October 4, 2016

Donald Trump Is a Lousy Businessman Who Got Lots of Money From His Rich Father and Then Squandered It

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Believe it or not, I try hard not to spend too much time covering every utterance from Donald Trump’s pie hole. Sadly, as the chart on the right shows (data courtesy of Quiddity), I fail more often than I succeed. Today I shall fail again.

First up, John Sides informs us that, even now, an awful lot of voters seem to think that Donald Trump is a self-made man. Nearly half believe that his father was roughly working class or so, rather than the millionaire developer he actually was. Presumably they also don’t know how much money Trump got from his father, either via loans, gifts, or eventually, inheritance.

The truth, of course, is that Trump’s father spotted him nearly $40 million in today’s dollars, and eventually Trump squandered it all:

Most of the $916 million loss that Trump claimed for 1995 is probably derived from about $900 million in bank loans taken out in the mid- to late 1980s that he had personally guaranteed and that he used to wildly overpay for hotels, airlines, yachts, barren land and other trinkets….None of these things are hallmarks of a great business operator or dealmaker.

Trump isn’t that financially sophisticated. In my interviews with him, he had trouble explaining such basic real estate concepts as “cash flow.”…His eyes tend to glaze over when complex numbers come into play. Trump’s own former accountant, Jack Mitnick, told the Times that it was always Trump’s ex-wife Ivana who asked probing questions about the couple’s taxes.

I’ve written about this several times before. Trump did a pretty good job building Trump Tower in 1984, but that was it. He didn’t have the attention span to repeat his success, instead throwing vast amounts of money at lousy businesses that no one else wanted. When that blew up, he managed to take the smoking ruins of his casino operation and turn it into a public company, which he mismanaged to its death, paying himself $82 million along the way. Since then, he’s made nearly all his money from entertainment and licensing.

Will Hillary Clinton bring up this subject in Sunday’s debate? Will she wait until the very last second, as she did with Alicia Machado, guaranteeing that Trump will go ballistic and keep it in the news for the entire following week? Maybe!

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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