We must demand that the rich and powerful be held to the same laws as everyone else.
From the transcript of an interview with Bill Black, on The Real News:
BILL BLACK: There is every evidence that the claim is, and I know this will shock people, a lie. First, he’s not self made. Second, it’s entirely due to the money he got from Dad. Indeed, if he had taken the money he got from Dad and simply put it in a Vanguard account, he really would have well over $10 billion today. Instead he’s a terrible real estate developer. So he lost money and defaulted on all kinds of loans, which also, by the way, he said made him smart, that all the great ones in real estate stiff the creditors; you know, including the banks and the workers who don’t get paid for doing these things. So it’s lie upon lie upon lie.
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The Trumps did the same thing. What they did is massively overcharge Dad’s companies for their services. Now, they weren’t providing real services, either. It was a scam upon a scam upon a scam. But it dramatically reduced Trump’s Dad’s profits. And then, remember, he is someone who makes his money from the public, through all these rental assisted housing for poor people. And he used the fact that he was now paying these much, much, much higher costs to his kids, where they were literally raising the cost by 300 percent, 400 percent, 500 percent, as his excuse for rent increase on these rent controlled dwellings.
So they were- again I emphasize it isn’t genius that explains these kinds of frauds. It’s audacity. And the Trump family simply exemplifies this combination of incompetence, moral degeneracy, but with just extraordinary audacity.