Trump’s Mortgages Reek of Fraud Under His Own Definition

President and former slumlord Donald Trump appears to have spent years committing the same kind of mortgage fraud that he’s been accusing his political enemies of.

ProPublica has reported that in 1993, Trump signed mortgages for two lavish homes right next to his Mar-a-Lago estate—one for $525,000 and one for $1,200,000. Like any standard mortgage, the agreement (ushered by Merril Lynch) required Trump to reside in those homes within 60 days and actually live there for at least 365 days.  

Yet ProPublica’s investigation confirmed that Trump never lived in either of those residences for enough time, maintaining his actual personal address as Trump Tower in Manhattan. He bragged to Vanity Fair in 1994 about splitting time between Manhattan and Mar-a-Lago proper, but not either of the other two large properties. 

In reality, Trump wasn’t completely truthful about his plans to reside in the residences and instead rented them out to people.

This is absurdly ironic if true. Trump has baselessly accused New York Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook, Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell, and Senator Adam Schiff—all enemies of his in one way or another—of mortgage fraud. 

The White House profusely defended Trump. 

“President Trump’s two mortgages you are referencing are from the same lender. There was no defraudation. It is illogical to believe that the same lender would agree to defraud itself,” a spokesperson told ProPublica. “This is yet another desperate attempt by the Left wing media to disparage President Trump with false allegations,” they said, adding, “President Trump has never, or will ever, break the law.”

While Trump’s decision to obtain multiple mortgages for more than one primary residence goes unprosecuted, it certainly meets the paltry standards of fraud that his administration has set for anyone Trump wants to get revenge on. 

“Given Trump’s position on situations like this, he’s going to either need to fire himself or refer himself to the Department of Justice,” Suffolk University law professor and mortgage finance expert Kathleen Engel told ProPublica. “Trump has deemed that this type of misrepresentation is sufficient to preclude someone from serving the country.”

President Donald Trump’s attempt to pay tribute to the honorees at the Kennedy Center Sunday night was marred by the president’s verbal diarrhea.

While discussing the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, Trump made a strange verbal detour into gushing about a round of golf he’d played with Gary Player.

“They have talent. They have talent. The great Gary Player, he hits shots. He’s 90 years old. He still plays good. Shot a 70 with me the other day. He’s 90. We’re playing pretty far back too. He’s incredible. You think [Joe] Biden could do that? I don’t think so. Can’t, can’t lift the club,” Trump said.

Trump, who has a tendency to repeat his own jokes and stories, previously bragged about Player shooting a 70 in late October. This time, the president claimed they’d been playing with another person who kept getting stuck in sand traps.

“It was sad to watch. And, and Gary says, ‘You don’t understand. Just—’ And he dropped five balls, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping!” Trump said, employing one of his time-honored verbal gaffes.

So, what exactly was the point of Trump’s story? A truly inspirational message for us all.

“[Player] said, ‘Well, here’s the problem. I’ve got talent and you don’t.’ And that’s, and that’s what that’s true about you. You have talent,” Trump said, adding his own thoughts: “If you don’t have talent, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

Throughout Trump’s speech Sunday, the president repeatedly struggled to stay on topic, bragging about renovations he’d made to the supposedly crumbling Kennedy Center, lying about young women thanking him for lowering the crime rate in D.C., and weirdly ranking the Supreme Court, Senate, and NFL owners committee as having the “hottest boards.”

Republicans had zero respect for Donald Trump until they realized he was about to reenter power.

In a sit-down interview with 60 Minutes Sunday, outbound Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene explained that the conservative caucus speaks very differently about the president behind closed doors, telling host Lesley Stahl that the reality of the GOP’s opinion on Trump would “shock people.”

“I watched many of my colleagues go from making fun of him, making fun of how he talks, making fun of me constantly for supporting him, to when he won the primary in 2024 they all started to—excuse my language, Lesley—kissing his ass and decided to put on a MAGA hat for the first time,” Greene said.

“I think they’re terrified to step out of line and get a nasty Truth Social post on them,” she added.

Greene went on to chastise Trump for focusing his second-term agenda on crypto billionaires, aiding and abetting Israel’s war crimes, and assisting Big Pharma.

“He didn’t take away the Covid vaccines that we want to see taken away,” Greene told the news magazine show. “So those are the areas that are still getting everything they want while the people—we’re still out here saying, ‘We want to see action on areas for the American people, not for the major industries and the big donors.’”

Greene announced last month that her time in Congress would abruptly come to a close in January, preemptively ending her term. In a statement, Greene wrote that she had “too much self respect and dignity” to “have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms.”

After many loyal years spent sycophantically supporting the president, Greene publicly broke favor with him after he attempted to undermine the release of the Epstein files.

“I am withdrawing my support and Endorsement of ‘Congresswoman’ Marjorie Taylor Greene, of the Great State of Georgia,” Trump posted on Truth Social in November. “All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!”

Greene, who won her district in 2020 without the president’s endorsement, has differed from her once “favorite president” on a range of issues. She has openly split from Trump and the rest of her party on artificial intelligence and the government shutdown, was one of the few Republicans to describe Israel’s actions in Palestine as a “genocide,” and has sparred with the White House over its handling of the Russia-Ukraine war.

The White House this weekend gloated about the Kennedy Center Honors medals—historically designed by a local business in Washington, D.C.—being redesigned by a multinational luxury brand.

Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has sought to use the power of the presidency to mold American culture to his will, including at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he was elected chairman in February after purging the board of trustees.

On Sunday evening, Trump will host the center’s annual honors gala, becoming the first president to do so. He claims to have been “very involved” in selecting the honorees, who were recognized at a medallion ceremony on Saturday.

Since 1978, those medallions were crafted by local artisan James Baturin, who, along with his wife and children, have made more than 250 awards—large, multicolored ribbons with gold name plates—as a family business over the years, according to WUSA9.

That is, until this year.  

On Tuesday, the Kennedy Center unveiled new medallions, created by Tiffany & Co. Somewhat less distinctive than the previous design, the new one features a gold disc hanging from a navy-blue ribbon.

Prior to Saturday’s ceremony, the White House fired off a tweet slighting the mom-and-pop operation that was jilted for a luxury-goods giant. The post celebrated the “new, far more classy design” as a “MASSIVE upgrade from the tacky rainbow sash design of medallions past.”

When a reporter pointed out the storied history of the awards described so sneeringly by Trump’s White House, one social media user quipped: “Taking work from a small family business and outsourcing it to a large corporation? That adds up, yep.”

Donald Trump Jr. weighed in on the Russia-Ukraine war this weekend with this ominous message: No one should bet on his father, the president of the United States, to stand by Ukraine.

As Politico reported Sunday, the president’s eldest son made several comments at the Doha Forum, a gathering of politicians and international figures, that cast Ukraine in a negative light, and President Donald Trump’s position as a changeable, unpredictable thing.

In response to a question about whether his father might walk away from the embattled country, Trump Jr. said, “I think he may.”

The president’s son also shared thoughts about corruption in Ukraine, and criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, calling him “one of the great marketers of all times.” He said that Zelenskiy had become “a borderline deity, especially to the left, where he could do no wrong, he was beyond reproach.”

Trump Jr. remarked that his father’s mercurial nature was actually a positive trait, and one of the things that made him unique. “The fact that he’s not predictable … forces everyone to actually deal in an intellectually honest capacity,” he said, per Politico.

Trump Jr.’s comments in Qatar about his father’s shiftiness and lack of predictability come at a particularly fraught time. The U.S. president has been pressuring Russia and Ukraine to sign a peace deal, but negotiations have dragged on, with no clear end in sight. Many people have also criticized the plan that Trump recently put forth, saying it favors Russia.

Meanwhile, Moscow warmly welcomed President Trump’s newly issued “National Security Strategy” this weekend, saying that it coincides with its political view of the world.

And against a backdrop of ongoing peace talks, Russia is ramping up the aggression.

The country carried out a huge aerial attack on Ukraine this weekend, targeting the country’s infrastructure and energy facilities, and wounding at least eight people.