Aaron Rupar also following Trump’s on the road lies:

Kayleigh McEnany explained about the ballots in a river way back at the beginning of the month.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that Meagan Wolfe, director of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said during a news conference this week that “no Wisconsin absentee ballots were found” in a mail bag that was discovered last week in a ditch in Greenville, Wisconsin, although she said she didn’t know if any out-of-state ballots were caught up in the mail bag.

McEnany sparred with Fox News Radio reporter Jon Decker on Thursday when he asked her about Trump claiming that his voters’ ballots were being thrown into an unspecified river, and she responded by saying that the president actually meant the ditch in Greenville.

Coulda had outa state ballots in it. From Hawaii maybe, or Alaska, or Vermont. We JUST DON’T KNOW. So let’s assume it did, and vote Trump accordingly. Makes sense.

Daniel Dale has fact-checky snapshots from Trump in campaigning mode.

Going up is not rounding the corner.

God damn scum bag. We blame him BECAUSE HE INCITES IT, KNOWING IT WILL HAPPEN. He could shut his fucking mouth about Whitmer, but he doesn’t, because he wants them to chant misogynist abuse despite the fact that there was an active plot to kidnap and murder her.

What is the world coming to when you can’t get the news media to report on a fake scandal made up by a criminal fraud to tarnish his non-criminal opponent?

Yes, how unreasonable that there’s a lot of reporting on a major pandemic.

Tss, everybody knows the name, it’s Ballotswastebasket River. Old Iroquois name I think.

The cavalry has arrived! Just in time to be swept into the ditch.

How poignant to see Kent garagiste Nigel Farage interfering in the US election, much in the way a drop interferes in the ocean. Farage is appearing at the odd rally for his emotional support president, Donald Trump, which tells its own story about where the US leader is at, psychologically speaking, for the final days of his campaign. On Wednesday, Trump gibbered to a crowd: “I’m glad I called him up.” So is Nigel’s agent.

Nigel was brought on stage in Arizona by Donald, where the latter introduced him as “the king of Europe”.

Certainly, and Trump is the emperor of Antarctica.

Farage rubed his way on to the rally platform and took the microphone to declare Trump was “the single most resilient and bravest person I have ever met in my life”.

Well, you know, that kind of thing – it always depends on the person who says it. It may be true of Farage, who may have a very circumscribed and jejune set of people on his list of “ever met.” But if we take it less literally as a general statement about Trump? No. Trump is neither resilient nor brave.

Also, Trump’s courage and resilience aren’t all that’s required. For the job Trump presumes to do he needs other qualities – intelligence, discipline, responsibility, empathy, collegiality, basic decency. Uh oh.

[Farage] was giving it his best Lord Haw-Haw, informing Trump’s crowd: “You’ll be voting for the only leader in the western world with the real courage to stand up to the Chinese Communist party.” Stand up to them? He pays more tax to them than he does to the US. Later, Nigel justified his media credentials by explaining to Daily Telegraph readers that Trump had “what Americans call ‘the big M’ – momentum”. Is that what Americans call momentum? We’ll have to take this latterday Alistair Cooke’s word for it, I suppose.

I can help with that! No, we don’t. Maybe some goons in Hollywood do, but as a people, no.

It would be nice if Trump and Farage joined forces after Trump loses, as a song and dance act playing towns like Knoxville and Sioux City and Abilene.

Thought for the Day: Marketing Harry Potter-themed underwear=advocating violence against “trans folx.”

An alert observer asked “So these are officially licensed, correct? Meaning that JK Rowling does profit from me purchasing them? Love the prints, but out of principle I have to pass, unless a portion of proceeds were donated to supporting trans charities.”

So this Elizabeth Tobey person is saying JK Rowling advocates violence against trans people – which of course is a defamatory lie.

Why do people do this?

It must be because the real casus belli is so weak, right? If it were strong, there would be no need to tell gross defamatory lies of this kind.

So it appears that in some sense the “allies” realize The Cause is weak. In some sense they get that it’s not all that important that Bob or Bill or Ben can’t get everyone to “validate” his “identity” as Betsy. They may think it is all that important themselves, but they spy in the distance the fact that not everyone does and that that will probably never change, because the fact is that it’s not important. It’s Luxury Grievance is what it is. It’s Grievance for people who don’t actually have any real grievance so they have to work something up. “I’m a prosperous straight white man and I’m sick and tired of acknowledging the oppression of other people – I want some of that for me!” So the Luxury Grievance is born.

It turns out men are stronger than women. Who knew?

Earlier this year, World Rugby caused somewhat of a stir when its draft proposals to ban biological men from playing at the top level of women’s rugby were reported by The Guardian. The proposals were of particular interest because they were in sharp contrast to the rules of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which has loosened its requirements to focus on athletes’ testosterone levels. World Rugby was also the first international sporting federation to indicate such a move, which led to immediate criticism from some quarters that the proposals were “harmful” despite the fact the they were aimed at safeguarding players’ health.

Which never made any sense, seeing as how we’ve always known that men have considerable physical advantages over women. It’s no use pretending this is a brand new concept, because we all know damn well it’s not.

Earlier this month, World Rugby released the final version of its Transgender Guidelines document, confirming that biological men would be barred from playing at the top level of women’s rugby. The reasoning was based on two primary factors that had emerged from the scientific research into the issue: first, the unacceptable risk of injury to female players; and second, the existence of significant performance advantages.

Aka it would be totally unfair and a disaster because men would win everything and they would break women’s necks in the process. It’s really pretty damn simple.

Rugby is a full-contact sport that involves frequent collisions, and there are particular risks to players’ heads and necks. The nature of the sport means that injuries are frequent and, very sadly, they occasionally result in life-altering disabilities. With that in mind, the conclusion reached by World Rugby should not be entirely surprising. However, the pioneering research that underpinned the final decision was compelling and is likely to send shockwaves throughout the sporting world.

The research set out not only the distinct biological advantages that men had over women (including increases in muscle density and increased heart and lung size), but went on to consider the effect that these advantages had in athletic performance. The research showed that men generally had a 30-60 percent advantage over women in strength, around a 33 percent advantage in terms of power and a 10-15 percent advantage in running speed. Even after taking testosterone suppressants (as per the IOC guidelines), the performance advantages remained significant, with only a fractional reduction in the males’ existing ability.

Why would this send any shockwaves through the sporting world? It’s not news!

Ross Tucker, the science and research consultant for World Rugby, acknowledged the “struggle” in considering the many aspects involved in the decision, saying that it was not possible to balance inclusion, safety and fairness.

It’s also not necessary or desirable. “Inclusion” of men on women’s teams should not be a goal in the first place. Think of adult men demanding “inclusion” on children’s teams. Nobody would think that has to be “balanced” along with safety and a fair shot at winning. Women are just supposed to suck it up I guess.

Andrew Copson at Humanists UK:

This morning, three civilians were murdered in France – stabbed to death and beheaded – by an Islamic extremist. It was a shocking and despicable act, but not an isolated one.

It comes just a fortnight after state school teacher Samuel Paty was murdered for teaching his class about freedom of expression and the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. France responded then in the only way a human rights-loving republic should. It defended the right to free expression, including to publish materials which may cause offence.

Sickeningly, today’s murders have been portrayed as a retaliation for that defence of free speech and secular education and it feels like this is a situation spiralling out of control. If it does, we must remember that there is fault only on one side here. Freedom of speech and freedom of belief are not crimes. But murder most definitely is.

Furthermore, the fact that someone somewhere said or drew something about a religion is a very minor fact about a minor incident, while hacking that someone’s head off is very major. There’s a disparity in proportion here. One the one hand: some people don’t believe in or defer to Religion X; on the other hand believers in Religion X rip the heads off people who don’t believe in Religion X. That’s not a match. Nobody has to believe in your fucking religion. It’s a religion: it provides no real reasons for believing in it, only fake ones. Just give up on this stupid murderous project to force all 7 billion people on the planet to bow to your fucking religion. The more you threaten the more we think your religion sucks.

[W]e have no reason to believe those who say that laws against offending religions will stop the violence. Countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Bangladesh are home to this kind of violence all year round, precisely because blasphemy laws give legitimacy to any vigilante targeting humanists, Christians, Ahmadis, or other minorities, safe in the knowledge that enough people believe violence is an acceptable response to those who offend you to offer them impunity.

That belief rests on the prior belief that submission to their religion is and should be mandatory. If your god thinks belief in him (women need not apply) is mandatory he’s an asshole; away with him.

iknklast’s comment on the fabrication post

You know, there seems to be a rather common thread running through all of this: wealth. It seems most of the “self-ID” people lead comfortable to wealthy lives. Maybe it’s that old thing where rich people used to crave living the “more authentic” lives of poor people; this is the new version of that, only you don’t actually have to give anything up or sleep in a less comfortable bed to do it. You just say “I am woman”, “I am black”, “I am Chicana”. Voila! Instant tourism into an oppressed status.

reminded me of this classic Monty Python reversal.

Oh does he.

That was 12. Let’s see the beginning.

But talking about a religion is not comparable to walking up to one person and picking a fight.

But never mind all that, let’s talk about women and why it’s necessary to go on treating them as inferiors.

No. Freedom for women was never limited to the right to vote in elections. That’s back of the cereal box history and it’s wrong.

Well all righty then! Men are stronger than women therefore men should dominate and persecute women. Powerful logic!

Dang. This started off being about Islam and tolerance of religious differences, but the guy seems to be pruriently obsessed with uppity women and…their naughty bits. WHAT IS BEHIND THAT STRING???

He says, showing utter disrespect for the values of others.

And then came the “right to kill millions of French people” tweet.

The death toll in the Algerian war was hard to pin down.

Historians, like Alistair Horne and Raymond Aron, state that the actual number of Algerian Muslim war dead was far greater than the official French estimates, but was fewer than the 1 million deaths claimed by the Algerian government after independence. Horne estimated Algerian casualties during the span of eight years to be around 700,000. Uncounted thousands of Muslim civilians lost their lives in French Army ratissages, bombing raids, or vigilante reprisals. The war uprooted more than 2 million Algerians, who were forced to relocate in French camps or to flee into the Algerian hinterland, where many thousands died of starvation, disease, and exposure.

It’s true that European and American colonizers have killed a lot of Muslims; it’s not true that that fact equates to a “right” to kill an equivalent number of non-Muslims. It’s even less true that cutting off the head of a history teacher is a way to redress the wrongs.

Labour has suspended Corbyn.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has suspended Jeremy Corbyn from the party over his reaction to a highly critical report on anti-Semitism.

The human rights watchdog found Labour responsible for “unlawful” harassment and discrimination during Mr Corbyn’s years in charge of the party.

But Mr Corbyn later said the scale of anti-Semitism within Labour had been “dramatically overstated” by opponents.

Labour said he was being suspended “for a failure to retract” his words.

I think Corbyn should think very seriously about coming out as trans now. I can’t think of anything else that would save his hide.

Sir Keir, who became Labour leader in April, said the publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) report had brought “a day of shame” for the party.

The report found Labour responsible for three breaches of the Equality Act:

Political interference in anti-Semitism complaints

Failure to provide adequate training to those handling anti-Semitism complaints

Harassment, including the use of anti-Semitic tropes and suggesting that complaints of anti-Semitism were fake or smears

The EHRC found evidence of 23 instances of “inappropriate involvement” by Mr Corbyn’s office, included staff influencing decisions on suspensions or whether to investigate a claim.

Yes that seems pretty inappropriate.

An anonymous Medium post yesterday:

I have watched the unmasking of CV Vitolo and Jessica Krug from afar. But when an old friend pointed me to the twitter bio of Dr. Kelly Kean Sharp, currently an Assistant Professor at Furman University, I now had a similar example on the edges of my own circles. I had distantly known Kelly while she was a PhD student at University of California, Davis, and was more than surprised to find out that she was now describing herself as Chicana.

This discovery led to multiple conversations and a flurry of research on the part of people who had known Kelly at UC Davis. They approached me to help publicize her fabrication and strategic use of a Chicana identity.

Note the word “fabrication.” It’s interesting that we’re still allowed to see it as “fabrication” when people pretend to be Black or Chicana but not when men pretend to be women. You’d think that if anything the physical sexed body would be more difficult to deny rather than less – but that’s not the world we currently live in.

She had only ever identified as a non-Hispanic white woman as far as they knew. Allegedly, when some colleagues asked about her newfound identity she claimed that her paternal grandmother had been from Mexico. Okay, fine, we know that identity can be quite fluid and many of us did not want to embark on a project of gatekeeping that would not allow Kelly to celebrate her grandmother.

There it is! There’s the jargon. Gatekeeping bad; idenniny fluid. But still, there is a limit.

But when some of us looked into genealogical records, we found that Kelly had no grandparents who were born outside of the United States or had Hispanic names. This is much more in line with how Kelly identified at UC Davis. The maternal grandmother who she claimed was from Mexico, was born in LA to white parents and was residing in the US during all the census records of her upbringing. A servant was even employed and living at the home according to census records. This grandmother eventually married a wealthy, white lawyer from Iowa.

Ok ok ok but she wore a sombrero when she cut the roses, all right? Satisfied?

Considering all these inconsistencies, we are left to wonder, how much did Dr. Kean Sharp benefit from such claims? What we do know is that Kelly immediately found a tenure-track job after graduating, a rare commodity in academia today, especially in the field of U.S. history, which produces, by far, the most PhDs out of all fields of history. Part of the reason for her quick success was that she astutely applied for a job in African American history (there are many less PhDs in this field). She managed to immediately move into a tenure-track professorship in that field, working dually in the Africana Studies and History departments at Luther College. This job was made possible by a Mellon Faculty Diversity Fellowship from the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. This Mellon promises to provide tenure track positions to those “whose backgrounds and life experiences will enhance diversity on the ACM campuses”.

This reminds me of “Rachel” McKinnon, who got tenure so amazingly quickly when other PhDs languish as adjuncts for years.

We also must ask, how could this sort of position, meant to encourage diversity on campuses in this region, go to a wealthy white woman who had suddenly decided she was a specialist in African American history?

That’s a good question. We ask similar questions when we wonder why positions on all-women shortlists, and awards, and jobs, and titles intended for women are given to men who “identify as” women. We see those questions as exactly the same kind of question as “why give a position meant to encourage diversity to a rich white person?” and we can never quite understand why we’re called harsh names for asking them.

[I]n another article about the club’s events for Hispanic Heritage Month in 2019, Kelly spoke of the importance of such a celebration, “it is important for us because it’s an intentional time to slow down and claim our history as part of the American story.” The “us” and “our” is impossible to ignore in this interview. To colleagues who knew her at U.C. Davis, we are left wondering how Dr. Kean Sharp presented herself to the Luther campus and the students of Latines Unides. Did she fully claim an “us” that inserted herself into a Latinx space based on lies?

Right?? This is what we keep saying. That “us” and “our” coming from men talking over and instead of women – we know it so well and yes, it pisses us off. If it’s easy to understand with this branch of identity, why isn’t it easy to understand with the even more built-in and inescapable branch of identity that is sex? Why is it bad to try to appropriate Latinx or Black identity but stunning and brave to succeed in appropriating female identity?

Perhaps hiding behind a vague Mexican heritage helped her feel more secure as she entered her new academic field of African American history. Certainly by using such an identity, she might not have to come to terms with her systemic white privileges.

It certainly works for men who identify as women. They not only don’t have to come to terms with their systemic male privileges, they get to attack us and call us names and do their level best to get us thrown out of all our jobs and groups and circles of friends. Men who identify as women get to destroy the lives of women who fail to agree that those men are women.

Why? Why does it work one way for women and the opposite way for all other subordinated groups? WHY?

Inside Higher Ed reports that Sharp has now resigned from Furman.

Furman’s history department, where Sharp began working in July, referred requests for comment to the university. Tom Evelyn, a Furman spokesperson, said the university was investigating the allegations against Sharp early Tuesday. He later said that Sharp had resigned, effective immediately. Sharp did not return a request for comment.

Prior to the resignation, Evelyn said Furman was “disappointed” to learn of Sharp’s alleged actions, and that it expects “members of our community to be honest in the way they represent themselves to others.”

Unless they’re men who identify as women.

If god is so great why does it need you to murder people while shouting “god is great!”?

Three people have been killed in a knife attack at a church in the French city of Nice, police say.

President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “Islamist terrorist attack” at the Notre-Dame basilica after visiting the scene in the southern city.

One elderly victim who was praying was “virtually beheaded”. Another woman and a man also died. A suspect was shot and detained shortly afterwards.

Not a very kind god, is it. If it wants humans stabbing other humans to death because they worship the god under a different alphabet, it can’t be a benevolent god.

Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi spoke of “Islamo-fascism” and said the suspect had “repeated endlessly ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greatest)”.

Mr Estrosi compared the attack to the recent murder of teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded close to his school outside Paris earlier this month.

Police have not suggested a motive for the attack in Nice. However, it follows days of protests in some Muslim-majority countries triggered by President Macron’s defence of the publication of cartoons that depicted the Prophet Mohammed. There have been calls in some countries for a boycott of French goods.

Macron’s defense of free expression did not trigger the protests. Theocratic Islamists protested Macron’s defense of free expression. Macron is not a criminal or a villain or blameworthy for defending free expression and rejecting freelance decapitation of school teachers.

That UN Women post is getting a lot of heated “the hell it is” from women, I’m glad to say.

One example:

It is your role as feminists to support and safeguard and empower women. Instead you seek to force them into submission to new and alien definitions, and you fail to protect us from a movement that polices and even denies our language, our right to describe our bodies, to name and identify the source of our oppression and to name and describe the violence enacted to maintain a world order that will forever deny us this most fundamental liberty and tool: to name our oppressors and their actions.

Instead you open the door to individuals and organisations whose aims are often directly opposed to ours – feminists object to mutilations, even medicalised ones, they lobby for these – and you participate in the coercion, blatant blackmail of impoverished women: bow and obey and you may have some hygiene, some healthcare, some education while trans lobbying groups mete out terms and conditions, or die in a ditch.You have the power to do all of this. But that doesn’t make it right.

There are many more.

UN Women giving away women’s rights and self-definition and reality again:

One, no, people don’t have a blanket right to identify themselves the way they want to. That’s just not true. All of us barring one person lack the right to identify ourselves as the president of the US. We can’t identify ourselves inaccurately if we’re stopped for reckless driving and have to show our driver’s license. We can’t identify ourselves as little Kathy’s mommy and take her home from school if we’re not little Kathy’s mommy. It’s just not true, yet people keep saying it. We can fantasize however we like, but once we involve other people, it’s not that simple. It’s not even close to that simple.

And two – what the fuck? Like hell it’s our role as feminists to “always be there” – it’s our role as feminists to refuse to be the sex that’s expected to “always be there.” It’s often our role as friends, mothers, daughters, sisters, employees, colleagues, comrades to be there – but as feminists? No. And always be there for men who say they “identify as” women and that therefore we have to agree that they are women? No no no no NO.

And three, same again. No that’s not our role as feminists. It may or may not be our role as other things, but not as feminists. And mostly not even as other things. Being there is one thing, accepting people for who they are is another. It depends. It depends on who, in fact, they are. There are plenty of things that people can be that motivate me not to accept them for it, because the things are bad. I don’t accept Donald Trump for who he is – I passionately furiously with disgust and contempt and fury reject Donald Trump for who he is. I’m disappointed that Jeffrey Toobin hopped onto that list the other day. Ivanka Trump’s place on it is solid.

Just stop. Stop. UN Women is for women, not women plus men who “identify as” women. Stop making new rules that mean women can’t have anything at all to themselves. Just stop.

I’m wondering about the logistics.

Conversations over the dinner table that incite hatred must be prosecuted under Scotland’s hate crime law, the justice secretary has said.

Journalists and theatre directors should also face the courts if their work is deemed to deliberately stoke up prejudice, Humza Yousaf said.

When he says “the dinner table”…does he mean strictly dinner with the family? Or does he mean any dinner table? If you have friends over for pizza, does that count? If you go out for a hamburger with one or more other person(s) does that count? How about the lunch table? Breakfast? How about if no one ever sits down – how about if all the people eating the dinner or the meal does so standing at a kitchen counter – are they safe?

The BBC did an explainer on the bill last month.

A hate crime is a criminal offence that is based on prejudice against a specific group of people – for example attacking someone because of their religion or the colour of their skin.

Scotland already has various laws in place that offer additional protection to people from crimes based on their disability, race, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity.

But not sex. Did you notice? Not sex. How odd that is. Religion, yes, but sex, no. Women just have to take it, I guess.

It means that crimes can be treated more seriously by the courts if the offender has shown “malice and ill-will” towards the victim based on their membership – or association with – one of the protected groups.

Cool that beating up women is a freeby on this one. No extra points because of misogyny!

The bill adds hate crime based on a person’s age to the list of protected groups, with hatred based on someone’s sex potentially to be added in the future.

Potentially. In the future. Don’t hold your breath.

It aims to simplify and clarify the law by bringing together the various existing hate crime laws into a single piece of legislation.

And it creates a new crime of “stirring up hatred” against the protected groups – which is defined as “behaving in a threatening or abusive manner, or communicating threatening or abusive material to another person”.

Including at the dinner table…but perhaps not the breakfast table. Here’s your out: just stir up hatred against women at the breakfast table and you’re doubly protected; you should be golden.

I especially love the “750” reference. Sly.

Trump is hurrying to destroy everything he can before he’s dragged out screaming. Today it’s the Tongass National Forest.

Federal protections for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest will be lifted this week by the Trump administration, allowing “logging and other forms of development” to occur in the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest known as America’s Amazon, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

…

The newspaper, which noted that the federal protections were put in place in 2001 during the waning days of Bill Clinton’s presidency, said the rollback by President Donald Trump represents “one of the most sweeping public lands rollbacks” Trump has made during his tenure. The President previously removed acreage from two national monuments and worked to open more federal lands and waters to oil drilling and mining.

The forest — about the size of West Virginia — and region form the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest. The area is a vibrant habitat for bear, eagle and salmon, plus towering old-growth cedar, hemlock and spruce. It includes Alaska’s capital, Juneau, and 31 other communities.

If it ain’t broke, get busy breaking it.

Bonjour Charlie!

Trump is blithely putting people in danger to serve his purposes again. He did a rally at an airport in Omaha yesterday, and by the time he hopped back into Air Force One, the temperature had dropped below freezing.

But as long lines of MAGA-clad attendees queued up for buses to take them to distant parking lots, it quickly became clear something was wrong.

The buses, the huge crowd soon learned, couldn’t navigate the jammed airport roads. For hours, attendees — including many elderly Trump supporters — stood in the cold, as police scrambled to help those most at-risk get to warmth.

At least seven people were taken to hospitals, according to Omaha Scanner, which monitors official radio traffic. Police and fire authorities didn’t immediately return messages from The Washington Post early Wednesday and declined to provide reporters on the scene with precise numbers of how many needed treatment.

Why? It’s not a state secret, why refuse to answer questions?

After Trump’s speech, where he promised “we’re making that final turn” on covid-19 in a state where positivity rates exceed 20 percent, per the World-Herald, Trump flew away on Air Force One around 9 p.m. Attendees began lining up for buses to return to their cars.

It took until after midnight to get everyone out.

Soon, officers were radioing in about numerous elderly attendees struggling in the cold, according to Omaha Scanner. Police began shuttling some people to their cars to get them out of the elements.

…

“Supporters of the President were brought in, but buses weren’t able to get back to transport people out. It’s freezing and snowy in Omaha tonight,” tweeted Nebraska state Sen. Megan Hunt (D). “He truly does not care about you.”

He truly does not care about anyone.

The NY Times has another KABLOOEY about Trump’s tax returns and what they reveal.

He opened a new Trump Sewer in Chicago in September 2008, just as all the wheels were falling off. The new Sewer did not flourish.

…the skyscraper became another disappointment in a portfolio filled with them. Construction lagged. Condos proved hard to sell. Retail space sat vacant.

Yet for Mr. Trump and his company, the Chicago experience also turned out to be something else: the latest example of his ability to strong-arm major financial institutions and exploit the tax code to cushion the blow of his repeated business failures.

The president’s federal income tax records, obtained by The New York Times, show for the first time that, since 2010, his lenders have forgiven about $287 million in debt that he failed to repay. The vast majority was related to the Chicago project.

It’s fascinating, isn’t it? When poor people fall into debt they can’t repay, it can cripple their lives for years to come. When rich crooks do, they can rich crook their way into doing it again and again without a scratch.

When the project encountered problems, he tried to walk away from his huge debts. For most individuals or businesses, that would have been a recipe for ruin. But tax-return data, other records and interviews show that rather than warring with a notoriously litigious and headline-seeking client, lenders cut Mr. Trump slack — exactly what he seemed to have been counting on.

In other words he stole millions by being an evil bullying asshole.

Big banks and hedge funds gave him years of extra time to repay his debts. Even after Mr. Trump sued his largest lender, accusing it of preying on him, the bank agreed to lend him another $99 million — more than twice as much as was previously known — so that he could pay back what he still owed the bank on the defaulted Chicago loan, records show.

Ultimately, Mr. Trump’s lenders forgave much of what he owed.

Meanwhile Susan Smith who took on debt to attend a for-profit “university” – perhaps Trump “University” itself – is living in her car because the interest payments are more than she can earn.

He borrowed millions for the project, construction was slow, and then the economy started to go bad.

With the financial crisis enveloping the world, finding buyers for multimillion-dollar apartments suddenly became much harder. In the spring of 2008, Mr. Trump asked Deutsche Bank to delay the loan’s due date. The bank gave him an extra six months.

Six months later the economy was falling off a cliff. Trump and his junior crooks threw a party at the new Sewer to celebrate…something.

At that point, at least 159 units in the building were still unsold, and many more were under contract but hadn’t closed, according to New York court records. That meant hundreds of millions of dollars that Mr. Trump and his family had counted on to repay Deutsche Bank and Fortress hadn’t yet materialized. And the loans were due in barely six weeks.Mr. Trump sought another extension.

This time, Deutsche Bank said no.

Mr. Trump’s company still owed Deutsche Bank about $334 million in principal and interest, and Fortress $130 million, not including interest and fees.

Mr. Trump went on the offensive. In a letter to Deutsche Bank on Nov. 4, he accused it of helping ignite the financial crisis. This was important, because Mr. Trump went on to claim that the crisis constituted a “force majeure” — an act of God, like a natural disaster — that entitled him to extra time to repay the loans.

A few days later, Mr. Trump and his companies sued Deutsche Bank and Fortress, along with the other banks and hedge funds that had purchased pieces of the loans.

The suit accused Deutsche Bank of engaging in “predatory lending practices” against Mr. Trump. He sought $3 billion in damages.

This is Trump. He borrows your money and then he sues you for lending it.

Deutsche Bank sued back, calling him a deadbeat and demanding immediate repayment.

Inside Deutsche Bank, angry executives and lawyers vowed to never again do business with Mr. Trump, according to senior executives.

Why didn’t they just seize the building?

Going to court to take over the unfinished skyscraper promised to be a costly, yearslong process, especially given Mr. Trump’s reputation for using the legal system to drag out fights and grind down opponents. It seemed simpler to resolve the dispute.

Who knew it was that easy? Who knew that all you have to do to steal millions from banks is to be a determinedly evil litigious bully?

They settled. The terms were kept secret.

But Mr. Trump’s federal tax returns, as well as loan documents filed in Cook County, Ill., provide clues to what happened: Mr. Trump was let off the hook for about $270 million. It was the type of generous financial break that few American companies or individuals could ever expect to receive, especially without filing for bankruptcy protection.

But Trump gets to do it because he’s such a crook. The secret to success is to be showily, conspicuously, brazenly evil.

Before Mr. Trump defaulted, Fortress had expected to receive more than $300 million from his company: the $130 million in principal and roughly $185 million in anticipated interest and fees.

But Fortress and its partners — including Mr. Mnuchin’s Dune Capital, as well as Cerberus Capital Management, whose co-chief executive, Stephen A. Feinberg, would become a major Trump fund-raiser and go on to lead a White House advisory panel — quickly realized they wouldn’t ever collect that full amount.

Two of the people Trump cheated out of millions now help him do his Trump thing to the whole country. It’s mind-boggling.