For the Record: Debate Takes

 

The Debate (2017), by the Filipino painter Gerry Joquico, via ArtAnton.

Earlier in the evening, I had a kind of kerfuffle with our dear friend Bos over the framing of our attack on Trump's China business, where I think the prevailing rhetoric emphasizes the points that aren't important at all for the sake of a sound bite that really doesn't end up meaning anything:

Hard to say how it means something important. Certainly the one thing he did with the account deserves a lot of investigation, but it's not ready to publish. pic.twitter.com/G7DmBxi9ao

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 22, 2020

I don't know. Many people have foreign accounts. He disclosed it to IRS. He pays more in taxes because Chinese law is more effective against tax dodging.

He doesn't keep a lot of money in it. Except that one time he seems to have laundered $15+ million. That part is interesting.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 22, 2020

I had a Singapore checking account for a couple of years after I came back to the States, and I really didn't mean any harm.

so why was the Times story news?

— Boswood (@Bosengood) October 22, 2020

I'm not even sure. It's certainly very informative, but the existence of the bank account and taxes aren't surprising. The biggest thing, again, is the buried lede in paragraph 20 with the money laundering evidence, which the writers themselves don't seem to have noticed.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 22, 2020

I probably wrote three of them, but yes, it was not lost on readers.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 22, 2020

It's the third or fourth installment in the Times series on the Trump tax returns from 2009-18. https://t.co/LwvFoYdUFp It's a good backgrounder on the dishonesty and hypocrisy of Trump's complaints about Hunter Biden when his own activities are far more questionable.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 22, 2020

He probably should have listed the bank account in his financial disclosure form, but it can't have a lot of money in it. The article makes clear he dumped most of his efforts to build businesses IN China in 2015.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 22, 2020

I think I got that last bit wrong—the financial disclosure he has to submit as president doesn't ask you to name your banks, so he wasn't even really hiding it. Except in the sense that he was hiding his income tax filings, which The Times now has.

Democrats don't get away with nada as a subject, and shouldn't imo. The $15 million is real and should be talked about at every opportunity. pic.twitter.com/Hsi7u3J304

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

The fact that this took place in 2017, when Trump was in the White House and his sons supposedly no longer seeking international business, the vagueness with which they described what the money was for, these are things they have to explain. It looks like a very large bribe.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

Which is what we need to focus on. Not the fact that he paid taxes in Cbina or had a bank account, but the weird thing he did with the account after he's supposedly stopped using it.

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Other than that one time in 2017 when someone suddenly gave him $17 million and he quickly put $15 million somewhere else.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

And then a couple of points from the debate itself. Speaking of taxes...

You sort of do in US (withheld) but that's not it. When for the first time in his life he started making some real money instead of losing it, as a TV star on The Apprentice, it took him and his accountants and lawyers a while to adjust to this situation, and he paid...

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

And since then his people have it all figured out and he pays between $0 and $750 per year. Back to the Trump norm since the 1960s when his father became a real billionaire by cheating on taxes and mortgage valuations.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

And of the "caged children" that Trump wants to blame on Obama, and Biden seems unable to explain clearly, maybe because he thinks it's too complicated:

... that is border camps where the population was CONCENTRATED rather than being dispersed into the community as had been done for literally centuries throughout America's history.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

Trump/Miller/Sessions, in contrast, put parents in criminal custody for crossing the border--something that had never been done--leaving the kids bereft and detained in cages for indefinite periods. Three years later 500-odd are still bereft because Trump admin lost their parents

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

I thought it was going to be much worse than that but volunteers from ACLU and elsewhere have performed miracles. But the suffering has been awful and every bit of it is the fault of Trump and his Nazioid advisors.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

The finale

The Old Lady noticed, in the answer to the last question ("what will you say in inauguration to those who opposed you?") Trump said he was going to lose: he'd tell them how terrible Biden is going to be.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

And racism in the morning-after spin

[narrator: Trump's history of being accused of racism started when he was still a teenager helping his father violate the Fair Housing Act by refusing to rent to Black tenants.] https://t.co/Np9Fwu5ksV

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

His history of racism against Native Americans started long before he decided it was funny to call Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas" and deserves a chapter of its own. https://t.co/GbRod8LrUA

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

And his anti-Semitism has very long been familiar to New Yorkers. https://t.co/4fmVN3oAcW

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

but it's all definitely getting noticed more https://t.co/VH3jsIoir7

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020

Bonus: My judgment on how Giuliani was just tucking in his shirt when Sasha Baron Cohen filmed him rushing into a bedroom with a blonde babe:

Advanced shirt-tucking technique. It's kind of like baseball pitching, every shirt-tucking genius follows his own special ritual. https://t.co/kDGrxchYSM

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2020