Trump's been getting away with scams, cons and crimes his entire life and always wriggles out of them. A new book by New York Times reporters Ross Beutner and Suzanne Craig called "Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered his Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success" says it all about Trump's long history of fraudulent business failures and his unique ability to convince people to keep giving him money anyway. They point out that Trump has had two big financial windfalls in his life, neither of them based on even the slightest talent for business. The first came via his daddy, who bankrolled him for decades with hundreds of millions of dollars and bailed him out repeatedly. He did manage some early success with Trump Tower and a couple of other buildings on which he'd been partnered with some people who knew what they were doing. But apparently, that was when the narcissism really kicked in so he bought into his own hype. He never listened to anyone ever again and virtually everything he touched — casinos, an airline, a football league, buildings in Chicago, a development for the world's tallest building in Manhattan, money-losing golf resorts, all of it — failed.
The second windfall came from "The Apprentice" which was picked up by NBC at a moment when Trump badly needed money. The illusion of wealth the show sold to America helped Trump cash in with an exclusive product placement deal that brought in a ton of money. (He even cheated his collaborator Mark Burnett, the producer who created the show, but they were all making money so they just let him do it.) Trump's personal licensing deals — the steaks, the vodka, the ties etc. — apparently never made much money, however.
No comments:
Post a Comment