Memo Shows Preet Bharara Was Concerned After Phone Call From White House

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12. YEP.

It sure dovetails with everything else we know.

Okay, forgive me for shouting, but ...

THIS IS THE WAY TRUMP IS USED TO DOING BUSINESS IN THE FREEWHEELING, HOT-DOGGING, SLICK-TALKING, LOG-ROLLING, PERCEPTION-IS-EVERYTHING, WHEELER-DEALER NEW YORK REAL ESTATE ARENA.

The schmoozing, the posturing, the bullying, the fast-talking, the bullshitting, the personal buttonholing, "cultivating a relationship" - as in pick up the phone to ONE person and schmooze 'em up, sweet-talk them, maybe take 'em to a nice dinner or better yet, invite them over for a nice home-cooked meal, show 'em around, make nice. And if it didn't work, either threaten them, try to scare them, insinuate things that don't add up but you know you can intimidate people into caving to you, get in their faces and tell them "so sue me!" (knowing they don't have the money to fight a long legal battle, much less even hire a decent attorney on par with his bigshot power guys to be able to fight on an equal footing), or otherwise intimidate them. He had lots of tricks and perception manipulations. And he had lots of 'em because he knew they worked. He knew he could bulldoze people. Simply by virtue of the power of his personality.

DAMMIT! Guys - my dad was absolutely SMALLTIME compared to trump, but he did the same shit!!! SAME SHIT!!! He didn't have anywhere near the financial "success" trump can claim, nor was he some loudmouth swaggering tycoon (although he did like surrounding himself with leggy young models because of "business&quot . He did it to EVERYBODY, whether they were in business or not. He did it to family members. He did it to opponents. Say ANYTHING to get his way. ANYTHING. He tried to scare me into compliance when I went away to college, insinuating that he'd talked to the campus police and that my friends were about to be arrested for pot (which was then illegal) and if I was hanging out with them I'd be arrested too). At the time, that scared me to death! Until I got a little older and realized - he'd done nothing of the kind. Hell, he wasn't talking with the campus cops, he wasn't collecting intel about pot smoking on campus, nothing. He just tried to blow smoke up my ass to get me to do what he wanted. He was just saying whatever he thought would work to get me to come home on the weekends.

And that was just one example. He could insinuate with the best of 'em. Mind fucking. He was a virtuoso at it. Just like trump is. And just as unaccustomed to answering questions about it, or having anybody try to follow up on it or drill down into it to get to the truth. A few times as I got older, I actually started doing that, and found myself cutting through a whole untamed jungle full of bullshit.

Here's another one. "Well I worked in radio, so I... blah-blah-blah." And I heard that for years. But the problem (for him) was - that I MYSELF actually DID work in radio. I knew that turf. Better than he did. And at one point, I finally stopped him and asked - "Dad, what did you DO in radio? What job did you have? Were you a general manager? Account executive? National sales manager? Program director? Deejay? What, exactly, did you do, in radio?" And he fumfered around with two or three different rambling bullshit reassertions (not unlike donald trump does) of "I Worked In Radio!" Me, again: "but WHAT did you do, exactly? What did you do, 'working in radio'? What was your JOB?" (Because I HAD worked in radio. For a quarter century at least. So you couldn't bullshit me about stuff like this.) He finally caved. "Well, I Worked Radio." Me: "What do you mean by that, dad?" Noticing, in the meantime, that he said he "worked radio" this time. NOT "worked IN radio." THERE'S A DIFFERENCE!!!

The punchline to this story? When I pressed my dad on that, he finally copped to it: "I bought commercial time." Meaning sales. He bought a package of ads. Radio commercials for his business. He never worked at any station - even in the sales department. He was a businessman, wanting to advertise his business on the air - so he bought commercials on local radio. But since he was the boss - owned that business himself with no shareholders or stockholders to have to answer to - nobody ever questioned him, tried to press him on just what, exactly, he meant by the sloganeering he used all the time that led you to think one thing when the reality was profoundly different, or even slightly different. Nobody ever asked a follow-up question. Because you didn't do that to the boss. Who'd fire you as easily as he'd pick up a cup of coffee from his desk and take a sip. He liked people who were compliant (and made sure to marry one, as well). People who didn't ask a lot of questions. People who didn't try to dig deeper and cut through his bullshit. People who didn't challenge him on points. People who didn't say anything, wouldn't say anything because they were too intimidated, and certainly didn't voice complaints.

Well, I didn't work for him so I did start asking questions here and there. He was very uncomfortable and didn't like being challenged like that. He was used to being king and lord and master - even just of his own little fiefdom. He didn't like having to explain himself to anybody.

trump is the same way. Just a WHOLE LOT bigger and with WAY WAY WAY more money involved (either actual OR perceived).

When trump told some reporter in one of the recent gaggles that "I'll be talking about it in a short period of time, and you're going to be disappointed." I KNEW IT. He didn't have any tapes. There were no tapes. He was just bullshitting, aiming to intimidate or frighten an opponent, simply operating on the assumption that this was merely the act of rolling another sucker. You can do that over drinks. You can do that over dinner (like he did with Romney in the fancy restaurant over frog legs that night). You can do that in your office behind closed doors - either in their face or on the phone. But if you're doing that with reporters charged with covering you for national magazines and newspapers and networks, and there are VERY clear repercussions and A LOT of people asking questions and challenging and asking follow-up questions and trying to dig down into your oozing swamp of bullshit, you're not gonna get the result you want.

The Donald does not like having to answer questions. Or having to explain himself. In any detail. Especially not when he can roll half the population of America with a mere 140 characters.