Becoming President Proving Worst Business Deal Trump Ever Made -The iPINIONS Journal

No doubt you saw promos for The Trump Family Business that ran last week. CNN finally aired it on Friday night.

But I hope you had better things to do. Because another report on shady dealings in the Trump Organization could be no more informative than another one on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

Reviews indicate that CNN featured case after case where Trump got millions to license his name for condo developments he never developed – despite his now-trademark hype. His scams left countless investors high and dry while he made off with their down payments.

But scamming investors, whether condo purchasers or money lenders, has been standard practice in the Trump family business for decades. Indeed, there’s no denying Trump’s genius for using other people’s money to enrich himself (as he is doing with taxpayers’ money every day).

News flash! The Trump family business is little more than a Ponzi scheme built inside a house of cards. The Madoffs had nothing on the Trumps.

The wonder is that Trump could always get far too many people to buy his schtick hook, line, and sinker. Exhibit A: He got enough of them to elect him president of the United States, which will live in infamy as the biggest scam in history.

The point is that he has thrived despite his open and notorious record of scams (like his defunct Trump University) and failed businesses (like his bankrupt Trump casinos). And the only thing that explains this is the P.T. Barnumesque proposition that

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Accordingly, only the willfully ignorant could have been informed by the scams CNN documented. And they would have been the same suckers who show up time and again at Trump’s rallies to swallow his equally documented bilge of lies.

To be fair, though, Trump himself made clear that his presidential campaign was just an unprecedented opportunity to burnish his brand. Remember this?

At his press conference Tuesday night, Trump stood next to a table laden with Trump goods including raw steaks, wine and bottled water. After winning two states’ primaries that night, the businessman launched into a defense of his many eponymous products. …

Except, as NPR found, Trump doesn’t own most of the products he flaunted Tuesday night.

(USA Today, March 9, 2016)

But even what NPR found was nothing new. In fact, I had already been arguing for years that the best way to register disgust with his self-promoting, self-aggrandizing, and self-enriching politics is to belittle and boycott his brand.

Here, for example, is what I wrote in “Trump for President? Don’t Be a Sucker!” April 8, 2011:

We all knew that Trump was a self-aggrandizing buffoon. …

I urge the rich folks he depends on to patronize his eponymous resorts and buy up his eponymous condominiums to begin shunning him – just as they would a two-bit racist like David Duke. I urge this especially of the black Hollywood and sports stars he likes to feature as extras in his one-man freak show.

More to the point, though, his shameless and shameful press conference referenced above incited me to write the following in “‘I Can’t Hear, or See, or Say that Name [TRUMP] Without Spitting,’” March 14, 2016:

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Obviously, the racism, xenophobia, and outright violence Trump incites are bad enough. But all of that is compounded by the failure of so many Americans, especially his rich celebrity friends, to not only repudiate him but make a show of shunning him — to hit him where it hurts.

All Americans should appreciate the categorical imperative of treating anything branded ‘Trump’ — from hotels to neckties and vodka — as if it were branded ‘KKK.’ It only hints at his cynicism and hucksterism that he makes such a public show of touting his Made in China products to Make America Great Again.

But the legacy of his publicity stunt masquerading as a presidential campaign should be a Trump brand so tarnished that the only people willing to patronize his businesses are the fools who voted for him.

Given that the vast majority of them are poor and uneducated, by his own estimation, it would only be a matter of time before he’s forced into the mother of all his bankruptcies (i.e., for failing to make payments on the debt he brags about using to finance his businesses). And trust me, this Croesus-envying narcissist would rather go bankrupt than depend on the rabble-rousing suckers who attend his rallies to keep his real-estate empire afloat. Which is just as well given that most of them can barely afford a night at a budget hotel.

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But, in a historic fluke, Trump’s campaign to burnish his brand name ended up getting him elected president of the United States. Registering my disgust then became a categorical imperative.

I duly continued in “Trump, Jared, and Ivanka Forgoing Salaries Is Just Another Bait and Switch,” April 3, 2017:

[I]t’s hardly a sacrifice if the members of this nepotistic triumvirate forgo hundreds of thousands in government salaries only to use their positions to generate hundreds of millions in private income. This is a bait and switch worthy of the Art of the Steal.

And in “America’s First Family: Rich Getting Richer,” June 22, 2018:

Donald J. Trump is the richest president in US history. Therefore, it’s ironic that he’s cheapening the presidency more than any other. But that irony is laced with gall. Because this cheapening is directly proportional to the way he’s using the presidency to enrich himself and his family.

All of the above should explain the vindication I felt while reading this:

Trump Tower, once the crown jewel in Donald Trump’s property empire, now ranks as one of the least desirable luxury properties in Manhattan. … Trump’s name has been a huge turnoff in liberal New York City. …

Most condo owners who sold since 2016 have recorded a loss … ‘no one wants in that building,’ says one former owner.

(Bloomberg, May 14, 2019)

Not to mention the schadenfreude I felt while reading this:

At Doral, which Trump has listed in federal disclosures as his biggest moneymaker hotel, room rates, banquets, golf and overall revenue were all down since 2015. In two years, the resort’s net operating income — a key figure, representing the amount left over after expenses are paid — had fallen by 69 percent.

(The Washington Post, May 15, 2019)

In fact, his brand is becoming so toxic that tenants in buildings all over the world are voting to remove his name – thus creating a vicious cycle of revenue losses. Granted, Trump has at least 16 criminal probes dangling over his head like proverbial swords of Damocles. Therefore, revenue losses might be the least of his worries.

Still, it speaks volumes that Trump Tower in New York City was the most profitable of his properties last year. After all, this was the case only because he’s charging both the Republican Party and his own re-election campaign exorbitant fees to rent space in his own building. In other words, he’s effectively embezzling campaign donations.

The Republican National Committee led the way, with Federal Election Committee records that were obtained by DailyMail.com showing that the group has doled out $1.4 million on overnight stays, meals and events at properties owned by President Trump since he took office.

(Daily Mail, May 16, 2019)

Again, nobody should be surprised that Trump is using his presidency to enrich himself like no other president ever contemplated, let alone dared. His self-dealing at Trump Tower is just one of the many norm-busting ways this Wizard-of-Oz-like conman is doing so.

But this is why the irony is so rich that, despite his money-grubbing efforts, he seems bound to lose more money during his presidency than any other president in US history. Never mind that such a fate would be entirely consistent with this:

[His core businesses] continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade (1985-1994). In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer.

Mr. Trump was able to lose all that money without facing the usual consequences — such as a steep drop in his standard of living — in part because most of it belonged to others, to the banks and bond investors who had supplied the cash to fuel his acquisitions.

(The New York Times, May 8, 2019)

The only difference is that media klieg lights on his presidency are now bringing investigators out of the woodwork. Which brings me to this bottom line from “NY Attorney General Dissolves the Trump ‘Charitable’ Foundation,” December 19, 2018:

And so the house of cards that is the Trump Organization begins to fall. … Trump seems bound to be the first man in history to rue the day he was ever elected president of the United States.

In other words, no amount of using the presidency to enrich himself will compensate for the financial loses and reputational damage he’s suffering.

Keep hope alive!