Jon Stewart, the new occasional host of The Daily Show, recently skewered MAGA’s argument the 45th president of the US should get a pass on his mega-million fraud crimes because they were somehow “victimless.”
As you've probably heard, Donald J. Trump was ordered by a judge to pony up $454 million for artificially inflating the value of his real estate assets over many years to score sweeter rates from lenders, although he was given a 10-day extension on it by an appeals court earlier this week, and the crippling ding reduced to $175 million (for now) because the rules, as always, don't apply to him.
It's not as if Dear Leader grabbed a bank manager by the pussy! Or sent his legion of droogs to poop on desks and beat up tellers at the head branch! Although Fox News would surely frame this as legitimate financial discourse if he had.
Stewart played a clip from a CNN interview with Shark Tank personality and Canadian business tycoon Kevin O'Leary, who said the quiet part out loud claiming his old pal shouldn't have to pay a price for massive fraud because wealthy people inflate the value of their assets all the time and nobody ever gets charged for it, so how is this even fair?
“That didn’t go over very well with the investment community because we’re all asking each other, ‘who is next?’” said O’Leary — sounding very much like someone who expects could be next — to host Laura Coates. “Everything you've just listed off is done by every real estate developer everywhere on earth in every city. This is has never ever been prosecuted.”
O'Leary, who has an estimated worth of $400 million, insists over-evaluating assets is no biggie, and so Stewart responded with a montage of him losing his shit on various Shark Tank contestants for, you guessed it, over-evaluating their assets.
Stewart went on to point out the blatant hypocrisy, as he does:
The fucking entitled arrogance. I don’t know if you know this, but most people just can’t commit fraud and expect to face no repercussions, even if everyone’s doing it. Try getting a car loan by saying you have 10 times as much money as you do. I’ll guarantee you there aren’t just financial consequences for those lies, but criminal ones. But don’t tell that to the investment community, because in their minds, in pursuit of profit, there is no rule that cannot be bent, there is no principle that cannot be undercut, as long as you and your fucking friends are making money.
First they came for the investment community and I did not speak out because I'm a renter living paycheck to paycheck tired of bending over and spreading 'em for the investment community.
O'Leary and Trump are cut from the same cloth. While the 69-year-old doesn't show obvious signs of dementia, openly perv on his daughter and isn’t facing 91 felony indictments, both became household names for being rich assholes who play rich assholes on TV shows created by Mark Burnett meant to portray rich assholery as an aspirational goal. He even has his own dumb catchphrase, “You're dead to me,” as the de facto “You're fired” to send hopeful capitalists packing. Although at least he doesn’t try to pretend he isn’t bald.
A man who weirdly insists people call Mr. Wonderful once went the full Monty Burns on his old CBC show The Lang and O'Leary Exchange, over a report finding 85 of the world’s wealthiest people control an amount equal to that held by the poorest 3.5 billion, or roughly half the planet:
It's fantastic and this is a great thing because it inspires everybody, gets them motivation to look up to the one percent and say, ‘I want to become one of those people, I’m going to fight hard to get up to the top'. This is fantastic news and of course I applaud it. What can be wrong with this?
Narrator: Everything is wrong with this.
Like TFG, he also flirted with parlaying his reality TV fame into a new gig as leader of the country.
O'Leary was a top contender to replace former prime minister Stephen Harper as head of the Conservative party after they got clobbered by Justin Trudeau in 2015, but the rules of Canadian politics are a bit different than those of Canadian Idol, and he noped out early in the race too lazy to learn French and realizing Quebec voters were going to give him a hard non. Possibly a va chier for good measure. Not to mention living at 24 Sussex Drive wouldn't provide nearly the same grifting opportunities as 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Shrewd investor that he is, O’Leary is one of many uber-rich Trump guys who don't want to put their money where their mouth is when it coming to helping Don Poorleone out with his various and sundry money woes.
Who knows, maybe there's a reason for him to imagine Johnny Law may want a word sometime soon. Which could explain why a Canadian living the US recently announced on LinkedIn he’s become a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, a country without extradition treaties with either Canada or the US, not to mention being one of the few places in the world to offer the opportunity to swim with sharks in a tank.
Five bucks says he’s not learning Arabic though. There are serfs for that sort of thing.
The movie post is up. Tonight we are watching Charlie Chaplin's masterpiece 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐃𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫.
The movie is over if you'd like to join us there for OT.