That Deal Tom Barrack Talked About? Trump Took a Bath On It.

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Tom Barrack is now telling us about the time he sold Trump the Plaza Hotel. “He played me like a Steinway piano,” Barrack said. Trump was a steely-eyed negotiator, a tiger in the jungle.

Who is he kidding? The Plaza Hotel was a disastrous deal—for Trump. Trump went with his gut and overpaid enormously. He bought it for $407 million—far more than it was worth at the time—spent over $50 million in renovations, and then, when he was going through bankruptcy proceedings, was forced to sell it in a deal that valued the hotel at $325 million. Barrack and his boss took Trump to the cleaners.

What’s more, Barrack was highlighting the absolute worst part of this deal: that Trump was so eager to get the hotel that he agreed to forego normal due diligence and instead allowed Barrack to just give him a list of stuff that needed fixing. It was massive negligence on Trump’s part. If Harvard has a list of the worst, laziest deals ever made, this one would make the top ten list.

Yet this is the example they’re touting to show what a great businessman Trump is? That takes real balls. It’s a testament to the fact that the Trump campaign figures it can just say anything. The Trump hagiography is once again beamed out to millions of people and nobody will ever hold them to account.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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