Joy is in for Chris Hayes

"He's so rich!1!!!!" None of his properties are making money, his business failures are legend, he's defaulted on loans from every bank in the country, his claims that he has $8 billion in cash are nonsense, he owes Deutsche bank hundreds of millions and he may owe Russian mobsters even more. I continue with "If you were given $50 million when you were 30, you would be a lot richer now and you'd be retired. He's a terrible businessman."

For some reason, that closed meeting between Trump and Russian operatives (and nobody else from the U.S.) back in May has just disappeared down the Memory Hole. Considering the full-throated baying of the conservative whackosphere over Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch meeting in Arizona, it's a wonder that nobody (really, nobody) in the popular media have raised any questions about Trump's meeting with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador (Who is regarded as a spy by many in the U.S. intelligence community, though the Russians deny it and who would doubt the Russians?).

The response from republicans if PBO has conducted a closed door meeting with Russians like trump did?
I mean could you imagine PBO doing anything trump does, even once, the republicans would have lost their mind.

If you flipped “Obama” with “Trump” with everything else the same, republicans would not be stonewalling investigations or running up to the WH or anything else...AoI would have already been drawn up.

I even think republicans would respect us more if we fought dirty.

If Republicans didn't have double standards, they wouldn't have any standards at all.

Eye opening.
Curious as to what the FBI did or did not do with the info.
It makes sense that Trump is refusing to release his tax records.
He appears to have ties to the Russian mob.
Money laundering! And that can be prosecuted by the states.
Simpson described what the Trump campaign did as a "crime" and Steele felt obligated to report it to the FBI. Also states that the FBI had an informant within the trump campaign, someone who did not like what was going on and reported it.
Russians did hack into the DN,C Debbie Wasseman emails.
Lots of other good stuff.
Kudos to Dianne Finestein for releasing this.

I think we all should start the demand to see his tax returns. Apparently his golf course are not making any money.

It's two fold. First they fully expected Clinton to win. But more important, second, they wanted to deny Trump ammunition to use when he intended to call the election "rigged" after he lost. In other words Trump defacto blackmailed them into silence through threats to destabilize our electoral system by not accepting the results of his pending loss, much like Ray Moore but on a national scale. If the FBI had revealed their Russia investigation, Trump would have used that as evidence that "the Deep State" had thrown the election to Hillary. The FBI thought they could avoid that turmoil by staying quiet until after Hillary won.

His golf courses don't make money, his casinos go bankrupt ... yet he's as wealthy as can be.

Something's not jive.

and if you are charging over $150.00 to play Golf at your course, how many people are willing to pay that? How many customers will you have? I understand that he has memberships that run in the $100,000.00+, but then again, we are talking about having your client base be the 1%.

I am not sure that if you are a great businessman that you would try to do business with only 1% of the country. Think about it, of that 1%, what % actually plays Golf and is willing to pay that exorbitant amount to belong to a Golf club? There are better and more inexpensive ways to get together with you fellow 1%ers, and I would doubt that a Trump Golf course would be a favourite.

His basic MO was to finance the construction with junk bonds paying high interest rates. He himself would, directly or indirectly, have an ownership interest and take a share of the profits, along with fees for his management or the licensing of his name or whatever. The casino would have positive EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) to support such payouts. When it all came crashing down is when the operating profits weren't enough to maintain the high payments on the bonds. Then the people who had invested with Trump (by buying the bonds) took heavy losses, while Trump walked away unscathed.

Trump has never declared personal bankruptcy. The bankruptcies were always of companies he controlled, but the creditors of those companies had no claim on Trump's personal assets.

I read an article about a real estate developer/slumlord, Allentown PA I think, and yes he or his companies owned many buildings, mortgaged to the hilt, never repaired anything, tons of tax credits, the city and feds helping him every step of the way to provide housing.

So yes, if one uses the laws, the companies take the liability, but there's little personal liability.

Every city has one, they say.

She seems like more of a Democrat than a Republican these days.

...that any conservative (who built a career on enabling the RW loons) repeating what liberals have said for years suddenly seems like brave and outspoken opposition.