I didn’t vote for Trump and he does a lot of stuff I don’t like, but I get so tired of this.
Trump started with a one million dollar loan from his father and built it into a fortune of some two billion or so before he tanked in the early 90s and wound up almost a billion in debt. He fought his way out of that and had built another fortune by the time his father died in 1999, when Donald Trump was 53 and already famous for The Art of the Deal and his real estate and casino businesses.
Fred Trump’s net worth at the time he died (again, in 1999) was a relatively paltry 200 to 300 million dollars, which was split between Donald and his siblings and their children, so basically pocket change to Donald.
Like it or not, and while Trump undoubtedly benefitted from his father’s wealth, credit and connections, he built fortunes way beyond what he was given.
One does not necessarily imply the other. If his father manages to live a wealthy lifestyle till he’s 18, he probably got a good high school education and likely into college with a scholarship. At that point he’s starting off much better than a vast majority of American 18-year olds. And already has connections to powerful people who can lend him money to start a business or give him good jobs.
$200 million today is not pocket change. $800 million is very much not pocket change. Trump did not start out with only a slight head start.
That $1 million “starter” loan wasn’t all he got. It’s been reported widely, but here’s an overview from the WSJ.
Those additional loans amounted to millions more, over years, whenever he needed a hand.
As others have said, he’s a sales man, with a gift for taking in the gullible, and penchant for taking the easy way. He’d either be in jail for his shenanigans, or he’d be a discontented old man whose dreams never matched his realities.
I still prefer to see him as a pudgy old fart golf pro. Hanging around once-posh-now-seedy courses in frayed polyester pants, his bald spot covered with a grimy red ball cap that says MAGA on it (stands for “Mt. Airy Golf Association”). Every now and then some high roller slips him a big tip in return for the bodacious female company (and chemical enhancers) that DJT is able to procure. One day in the clubhouse, he sees a gorgeous model from Slovenia on the arm of the club president, but DJT knows better than to do anything more than tug his forelock and hustle back to the locker room. He knows his place and sadly makes do on the few crumbs that drift his way. Doesn’t that picture give you a warm fuzzy feeling? It sure does me.
He’d be an angry old white guy who watches Fox News constantly and considers himself and other angry old white guys to be persecuted, in some vague and nebulous way. Also, I doubt that he would have remarried after his second divorce.
No, I think the view that Donald Trump is a mediocre businessman is a pretty accurate one.
He started with a million dollar gift - and his father’s reputation to back him up. That opened doors for him that wouldn’t have been open otherwise. As I’ve noted, Trump’s biggest skill is convincing other people to invest their money with him. His family wealth was a factor in that.
A lot of his projects failed. That’s a matter of record. He had the family money to fall back on as he started over again.
As for the claim that Donald Trump would regard 200 to 300 million dollars as a paltry sum, what is that based on? Trump may claim to be worth billions but he has famously refused to open his financial records. For all we know, he might be worth around twenty or thirty million.
I’ve seen financial reporters who’ve pointed out that Trump would have made more money over the course of his career by just taking what he was given and putting it in generic index fund. Donald Trump is a below-average investment.
Man, that small loan from daddy bullshit is never going to die. Without Fred, Donny Boy is nothing. Since he’s such a miserable prick, he’d no doubt be working somewhere that enables him to bring misery to others. DMV clerk is my guess.
If Chump had not inherited any money, he may also not have been in any situation to develop his annoying braggadocio. He may have ended up lacking self-confidence completely. So I don’t buy into the notion that he could still have become a successful businessman.
Assuming he was all that successful anyway. They say in Thailand that you can end up with a small fortune owning a bar if you start with a large fortune. Could be the same with Chump. We don’t actually know how much money’s he’s lost over the years, but we do know of his bankruptcies.
a net worth of $300 million is not “paltry.” the average person doesn’t have even a couple thousand to play with. I’m sure there are a hell of a lot of people who could do well if given a million or two of “play” money to invest. the key is getting that money.
which is why the most apt description I’ve heard which applies to him is “born on third base, yet acts like he hit a triple.”
$300 million isn’t “born on third base”. It’s “born on two steps away from the winning run of game five of the World Series.”
I kind of have to agree with Starving Artist. Just because Trump is a jerk and liberals hate him doesn’t mean he might not have a knack for his core competencies of real estate and marketing. He’s more like Barbara Corcoran (another dummy) than Mark Cuban or Elong Musk. Trump is not really an entrepreneur and he’s definitely not a brilliant inventor.
You can be dumb as shit to sell real estate. Some of the dumbest people I know are in real estate. All you really need is drive, a narcissistic ability to bullshit and project confidence by not giving a fuck.
The problem is that even if Broke Trump was still able to transfer from Fordham to Wharton, he wouldn’t be starting off with his father’s bankroll to start him off. But who knows? He would probably just take out a shitload of loans and not care about how leveraged he was.
Look, the question implied by the title of the OP is whether Trump would be successful if not for the inheritance he received from his father. Therefore it’s germane to point out that:
a) His success clearly was not a result of an inheritance from his father because at the time his father died, Donald Trump had already built, lost, and rebuilt from a billion in the hole a second multi-billion dollar fortune.
b) It’s also clear that to most people 200 to 300 million dollars is a YUGE amount of money. But number one, Donald didn’t inherit 200 to 300 million from his father. Fred Trump’s fortune was divided between Donald and his three siblings and their children. I don’t know how much he finally wound up with but I’d guess around 50 to 80 million. And again, he was already 53 years old and world famous by the time his father died.
c) Many thousands of people start out with the same advantages that Trump had and don’t accomplish anywhere near as much as Trump has. So clearly his ‘silver spoon’ accounts for very little. If it was the overriding determinant factor, everyone similarly advantaged would have wound up the same or better than he has.
d) Claims that the initial amount, if invested in money market funds or whatever, would have earned as much money as he’s worth by now fail to take into account the very large amount of money he’s spent living during all these decades.
e) He built his second multi-billion dollar fortune from almost a billion in personal debt. You can’t dig out from under a billion in debt and become a multi-billionaire again in the span of seven years or so without knowing what you’re doing.
f) Trump Sr.'s money couldn’t have been much help to Donald once he’d built up his multi-billion dollar empires because even at the end of his very long life, Fred Sr. was only worth 200 - 300 million. So he had considerably less earlier in Donald’s career, and even if he’d just plain given it all to Donald, it wouldn’t account but for a fraction of Donald Trump’s net worth.
I know you guys are loathe to give him credit for anything. I feel the same way about Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. But at least I can acknowledge that their accomplishments exist. Are we about fighting ignorance here or not? The vast majority of the claims made about Trump are in error, whether factually or analytically. The guy is a jerk, and a lot of other undesirable things too, but it’s just plain folly to claim that he lacks business acumen and owes everything to a relatively small inheritance he received when he was 53.