The staffs of both the New York Times and the Washington Post are working overtime to dig deeper into Donald Trump’s business affairs. And it’s getting juicier and juicier, mostly because the known facts are not adding up. WaPo explains:
In 1995, Donald Trump was in the midst of a spending spree. He had recently bought a 727 jet for personal use, added a skyscraper to his Manhattan real estate portfolio and snapped up properties in Telluride, Colo., and Palm Beach, Fla., financial records show.
That same year, he said he had negative $916 million in “federal adjusted gross income,†a claim that gave him the prospect of avoiding federal income taxes for years to come.
So how could he be thriving and avoiding taxes at the same time?
That’s the central mystery behind the state tax documents filed in New York by Trump for 1995 and disclosed this weekend by the New York Times.
Hmm. Well, another WaPo story says this:
Trump’s bid for the White House relies heavily on his ability to sell himself as a master businessman, a standout performer in real estate and reality TV.
But interviews with former shareholders and analysts as well as years of financial filings reveal a striking characteristic of his business record: Even when his endeavors failed and other people lost money, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee found a way to make money for himself, to market his Trump-branded products and to pay for his expensive lifestyle. …
… Trump’s campaign did not make him available to respond to specific questions about the company, but in a recent Washington Post interview, Trump said he “made a lot of money in Atlantic City,†adding, “I make great deals for myself.â€
He avoided personal ruin in part by getting the banks who backed him to forgive a lot of the debt. But he also tricked members of the public into taking over his failed businesses….
… the gist is that Trump set up his first major public company Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. It was listed on the NYSE and members of the public, including quite a few individual investors, bought the stock. It was an IPO of a mature, indeed already failing company. But Trump used the allure of the Trump name to entice people in.
Over the next several years the businesses swirled down the drain and Trump was able to sell his other distressed casinos to the public company. In other words, he was both the buyer and the seller. So he sold the deeply indebted and already failing Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Castle to the company at a price of his choosing. While he was doing this he continued to pay himself tens of millions of dollars a year as the company’s CEO in addition to using the company to help out his other businesses. By all these machinations he managed to have the company’s major expenditures be paying off or at least servicing the debts he had racked up before the public company came into existence. At the end of the day basically everyone who invested in Trump company lost everything.
The company launched in 1995, the same year Trump claimed almost a $1 billion in losses on his tax return. Clearly these two things were related. Indeed, the Casino business was the essence of Trump’s business empire at that point. We just don’t know precisely how it all fits together because unlike the public company which had to make all the filings every public does, Trump’s personal finances are private and remain that way because he’s refused to release his tax returns.
The Times has more details about Trump’s bad investments. At one point, when he was about to go belly up, his father gave him a “loan” by sending “a lawyer to the Castle casino to buy $3.3 million in chips and leave without cashing them.”
Now, I don’t know if any of this is illegal, but it certainly isn’t good.
Oh, and Julian Assange’s big announcement was a bust. He had nothin’. I’m guessing Vladimir decided Trump was a lost cause and stopped feeding him leaks.
Update: From September, but related — Trump’s Riches and the Real-Estate Tax Racket.
Update: Fortune magazine says that Trump’s presidential campaign is destroying his “brand.”
Over the past 12 months Trump has almost certainly been devaluing his brand among the customers who are most important to his businesses – high-income individuals plus the corporations that rent space in his office buildings and hold conferences and meetings in his hotels or hotels that have licensed his name.
Trump’s supporters in the election tend to be less educated and poorer than voters overall; they’re not his customers. By contrast, he’s losing heavily among college-educated voters, a group that includes most of his individual customers. Corporate customers find it increasingly difficult to associate themselves with Trump-branded real estate because of his astonishing ability to offend assorted groups – Latinos, Muslims, women, the disabled. No mainstream corporation wants to offend those groups by occupying space with Trump’s name in shiny gold capital letters on the front.
There’s evidence that Trump’s brand devaluation is happening. Bloomberg cites research showing that among consumers earning over $150,000 a year, the Trump brand’s value had plummeted by the end of last year. Other research finds that the market share of Trump casinos, hotels, and golf course plunged 14% from July 2015 to July 2016.
t-RUMP on his stupid suckered investors:
“Let them eat breadcrumbs.
I’ll get my cake and eat it too!!!
BWA-HA-(snif, snif) HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
The media made money on great ratings when they enabled Trump to rise. Now they can make money on great ratings as they bring about his fall.
Those guys are smarter than I thought.
Trump is the epitome of the spoiled rich kid, given everything in life, born between third base and home and thought he hit a home run. Thanks to his own stupidity, he’s about to get thrown out at the plate.
Proverbs 16:18 has the Donald down cold:
“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”
csm …Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping for. I not only want to see Trump defeated. I want to see him publicly humiliated with the biggest landslide victory for Hillary that’s ever occurred in the history of the United States. The only problem with my desire is that Trump doesn’t have a conscience or a soul, so for a humiliation to find lodging in his being is a complete impossibility. OK, maybe I’m a little harsh in that judgment because when Obama ridiculed him for his birther nonsense at the Correspondent Dinner a few years ago he did get a little bit redder, so I guess there must be a trace element of conscience somewhere within him.
In Ben Carson’s bible in the book of Poverbs 1:1, it says: No big bag of shit shall ever inhabit the White House.
I saw Trump’s mocking of Hillary when she attended the 9/11 memorial event and had to be steadied into her vehicle when the effects of pneumonia had overtaken her. It reminded me of a computer concept that was taught back in the early days in learning Windows 3.1. That concept was described with an acronym called WYSIWYG. That concept can and should be applied to understanding Trump’s true nature.
Well, that VP debate was a boring shit-show, wasn’t it?
Kaine did ok, but interrupted too many times. And he missed a real chance at some knock-out blows. But, he did his job: he brought up t-RUMP’s many sociopathic faults.
Pence never really answered a question, which caused Kaine to interrupt him to try to get him to answer THE FUCKING QUESTION!!!
Pence also acted like t-RUMP didn’t exist, except to deny his boss didn’t say what all sorts of video, audio, and twitter tweets that are easily obtainable prove that he did – and would make a great many TV ads for the Clinton campaign.
Pence’s head movements from side to side while Kaine was talking, made me think it was “GOP VP Bobble-head Night” at the college.
Before I went to bed, Pence’s “Senator, there you go whipping out that Mexican thing again,” was a cause for much hilarity (shades of Sheriff Bart in “Blazing Saddles!).
And Kaine got in a good one about women’s choice, when he asked why they couldn’t just let women make their own choice.
Overall, not entertaining. But both candidate did what they were supposed to do.
No Swami, you mean WISIWYG not WYSIWYG. When you look at the tRump you see a giant bag of shit. Other people look at the tRump, and see the illusion. Pence did a fair job of painting the illusion last night, or at least pretending he did. In his alt-reality the tRump is a brilliant businessman, philanthropist, tax expert, fluent in international relation, honest, et on and on. If all saw what you see clearly, yes this is what they will get. Many do not see the same screen you are looking at. The press may have seen their screen for some time, but now are finding out you have better pixilation. Perception is not reality all of the time.
bernie..I see your point and I agree you are correct, but only from a limited perspective. I think the acronym WISIWITI’GTG would be apropos.
Now, I know I like Tim Kaine! Before the debate, I thought of him as boring. Yes, he did interrupt and that is rude and generally I don’t like it in a debate. However, as the debate wore on, I thought it was intentional and was designed to throw Pence off balance by trying to get him to defend Trump, which he couldn’t do. I also get annoyed at the pundits deciding who “won” the debate. Pence was thrown off balance and spent half the debate shaking his head. When people do this, I think they don’t have a valid response and just want to deny, deny, deny. I do have to admit I am biased against Pence so maybe that influences my opinion. So be it!
grannyeagle.. Have you ever seen the movie Guide for the Married Man? There was a scene with Sid Caesar in that movie where the technique of deny, deny , deny, was taught. I constantly have recollections of that scene whenever I see that same technique employed in current political exchanges. I think the point being that with constant denial you’re left questioning your own reality or what you know to be true.
I find there have been several times when I’ve had to go back to check and see if my understanding was correct after being presented with a denial of the facts.
Swami…..nope, never saw that movie. However, it amazes me how people can get on TV and deny something when there is factual evidence. There are times in life when denial is useful such as in the grieving process but Pence was ridiculous.
grannyeagle
Here’s a clip of what I was talking about. I was wrong about Sid Caesar, It was Joey Bishop. But not a bad recollection after 50 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pmBC_CrQS4