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Donald Trumps name is linked to steaks, hotels, vodka, and an isolationist political platform. Some of these ventures have succeeded, many have failed, and the last one has put him in the White House. Less known, however, is the time he tried to clone Kickstarter. The site was called FundAnything, and despite its supposedly ambitious beginnings, its now literally a facade.

FundAnything was founded by Bill Zanker, also a founder of the Learning Annex online education company and co-author of Trumps 2007 book Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life. Trump didnt put his name on the site, but he was supposed to be deeply involved. In addition to investing in FundAnything, he promised to promote selected campaigns on his Twitter feed and personally donate money, including a $1 million prize to the first person who beat Kickstarters record-setting $10 million Pebble campaign.

And from the beginning, the site had Trumps populist edge. Zanker boasted that the reign of Kickstarters Brooklyn hipsters is over, referring to Kickstarters New York headquarters. Crowdfunding got traction with creatives and tech, but you go anywhere but the coasts and they dont get it yet, he told AllThingsD. (Apparently, creative and technical people dont live in flyover country.) Trump himself was more dramatic. Peoples lives have been destroyed by this economy and they feel hopeless, he said. FundAnything is a real solution.

FundAnything more or less cloned Indiegogos flexible funding program: people could set a goal and pay a 5 percent fee if they met it, or a 9 percent fee if they didnt. Its most distinctive feature was that instead of focusing on either donation campaigns or creative projects, FundAnything true to its name would fund almost anything. Trump officially launched it by giving suitcases of money to a family funding medical bills, a woman with a small business, and an aspiring singer. (He then filled an aquarium with cash and had visitors grab bills from it.)

FundAnythings site is almost entirely gone today, and its difficult to judge its scale. But it appears to have had a small number of high-profile campaigns: Magician Penn Jillette and comedian Adam Carolla, the most highly publicized users, raised over a million dollars apiece for their respective films Directors Cut and Road Hard. While FundAnything promised to make crowdfunding appealing to the masses, however, Jillette and Carolla already had ties with Trump, since theyd been competitors on Trumps Celebrity Apprentice. Carollas campaign in particular was equally a publicity campaign for FundAnything, which Carolla said offered him a special, lower pricing rate.

Trump all but promoted the site as his personal charity

What might draw a small-time user to FundAnything? Basically, the prospect of getting money and publicity from Trump, who Zanker described as a genius businessman. One press release all but described it as a Trump charity foundation, and Trump promised to tweet about campaigns every week to his 2.2 million (at that point) followers. But his support was, at best, lackadaisical. A few months after launch, Forbes reported that hed only endorsed five campaigns since launch (FundAnything added three more after being contacted) and tweeted about FundAnything a handful of times, mostly with generic promotions for the site.

Trump finally cut ties with the site in late 2014, saying it took too much of my time and too much time to raise the money. Hed posted 27 tweets over the course of eight months, only six of which mentioned specific campaigns besides Jillettes and Carollas. At the time of Forbes article hed put around $92,000 toward campaigns in increments between $2,000 and $40,000 a lot of money for individual recipients, but very little for an entire platform.

FundAnything stuck around for a while after Trumps departure, although its purpose wasnt clear. PC Magazine reviewed it in 2016, praising the platforms flexibility but calling it bare-bones and dated. (In a particularly weird detail, it noted that one of the funding categories was simply called Oklahoma.) But as of today, its a Potemkin website. What appear to be menu buttons and campaign thumbnails are actually part of a large single image, hyperlinked to itself.

Economic anxiety, Kickstarter edition

I emailed and tweeted at several people and organizations who used FundAnything, including Carolla. Only one wrote back: Free the Nipple, which raised $45,000 of its $250,000 goal on the site. At the time, FundAnything was affiliated with Donald Trump. Thus, Free the Nipple declines to comment! Sorry, a representative told me. At publication, Zanker also had not responded to an email asking about his future plans for the site.

Gawker referred to FundAnything as a new crowdfunding scam back in 2013. But unlike some of Trumps other ventures, FundAnything doesnt seem necessarily underhanded or fraudulent, although users might have been more successful on another platform.

It is, however, a striking microcosm of Trumps path to the White House. FundAnything was supposed to take crowdfunding beyond coastal elites (or Brooklyn hipsters) who had, in Trump and Zankers estimation, failed ordinary Americans. It played on real economic fears and Trumps reputation as a brilliant dealmaker, although it wasnt clear how his skills applied to crowdfunding. It appears to have ended up most greatly enriching Trumps associates, albeit perhaps unintentionally. And like his political campaign, Trump launched it with a lot of big promises only to lose interest once the real work started.

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Donald Trump's terrible crowdfunding site was a microcosm of his political career - The Verge

The accounts from Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to his superiors, intercepted by U.S. spy agencies, contradict public assertions by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The Post's Greg Miller explains. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Attorney General Jeff Sessions's bad week just got worse. And while his new problems would appear to threaten his job,they also put President Trump in a box when it comes to his apparent desire to be rid of Sessions.

The Washington Post is reporting that Russia's ambassador has said he and Sessions discussedthe 2016 campaign during two meetings last year. That is contrary to multiple public comments made by Sessions in March, when he recused himself from oversight of the Russia investigation.

Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller report that Ambassador Sergey Kislyak's accounts of those meetings were intercepted by U.S. intelligence and that in them he suggested that the two men spoke substantively about campaign issues. Yet Sessions said March 1 that he never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign, and the following day, while announcing his recusal, he said it again: I never had meetings with Russian operativesor Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign.

This is now the second time that Sessions's accounts of his meetings with Russians have been seriously called into question. During his confirmation hearings this year, he denied having met with any Russians during the campaign. When the Kislyak meetings came to light, he clarified that he thought the exchange was in the context of the campaign only. He then quickly recused himself.

That flub was highlighted this week by none other than Trump. In a New York Times interview, Trump openly suggested that he wouldn't have nominated Sessions in the first place had he known he would recuse himself. Then Trump turned to Sessions's bad answers at his confirmation hearings:

TRUMP: So Jeff Sessions, Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers.

MAGGIE HABERMAN: You mean at the hearing?

TRUMP: Yeah, he gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they werent.

If Trump does want to get rid of Sessions, it would seem that more of Sessions's bad answers about his meetings with Kislyak are on the table to justify it. The problem for Trump is that using that justification would also lend credence to the idea that there was something untoward about those meetings. Trump has repeatedly suggested that the entire Russia investigation is a hoax and a witch hunt, so the idea that he's suddenly that concerned about Sessions's Russia contacts would be difficult to reconcile.

It would also be difficult to square with other top Trump allies and family members who have failed to acknowledge or be transparent about their meetings with Russians. How could Trump take issue with Sessions's failures to correctly characterize his meetings with Russians but not with Donald Trump Jr., whose meeting seeking opposition research about Hillary Clinton allegedly from the Russian government came to light this month? And then what about Jared Kushner's meetings, which include that one, a meeting with Kislyak and a meeting with the head of a Russian state-owned bank. None of them were disclosed on his security clearance formwhen he joined the White House. Trump would need to explain why Sessions's failures were bad and his son's and son-in-law's weren't.

But Trump nonetheless seemed to get the ball rolling on that front in his New York Times interview. And given that more of Sessions's comments have come into question now, we'll see whether Trump keeps using that as justification for continuing to undermine one of his earliest supporters and top Cabinet officials.

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Jeff Sessions just got in more trouble and now he's put Trump in a box, too - Washington Post

BBC News

How OJ Simpson paved the way for Donald Trump BBC News It seems entirely fitting that OJ Simpson should reappear at this surreal juncture in American life because many of the trends that culminated in the election of Donald J Trump can be traced back to his arrest and trial. Consider first of all the ... and more »

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How OJ Simpson paved the way for Donald Trump - BBC News

Since taking office, President Trump has routinely touted stock market gains and positive jobs reports as evidence that he is succeeding.

Economists say that while he can take some credit for the stock market, it's far too soon for his policies to have affected the job market.

That's because the stock market tends to react to expectations as much as reality, so it's reasonable to assume that traders responded to some of Trump's campaign promises, such as cutting taxes. But employers make hiring decisions based on fundamental factors like the health of the economy, which a president can only influence indirectly.

In the short term, presidents do have a major impact on the rise and fall of the stock market, said Bob Bruner, current economics professor and former dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. Presidents can declare intentions to adjust taxes, impose antitrust enforcement on industriessuch as Jack Kennedy diddeclare war, or undertake military actions without the sanctions of Congress. All of those things dramatically affect the expectations of the capital markets.

The growth in the stock market during Trumps first 100 days was the most under any president during that period since 1989the first year of George H. W. Bush's presidency. This boomwhich has been coined the Trump Bumpwas likely driven by Trumps promises to slash taxes and pass an infrastructure bill.

No one ever knows why the stock market does what it does, says Alan Binder , an economics professor at Princeton University. But its not an unreasonable supposition that the election of Donald Trump had something to do with it. Maybe a lot to do with it.

However, despite the success of the stock market under Trump, its gains are somewhat contingent on the president actually getting that agenda signed into law, something he has struggled with. "Markets react to sentiment but they are sustained by facts and commitments," added Bruner.

Trump has yet to succeed on getting any major part of his agenda passed. The Obamacare repeal recently died in the Senate, and little to no progress has been made on passing an infrastructure bill or tax reformtwo other signature parts of Trump's agenda. If nothing continues to get done, the gains in the stock market ignited by Trump could disappear.

Binder says that in terms of economic policy Trump has "basically done nothing," besides cutting back regulations in a "minor" way. However, Binder also noted that Trump has "not done anything bad macro-economically either."

The president's ability to influence economic growth is sometimes overstated, economists agree.

Presidents can affect the economy through the decisions they make, but it often takes years to gauge the impact. For instance, most economists now say President Obama's stimulus package helped pull the U.S. out of the recession, even though a majority of Americans at the time believed it didn't work. Likewise, President George W. Bush's decision to launch the Iraq War could have contributed to Great Recession, economists note . But, even so, the president, Bruner says, is just one of the "many cooks in the kitchen" that influence the economy.

So, while Trump may deserve some credit for the boost in the stock market, his impact on job creation and overall growth remains to be seen. Yet the president, on Twitter, has repeatedly taken credit for the positive jobs reports.

"It's premature," said Stephen Moore , a visiting fellow at the Project for Economic Growth at The Heritage Foundation, of Trump's tweets on jobs growth. "It takes a while for policies to translate into jobs. Stock markets react instantaneously to things. For jobs to come backthat takes longer."

Job growth has increased steadily under Trump . Through the president's first five full months in office, employers added 863,000 jobs and the unemployment rate decreased from 4.8 percent to 4.4 percentan indication the economy is doing well. But the job growth under Trump is also similar to the last five months of Obama's presidency, when 908,000 jobs were added, showing that the increase is likely just a continuation.

The jobs results are the outcomes of many people," said Bruner. "Trump is merely basking in the afterglow of solid economic news. The roots of which extend well back in time."

Also, by taking credit for a robust economy so early in his presidency, Trump may be digging himself into a hole if there's an economic downturn later on in his four year term.

"If you want to own the economy, you own it," added Moore. "And that can be hazardous."

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Donald Trump Keeps Taking Credit for the Economy. How Much Should He Get? - Fortune

Our Louis XIV. Photo-Illustration: Daily Intelligencer; Photos: Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV, Louvre Museum; Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images (Trump)

In his bizarre New York Times interview, Donald Trump expresses his characteristic assortment of fever-dream assertions. The president believes Hillary Clinton was totally opposed to any sanctions for Russia, that a properly amortized health-insurance plan would cost $12 a year, that Napoleons one problem is he didnt go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and that Trump has somehow either carried out or reversed sweeping land reforms (Ive given the farmers back their farms. Ive given the builders back their land to build houses and to build other things). Yet a consistent idea manages to poke through the delirious rambling. Trump repeatedly affirmed his conviction that the entire federal government ought to be operated for his personal benefit.

Trump expressed this idea by returning several times to the phrase conflict of interest. Trump himself is of course the most personally conflicted president in modern American history. He has maintained a vast, undisclosed business empire and openly used his powers in office to enrich himself. But he does not mention this conflict of interest. Instead he applies the phrase to any law-enforcement official who might potentially get in his way.

The headline of the story was Trumps anger that Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from an investigation into the Trump campaigns connections to Russia. The cause of the recusal flows self-evidently from basic legal principles. Sessions played a key role in the Trump campaign, so obviously he cant conduct an investigation into it. In Trumps mind, though, it is obvious that managing the investigation into the Trump campaign is the very thing his handpicked Attorney General ought to do:

Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself. I then have which, frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, Thanks, Jeff, but I cant, you know, Im not going to take you.

It is not as if the job of overseeing the Russia investigation is not being done. What Trump objects to is the fact that he was deprived of the chance to choose the official who is overseeing it.

Trump goes on to explain or, to put it more accurately, gesture at his belief that everybody else in government is fatally conflicted. Robert Mueller is conflicted because he interviewed to be the head of the FBI to replace James Comey. The acting FBI director is conflicted because his wife ran for state Senate as a Democrat. Muellers staff is conflicted. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is conflicted because hes from Baltimore There are very few Republicans in Baltimore, if any. (Rosenstein is not from Baltimore, and was appointed as a U.S. Attorney by George W. Bush.) In contrast to Trumps notion that he is surrounded by officials fatally conflicted by loyalties to causes other than Donald Trump is his belief that he possesses the legitimate authority to control law enforcement as he pleases. He paints the role of the FBI director as his personal subordinate. The FBI person really reports directly to the president of the United States, which is interesting. You know, which is interesting, he says.

It is true that the FBI director reports to the president. That is one half of a delicate but vital constitutional arrangement designed to ensure that neither the FBI director nor the president can amass completely untrammeled power over law enforcement in a way that would invite political abuse. That is why the FBI director has a ten-year term, rather than serving as a political appointee like other Executive branch officials. And it is why the bureau has the foundational creed that elected officials cannot interfere with any investigation. Instead, Trump reaffirms his view that he has the right to stop any law-enforcement investigation at will: I could have ended that whole thing just by saying they say it cant be obstruction because you can say: Its ended. Its over. Period, he states.

Six months into his presidency, foundational republican concepts remain as foreign as ever to Trump. He believes the entire federal government owes its personal loyalty to him, and that the office of the presidency is properly a vehicle for personal and familial enrichment. If the rule of law survives this era intact, it will only be because the president is too inept to undermine it.

A four-member parole board voted unanimously to set Simpson free as soon as October.

Surprisingly, a trash can is a decent shield against a giant blade.

A tough reporter and a lovely person, gone way, way too soon.

The latest version of Trumpcare would cost 22 million people health coverage, just like its predecessor, but McConnell has some room to maneuver.

Mujtaba al-Sweikat, accepted to Western Michigan University, was arrested for attending pro-democracy protests.

Doctors discovered a brain tumor during surgery to remove a blood clot last week.

Youd expect a presidential tirade against a top appointee to lead to a firing or resignation. Not with Donald Trump but the optics are terrible.

On Wednesday, Trump said Mueller shouldnt probe his business dealings. On Thursday, a report says Mueller is already doing it.

The president seems to think more time and effort will overcome the divisions among Senate Republicans on health care. So far, no signs hes right.

Heres a fun theory.

Last year, Trump promised universal health care. Now, to build support for throwing millions off insurance, his team is trying to make Obamacare fail.

The president explains his belief that a conflict of interest is any loyalty to anything but Trump.

Republicans took Obama to court over the presidents duty to take care that laws be faithfully executed. Democrats should do the same.

A former staffer for now-retired Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on the Trumpcare debacle.

Trumps former campaign chairman is set to testify before the Senate next week.

He says he wouldnt have hired Sessions if he knew hed recuse himself, suggesting he wanted the attorney general to control the Russia probe.

CBO says a straight repeal would cost 32 million their health coverage while doubling premiums.

Putin won in Syria, one anonymous official told the Washington Post.

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Donald Trump: L'tat, C'est Moi - New York Magazine