NBC Fires Donald Trump

Cafe Society
21

They meant very little to his net worth. Sure, if he still controls the company, he’s out his most if not all of his ownership stake, but they can’t touch his personal money or any other venture. It won’t affect his credit rating, as each business entity would be borrowing on its own business credit, not the Donald’s personal credit. To Trump, it is just business as usual.

I am speculating on his number of business ventures. They are a lot more than 4, but how many I don’t know. I’m also speculating about any relationship Silverstein and Trump may have, because I don’t know either, nor do I know of any interactions they may have had.

I’m not speculating on how real estate enterprises set up their businesses, isolating each venture so that it affects neither their personal wealth nor any other venture. I’m not speculating on how the bankruptcies work, though I’m not going into detail on the two major types of bankruptcies and how they differ. Nor am I speculating about Larry Silverstein, who was the main partner in the original WTC, having ‘dibs’ on rebuilding. My wife works for Larry Goldman’s real estate management firm (and she calls on me quite often to help with the Excel work and because in a past life I used to handle partnership accounting for a hedge fund). Larry Goldman was one of the major partners in the original WTC, but took his portion of the insurance payout and didn’t reinvest into Freedom Tower.

Freedom Tower has a fair deal of risk - the risk of attracting enough new tenants to make it profitable. The financial industry, which filled the bulk of the former towers, are (almost) nowhere to be found. As of January, Conde Nast took up about 1/3 of the occupied space, and government offices were also a large leaser of space, occupying ~40% of the leased space (not total space). As of January, they were only 62% occupied. Silverstein and his management teams certainly know what they’re doing, but 62% might just be about break even if they’re lucky (and I doubt the gov’t is paying the market rates, which are the most expensive in NYC).

22

As of today all the right-wing crazies in Memphis are all chanting his name, swearing their loyalty and planning for his presidential campaign. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like everyone was enchanted by an evil wizard.

23

Ok, I’ll restate it as an hypothesis: Trump’s true net worth is a matter for speculation, since he hasn’t released any audited numbers. I’m not challenging your general points.

Ok, time to google:
Bloomberg on Trump’s net worth:
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-16/just-how-rich-is-donald-trump-exactly-
“He also doesn’t publicly delineate between what he owns outright and properties he manages, making components of his fortune hard to pin down.” Trump also pulls in a fair amount of licensing fees for properties that are named after him but managed by others.
Trump values his name alone at $3.3 billion. Forbes thinks Trump’s estimate of his net worth is exaggerated by approximately 100%. Donald trump financial statement: He says his name alone is worth $3 billion.

Forbes places his net worth at $4.1 billion. According to Forbes, he was in the red during part of the 1990s: good for him for bouncing back. Apparently only the first corporate bankruptcy truly put his wealth at risk.
Trump Exaggerating His Net Worth (By 100%) In Presidential Bid

ETA: Chart from Gawker: http://gawker.com/donald-trumps-grossly-exaggerated-net-worth-a-timeline-1711718182

24

NBC and Trump both own a piece of the pageant. NBC dumped it from their tv schedule, but separating legally will take time.

I hope the pageant finds another sponsor and tv slot. The women have done nothing wrong. Don’t jeopardize their scholarships because Trump is an pompous idiot. These women are from all over the world. I think many are from countries with little job opportunities? They need these scholarships to make better lives for themselves and their families.

25

That’s mostly a scam.

The way it works is this: The pageant offers a bunch of scholarships to each of a handful of winners. Each individual winner can only except one scholarship, of course, because they can only go to one school at a time. The pageant then gets to claim the entire value of all scholarships offered, even though only a tiny fraction of those can ever be used.

If I offer you a thousand different scholarships to a thousand different schools, each worth a grand, choose one, it only costs me $1,000 in actual scholarship money but I then get to claim that I offered you $1,000,000 in scholarship money. That’s essentially what they’re doing.

John Oliver did a piece exposing this with the Miss America pageant. How that relates to Miss USA and Miss Universe is revealed in the last bit of the linked article:

Net result is that the Miss America scholarship claims are largely bogus, and even with that, they are still the largest provider of actual scholarships. Meaning Miss USA/Universe give out even less scholarship money.

26

I’ll agree with you on that point. Trump’s self promotion combined with his disdain for actual facts make anything he says about his value suspect.

27

If NBC hadn’t fired Trump, wouldn’t they have incurred an equal airtime obligation to all the other presidential candidates?

28

Cracked has collected stories of Trump’s business practices that are in the public record. Just seeing these would make investors wary of getting into bed with him.

29

Are you guys smoking crack, that you’d want him anywhere near any project at all, let alone the Freedom Tower or whatever the hell they are calling it. That project was/is already a mess. Trump would have only made it worse and then run away as fast as his pudgy legs would take him.

That Cracked article is a great summary. Trump has sold this false bill of sale that so many people have bought. He sucks. He is not a great businessman, he is a liar and a used-car salesman on a massive scale.

30

No one said that. Trump is every (crooked) entrepreneurs’ wet dream. Even when his projects lose money, he makes money. That’s not necessarily illegal (and the Cracked article takes a number of liberties with its ‘reporting’). One is allowed to make money for finding, putting together, raising capital, etc., to get a project started. One is allowed to make money managing a project. Finders fees and management expenses should all be laid out in the offering memorandum.

Some ‘reading between the lines at Cracked’:

That’s not what the source article said. It said he defaulted on the loans, but not at what point he defaulted. We know it didn’t last long (4 years), but we don’t know how many payments he made.

This is scummy behavior no matter who does it, using the legal system to silence permitted speech. It’s why we need nationwide strong anti-SLAPP laws. But no one is arguing that Trump isn’t an asshole, and assholes do what assholes do.

As best as I can tell, Donald Trump has never filed for bankruptcy. Donald Trumps businesses, each a separate legal entity under the law, have filed for bankruptcy. That includes businesses that might only bear his name (which I would guess he sells for an upfront fee and points on the back end, such as the Trump Ocean Club Baja Mexico mentioned earlier).
Regarding Deutsche Bank:

Like the McDonald’s Hot Coffee lawsuit final payout agreement, we can only guess as to how much the case actually settled. There is as much evidence that DB lost $40 million as there is that Trump paid them what was owed quietly.

This is very common in bankruptcy restructuring, exchanging equity for debt forgiveness and installing new management. Nothing to see here. When the Trump Plaza Hotel finally shuttered its doors last year, Trump’s only involvement was trying to get his name off the property which he didn’t own or control.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like Cracked articles and read them often. But please don’t use them as a cite.

31

We’re in Café Society; I’ll use anything I like as a cite (also I didn’t post the link in the first place). Please take your requests for a proper cite over to GD. I’d rather not have CS turn into that morass, please!

32

Cite may have been the wrong word. Apologies. Maybe “take them at face value”? It’s a fun article, but Cracked (like certain news channels) starts with a premise and massages facts like Play-Doh to fit their premise. At least Cracked admits to being a humor site.

33

I remember this came up last time he “threatened” to run. NBC would have just skipped a season of The Apprentice.

34

Mexico has decided to make the Miss Universe Pageant a little less universal.

35

There is nothing better than Trump schadenfreude. It’s the biggest, classiest schadenfreude there is.

36

Macy’s is dropping its Donald Trump line of merchandise.

I don’t think that will hurt The Donald that much. On the other hand, I won’t have to watch him pop up in the middle of Macy’s commercials anymore, so I consider that a win.

37

No, no, no. HE dumped THEM because of their support of illegal immigration, and also the clothes were crappy!

38

Don’t you mean itss YUUUUUUUGE!!

39

Does he really think he’s fooling anyone?

40

I guess court testimony reported on the radio isn’t considered public, per se. I remember my first case of schadenfreude (before it was a popular term) in the mid-1980’s when I heard on morning radio that Trump lost a case against an old woman whose house he had arranged to have condemned because it sat next to one of his hotels and she wouldn’t sell him the property. Apparently he had ranted from the stand that her place was an eyesore and a blight on the landscape (echoing his claims on the paperwork for condemning the site). The court asked why he had offered her tens of thousands of dollars over market value for the land if it was so ugly.

That seems pretty out-of-control (megalomaniacal) and stupid.

—G!

The schadenfreude came to me when I heard the jury decided he was guilty of trying to bribe city officials to help him condemn the woman’s land. He was fined for the bribery attempt and ordered to pay the woman millions. The woman said she would take the money and – very pointedly – neither move (so Trump couldn’t buy the land) nor remodel (because that would imply Trump was right about her home’s appearance).