The Future President, Donald Trump

Do you know that Trump cheats small business owners, or are you just sauying that?

At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.

Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages.

In addition to the lawsuits, the review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens — filed by contractors and employees against Trump, his companies or his properties claiming they were owed money for their work — since the 1980s. The liens range from a $75,000 claim by a Plainview, N.Y., air conditioning and heating company to a $1 million claim from the president of a New York City real estate banking firm. On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing.

The actions in total paint a portrait of Trump’s sprawling organization frequently failing to pay small businesses and individuals, then sometimes tying them up in court and other negotiations for years. In some cases, the Trump teams financially overpower and outlast much smaller opponents, draining their resources. Some just give up the fight, or settle for less; some have ended up in bankruptcy or out of business altogether.

On Friday, Donald Trump spoke at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, and afterward he talked briefly with the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody. Brody began by asking Trump if he agreed with former Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.), a Trump backer who said last week that if Hillary Clinton wins in November, she will allow in unspecified outsiders and "this is the last election when we even have a chance to vote for somebody who will stand up for godly moral principles."

Trump said yes, "I think it’s going to be the last election that the Republicans can win." He continued:

If we don't win this election, you'll never see another Republican and you'll have a whole different church structure. You're going to have a whole different Supreme Court structure. That has to do a lot with what we're doing because the Supreme Court, as you know with Justice Scalia gone, I think you could probably have four to five judges picked by the next president. Probably a record number, David, probably a record number of judges. If they pick the super-liberals, probably to a certain extent, people that would make Bernie Sanders happy, you will never have a Supreme Court, we're going to end up with another Venezuela, large scale version. [Trump to CBN News]

I haven't had a conversation with a single solitary Hillary supporter that is willing or able to discuss the reasons why she isn't crushing Trump. Her flaws, mind you, not his and not those of his base.

For Clinton to fixate on Trump’s endless flaws suggests that her own platform has little substance.

As a Hillary supporter I have a question for ya. It's clear that Hillary has a problem with telling the truth as evidenced by the fact that she couldn't be honest with the public Friday that she had pneumonia, which I'm sure you will agree that the public has a right to know in as much as we are considering her for the office of president, if in fact it's really pneumonia and not something more serious because if she's lying about one thing how can we tell if she's telling the truth at any given point.

So my question is how can you justify supporting someone who lies to the public on something small knowing that the possibility of her lying to you on the big issues is distinct. And if you justify her lies by supporting her what does it say about you?

All of our presidents, throughout my lifetime, have been shameless liars when necessary.

In 1944, Harry Truman was asked by his friend and Senate colleague Owen Brewster what Franklin Roosevelt was really like. Truman hadn’t gotten to know his running mate very well, but the Democratic vice-presidential nominee had spent enough time around FDR to provide a succinct answer.

“He lies,” Truman replied.

Presidential candidates, even those with reputations for evasiveness, reacted to the growing focus on honesty the way you might expect: they accused their opponents of lying, while promising not to lie themselves. Richard Nixon had been elected president in 1968 after positioning himself as the peace candidate. As the phrase credibility gap gained currency in the context of Johnson’s lies about the Vietnam War, the incoming White House communications director, Herbert Klein, vowed, “Truth will become the hallmark of the Nixon administration.” But by the time Nixon left the White House,a new catchphrase had entered the lexicon: What did the president know, and when did he know it?

Such campaign exaggerations aside, Carter’s commitment to truth telling did not wear well. “Humankind cannot bear very much reality,” wrote T. S. Eliot, and after four years of Carter, the American electorate was no exception. Carter’s revelatory form of communication (admitting to Playboy that he “looked on a lot of women with lust,” for example, or bemoaning a national “crisis of confidence”) was a poor substitute in voters’ minds for executive-branch competence, or for leadership that could make Americans feel good about themselves. As Western Illinois University history professor George Hopkins sees it, all presidents lie for the simple reason that if they didn’t, we wouldn’t elect them. “So the problem is not them, it’s us,” Hopkins told me recently. “We should look in the mirror.”

You have no way of knowing or establishing the truth (or lack of it) in what you wrote. Merely words.

You don't know Trump's thoughts and motives (or those of anyone else) no matter what you watch on TV.