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Trump about fraud referrals, law firm extortion, USA reputation, autopen and "Mayday" [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-05-01

The saying used to be, if you can't say something nice about somebody, don't say anything at all. Donald Trump, obviously has never heard that. He made a couple of snide remarks at Terry, and to his credit, Terry didn't react.

But after laying out what DOGE had done and how cuts impacted the lives of people abroad, like letting them die, Terry asked about the amount of money saved. Where it went from 2 trillion, to 1 trillion, now 150 billion, and "going south." Terry asked about the requisite fraud Musk and DOGE must have uncovered. This is from the ABC News transcript of the interview. I just make TERRY MORAN, Moran, and PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP to Trump.

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Trump: You don't know what it's going to be because we've got things that are very --- at a very high level that are being looked at right now. We also found tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse, as you know. We found a lot of fraud. There was a lot of fraud. Fraudulent things were taking place, and we ended that, and those people are gonna be suffering -—

Moran: Just -—

Trump: --- because of it.

Moran: --- a legal note. Fraud is a crime. There have been no referrals to the Justice Department on any of this -—

Trump: Well, you don't know that, do you? How do you know that?

Moran: Have there been referrals -—

Trump: How do you know that -—

Moran: --- to the --- are there criminal referrals -—

Trump: Why --- how do you know that, that there were no referrals? I think there -—

Moran: There's --- there's -—

Trump: --- were referrals.

Moran: They generally --- alright. There's been no investigation from the Justice Department -—

Trump: How do you know that?

Moran: I'm asking you, sir.

Trump: No, you're not asking me. You made a statement. You're not asking me -—

Moran: Now, I'm asking you -—

Trump: That was a statement you made. There have been -—

Moran: Now I'm asking.

Trump: Have there been. Yes, there have.

Moran: So there have been referrals from the work of DOGE.

Trump: Of course there have been. Take a look at some of these things -—

Moran: Alright. Alright.

Trump: --- that took place. Millions of dollars were given to people for no reason whatsoever. Of course there have been.

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That's the best we've gotten out of any person yet. No spokesperson has ever said anything about referrals when asked about it. Pam Bondi hasn't said anything about it. She's too busy helping send US citizens to gulags abroad.

What we know is that no criminal referrals have been made. If there had, they would be shouting it from the rafters. After all, that would justify the whole operation, besides claimed waste and abuse.

In another section of the interview, Moran got to the story about Trump's extortion of the law firms and his executive orders against them.

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Moran: Okay, I want to talk a little bit about Presidential Power, the powers that you have in the presidency --- temporarily that the American people ha --- have given you, right? You've revoked a lot of people's security clearances. You revoked security details for people who are --- still threatened, you know, with death threats. You've gone after law firms because they employed people you don't like and they represented people you don't like -—

Trump: Well, they obviously agreed because they paid me a lot of money.

Moran: Well, the reason they agreed is because you were threatening to destroy their business with your executive order that said, "You can't represent clients before the federal government." That's ---

Trump: Well --- These are big -—

Moran: That's their bread and butter -—

Trump: These are big boys. These are big, these are the biggest, most powerful lawyers. These are not people that -—

Moran: You got a lotta leverage as president -—

Trump: --- are easily intimidated.

Moran: As president you've got all the cards.

Trump: And they paid hundreds of millions of dollars because they felt --- I guess they felt they did something wrong, you know -—

Moran: It was for survival, sir. You -—

Trump: No, it isn't. These -—

Moran: You were crushing their business -—

Trump: These --- these firms are very powerful firms, and there's 15 of them. And these are firms that probably look, you have to ask them. In fact, this is a separate story. You have to ask them, "Why did you pay Trump hundreds of millions of dollars in services, et cetera? Why did you do that?" I don't know.

Moran: You don't take that factored -—

Trump: We --- we --- we have a clause in the thing that "While you admit no wrongdoing." But you know, it's one of those things. And now I'm friendly with those firms. But it's --- you know, these are the most powerful firms in the world. And they just signed whatever I put in front of 'em. I've never seen anything like it. I'm --- I'm actually surprised myself in a certain way. But they obviously felt they had probably did something wrong. I guess that's why they signed.

Moran: I guess the question out of that is the concern that people have: Are --- are you using your powers as president to get personal revenge?

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Then Trump goes at length into his victimhood about being persecuted like nobody else ever has. Talks about winning the election and getting the seven swing states, which we're not really sure about with the Russians involved. Then he said he went after Biden because Biden went after him. Tit for tat. Then he says he did it because Biden was incompetent. What an excuse.

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Trump: Here's a man that used an autopen to sign important documents. Now, who really is --- do ---- do you think he knew what --- that they we're using an autopen. I mean, he used an autopen to sign very, very important documents. And so those are questions you really should be asking: "What do you think of the autopen? Who wielded the autopen?" Because whoever that person was, think of it. Whoever that person was who wielded the autopen, he was really the president of the United States.

Moran: You are the president, right?

Trump: I don't think Biden knew anything about it -—

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Then he lies about the reasoning behind going after people who oppose him.

Trump is like a broken record on the autopen. He's still trying to invalidate Biden's pardons and any documents, legislation, executive orders, anything that Biden signed is now invalidated by the use of an autopen, somehow. There was one time when Obama signed a document remotely with the autopen, and the Department of Justice said it was okay and valid.

But Trump's comment that the law firms signed the deals because they thought they were guilty of something is outrageous. He had their heads under a guillotine ready to go. They did it out of self-preservation, which they are going to regret

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Moran: I'm gonna ask --- if I may, do you think the reputation of the United States has gone down under your presidency?

Trump: I --- no, I think It's gone way up, and I think we're a respected country again. We were laughed at all over the world. We had --- a president that couldn't walk up a flight of stairs, couldn't walk down a flight of stairs, couldn't walk across a stage without falling. We had a president who was grossly incompetent. You knew it, and I knew it, and everybody knew it. But you guys didn't want to write it because you're fake news.

Moran: Alright. Thank you -—

Trump: And, by the way, ABC is one of the worst . I have to be honest with you …

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Honest with you. That's a laugh. ABC is the worst because during the presidential debate, their moderators fact checked Trump. He's never, ever going to forget that. And he hasn't. Trump already extorted $15 million out of them to settle a case. There's always going to be more, and there is. Trump sent Brendan Carr, Chairman of the FCC, to go after and investigate ABC and Disney, their parent company, over DEI. DEI is automatically civil rights discrimination. Some entities are fighting back on this, like Harvard.

DEI is not discrimination against white people. This line of attack must be taken away from Trump. It's been one of the methods to go after the law firms. Each one that capitulated will be re-examined for the length of Trump's term to make sure DEI never comes back. They gained nothing by knuckling under and will find that they have lost their reputation, and they are paying fines of up to $125 million in pro bono work. What's to keep Trump from coming back for more? Nothing. Trump said there is an agreement the law firms signed. I don't believe there is. One of the law firms fighting back would have been presented with it, and made it public.

Trump is so far off about the reputation of the USA that it's not funny. Trump has made us the laughing stock of the world, and that started with the people of the United States voting him back into power. The world asked collectively, "What? Again?" The world watched as Trump was allowed to strip away our rights and withdraw from the world stage we had dominated, into a timid little country with no plan of action besides threats against our allies and coddling our enemies.

Trump thinks he's had a successful first 100 days in office. He needs to be reminded every day that he's a failure.

Today is May 1st, and we are literally calling mayday for help against a tyrant.

Today, 50501 is calling for a "National Day of Solidarity - Stop the Billionaire Takeover."

Protests nationwide. Do your part, whatever fashion you can, to do on a Thursday, instead of a weekend.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/1/2319750/-Trump-about-fraud-referrals-law-firm-extortion-USA-reputation-autopen-and-mayday?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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