• Rapidcreek@reddthat.comOP
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    1 year ago

    According to billionaire Anthony Pratt’s account, as described by the sources, Pratt told Trump he believed Australia should start buying its submarines from the United States, to which an excited Trump – “leaning” toward Pratt as if to be discreet – then told Pratt two pieces of information about U.S. submarines: the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads they routinely carry, and exactly how close they supposedly can get to a Russian submarine without being detected.

    • QHC@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Such a weird thing to volunteer, especially for someone that is supposedly a ‘master negotiator’. The hook was set and line was being pulled back. The sell was done!

      It might not be the #1 rule of sales, but pretty close to the top is “once you’ve closed the deal, stop talking”.

      • Rapidcreek@reddthat.comOP
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        1 year ago

        There was a congressman who gleefully told the press on WWII that the Japanese were setting their depth charges too shallow.

        The IJN picked up on this of course and adjusted accordingly. This is pretty much the same if not worse.

        • Artoink@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Andrew May

          It’s estimated his loose lips sank 10 ships and killed 800 servicemen.

          Unrelated, he was convicted of accepting bribes as a Congressman. He gave a lucrative contact to a company with no experience producing munitions, then opened a lumber business and sold that same munitions company excessively expensive crates as the way to receive his kickback. The reason is came to light was because the munitions company produced defective artillery shells that prematurely exploded and killed at least 38 soldiers. Served 9 months before Truman pardoned him.

      • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
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        1 year ago

        When it comes to selling shit, trump is pretty good at it… when it comes to keeping shit secret, trump is a walking, secret spilling megaphone.

        But hey, we got some sweet submarines out of it! Thanks guys!

        • orclev@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Trump is really good at selling shit, but anything actually useful not so much. He’s a con artist, always has been. His true calling in life is parting morons from their money, and that’s about it. Although even in that regard he’s had some pretty spectacular failures. He did after all manage to bankrupt a casino, something notoriously hard to fuck up as long as you can do some pretty basic statistics. He’s basically a slimy used car salesman who inherited a lot of money and who half paid attention to the lessons his equally slimy but actually dangerously smart father taught him.

          Fred Trump was a real piece of work, a true slum lord, and far too clever to get caught in the many illegal schemes he had running (mostly tax fraud, but I’m sure he had plenty of other scams going). Donald Trump on the other hand is barely literate, has the attention span of a gnat, and is such a raging narcissist that if his name isn’t mentioned for more than 10 minutes he loses interest and checks out. His military advisors literally sprinkled his name throughout their reports just to get him to read the damn things, something that in retrospect was probably a mistake as we’d all likely be safer if they hadn’t.

          • frezik@midwest.social
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            1 year ago

            He and his family have wiggled out of things before because investigators thought they were too dumb to know they were committing crimes.