For the record, that building is gorgeous. The apartments are awkwardly laid out and surprisingly small, but the building is hot. Except it would be hotter if his name weren’t plastered on it in 20-foot letters.
But I’m patient.
I believe that The Donald doesn’t have many years ahead of him. He’s obese and the red skin tone under the magic Cheeto dust looks a helluva lot like out-of-control blood pressure. Combined with his NPD constant state of fury and denial, I wouldn’t be surprised if he crosses over to BabyJesusLand in the next few years.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if he’s diagnosed with some form of dementia in the near future.
My theory of what will happen post-election:
The Trumpeter will leverage his “fame” across every low-rent media outlet who will have him: Faux news, hate talk radio, conspiracy talk radio, “Dancing with the Stars,” “Help, Get Me out of Here, I’m a Celebrity,” and so on. He will have legal troubles with the IRS, Trump U, and possibly sexual assault rulings, but these will all serve to keep him in the public eye and therefore keep eyeballs on his media doings. Any publicity is lucrative publicity for him.
He may establish his own TV channel/show, but I don’t see it lasting long. As noted throughout this thread, this would be a very expensive undertaking and he would probably have a lot of trouble snaring advertisers, apart from Bob’s Gun, Ammo, and Drive-thru Beer Barn (“Visit one of our three stores in the tri-state area! Thursdays are ladies’ day, bring your gal along for a 15% discount on AK47s!”)
Unfortunately, his Bret Easton Ellis son will find his fame star ascend.
Trump will land on his feet because he’s rich. He may not/probably is not a billionaire, but by normal, middle-class standard he’s still filthy rich and we all know money talks and buys folks out of a lot of trouble that would ruin normal people. Sure, I have my fantasies about his empire faltering and him sinking into the swampy depths he deserves, but he’s a rich cockroach.
When I was in Vegas last week I figured it would look a lot better if someone just painted over the “T”.
Like being able to buy the Martha Stewart line of sheets and pillowcases at K-Mart?
He’s going to be poison to sponsors on top reality shows. You think he’s going to get the Apprentice back? Nor likely. He might be on Hannity, but even Ailes has bailed on him now, so Fox might not really want him around. And given how out of control he is, they would certainly not want him as a commentator. Even if they did, it would be chickenfeed for him.
But it takes a lot of money coming in to pay for those jets and stuff. And to pay back the Russians and Chinese. If his properties go under, he is going to be in serious trouble.
I think Mark Cuban said that how he licensed his name to all sorts of crap product indicates he has a big cashflow problem, since too many licensees diminishes the value of each one. And that was before he thoroughly trashed his brand. Go to a discount store and see how many formerly good brands are now on total crap products. Trump suits will be selling in WalMart soon, mark my word.
But it will be the most popular personal bankruptcy ever!
I wonder if he’ll try to claim that as a capital loss on his next tax return.
He may be able to immunize his descendants against federal income tax obligations for generations to come…
I agree with all of this. There’s always a market for people who admire people just because of their wealth.
You forgot to mention Book Tour on his new “They Conspired Against Me” memoir. 
Here’s something from September of this year from Gallup, so I’ll quote the whole abstract:
There’s an article on Vox summarizing the study, as well.
This Vox article, from the fifteenth of this month, summarizes even more studies.
- That’s true: at least up till now top drawer TV venues require you to be reasonably non-controversial. There’s plenty of reality TV fueled by notoriety but Apprentice was relatively top draw…for the genre business-wise, not my cup of tea.
- Trump isn’t going to take any role as small as commentator for the money, true. But assume he loses. In recent history getting a major party nomination for pres then losing means your political influence evaporates completely. This is where it’s conceivable IMO Trump could again surprise. Also either for money or influence/attention his political/media plan might not be to appear on somebody else’s network, but more of a Glen Beck thing, except Trump might think he could make a better go of.
- On this point though I think you need to de-spin yourself a little now that the election is drawing to a close. The best evidence albeit incomplete is that Trump is not particularly leveraged, and Cuban is just talking trash in all likelihood. Trump has mainly licensed his name rather than being an actual real estate developer for a long time
NYT identified $650mil in loans by companies Trump controls, but much or all might not have personal recourse to him. Separately Forbes and The Economist fairly recently came up with net worth estimates for Trump in $2-4bil, his $10 bil or the idea he isn’t really a billionaire are both spin, in all likelihood. $2.65 in assets and .65 in liabilities=2bil NW is very low leverage for a real RE concern, which The Trump Org really isn’t. It’s more of a marketing company. Which gets back to the real issue of modifying his marketing approach based on much higher positive profile among some people, and much more of a pariah among others. Anyway the image of Trump one step ahead of bill collectors is very likely false.
I think that in another 2-3 years, the Trump Organization will quietly announce that for various marketing reasons it makes sense to have all their properties operate under one brand. That brand will be Scion.
The announcement will make a fairly large splash on the business page of major papers, but will be a minor story in general.
They will try to build the Scion name into a brand as strong as Trump seemed to Donald to be, but they will fail at this.
By the time this happens (say in early 2019 for the name changeover), Donald will no longer be actively running the company.
When someone like McCain or Kerry loses they go back to their existing political network. Trump doesn’t have much of one, besides maybe Giuliani (out of office) or Christie (out of office soon, if not in jail.) He will surely be able to get people to rallies, but no one owes him a favor. Like Palin, he will be politically dead.
I’m not talking current net worth, I’m talking cash flow. Trump has two types of branding - high end clubs and hotels, and low end products. They wouldn’t be talking about changing the name of the hotels if the brand was so great. I’ve read enough about branding to know Cuban has a point. Trump’s brand now stands for rich elegance, like Trump Tower - or before the election. Now it stand for racism and sexism. His base will be fine with it, but not those who can afford going to his resorts. And who in the Arab world is going to pay him a licensing fee for a Trump Hotel? Not to mention in Mexico. This won’t affect his net worth now, except in brand value, but he had best cut down his spend rate pretty quickly. Not to mention alimony for Melania.
When the occupancy rates for the high end properties get low enough to be money losing, we’ll see still more bankruptcies. It will be the companies, not him, but it will hurt.
He hocks them to pay his attorney’s fees.
The blow to his brand doesn’t come from individual choices. I work for a Fortune 100 company and companies like mine book a high percentage of hotel rooms at hotels like Trump’s. We book golf outings for executives at Trump golf courses. Large companies are conservative and avoid controversy whenever possible.
I was chatting witha senior executive earlier this week and he said that we would never book an event at a Trump property now for fear of offending a client or a key employee. It is just much easier and safer to book a Marriott instead. I expect the decline in business bookings to be the real killer.
The 40% of the electorate voting for Trump are the kind of people he wants at his rallies, but definitely not the kind of people he wants staying at his hotels.
The only attorney that’s going to get paid is the most recent one that will be handling his bankruptcy so that he won’t have to pay any of the others…and if that lawyer has an I.Q. over 75 she’ll demand her money up front.
It’s not just the demographic; it’s also a matter of geography.
His branded properties are primarily in blue and to some degree purple states, not mostly red ones. And in those states his branded properties are mostly in urban areas.
The brand is now toxic to a large number in the demographics and locations that the brand has catered to.
Can he build a new set of properties built upon his appeal to his new demographic? (And those properties may be media in nature)? Maybe. But current properties have taken a hit in value and his ability to sell his name as “cachet” is … diminished.
10s of millions are going to vote for Trump. He’ll be fine.
Worse case scenario he sell’s off or rebrands the high end hotels and instead opens cheap Holiday Inn style resorts that appeal to his base.
Come stay at the Trump International I-90 Motor Lodge, with free continental breakfast, color TV, and air conditioning!
These days, most of his income is apparently from selling his name to people who want to plaster it on their own high-end properties. He’s gonna be SOL with respect to such deals in the future. But surely he’s got deals where his counterparties are committed to paying for the use of his name for the next ten or twenty years. So my guess is that while he may have to cut back somewhat on his opulent lifestyle, he’ll still be filthy rich by most people’s standards.
And even if he’s unable to cut back, chances are he can maintain his lifestyle for something close to his life expectancy. Mostly he’ll be blowing through his kids’ inheritances. If he lives to age 90, they may find they’ve spent all this time sucking up to the old man for nothing. Sad! (For them, anyway. A big grin for the rest of us.)