I’m no economics professor, but if food banks are rationing food because of record demand while billionaires gained a record $1 trillion in combined wealth, it might be time to reconsider our system.”
—Tweet by Dan Price of Seattle.
More than a quarter million people have died from the coronavirus as the number of cases of the virus hit new records daily. But there are other far-reaching effects as well:
One in eight Americans often do not have enough to eat. That’s 26 million people.
As many as 30-40 million people in America are facing eviction because they can’t pay their rent.
About 30 million Americans are unemployed, which in turn, leaves families unable to pay rent or buy groceries.
Yet, diehard Trump devotees, their loyalties seriously misplaced, have poured an estimated $170 million into his “election defense fund” that he shamelessly hawks via a daily email blitz.
This is a man who boasts about being a billionaire and who, in 2016, said he would self-finance his presidential campaign.
So, why does he need a defense fund to continue to challenge an election that is doubtless settled?
That’s a very good question and one to which we have yet to receive an answer.
All we get out of Tweet Thang is his baseless claim that Biden, the Venezuelans, the Democrat Party, Dominion voting machines (take your pick) stole the election.
Actually, there is a web page that quite succinctly explains precisely how Biden stole the election. (To view the full explanation, click HERE.)
On election day, I received 31 emails from Trump (24) Mike (Casper the Ghost) Pence and Eric Trump (2 each), Melania and Lara Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders (1 each).
Beginning on Nov. 4 and continuing through yesterday (Nov. 30), I received 308 from Trump, 27 from Pence, 21 from Eric, 15 from Laura, 9 from Newt Gingrich and 6 Rudy updates. If you’re counting, that’s 386 emails in 27 days – just over 14 per day.
Conspicuously absent from this barrage was Donald Jr.
All of the emails had two things in common:
Each one was addressed personally to me by name (until a few days ago when my name was mysteriously changed from Tom to Ben. I’m at a loss as to how I suddenly took on a new identity).
Each one was literally begging for money – even stooping so low as to offer special Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals in exchange for my contribution. Nov. 30 was the deadline for contributing but thankfully, the offer has been “extended” (whatever that extended offer may be).
On Monday, for example, there was this:
Ben,
You’ve always been one of my TOP supporters, and now I have an EXCLUSIVE offer just for YOU.
For TODAY ONLY, I’m giving YOU a FREE TRUMP GIFT to show you just how much you mean to me. This Trump Cyber Monday offer is meant for YOU, Ben, and is not intended to be shared.
You have 1 HOUR to claim your FREE TRUMP CYBER MONDAY GIFT before I release it to the next Patriot in line. Don’t wait.
Please contribute at least $35 IMMEDIATELY to claim your FREE TRUMP CYBER MONDAY GIFT. >>
I want you to know how much you mean to me, Ben.
You’ve always been there when I needed you the most, and I know you’ll continue to be there for me while we work to DEFEND the Election.
Contribute $35 RIGHT NOW and my team will send you your FREE Trump Cyber Monday Gift.
Thank you,
Donald J. Trump
As of Tuesday, Dec. 1, he has collected $170 million via his email scam in which he paints such a rosy picture of him being able to overturn the results of the election. $170 million! Of course, he neglects to mention that 60 percent of everything he collects goes right into his pocket to do with as he pleases. The disclaimer on his solicitation says so. If you read far enough into it, it’s there for you to see. That’s a lot of Big Macs, folks, especially when 26 million Americans are going hungry because of a pandemic that he ignored for way too long.
He could even use that money to pay himself a million or so a year as well as his deadbeat kids, especially given the fact that there are 30 million unemployed Americans, many of whom don’t know where they’ll be sleeping next week.
There’s just something patently obscene about this fund drive.
If you voted for Trump, that’s your business and yours alone. I have nothing to say other than I don’t agree with your choice. Still, it’s your choice as a free American.
But if you fall for these B.S. “personalized” emails and you cough up one red cent to support this parasitic charlatan who has never had to struggle, who has never given a fleeting moment thinking of you or your fellow Americans who are out of work, going hungry and looking at the very real possibility of being homeless, then shame on you.
Who else but Donald Trump would be thinking only of himself at times like these?
Stop and think about it for just a doggone second. If he’s really such a filthy rich billionaire as he would have us believe, why is he begging for $5, $10, $35, $50, $100 contributions like some cheesy televangelist? Is that Cyber Monday deal he’s offering a prayer cloth or a genuine splinter from the Cross?
Think for just a minute how much better spent your $5 or $10 would be if you gave it to the local Food Bank. If you are so weak-minded that you would fall for such a scam, if you are so callous as to give money to the Tangerine Toddler when your neighbor, your relative, the kids down the street, are going without their supper, then you damn well deserve just such a president because you are as morally corrupt as he is.
Random6018111
Louisiana Voice 
“you damn well deserve just such a president because you are as morally corrupt as he is.”
I would add to the ranks of the morally corrupt, not just those who choose to send money to such a degenerate, but those who voted for him.
Have you gotten any solicitations for a presidential pardon yet? According to the trump Justice Department, those are on offer for sale, too.
I notice some of the diehard trumpians who usually comment here have been mighty quiet of late.
Stupid is as stupid does.
And there are some stupid people who still fall for scams. The Donald has survived off these people all his life.
You tell it like it is, Tom!
If his supporters can still support him after his #1 supporter/apologist, Bill Barr, says there was no extraordinary fraud in the election DJT claims was stolen from him, they will never abandon him.
I have tried to rationalize how some of my acquaintances can continue to believe in him, but I am out of options for doing so.
I do think, as I heard someone comment on NPR yesterday, that the main reason for his latest publicity stunts is as simple as the fact he cannot stand Biden being in the limelight and pulling stunts is the only way he can keep getting attention. His latest is an allegedly planned 2024 campaign kick-off event on inauguration day.
If his supporters don’t realize he is playing them, they never will. It will probably get lost in the fog of the multitude of his crimes, mismanagement and lies, but it would be interesting to know exactly where the money he is currently soliciting is going and the extent to which he is personally profiting.
P. S. Did any of you happen to catch Senator Kornpone on TV last night? Cassidy is at least trying to act like a reasonable person who cares, if only marginally, about people and human concerns. Kornpone acts like an Oxford educated Jed Clampett with no conscience who hopes he has enough hillbillies in Louisiana stupid enough to re-elect him.
This from a guy who many years ago had respect (and his response is typical of what the right-wing media is saying about Barr (from a CNN report):
Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, whose conspiratorial program is a favorite of the president, attacked Barr in brutal terms on his show. “For the attorney general of the United States to make that statement — he is either a liar or a fool or both,” Dobbs said. Dobbs then went further, suggesting Barr was “perhaps compromised.” He characterized Barr as having “appeared to join in with the radical Dems and the deep-state and the resistance.”
Now, I ask again, how can reasonable people combat this kind of divisive propaganda? If people choose to believe this and other outlandish things they consume from right-wing outlets and each other, we are certainly not going to convince them of anything with simple facts.
No, you are right. They will never be convinced. If people dying of the coronavirus refuse to believe they have it because it is all a hoax then surely facts will never change their minds. The best thing to do, if possible and angry as they make us, is just to walk away from them. What else can you do. It is hopeless.
Dumpster business as usual.
Read this letter to the editor in today’s Baton Rouge ADVOCATE. I am sure the writer believes every word he has written:
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_93441b6a-2f18-11eb-baec-43a9c7ca2800.html
What concerns me the most about it is its obvious sincerity. Like other things I’ve read, it does not reflect what I consider to be reality. But, what I think about it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that some 48% of the people in our population believe it.
Stephen, according to Bread for the World, “Kentucky houses some of the hungriest and poorest number of Americans. American Community Survey data shows that 16.4 of Kentucky households at risk of hunger last year.
In Kentucky, 18 percent of residents lived in poverty. According to Bread’s analysis, the state also had one of the highest participation rates in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps). Congress proposed cutting funding for SNAP 13 times last year despite the program helping move 3.7 million Americans out of poverty.
Children continued to be a segment of the population that was most vulnerable to hunger and poverty. Last year the state saw more than 1 in 4 children living in poverty, which included 76,492 children under the age of 6.”
Now, here are the election results from Kentucky:
Trump – 1,326,646 or 62.1%
Biden – 772,474 or 36.2%
McConnell – 1,233,074 or 57.8%
McGrath – 816,184 or 38.2%
McConnell was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984. And so, one of the poorest and neediest states in the Union ignorantly re-elects him and overwhelmingly voted for Trump. The old saying about cutting off your nose to spite your face could not be demonstrated any better. And we could very well be stuck with Mr. Obstructionist as Majority Leader for at least two more years.
Sad? Disgusting? Enraging?