Tyfone and AFS join forces to combat fraud
Digital banking solutions provider Tyfone today announced it has partnered with Advanced Fraud Solutions (AFS), a trusted leader in fraud prevention solutions, to offer a user-friendly, proactive check and ACH fraud prevention solution for commercial accounts.
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Despite rising check fraud, 65% of banks say fewer than half of treasury clients use Positive Pay solutions. The integration of AFS's Positive Pay solution with Tyfone's nFinia® Digital Banking Solution provides commercial clients enhanced security, customizable transaction rules and AI-driven analysis.
'Protecting business clients is a key priority for financial institutions. However, Positive Pay adoption remains low, despite rising check fraud,' said Jordan Bothwell, Chief Partnership Officer at AFS. 'Together with Tyfone, we are providing banks and credit unions with a more secure, advanced digital banking solution, that prevents fraud, while still maintaining a frictionless experience.'
nFinia is an innovative, configurable platform designed to meet the evolving needs of both retail and commercial banking customers. AFS's Positive Pay helps institutions secure cash flow while preventing fraud. The integrated solution empowers financial institutions to deliver a personalized, feature-rich commercial banking experience, while enhancing security.
'Protecting clients from financial threats means protecting your reputation, your customers and your future,' said Jared Kopelman, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Tyfone. 'Financial institutions can't afford to be reactive to fraud - they need to take a proactive and strategic approach when combatting bad actors. By partnering with AFS, we're equipping our clients with powerful fraud prevention tools that ensure commercial clients can trust their institutions to safeguard their finances.'
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Daily Mail
36 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Man loses 40% of his skin when he risks his life to save his beloved dog from house fire
A Texas man burned off 40 per cent of his skin after rushing back into his burning home to save his pet after a motorcycle exploded inside. Zain Cano, 31, of San Antonio, risked his life to save his pet on May 22 when a fire erupted inside the duplex he lived in with his wife Jenna Carter while he was working inside on his motorcycle around 10pm. Cano managed to safely escape the apartment, only to realize his beloved dog Clarence was still inside so he ran into the flaming property. Cano wrote on Reddit: 'I had been working on my motorcycle and didn't secure the fuel line, the gas leaked on to the carpet and caught fire.' His wife Carter was not home at the time the fire broke out. When firefighters arrived, flames licked the property and they found Cano laying on the lawn, according to News 4 San Antonio. He was rushed to the hospital and the heroic feat left Cano with burns covering his body, and he required multiple surgeries, as was revealed in a GoFundMe fundraiser and on Facebook. Cano, who was released from the hospital on Wednesday, also underwent a skin graft on the right side of his body and had a blood transfusion. One of the grafts, which transferred skin from his calf to his foot, resulted in one of his tattoos being moved to a new location on his body. Photos of Cano in hospital, showed him completely unrecognizable with no hair and white bandages covering every part of his body - a far cry from the dark-haired, mustached man he was before the incident. The blaze meant that Cano, who did not have health insurance, Carter, and Clarence were homeless as the dog owner faced a lengthy and painful road to recovery. Cano added: 'I feel horrible because my family is now homeless because of my mistake. We're staying at a motel for the time being, but it's expensive and I can't work and probably won't be able to for at least another month or more.' Carter's caring for Cano as he needs assistance changing his bandages, and while bathing or using the toilet. His wife said on the charity page: 'He's had a hard road so far and a long one ahead of him in terms of healing. 'He's going to need multiple weeks of continuous medical care and help from me (he has to use a walker and cannot use his hands), and we desperately need a stable environment for him to heal in.' The couple's hoping to purchase a camper van to minimize their expenses, but they worry it might not be practical for Cano, who's 'having trouble getting around'. Cano wrote online: 'We have to change my bandages daily and we're concerned about keeping things clean enough so I don't get an infection. 'Unfortunately, we already spent what little savings we had and I won't be able to work for a while.' The couple started the fundraiser as a way to request help with medical bills, permanent housing, and upcoming expenses. Cano posted on Facebook: 'So now time is of the essence and I'm humbly and embarrassingly asking for help again.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘There is no option of surrender': can Zohran Mamdani cause the greatest progressive upset in New York politics?
Zohran Kwame Mamdani is huddling with advisers surrounded by agitated protesters, New York police department (NYPD) officers and lines of metal barriers penning us in. An hour ago Brad Lander, the elected comptroller of New York who is running against Mamdani in the race to become the city's next mayor, was arrested by masked agents of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) as he accompanied an individual out of immigration court. Video shows the agents shoving Lander against a wall, handcuffing him, and scuffling him away. The incident has clearly rattled Mamdani. He looks tense, and when greeted by supporters his trademark beaming smile is replaced by a tight grin. Days earlier Mamdani cross-endorsed with fellow progressive Lander ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary, which makes this personal. 'This is horrifying,' he says. Behind us looms the brutalist tower of the Federal Building, its tombstone-grey granite and glass exterior wrapped in fine mist. It is a setting out of a dystopian Gotham City. 'No peace, no justice,' the protesters chant. 'Ice out of the court, Ice out of the city.' 'This is an authoritarian regime that has dispatched masked men in unmarked cars to detain and disappear as many immigrants as they can find, and anyone standing in their way,' Mamdani says. 'Ice agents attempted to rough up Comptroller Lander and make an example of him – if that's what they are willing to do to an elected official, what will they do to an unknown immigrant?' There is a potent family link too. 'That's the very court I took my father to a few months ago for his citizenship interview,' he explains. 'I hugged him tightly, not knowing if I would see him at the end or if he too would be detained, as so many immigrants have been. I waited in a coffee shop for four and a half hours hoping he would come downstairs, and he did.' It is not impossible, given the state of the race, that in three days' time Mamdani, until recently a virtual unknown, will prevail in the primary ballot and take a giant leap towards becoming the next occupant of Gracie Mansion. Should he go on to win the general election in November, he would be propelled onto the front lines of the battle to protect New Yorkers from Donald Trump's mass deportations and other legally-dubious incursions. Could he handle it? 'I do believe that I could. I will unabashedly stand up for our sanctuary city policies which have kept New Yorkers safe, and use every tool at the city's disposal to protect our immigrants.' And then he adds: 'There is no option of surrender.' That Mamdani should be a serious contender for the leadership of America's largest city is both a sign of the times and of his individual capabilities. Polls show him within striking distance of the frontrunner Andrew Cuomo in what is now essentially a two-horse race, with Lander trailing a distant third. Mamdani came to the US aged seven from Uganda where he was born to parents of Indian descent. His father is a political scientist Mahmood Mamdani, and his mother, Mira Nair, is the Oscar-nominated director of Salaam Bombay! and Monsoon Wedding. He is a democratic socialist endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He has been outspoken on the Gaza war, which he views as a genocide, and is unrestrained in his criticism of Trump, whom he calls an authoritarian. He denounced Lander's arrest as 'fascism'. He is equally scathing about the establishment of the Democratic party, which he tells me has 'betrayed' the people of New York. And yet here he is, an unashamed progressive Muslim immigrant, snapping at the heels of the ultimate Democratic machine politician, the thrice-elected former governor of New York, Cuomo. The outcome of the ranked-choice vote could illuminate so much more than the future of New York, important though that is. There's age. Mamdani, if elected, would become at 33 the youngest mayor in a century; Cuomo, 67, would be its oldest in a first term. Could this election deliver a blow to what Ocasio-Cortez has called the 'gerontocracy' of American politics? There's Trump. Lander's arrest could be just the start – only a day before the comptroller was apprehended, the president announced he was prioritizing deportations from New York and other Democratic-run cities, putting whoever wins the mayoral race in the line of fire. And there's the Democratic party itself. Mamdani calls the election a referendum on the future of the party – and given the parlous state in which it currently finds itself, trapped in the headlights of a president who appears hell-bent on destroying American democracy as we know it, he may not be wrong. This is gearing up to be a seismic clash at a turning point for the country. No wonder Mamdani looks tense. Our interview was not meant to be like this. The plan was for us to meet in Mamdani's campaign office near Madison Square Park, but the shock of the Lander arrest sends him scrambling down to Federal Plaza, the Guardian in hot pursuit. It's a bit like a game of cat and mouse. We follow the candidate as he moves away from Federal Building, and takes off with his posse of campaign managers to find a quiet place to talk. He says we'll regroup at a sandwich bar nearby then abruptly changes the location, but amid the confusion he's always impeccably polite. 'Thank you for your understanding,' he says to me. We finally get to sit down in a Le Pain Quotidien around the corner from where Lander is being detained. Mamdani asks if I mind that he eats while we talk – it's mid-afternoon by now and it's his first meal of the day. When I express sympathy, he gives a maudlin smile and says: 'I chose this.' We begin by discussing his explosive rise, from a barely known member of the state assembly representing Queens into a political phenomenon. The previous Saturday, at a rally at Terminal 5, a music venue in Hell's Kitchen, Mamdani was introduced by Ocasio-Cortez, who likened how he has burst onto the scene to her own unlikely eruption as Bronx bartender turned congresswoman in 2018. Did Mamdani expect to be where he is now when he launched his run last October? From the start he believed in the possibility of his campaign, he says, but did not expect his numbers to surge until the end. 'Instead we've been firmly in second place for the last few months, and we've narrowed a 40-point gap with Cuomo down to single digits despite Republican billionaires spending close to $20m in attack ads against me.' That Mamdani has caught the imagination of young New Yorkers is self-evident at the Saturday night rally. The venue is packed with over 3,000 supporters, most in their 20s and 30s, waving placards saying 'A City We Can Afford'. Comedian the Kid Mero hosts, a marching band performs Empire State of Mind, and the DJ plays hope and change-themed tracks (the rally closes with Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin'). It all has the razzmatazz of a premature victory party. Mamdani commands the stage, displaying an ease with TikTokable soundbites and a beguiling charisma which are essential qualifications for high office these days. He echoes the lyrical rhetoric of Barack Obama: when he wins on 24 June, he orates, 'it will feel like the dawn of a new day, and when the sun finally climbs above the horizon that light will seem brighter than ever'. A key to his success among young voters – and in turn, the amassing of a vast army of 46,000 volunteers who have knocked on more than a million doors – has been his savvy use of social media. He has posted a stream of viral videos, shot on gritty New York streets, infused with the humor and pace that he first honed during his younger years when he was an aspiring rapper going by the name of Mr Cardamom. To publicise his plan to freeze the rents of all rent-stabilised apartments, Mamdani posted a TikTok video in which he dives fully clothed into the frigid waters off Coney Island. It was titled: 'I'm freezing … your rent.' When Cuomo entered the mayoral race, Mamdani filmed in front of Trump Tower to visually connect the two men as bullies accused of sexual misconduct – Trump was found liable for sexual abuse, Cuomo was forced to resign as governor in 2021 following reports that he sexually harassed female staff, which he denies. Such grabby stuff has spawned a whole cluster of fan-based Instagram groups. Among them: Hot Girls for Zohran and, not to be outdone, Hot Boys for Zohran. Fun this may be. But it's also serious politics. It's earned him the adoration of countless young voters at a time when social media is increasingly critical to winning elections – just ask Trump who, with his 106 million X followers and his Truth Social platform, literally owns political social media, leaving most Democratic leaders languishing in the wilderness. 'New Yorkers of all ages are engaging with the world around them through their phones,' Mamdani says. 'One reason we've been able to get so many to engage with us is that they've heard about our politics in places they typically would not.' He calls his social media strategy the 'politics of no translation'. What is that? 'It's when you speak directly to the crises that people are facing, with no intermediaries in between. We need a politics that is direct, that speaks to people's own lives. If I tell you that I'm going to freeze your rent, you know exactly what I mean.' Mamdani puts his spectacular popularity with young New Yorkers down to a hunger for a 'new kind of politics, one that puts working people at the heart of it and showcases a new generation of leadership'. There's maybe something else also at play: he has a magnetism that just seems to draw people towards him. The young waiter who takes his order of grilled chicken salad appears starstruck, and after we finish talking the waiter comes back to the table and engages Mamdani in intense conversation. The candidate obliges, despite his frantic schedule that will see him dashing between boroughs late into the night. I get flashes of that magnetism as we sit at our table. Like any politician, Mamdani has his talking points, but he drops his guard when I ask him what he remembers about arriving in New York as a kid. He leans towards me, and his face opens, and he seems transported. 'I remember going to Tower Records around 66th Street or so, and browsing all the different CDS, then stepping outside and buying my first bootleg copy of Eiffel 65, the euro pop group with the song Blue (Da Ba Dee). I remember playing soccer in Riverside Park, I remember falling in love with chess.' Reverie over, Mamdani the mayoral candidate is back, shoveling down food in between espousing political strategy. And this is when we get down to it, and the real challenge he faces. Because his appeal to young New Yorkers is not enough to win. To defeat Cuomo on Tuesday he has to reach beyond young voters. He has to get to the older African Americans and Hispanics in the outer boroughs who dependably turn out to vote, and thus often decide the outcome of New York Democratic primaries. Polls suggest that such voters are still favouring Cuomo as a safe pair of hands, though there has been a recent uptick among older Latinos. Mamdani is candid about how hard this has been. 'It was very difficult for us to get into these spaces to make our case,' he admits. 'Especially as we began with 1% name recognition. But things are shifting, now we're finding that we are double-booked for churches on a Sunday morning.' Paradoxically, the outer borough communities that he has to convert are home to the very same voters with whom Trump made astonishing inroads last November. It's the guilty secret of New York, which is so proud of its status as a liberal bastion: Trump enjoyed his biggest swing of any state in the country here – about 11.5% – and increased his vote by double digits in both the Bronx and Queens. 'It wasn't just the scale of the swing,' Mamdani says. 'It was that it took place far from the caricature of Trump voters, and into the heart of immigrant New York.' After Trump's victory, Mamdani had to turn the political impulse of lecturing into listening went on a listening tour to the outer boroughs. 'I went to Fordham Road in the Bronx and Hillside Avenue in Queens, and asked these New Yorkers, most of whom are Democrats, who they voted for and why. I learned that many did not vote, and many voted for Trump, and they did so because they remembered having more money in their pocket four years ago.' The plea he heard over and over again was for an economic agenda that would make people's tough lives easier. 'And that is how we have run this race,' he says. That's where his affordability ticket kicks in. Rents will be frozen in rent-stabilised apartments that house 2 million New Yorkers, two-thirds of whom are people of colour. Childcare will be provided at no cost, the minimum wage will be raised, city-run groceries will be opened offering cheaper healthy food, buses will be made fast and free. To pay for all that, taxes will be raised for corporations and for the top 1% of earners with incomes above $1m. When I ask him to imagine how he imagines New York would look after he had been in Gracie Mansion for two terms, he replies: 'It is a city that is more affordable, that works better, and where we have restored public excellence into public service.' Mamdani's affordability manifesto is a conscious blueprint for reconnecting working-class Americans, of all races, back to the Democratic party in the fight against Trump. It's also a damning indictment of where he believes the Democratic leadership has gone wrong. He goes so far as to use that word 'betrayal'. 'New Yorkers have been betrayed by the politics of our city,' he says. As evidence he points to Trump's deportations. We're still sitting in Le Pain Quotidien, Mamdani's salad now half-eaten and his tie off, and we are both painfully, though unspokenly, aware that Lander remains in custody as we speak (he was released a few hours later without charge). Up to 400,000 New Yorkers are at risk of Trump's deportations, he says, yet under the current Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, whose corruption charges were dropped by Trump in what was widely seen as a quid pro quo, the city has assisted fewer than 200 people facing imminent removal. Mamdani pledges that under his leadership, the city would provide legal representation for all immigrants in detention proceedings. That would boost their chances of going home to their families some elevenfold. His critique of the Democratic party doesn't end there. For him, Cuomo is the epitome of where the established party has gone off the rails. 'I believe we lost the presidential election because we had left the working class behind a long time ago. They were told time and time again that their leaders would fight for them, and those leaders, like Andrew Cuomo, sold them out.' He's in his flow now, his arms flapping in grand gestures of the sort that his staff have worked hard to get him to tone down. There's animation in his portrayal of Cuomo, containing a hefty dose of venom, and even disgust. 'We are considering electing a former governor who resigned in disgrace, one who cut Medicaid, stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA [which runs the subway], hounded the more than a dozen women who credibly accused him of sexual harassment even suing them for their gynecological records. It begs the question: what high ground do we have in the Democratic party when we critique Donald Trump?' Towards the end of his Terminal 5 rally speech, Mamdani warned his supporters to expect a barrage of negative attack ads from Cuomo and his billionaire backers in the closing stage of the race. But it's not just the barrage of TV ads that are attacking Zohran. The most withering criticism has come from the New York Times editorial board, which went so far as to opine that he didn't deserve a spot on the ballot. Mamdani swats that one away with the curt remark: 'These are the opinions of about a dozen New Yorkers. They're entitled to them.' The paper described his proposals as unrealistic. That's paradoxical, he says. Working-class Americans are losing faith in the Democratic party, yet anyone who comes up with policies that address their daily struggles is castigated for being pie in the sky. 'If you want to fight for working people priced out of their own city, then you are told you are out of touch.' The Anti-Defamation League, the Holocaust Museum, and several Jewish leaders have also blast out to scorch him in the final stretch. Shortly after we meet, a podcast is posted by the Bulwark in which Mamdani was asked whether he felt uncomfortable about the use by some pro-Palestinians of the phrase 'globalize the intifada', which has been condemned by some Jews as a call to violence. He would not denounce the expression, saying it spoke to 'a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights'. The comment led to rapid backlash from some Jewish groups. That was just the latest in a pattern in which, stepping outside a campaign tightly focused on affordability, he has been prepared to speak out about the highly contentious issue of the Middle East. He has decried the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, and championed the cause of Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian student activist at Columbia University who was released on Friday after more than three months detention on the orders of a federal judge. Given the nature of his economically-focused campaign, wouldn't it have been expedient to skirt around the issue of Gaza? . 'I have always been honest,' he says. 'I am honest because I believe it is incumbent upon us to have a new kind of politics, consistent with international law, and I believe there are far more New Yorkers looking for that consistency than one would imagine.' Mamdani has clearly been riled by the attacks made on him, which he calls Islamophobic. 'I have been smeared and slandered in clear racist language,' he says, pointing to mailers from a Cuomo-supporting super PAC which altered his face to be darker and his beard to be thicker (the super PAC denied any intentional manipulation). In the days after our interview, the NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force announced they are investigating threats made against Mamdani, by an unidentified man who said he was a 'terrorist' who is 'not welcome in America'. None of this is new for him. He's had to deal with Islamophobia since 9/11, when he was nine and had been living in the city for just two years. He was spared the worst of the anti-Muslim fallout of the attacks, he says, partly thanks to a kind teacher who pulled him aside and told him to let her know if he was ever bullied. But 9/11 left its mark. 'Living in the shadows of that moment, it politicized my identity. It forced a nine-year-old boy to see himself the way the world was seeing him.' That young boy is now three days away from a vote in which he seeks to become the first Muslim mayor of New York City. As he finishes up his salad and downs a cup of hot water with honey and lemon, before rushing off to his next engagement, he looks a strange mix of bone tired and fired-up for the battle ahead.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘This presidency is a brand-franchise': Trump has taken the commercialization of politics to a new level
'I like thinking big. I always have. To me it's very simple: if you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.' Those were Donald Trump's words to writer Tony Schwartz in the Art of the Deal. In his second term, Trump has been thinking big about making money. Since his reelection campaign began, Trump is estimated to have more than doubled his net worth to $5.4bn. A sizeable chunk of that cash has come from the launch of Trump-branded products. This week the Trump Organization entered the mobile phone business with a Trump-branded service that will include a 'sleek gold' phone, which costs $499, that is 'made in America'. Maybe? Never to miss a patriotic marketing moment, they launched Trump Mobile at Trump Tower in New York on the 10-year anniversary of their father's announcement at the top of a gold escalator, to the sound of Neil Young's Rockin' in the Free World, that he would run for president. The premium tier of service would be dubbed the 47 Plan, priced at $47.45 a month. Donald Trump Jr said the brothers had partnered with 'some of the greatest people in the industry to make sure that real Americans get true value from their mobile carriers'. 'Celebrity' phone launches are hardly new. The launch announcement came days after the actor-hosts of the popular SmartLess podcast – Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes – announced their own cut price phone plan, and more than two years since actor Ryan Reynolds profited from his stake in Mint Mobile, sold to T-Mobile for $1.35bn. So was Trump – or the Trumps – thinking big or just following a pattern of seemingly random licensing deals that renew concerns about the president's business enterprises? After all, if Trump is really concerned about phone prices, he could – as president – push for legislative change. 'There was a lot of dialog when Trump returned to power that we would see in this term a particularly interesting residency in the White House about how much money would be made,' says marketing-PR guru Mark Borkowski, 'and this is a typical Trump side-hustle playing off Maga patriotism.' The blurred lines between business and politics, impacting how candidates are portrayed, policies are shaped and voters engage with the political process – commonly referred to as the commercialization of politics – may not be Trump's to own exclusively, but he's taken it to a new level. 'It is troubling, and more than in jest, that this is now a political economy and he's actually saying this presidency is a brand-franchise,' says Borkowski. 'There is no separation between power and profit. He's redrawn the boundaries between commerce and the office of the president, and he's accelerated the notion of post-ethical politics.' The gold phone and patriotically-priced phone plan – '47' referring to Trump's current term, and '45' referring to the previous – is only the latest ask of the Maga (Make America Great Again) faithful, otherwise known as ultra-Magas, to show their commitment in dollar terms. 'The Trumps' continued business expansion often serves to reinforce Trump's political persona rather than distract from it. For Maga supporters, his business ventures are interpreted as proof of his self-made success and outsider status – both key pillars of his political brand,' says Zak Revskyi at the New York brand management consultancy Baden Bower. 'These business moves don't just coexist with his political identity – they actively feed into it. They help sustain the image of Trump as a results-oriented executive who blends capitalism with populism,' Revskyi adds. On Thursday, Bloomberg revealed that investment bank Dominari Holdings, where Donald Jr and Eric work as advisers, helped an obscure toymaker selling Smurf-branded tumblers, koala backpacks and plush sea turtles, pivot into crypto this week, sending its shares up more than 500%. The outlet noted that there was no sign in regulatory filings that Trump family members were involved in this or previous crypto-related transactions through the bank – which is based in Trump Tower – but noted that 'the gain added to the windfalls of executives orbiting the president's family'. Aside from the Trump's well-publicized (and profitable) adventures in crypto – his ownership stake in World Liberty Financial produced $57,355,532 in income since it was launched last year – the family brand has upped by 20 its Trump-branded real-estate projects around the globe, calculated Citizens for Ethics, including an 80-storey skyscraper in Dubai, and plans for branded hotels in Riyadh and Jeddah, and a golf course in Qatar, to an estimated value of $10bn. A 234-page financial disclosure form released by the Office of Government Ethics this month showed 145 pages of stock and bond investments. The disclosure showed that 2024 was a very good year for royalty payments from products featuring his name and likeness. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Among them, calculated NBC News, was $3m from a Save America coffee table book; $2.5m from Trump sneakers and fragrances; $2.8m from Trump watches; $1.3m from a Trump-endorsed Bible; and just over $1m each from '45' guitars and non-fungible token (NFT) sales. Most have at least some aspect of gold-coloring, according to a review of the 'Golden Age of America' Trump collection. Many of the assets are held in a revocable trust overseen by Donald Jr, including more than 100,000 shares, or 53%, of Trump Media and Technology Group, the company that owns Truth Social, valued at 5.15bn, or held in partnerships that do not require divestment under conflict of interest laws. The business of selling the family name hums along despite, or because of, the on-the-fly dramas that envelope the White House from week to week. The White House claims that the president 'has been the most transparent president in history in all respects, including when it comes to his finances', noting that Trump handed over 'his multibillion-dollar empire in order to serve our country, and he has sacrificed greatly'. The Trump phone, which analysts doubt can be 'made in America', as promotional materials assert, is merely an add-on to a thriving political-business operation. Democrats have found it hard to find a footing in calling out the interplay, in part because Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, was similarly accused of allowing a family business of influence peddling to evolve around him and issued a pre-emptive pardon of family members before he left office. 'I don't do it for the money. I've got enough, much more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it,' Trump wrote in the opening lines of in the Art of the Deal, published in 1987. 'Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.' But under Trump politics and business have become melded as never before. 'It's a new hyper-reality that exists in America,' says Borkowski. 'It's about turning political fandom into money, and he's laughing all the way to the bank. He's doing exactly what was expected. Nobody in Trump's heartland sees this as damaging – it's what they expect a deal-maker to do. The absurdity of everything Trump does is the point.'
