The Washington press corps is abuzz about the latest scandal from the White House: President Obama threw a huge, celebrity-filled party — and didn’t tell any of them about it.
Click above to watch a report on how the word got out — and also a note about a certain other president who hung out with Hollywood stars at the White House.
Video viaGood Morning America/ABC News..
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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Some House Democrats and House Republicans are coming together toward a common opponent: far-right “pro-Putin” hardliners in the House Republican conference, who appear to be led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
Congresswoman Greene has been threatening to oust the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Last month she filed a “motion to vacate the chair.” If she chooses to call it up she could force a vote on the House floor to try to remove Speaker Johnson.
House Democrats say they are willing to vote against ousting Johnson, as long as the Speaker puts on the floor desperately needed and long-awaited legislation to fund aid to Ukraine and Israel. Johnson has refused to put the Ukraine aid bill on the floor for months, but after Iran attacked Israel Johnson switched gears. Almost all Democrats and a seemingly large number of Republicans want to pass the Ukraine and Israel aid packages.
Forgoing the possibility of installing Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker, which is conceivable given Johnson’s now one-vote majority, Democrats say if Johnson does the right thing, they will throw him their support.
“I think he’ll be in good shape,” to get Democrats to support him, if he puts the Ukraine aid bill on the floor, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) told CNN Thursday. “I would say that there’s a lot of support for the underlying bills. I think those are vital.”
“If these bills were delivered favorably, and the aid was favorably voted upon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene went up there with a motion to remove him, for instance, I think there’s gonna be a lot of Democrats that move to kill that motion,” Congressman Krishnamoorthi said. “They don’t want to see him getting punished for doing the right thing.”
“I think it is a very bad policy of the House to allow one individual such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is an arsonist to this House of Representatives,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) told CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane, when asked about intervening to save Johnson. He added he doesn’t want her “to have so much influence.”
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, one of several Republicans who won their New York districts in 2022, districts that were previously held by Democrats, opposes Greene’s motion to vacate – although he praised the Georgia GOP congresswoman.
CNN’s Manu Raju reports Republicans “say it’s time to marginalize hardliners blocking [their] agenda.”
D’Esposito, speaking to Raju, called for “repercussions for those who completely alienate the will of the conference. The people gave us the majority because they wanted Republicans to govern.”
Rep. Mike Lawler, like D’Esposito is another New York Republican who won a previously Democratic seat in 2022. Lawler spoke out against the co-sponsor of Greene’s motion to vacate, Rep. Tim Massie (R-KY), along with two other House Republicans who are working to block the Ukraine aid bill via their powerful seats on the Rules Committee.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), a former Navy pilot, blasted Greene.
“Time is of the essence” for Ukraine, Rep. Sherrill told CNN Wednesday night. “The least we can do is support our Democratic allies, especially given what we know Putin to do. To watch a report and to think there are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene on the right that are pro-Putin? That are pro-Russia? It is really shocking.”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), as NCRM reported Thursday, had denounced Greene.
“I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to oust the Speaker over it,” he said, referring to the Ukraine aid bill Greene and her cohorts want to tank. “I mean that’s a strange position to take.”
The far-right hardliners are also causing chaos in the House.
“Things just got very heated on the House floor,” NBC News’ Julie Tsirkin reported earlier Thursday. “Group of hardliners were trying to pressure Johnson to only put Israel aid on the floor and hold Ukraine aid until the Senate passed HR2.”
HR2 is the House Republicans’ extremist anti-immigrant legislation that has n o chance of passage in the Senate nor would it be signed into law by President Biden.
“Johnson said he couldn’t do it, and [Rep. Derrick] Van Orden,” a far-right Republican from Wisconsin “called him ‘tubby’ and vowed to bring on the MTV [Motion to Vacate.]”
“No one in the group [Gaetz, Boebert, Burchett, Higgins, Donalds et al.] was threatening Johnson with an MTV,” Tsirkin added. “Van Orden seemed to escalate things dramatically…”
Despite Greene’s pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine positions, her falsehoods about “Ukrainian Nazis,” and Russians not slaughtering Ukrainian clergy, reporters continue to “swarm”:
Watch the videos above or at this link.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
Trump Media share price shows steep decline following its peak in late March
Trump plans to water DJT stock by issuing millions of new shares. It’s part of a new Trump scheme to make money for himself and his bankers from a failing company that rang up just $4.1 million in revenue last year and lost more than $58 million.
At its peak, the market valued the company at $8 billion, which, in market terms, is a delusional fantasy. It’s true value is zero, especially if Trump is incarcerated.
The stock watering plan also reminds us that savvy investors and investment bankers make money when stocks fall and rise. Profiting off a loser company is a lucrative but risky and sophisticated game, not one to try at home. Unless you want to be wiped out financially right down to losing your house, since the potential losses to you are unlimited.
Here is how it works: By Issuing millions more shares of DJT, the Trump company ticker symbol, the company will collect cash to keep it going since it isn’t earning a profit or taking in much from customers. The new shares dilute the stock the way a bar watering the gin makes it less potent.
Shorts borrow shares from investors and sell them, paying a fee to the investor. If the stock price falls, the shorts buy back the same number of shares at the lower price, return them to the person they were borrowed from, and keep the difference in price between the sale and re-purchase.
People who hold shares are called longs. They have a long, or ownership position.
Watering helps those who short stocks, called shorts, in two ways.
Shorts borrow shares of stock, paying the investor a fee for the loan of their shares. The shorts then sell the borrowed shares.
Note: If you own a stock brokerage account that allows you to buy on the margin, the investment house can loan out your shares without you knowing it. The brokerage assumes the risk of making you whole if things go awry.
The first way that shorts benefit from stock watering is that millions of new shares become available to sell short. Right now, there are hardly any shares left to borrow and sell short.
For example, if a short sold at $26, roughly the DJT price Monday, and bought it back for $1 later, the profit would be $25 per share less than the fee paid to borrow the shares. In this scenario, the short seller makes a bank vault of cash while the loyal Trump supporter who held onto their shares gets wiped out.
While that’s a nifty and lucrative result, what happens if the stock price rises? Should the stock price rise, say to $51 from $26, the person with the short position would lose $25 per borrowed share. Ouch.
Second, issuing more shares lowers the value of each existing share, putting more downward pressure on DJT.
DJT trading began three weeks ago. DJT shares peaked March 26 at $79.38 and started falling. On April 15, the day Trump’s first criminal trial began in Manhattan, DJT shares traded at about $26. That means the stock has already lost more than two-thirds — down 71%, closing today at $22.84 — from its peak value. Ouch for real.
Trump owns 58 percent of the pre-dilution shares. But he can’t sell his shares for five months under a so-called “lock up” intended to reassure investors that the company isn’t a pump-and-dump scam to run up the share price so the insiders can cash out, leaving the buyers with losses when the stock collapses.
But Donald can still cash in and walk away with a fortune, perhaps several billion dollars, since at its peak, the company was valued at about $8 billion for reasons that have nothing to do with market fundamentals like profits and expectations of future profits.
How would that work?
Donald can pledge his DJT shares to an investment bank. The bank then loans Donald cash secured by those shares.
CEOs have done this for decades, pocketing cash without selling their shares — or having to tell investors! In those deals, the CEO or founder could borrow as much as 90 percent of the share value. If the stock rose, the investment house got the first 35 percent or so of the increase. If the stock fell, as we see with DJT shares, the investment house also makes money because it shorts the stock.
After the price collapses, the investment bank closes its short position by buying back cheap shares, and Trump’s loan is paid off.
The bankers keep the fat fees charged for arranging the deal plus any surplus on the short.
In this case, the investment bank might loan Trump only half of the value of his shares. In that scenario, it would double its money because when the bank closes its short position, its gross profit would be twice as much money as it loaned Trump. And then there are the fees the bank collects for arranging the deal.
It’s a win-win for Trump and the bank — and nothing but losses for people who went long, buying and holding DJT shares as they fell from almost $80 to zero.
At the upcoming April 22 hearing before Justice Arthur Engoron on Trump’s putative bond in the persistent fraud case, New York Attorney General Letitia James should ask if Trump hypothecated his DJT shares and collected cash through a loan against them.
If he did — and I think that is highly likely — this could seriously complicate collecting the nearly half a billion dollars Donald owes in disgorgement and interest. Trump can delay payment while he appeals, but he has no chance of reversing the finding of fraud, only of persuading a court to shave back the size of the award. That, too, seems unlikely for anything but a modest amount of what he owes.
Whether it’s cheating at golf, cheating novice roulette players at the Trump Castle casino, cheating illegal immigrants out of their wages in building Trump Tower, cheating on his wives, cheating insurance companies, cheating on damages from 9/11 — he suffered none but collected big time — cheating on his income taxes, cheating on his property taxes, or trying to cheat by stealing an election and overthrowing the government, remember that Trump is always and everywhere looking to make money for himself with no regard for who gets hurt.
