It should be noted that both twins ended up profoundly damaged, and wards of the state.
Not that I blame Carson for that. I’m honestly glad they got someone good to try. But the surgery wasn’t the slam-dunk that the press likes to suggest.
The article did say they only had a year or two.
But yeah, even if it worked, that doesn’t make him Presidential material.
His father was leery of Manhattan real estate and didn’t want to get involved. Considered it too risky. He made his fortune building affordable apartment housing in the outer boroughs. Trump came into Manhattan and started putting up high rise office and residential buildings and made his fortune in a completely different and much tougher kind of real estate business than his father had.
Did you not read anything I said? Trump did not get his father’s fortune until a decade after he’d already published The Art of the Deal, built Trump Tower and completed many other grand buildings and refurbishments, built and operated multiple Casinos in New Jersey that operated profitably for some time until the casino business went south for nearly everyone. He then faced a downturn that saw him lose many of his holdings and deeply in debt. He fought his back from that and had become successful and a billionaire once again by the time his father died. As I said before, his father’s money was icing on the cake by that time.
Virtually everything you say demonstrates an abysmal lack of knowledge about Trump’s history. He didn’t squander his wealth by going bankrupt, he actually saved part of it.
At one point in the early nineties Trump was not only technically broke but in debt to the tune of nearly a billion dollars. He commented to his wife one night that a homeless guy nearby was worth $900 million more than he was.
Through extraordinary business insight, tough negotiation and severely tightening his own belt he was able to battle back and rebuild his multi-billion fortune again…and in fairly short order.
Further, according to Wiki anyway, Fred Trump’s assets at the time of his death in 1999, were worth an estimated $250 - $300 million dollars and were divided equally among his four surviving children. So clearly your claim that Trump owes his success to inheriting $300 to $400 million from his father is demonstrably false on at least two levels: one, he had already made, lost and remade a multi-billion dollar fortune before his father even died; and two, he inherited less than a hundred million anyway if Wiki is to be believed.
I trust that having twice now debunked your assertion that Trump only owes his success to having inherited hundreds of millions from his father it won’t be necessary to do a third time.
The outer boroughs are (literally) 600 feet from Manhattan. Which his father avoided so not to compete with his less talented son:
**Recently, Donald Trump said he was happy his father stuck to Brooklyn and Queens. ‘‘It was good for me,’’ the developer said, chuckling. ‘‘You know, being the son of somebody, it could have been competition to me. This way, I got Manhattan all to myself!’’ **
So, no nepotism at all. Except, even his brother concedes:
** ‘‘But what he lent was mostly knowledge; Donald really did it on his own, along with whatever boost he got from being Fred Trump’s son, of course,’’ Robert Trump said. **
It’s an honest to god riches to slightly more riches due to a paltry rate of return and a few decades of time.
He inherited the (Fred) Trump Group in the early 1970s valued at several hundred million. You’ve debunked nothing.
Oh, please.
Then why didn’t he ever venture into Manhattan during Donald’s child/early adulthood?
Gracious words from a loving son complimenting his deceased father, and in no way proof that Fred stayed out of Manhattan for his son’s sake. Again, he had at least 25 or 30 years in which to venture into Manhattan before Donald decided to make his mark there. Why didn’t he?
First of all, allowing a son to work in and learn the family business is hardly nepotism by most measures.
And yes, no one is denying that Trump benefitted by having learned the family business while growing up, nor by having received a million dollar loan to start his own business. But don’t you think a smart, shrewd businessman like Fred Trump wouldn’t have been willing to loan his son that money if he didn’t quite a bit of confidence in his ability? Trump has four other siblings, and none of them have come close to the heights he’s achieved. And there are hundreds if not thousands of millionaire and billionaire offspring in this country who’ve done nothing of note whatsoever.
Sigh
No, for the second time, he did not inherit it; he was given managerial control of it. Big difference. (And also yet another sign of Fred Trump’s confidence in the considerable abilities of his young son.)
Look, you guys don’t like Trump and so you’re unwilling to give him any credit for anything. I understand that, I’m the same way when people start talking about how smart Bill Clinton or Barack Obama are. But I don’t ignore the facts and either distort them or repeat the same old fictions over and over again because I don’t want to give them credit. You guys can think what you like of Trump as a candidate for the presidency, but when you keep repeating the same untrue nonsense over and over again despite the fact that the facts prove you wrong over and over again you just look like a willful low-information voter. And we all know which side is supposed to have all the low-information voters, don’t we?
What I’m saying is he’s no Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, despite having a fortune of similar magnitude. He got a lot of leg ups and could almost have become a billionaire with careful investments instead of working 40 years on making deals. Would you concede that this is true?
Trump is a competent businessman and he’s made some good deals and bad deals. He obviously knows “the art of the deal”. But he’s not an exceptional, jackpot, supergenius innovator/reality distortion guy like the 2 California tech billionaires I mentioned. Heck, for that matter, Trumps actions didn’t really create anything : he bought and sold property, and worked out the financing for some really nice buildings. I suppose he might have had some input on the look of the branding or the color scheme…
Well, Ivanka is on pace to make even more money in real estate. What an amazing coincidence that they happen to all have the last name of “Trump”. I’m sure that her grandfather’s last name and the empire she is inheriting through her father has nothing to do with her successes in this field.
Competent. We can compromise. I will accept “competent”.
Not even alive anymore? Pffft, what a loser…
Whoops, hereis the article.
Also, I am more on Starving Artist’s side when it comes to Trump’s business acumen. OTOH, I am left feeling like my life would have been completely different with different parents.
I think Trump is a very shrewd and cunning man of exceptional intelligence, possibly a genius on the level of Jobs or Musk but how can anyone say? I’m not all that familiar with Elon Musk but I’ve been a follower of both Steve Jobs’ and Donald Trump’s careers for decades and there are more than a few things they have in common. Both have shown themselves adept at seeing opportunity where no one else has, over and over again. Both have shown themselves to know how to push people to their very limit to get the most out of them, Jobs with his employees and vendors, and Trump with his business adversaries, competitors, and also his vendors. Both have shown a similar ability to recognize, hire and retain extremely good and competent people. And both have shown extraordinarily ability as visionaries. Jobs could look at a primitive graphical user interface and know immediately that it was the future of personal computing, and Trump could look at a huge tract of land and buildings sitting abandoned and in ruin and envision a huge business, residential and shopping complex in its place, a complex that is in no way simple to pull off or guaranteed to make a profit once built.
And certainly Trump has shown himself to be what Bill Gates would refer to as a “high-bandwidth guy”, managing the financial, architectural, engineering, political approvals, contracting, scheduling, etc., of multiple projects at the same time that are complex and difficult and involve a great deal of technical knowhow. It’s undoubtedly true that he now has people in place to shoulder much of this load, but he still has to know how to supervise and manage these people, assess and the quality of the jobs they’re doing, and take the appropriate steps accordingly and for much of his career he handled most of these details himself. I was surprised to hear him talk recently about how he buys a huge number of television sets every year for his hotels and resorts and how difficult it is to find an American manufacturer. He knows details about all the South Korean and Japanese firms and their products and apparently places his orders accordingly, but to me it was fascinating that a guy with all he has going on would be learning about and ordering televisions for his properties himself.
What Trump does is not easy. Most of the people on this planet wouldn’t be able even to ride herd over all he has going on even on a day to day basis, let alone seek out and obtain the proper locations, put in place the financing, and then build and operate the projects he does so that they turn a profit and continue to grow his empire like he does.
I asked my grandparents when I was a child what a genius was after hearing the word on television. They told me that geniuses were people who had the ability to see things no one else can see.
Now take a look at Trump’s candidacy, where from Day 1 he’s blown all the other Republican candidates out of the water. It’s pretty much been Trump and the Seven Dwarves ever since. Look at the way he’s for the time being at least brought them and the media to heel. Look at the support he has and the crowds that attend his rallies. No one in the beginning took his run for the presidency seriously. Time after time he’s said and done things that were supposed to be his ruin and it’s only boosted him further in the polls. I don’t know what his end game is and I too have a hard time thinking he’s serious given some of the things he’s said and done, but one thing I’m sure of is that he knows exactly what he’s doing and why and nobody else can see it.
So yeah, I’d call him a genius.
Much of her success is due to her beauty, poise, likablity and charisma, all of which inspire a significant number of women around the country to want to be like her, or live like her…or at least use some of the same makeup, style and home keeping techniques that she uses.
Certainly the media exposure she gets through being an exceptionally glamorous member of the Trump family has made it possible for her to be achieving the success she’s currently enjoying, but she’s emerging as a lifestyle guru (or at least as someone to emulate) in a field that other rich and beautiful women have struggled and largely failed to gain a foothold in (I mention Gwyneth Paltrow, Blake Lively and Jessica Alba, to name but three), and without the qualities I outlined above she’d be little more than a much more well behaved version of Paris Hilton - famous for being pretty and from a wealthy family.
And as your link above demonstrates, a considerable portion of her day is spent the same way as her brothers, which is administrating and supervising parts of their father’s real estate business.
She seems to have a pretty successful and rewarding homelife as well.
Other than the exposure she’s gotten from being Trump’s daughter (and without which frankly it would have been very difficult for her to have achieved what she has) she’s accomplished everything else on the basis of qualities that are unique to her and without which she wouldn’t be accomplishing what she is no matter how much exposure she got.
Not really, as pointed many times before, he is nowadays ignorant and incompetent at identifying the people he is getting close to in this election, either that or that he does not care because he is indeed a racist, a bigot or a science denier.
He may get the nomination, but continuing to win among Republicans by less than 30% translates to less than 8 percent of the whole electorate.
Artist, can you say with honesty that you genuinely believe that
- Trump could bring peace to the middle East
- Trump could make the U.S. military so powerful “no one would want to mess with us” and eliminate ISIS
- Trump could force Mexico to build a high end wall, able to stop virtually all the illegal crossings into the USA
- Trump could have prevented 9/11
Those are just the promises I can remember off the top of my head. If you actually think he could do some of these things, feel free to quote the exact wording he used and how you feel he could have implemented it. The “preventing 9/11” is especially galling : yes, the FBI had a report from when the hijackers were in training. But with a nation of 350 million people, the FBI must get thousands if not hundreds of thousands of possible terrorist “rumors” in their intel office every year. There is no physical way they could investigate every possibility with any feasible level of manpower. (in fact, I think if they had more agents and more ability to investigate “rumors”, they’d end up with more tips to investigate…)
And in any case, the President would never have time to review reports like that or micromanage FBI operations. Had Trump been President from 2000-2008, he would have gotten hit by surprise with 9/11 just like Bush. Maybe he would have responded to the attacks with better judgement, but preventing it was essentially impossible.
I can say with honesty that I take very little of what Trump has been saying on the campaign trail seriously.
ETA: I can also say with honesty that should Trump actually wind up in the White House I believe he will govern very differently than most people think.
One of my favourite quotes about business is from Mohamed Al-Fayed: ‘you can ask me anything at all about my businesses and career … except how I made the first million’.
And that’s it basically, most of us can make money from money - esp. with social and business connections given to us.
It’s like a model claiming she worked so hard to be born pretty.
So how are we supposed to feel about someone who constantly spouts deceitful, hateful, utter bullshit for the sole purpose of getting elected?
If he believes even a fraction of what he’s been spouting, he’s a dangerous imbecile.
If he doesn’t, he’s a fraudulent demagogue.
And there’s a good chance he’s actually both a dangerous idiot AND a fraudulent demagogue, not to mention definitely a raving megalomaniac, too.
Sounds like the ideal candidate for solid governance and wise leadership! 
Well, Hillary, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and many other Dems frequently spout deceitful, hateful, utter bullshit about Republicans and people of a conservative mindset for the purpose of getting elected, so your question in that regard is pretty much a wash.
As to how you should feel about him, that’s completely up to you. I would just prefer that people form their opinions within the framework of reality when assessing his intelligence, accomplishments and success. Trump has chosen the approach he’s taken for reasons known only to him and he has to rise or fall based on that approach and whichever approaches he might decide to take in the future. I’m comfortable with people judging him accordingly.
Such as? Also DWS isn’t running for president.
We have. He’s a lightweight who used his silver spoon to increase his fortune. His accomplishments are on the level of Paris Hilton, or Jeb Bush. He used his name and elevated position to achieve moderate success. If he were born poor, Trump would be a car salesman.
He’s a racist, ignorant, bitch and deserves to die penniless and alone. But, unfortunately, we don’t live in a just reality.
The fact that the GOP is choosing him (so far) shows the class of folk that make up the GOP base.
Absolutely amazing. After being patiently shown that you have been fed a line of bullshit by your “news” sources about “what difference does it make,” and that the original transcript shows that what she said was the complete opposite of what you thought, you jump to another point just as wrong, and just as easily proven wrong by reading the original transcript, instead of the out of context part they keep playing on Fox News or Limbaugh or wherever you get your “facts.”
I look forward to your next post, about “You didn’t build that.”