Trump's Florida Mar-a-Lago resort in Hurricane Dorian's path

President Donald Trump's prized Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida is potentially sitting directly in the path of Hurricane Dorian , which is forecast to become an extremely destructive storm.

The resort, which is currently closed for the summer, is on the wealthy barrier island of Palm Beach. During the cooler months, Trump visits the property frequently and has held several high-level meetings there with world leaders.

The National Hurricane Center's most recent track for Dorian places Mar-a-Lago in the crosshairs of a possible Category 4 storm with winds of almost 140 mph (225 kph).

Still, the resort dates from the 1920s and has seen more than its share of hurricanes in the past. It was originally built by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, with the main mansion containing 126 rooms.

Trump bought the place in 1985, after efforts to make it into a national park did not work out. Since he became president, Trump has hosted leaders such as Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and China's Xi Jinping at the resort.

Hurricanes have always been a part of Mar-a-Lago.

In 2005, Trump said he received a $17 million insurance payment for hurricane damage to the resort. But an Associated Press investigation found little evidence of such large-scale damage.

At the time, Trump said he didn't know how much had been spent on repairs, but acknowledged he pocketed some of the money. He transferred funds into his personal accounts, saying that under the terms of his policy "you didn't have to reinvest it."

"Landscaping, roofing, walls, painting, leaks, artwork in the — you know, the great tapestries, tiles, Spanish tiles, the beach, the erosion," he said of the storm damage. "It's still not what it was."

Trump is a climate change skeptic. Meanwhile, local governments across Florida, including in Palm Beach County, are gearing up to deal with rising sea levels and possibly more intense hurricanes. If sea-level rise predictions even at the lower end come true, Mar-a-Lago could have ocean water lapping on its lawns in the not-too-distant future.

eddie wrote:Wasn’t he a successful businessman before becoming president?

Maddog wrote:https://www.apnews.com/a98f26f7c9424b44b7fa927ea1acd4d4

Maddog wrote:

eddie wrote:

Maddog wrote:

Have you forgotten the photos of separated children from the Obama era?

Trump has just picked up the pace.  

Interesting. Have you got links, photos etc?

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee sent out a pair of tweets Wednesday and earlier this month with photos of migrants sleeping on a detention center floor to publicize an immigration hearing in Capitol Hill.

Just one problem — the pics were snapped in 2014, during the Obama Administration.

The Dems deleted the two messages, and claimed it was an “error.”

https://nypost.com/2019/07/10/house-dems-use-obama-era-photos-to-promote-kids-in-cages-hearing/

eddie wrote:

Maddog wrote:

eddie wrote:

Maddog wrote:

Have you forgotten the photos of separated children from the Obama era?

Trump has just picked up the pace.  

Interesting. Have you got links, photos etc?

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee sent out a pair of tweets Wednesday and earlier this month with photos of migrants sleeping on a detention center floor to publicize an immigration hearing in Capitol Hill.

Just one problem — the pics were snapped in 2014, during the Obama Administration.

The Dems deleted the two messages, and claimed it was an “error.”

https://nypost.com/2019/07/10/house-dems-use-obama-era-photos-to-promote-kids-in-cages-hearing/

Wow. If that’s true that’s just....well...hmmmm....

Ben Reilly wrote:

eddie wrote:

Wow. If that’s true that’s just....well...hmmmm....

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/23/trump-falsely-says-obama-started-family-separation/1540733001/

Maddog wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:

eddie wrote:

Wow. If that’s true that’s just....well...hmmmm....

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/23/trump-falsely-says-obama-started-family-separation/1540733001/

They were separated.  Trump expanded the criteria for those separations.

Ben Reilly wrote:During 2014, the Obama administration was faced with figuring out what to do with roughly 47,000 kids who weren't with their parents and tried to cross the border illegally: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-27874901

Bit different from forcibly taking children away from their parents, a practice which did indeed originate with Trump's 2018 "zero tolerance" policy.

eddie wrote:And who knows what is true and what isn’t?
Media and smoke and mirrors. That’s why I don’t ever know what to believe.

The truth lies somewhere out of reach, halfway between what we read and what we don’t know...I guess.

Maddog wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:During 2014, the Obama administration was faced with figuring out what to do with roughly 47,000 kids who weren't with their parents and tried to cross the border illegally: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-27874901

Bit different from forcibly taking children away from their parents, a practice which did indeed originate with Trump's 2018 "zero tolerance" policy.

And they separated some parents from kids.  It wasn't a blanket policy though.  

Maddog wrote:

eddie wrote:And who knows what is true and what isn’t?
Media and smoke and mirrors. That’s why I don’t ever know what to believe.

The truth lies somewhere out of reach, halfway between what we read and what we don’t know...I guess.

The truth is just varying degrees of lies.  

Maddog wrote:

eddie wrote:And who knows what is true and what isn’t?
Media and smoke and mirrors. That’s why I don’t ever know what to believe.

The truth lies somewhere out of reach, halfway between what we read and what we don’t know...I guess.

The truth is just varying degrees of lies.  

Ben Reilly wrote:

Maddog wrote:

The truth is just varying degrees of lies.  

Oh yeah, sure, totally.

I'm just glad I never had to defend anybody I've voted for by resorting to arguing that reality is ultimately unknowable ...

Ben Reilly wrote:

Maddog wrote:


And they separated some parents from kids.  It wasn't a blanket policy though.  

Really, though, I'm being roped into a discussion of "who did it first" rather than "is it morally defensible."

If Obama had done this, I'd have condemned the practice -- just as I condemned Obama for drone strikes and for not prosecuting government employees and officials who committed and condoned torture, which is illegal.

Sorry, but Trump has done really bad things, and I'm not going to feel one tenth of an iota bad for saying I hope a hurricane wrecks up one of this bastard's resorts.

If I believed he has a heart, I'd wish something on him that would break it the way he's broken the hearts of a thousand children.

eddie wrote:

Maddog wrote:

The truth is just varying degrees of lies.  

Oh yes. Indeed. I wish everyone would remember this.

Maddog wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:

Really, though, I'm being roped into a discussion of "who did it first" rather than "is it morally defensible."

If Obama had done this, I'd have condemned the practice -- just as I condemned Obama for drone strikes and for not prosecuting government employees and officials who committed and condoned torture, which is illegal.

Sorry, but Trump has done really bad things, and I'm not going to feel one tenth of an iota bad for saying I hope a hurricane wrecks up one of this bastard's resorts.

If I believed he has a heart, I'd wish something on him that would break it the way he's broken the hearts of a thousand children.

You're not being roped into anything. Is Trump a worse human than Obama?

I would say yes. He's really not quite right in the head. But our government has done bad things and trampled on folks liberties under both of them.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

You're not being roped into anything. Is Trump a worse human than Obama?

I would say yes. He's really not quite right in the head. But our government has done bad things and trampled on folks liberties under both of them.  

Classic Whataboutism.  That is, to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument.  Hey, what-about "our government [which] has done bad things and trampled on folks liberties..."

The problem with this is that it side-steps the issue, and substitutes shrugs.  A diversion.  Very popular when one doesn't want to answer or address the question.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Classic Whataboutism.  That is, to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument.  Hey, what-about "our government [which] has done bad things and trampled on folks liberties..."

The problem with this is that it side-steps the issue, and substitutes shrugs.  A diversion.  Very popular when one doesn't want to answer or address the question.

It side steps nothing. It points out the hypocrisy of a lot of people.

Glad you dont like it.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

It side steps nothing. It points out the hypocrisy of a lot of people.

Glad you dont like it.

What is more important?  The problem?  Or the hypocrisy over the problem?  Fix the problem and the hypocrisy goes away per force.

You don't think things through to the end, do you?

Ben Reilly wrote:I remember how Rush Limbaugh (American right-wing radio commentator) said, after George W. Bush left office, that he had "carried water" for Bush for eight long years. In other words, he bit his tongue when Bush did something he didn't agree with.

I never EVER bit my tongue when Obama did something I disagreed with, or Bill Clinton. I don't understand it, really -- it's about the ideas, not the personalities.

You never saw a Democrat defending Rod Blogojevich the way some of the most scandal-ridden Republican politicians have been defended by their voters.

On the other hand, you see plenty of friction among Democratic politicians these days, particularly between the established ones and the newcomers. We also had a very high-ranking Democratic senator who was adamantly pro-life (Harry Reid).

It just seems to me that Democrats are more independent-thinking and unafraid to criticize their own politicians than Republicans.

Maddog wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:I remember how Rush Limbaugh (American right-wing radio commentator) said, after George W. Bush left office, that he had "carried water" for Bush for eight long years. In other words, he bit his tongue when Bush did something he didn't agree with.

I never EVER bit my tongue when Obama did something I disagreed with, or Bill Clinton. I don't understand it, really -- it's about the ideas, not the personalities.

You never saw a Democrat defending Rod Blogojevich the way some of the most scandal-ridden Republican politicians have been defended by their voters.

On the other hand, you see plenty of friction among Democratic politicians these days, particularly between the established ones and the newcomers. We also had a very high-ranking Democratic senator who was adamantly pro-life (Harry Reid).

It just seems to me that Democrats are more independent-thinking and unafraid to criticize their own politicians than Republicans.

What is the equivalent of RINO in the Democratic party?

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

It side steps nothing. It points out the hypocrisy of a lot of people.

Glad you dont like it.

What is more important?  The problem?  Or the hypocrisy over the problem?  Fix the problem and the hypocrisy goes away per force.

You don't think things through to the end, do you?

The problem gets worse through the hypocrisy of people like you and Ben.  

The pendulum just swings back and forth.  

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

What is more important?  The problem?  Or the hypocrisy over the problem?  Fix the problem and the hypocrisy goes away per force.

You don't think things through to the end, do you?

The problem gets worse through the hypocrisy of people like you and Ben.  

The pendulum just swings back and forth.  

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

What is more important?  The problem?  Or the hypocrisy over the problem?  Fix the problem and the hypocrisy goes away per force.

You don't think things through to the end, do you?

The problem gets worse through the hypocrisy of people like you and Ben.  

The pendulum just swings back and forth.  

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:


The problem gets worse through the hypocrisy of people like you and Ben.  

The pendulum just swings back and forth.  

That's bull shite.  If you've got a flat tire, fix the tire...don't reminisce about how Uncle Sam had a flat tire too.

The so-called hypocrisy is not even honestly offered.  It is posed as a diversion to the adversary in a whataboutism proposal.

If the problem in the one instance, equals the problem in the second instance...fix the problem and both go away.  Pendulum my ass...wherever it swings, fix it you loser.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

That's bull shite.  If you've got a flat tire, fix the tire...don't reminisce about how Uncle Sam had a flat tire too.

The so-called hypocrisy is not even honestly offered.  It is posed as a diversion to the adversary in a whataboutism proposal.

If the problem in the one instance, equals the problem in the second instance...fix the problem and both go away.  Pendulum my ass...wherever it swings, fix it you loser.

The problem changes because of the hypocrisy. Let's take tariffs. Many democrats now have a problem with them. Many republicans don't. Their positions are opposite of what they were when Obama was president.  

That hypocrisy is the problem.  

The problem on the border is another example.  

Hypocrisy causes people to follow people or parties instead of positions. And people like you are guilty of that.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

The problem changes because of the hypocrisy. Let's take tariffs. Many democrats now have a problem with them. Many republicans don't. Their positions are opposite of what they were when Obama was president.  

That hypocrisy is the problem.  

The problem on the border is another example.  

Hypocrisy causes people to follow people or parties instead of positions. And people like you are guilty of that.

The hypocrisy is in your mind, no one else.  Hypocrisy is merely a critique--your critique--not an animating factor in the real world.  Thus it plays no role in the problem.

The fault of the whataboutism fallacy is that it detracts, not affects the question.  It changes the subject to the hypocrisy, and away from the original issue.  To respond to the assertion, "I have a flat tire", by saying "Uncle Bill had a flat tire once" lends nothing to the need for a tire change.  It's merely a retort.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

The hypocrisy is in your mind, no one else.  Hypocrisy is merely a critique--your critique--not an animating factor in the real world.  Thus it plays no role in the problem.

The fault of the whataboutism fallacy is that it detracts, not affects the question.  It changes the subject to the hypocrisy, and away from the original issue.  To respond to the assertion, "I have a flat tire", by saying "Uncle Bill had a flat tire once" lends nothing to the need for a tire change.  It's merely a retort.

And in your case, the flat tire may or may not be a problem depending on who's tire it is.  

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:


And in your case, the flat tire may or may not be a problem depending on who's tire it is.  

Who cares?  It's a separate question.  Figure that out later.  The tire needs to be changed, or no one is going anywhere.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Who cares?  It's a separate question.  Figure that out later.  The tire needs to be changed, or no one is going anywhere.

You care.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

You care.

Not from the perspective of the given question.  It's another matter.  To point out the great many problems in the world, is not an answer to any one of them.

It's a tacit admission that one has no answers.  What it says is, you have been bested, you have no answer, so you want to tuck tail and run to another subject.  You're hoping the hypocrisy accusation will cover your retreat.