edge of collapse now.

You uh … might want to slow it down there buddy. Pretty sure there’s a couple of those things that aren’t supposed to be combined.

Asbestos is safe in the same way old crates of TNT are. That is as long as it remains completely undisturbed and you’re nowhere near it. Also much like old crates of TNT when discovered safely removing it involves a very expensive call to highly specialized removal teams and there’s a high risk of collateral damage in the process.

Do you think the same guy is responsible for stocking the Depends in Congress and the Senate as well, or are there a few of them?

5th circuit about to have a whole lot more free time.

Many psychological experiments have shown that most people when ordered to do something by a person they perceive as an authority will follow those instructions even in cases where they feel the instructions are wrong. Most people just want to keep their head down and do their jobs. So yes, if Trump ordered them to, most rank and file would commit illegal actions. While I’d like to think most wouldn’t be willing to murder someone, we’ve seen ample evidence that there are enough that follow Trump that would be more than willing to for someone to do it, and most would be unwilling to stop them even if they weren’t willing to do it themselves.

We have seen all this before. Hitler didn’t start off by committing genocide, Stalin didn’t start by sending people to gulags. They start small with the things people are willing to do even if they feel it’s wrong and slowly escalate. Stripping rights turns into imprisoning, which turns into murdering, and each step of the way everyone either says “I’m not doing it myself, I’m not responsible” or “They deserve it because they’re a <minority> and I’m not”.

Traditionally it comes down to the national guard. During desegregation the national guard was deployed to several southern states to enforce the law when southern states tried to ignore it. They’re not officially military so they don’t run afoul of the posse comitatus act, but they effectively serve the same function within US borders.

Trump has never really cared much for laws, or reality, if either happen to get in the way of what he wants. The danger if Trump wins this year is that he’ll do exactly what he has said he will and go full fascist. We’re talking Hitler/Stalin style rounding up political opposition or anyone he deems undesirable and sending them off to gulags/concentration camps or just plain having them executed.

In that regard it’s not a question of if the law allows Trump to do something, it’s a question of if anyone will be willing to stand up to stop him after he’s seized full control of the federal executive and judicial branches and has his GOP allies in control of the legislative.

Worst case scenario it might come down to the military to stage an intervention and restore order, although at that point we’re effectively looking at a military coup even if the ultimate goal is restoring democratic rule and upholding the constitution which is a whole can and a half of worms better left unopened.

With these two it seems like they’re really trying to add a new president to the list of those that died in office. Last one that wasn’t assassinated was FDR in 1945. Going to be really important who these crypt keepers run as their VP because there is a very good chance they’ll be the president before the end of their term.

How are Kamala Harris polling numbers these days? If they’re better than Biden’s (and that’s a really low bar so I’d kind of be surprised if they aren’t) it would be smart of the Democrats to encourage people to vote to support her in the incredibly likely chance that Biden dies in office making her the president.

That’s because Trump thinks any media that doesn’t praise him as the smartest, richest, handsomest, and most powerful man in the world is a “Left wing rag”. I’m sure now that Faux News was forced to add fact checkers to avoid another devastating lawsuit he thinks they’re “liberal” and “woke” now as well.

More accurate headline: 80% of polled Americans have a room temperature IQ, 53% now showing signs of single digit IQ.

Among all the problems currently facing the US, illegal immigration doesn’t even crack the top 100 and anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot. Literally the only reason Republicans keep harping on about it is that it’s a conveniently deniable way to show support for racism.