Kudos for the Blazing Saddles reference.
And those are some scary-ass polling results.
What a ringing “not an endorsement”.
This is so outrageous that I hope that it is due to respondents riling/yanking the chain of/lying to the pollsters.
IIRC, the poll question was worded as it having been an Executive Order (which is, AFAICT, true). However, the fact that Obama has used Executive Orders to work around an obstructionist Congress has undoubtedly made that particular term a hot button for some Republicans; they may well have objected to any Executive Order.
However, there may well have been some chain-yanking there, too.
So whether he’s much of a real estate developer, or has been much of one, for a long time is questionable. But it isn’t in question he has billions of dollars in real estate.
Trump’s real worth is somewhere between $2.5bn-4bn, most seem to think around $4bn. Most of his “claimed” net worth of $10bn is based on his brand valuation, but literally no one other than Trump values that at $6bn. Trump owns stakes in the following NYC properties, the total value of his stakes is estimated at around $2.18bn:
Trump Park Avenue
1290 Ave of Americas
Niketown, E 57th St
Trump International Hotel and Tower, Central Park West
Trump Tower 725 Fifth Avenue
Trump World Tower, 845 United Nations Plaza
Trump Plaza, 3rd Avenue
Trump Parc East, 100 Central Park Avenue S
40 Wall Street
He owns 13 golf clubs (not five irons, the actual place where they play golf ;)) with an aggregate valuation of $366.6m.
He has “personal assets”, meaning his personal residences, planes etc valued at around $162m.
He has $1.78bn in “other properties and assets.” These are various things, a mixture of clubs (Mar-a-Lago, a private club, and Doral Miami–a resort, a winery, a few hotels he owns, some land he owns for a planned residential development.
None of the above are things where he’s received a fee for usage of his name, those are all real assets he owns either in full or stakes in, and given the weight of Manhattan properties it’s no surprising the valuations are high–Manhattan has among the world’s highest valued real estate per sq. ft.
All of the “Trump branding” stuff, Forbes analyzed and found it to be worth $230m or so. This is a big number, but Trump claims it is worth over 10x that, and that is how his claimed net work of around $9-1bn is about $5bn higher than what Forbes reports. So while that Trump branding merchandise, buildings etc are certainly significant, it’s not fair to say that’s what most of his business is. To be frank much of Trump’s actual business is actually just owning things, he only manages through his company a small portion of the properties I’ve listed out. Some he has no management involvement at all, he just owns a stake in something that has intrinsic value and from which he generates income. That’s more where it’s a lie that he’s a significant “manager” or businessman day to day these days, much of his wealth is tied up in real estate assets he isn’t really involved in other than owning. I do believe he’s involved in the management of the two clubs in Florida, the hotel he owns in Las Vegas and some of the golf clubs he owns.
So there’s a few claims here I can work through. What you’re saying has shades of truth to it but isn’t on the whole accurate.
So to start with Trump’s dad built buildings at a profit (i.e. he was in construction) and owned a huge stock of rental units–14,000 in the 70s. When Trump took over in the 70s that was largely their business. But even then Donald wanted out of being a land lord and started to divest the Trump business of such holdings. From there he transitioned into a “real estate developer.” Someone that bought all or a large stake in a site, managed its development (zoning/construction/marketing) and then sold it at a profit or managed it as a going concern. He had some level of success with this, growing the Trump business several fold from the 70s to the early 90s. In the early 90s he hit his first major headwind, two companies representing two real estate assets–the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and the Trump Plaza Hotel in New York and Atlantic City ran into serious financial troubles. Trump had made some personal guarantees here (meaning he had put up his personal fortune against some debt he was using in connection to these holdings.) The bankruptcy of these two companies threatened him with personal bankruptcy. He escaped that by negotiating better payment terms on his personal debt, and part of how he paid it off was by selling stakes (for example 51% of the Plaza Hotel) and all those licensing deals for buildings we talked about. Those started to come into play more so than in the past in part to get Trump out of the personal debt that was threatening him with personal bankruptcy.
That’s two of Trump’s famous four bankruptcies, the Taj Mahal (1) (an Atlantic City casino) and Trump Castle Associates (2nd bankruptcy), TCA included the NY Plaza Hotel, the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City and the Trump Castle Casino and Resort in Atlantic City. Despite going through the bankruptcy process here it should be mentioned the type of bankruptcy involved allowed the properties to continue operating and Trump to mostly maintain control. He maintained his stakes in and control of the four casinos mentioned, had to sell 51% of his stake in the NYC Plaza Hotel (he retained the title of CEO of the hotel but was relieved of all actual management responsibilities by Citi which held the 51% stake.)
Then in the 2000s came Trump Hotel & Casinos Resorts (3) which was his third bankruptcy. While a new corporate name, this again represented his Atlantic City casinos and a riverboat casino. He again had these go through bankruptcy, and again maintained control of them. In this bankruptcy his bondholders were given majority ownership, but Trump retained status as the single largest shareholder and was still in control of the management of the casinos.
Finally in 2009 the (4) bankruptcy came when these Atlantic City properties went bankrupt again, ending Trump’s ownership in them and association with them. A few of them continued on with the Trump name as going concerns until 2014 when they were closed permanently.
So that’s the full bankruptcy details.
Again, on the claim about licensing his name, while he has made money with that, it isn’t as much as he claims and in fact only represents a small portion of his fortune.
I think Trump made something like $200m from his 13 year involvement from the Apprentice, while again, a large sum, he has over $3bn in genuine real estate assets so he has not made more from the Apprentice than from real estate.
I’m unclear on whether Trump personally owned “Trump University” but he ran ads for it and was involved enough that he’s part of the civil fraud case involving the educational scam organization that is currently ongoing, and is expected to have to testify.
So essentially the long of it is, Trump unloaded a lot of residential rentals in the 70s, invested it into development, made a good bit of money developing and selling properties, got involved in casinos from which he extracted lots of profits and invested those in other real estate holdings privately using his profits, and eventually those casinos all went bankrupt. So while they were long term failures as businesses, he actually still has significant net worth from them because he reaped huge profits from them over a period of many years which he used to then invest in other real estate that were in totally separate legal entities.
nm
Average white blue collar workers aren’t neo-liberal globalists who hate the New Deal. If they were they would’ve voted Jeb. When Trump says he won’t destroy entitlements and he’ll insure everyone these are very good things from the Republican electorate’s POV, not something to be deflected with race baiting. The race baiting is the frosting on top.
He’s a populist and a nationalist. This could be construed as being liberal, since the Republican party is in a dark place.
Everyone supports big government. Modern industrialized nation states have been big government for 100+ years. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
I’ve never heard him say he wants to move trade unions into the government, so he can’t be a corporatist.
Holy crap! Chris Christie just endorsed Trump! No linky yet but I’m seeing it live on MSNBC. I didn’t see this coming at all.
Didn’t Trump say that he’d like an experienced politician as his VP yesterday? There may be a quid pro quo at play here. Christie’s political career appears to be over, but a stint as VP would resurrect it.
That’s a pretty big thing. Trump had a couple House members endorse him but Christie (failed run aside) is a sitting Republican governor and in the sort of state that Kasich or Rubio would like to pretend that they’re strong in.
One thing that made Nate Silver famous was that he not only consulted the best pollsters, but he also checked if his sources were accurate too, thanks to his knowledge in statistics he identified problems with pollsters like Research2000 that turned to show that that pollster was very likely involved in producing fake data.
So out with that source of info and hello to more accurate sources that made him a star in the pollsters world.
OTOH Trump does fit the pattern of some relatives I have that in their later years also get stuck into relying on very bad sources of information and they are not willing to check if their sources are reliable or to even clean their Internet bookmarks after finding that they are dirty.
We Found Where Donald Trump's "Black Crimes" Graphic Came From - Little Green Footballs
I guess we know who President Trump would appoint as Secretary of Assholishness.
Wow. I would not have guessed that in a million years. Someone must really be anticipating needing a Presidential pardon in a few months.
The kind of steady, even-handed leadership we need!
Until the border wall is up, we’ll be sure to close the bridges over the Rio Grande.
Right when Rubio really does seem to be hitting his stride in jabbing at Trump. Implying he wet his pants–wow, Marco.
This will not end well for Rubio. The pig likes it.
Christie will be in charge of controlling bridges throughout the USA.
And the donuts will be much bigger.
Unless Christie is seriously delusional, I’ve got to figure that he already decided his political career is over so he’s going to take out Rubio, do a favor for a friend, and cash in with a corner office at Trump Tower.
Stony Brook University political science professor produces a statistical model which has correctly predicted every Presidential election since 1912. The model says Trump’s the winner.