Donald Trump announces he will run the U.S. like he has run his own life: Thrice divorced Trump has gone bankrupt 5 times
By Nate Thayer
June 16, 2015
We have entered the American political silly season, which promises to be equally as entertaining as embarrassing.
Trump and his haircut; What else is he not being honest about?
What is entertaining is Donald Trump announcing today he wants to run for president.
“I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created,” he said today, calling America a “laughing stock all over the world.”
“I’m really rich,” he said.
“Sadly the American dream is dead,” Trump added.
What is embarrassing is the U.S. republican party is promoting him as a serious contender. Even more embarrassing is that Trump is tied in opinion polls to former U.S. senator Rick Santorum, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former New York Gov. George Pataki, and he has more support than Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.
He received a standing ovation at a republican party held summit for presidential candidates in Iowa earlier this year. He was a featured guest at the republican party presidential candidates crucial Conservative Political Action Committee annual convention in March.
Let’s cut to the chase: Donald Trump is an idiot–regardless of one’s politics.
While Trump portrays himself as an icon of savvy economics and a populist political thinker, his record tells a very different story.
Trump represents the darkest side of Wall Street wealth and base American simple-minded intolerance and hucksters.
Trump is probably best known as the blowhard Kim Kardashianesq American success story of reality TV (“You’re fired!”) who sports a bleached raccoon carcass on his head.
One question is why the republican party is welcoming him as a viable representative of their political game plan for the next president of the United States of America.
“When is the last time we beat Japan at anything?” he said today, apparently unaware that World War Two occurred.
He called Mexican immigrants “criminals, rapists and, I guess, a few good people.”
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you…They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people.”
“I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall,” he vowed today.
Trump addresses the republican party mainstream vetting event for presidential candidates–the Conservative Political Action Committee
Another question is why the man is not in prison. Because the facts indicate that Donald Trump is, in fact, a serial failed businessman.
Before Donald Trump’s father died, he had bailed Donald Trump out twice from his inherited business enterprises. Since, Donald Trump has declared bankruptcy 4 times on his own.
His corporations have filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy four times. Trump has learned the lesson of getting rich in America: never take personal responsibility for your own actions–or finances.
Trump’s bean counters made sure that when he plummeted to a billion dollars in debt it was his corporations who filed bankruptcy and he could still maintain: “I have never filed bankruptcy.”
In Chapter 11 bankruptcies, the owners’ personal assets and credit history are unaffected. Trump keeps his personal money separate from his business money. If any average citizen did what Trump has done, we would be in prison.
Trump Casinos
Donald Trump has filed for corporate bankruptcy five times, in 1991, 1992, 2004, 2009, and 2014, all part of his showcase Trump Entertainment Resorts, the showcase of his collapsed economic acumen. He has never filed for personal bankruptcy.
Trump financed the construction of the business empire, the Atlantic City, New Jersey Trump Taj Mahal, with junk bonds and was unable to pay the high interest. By 1990, Trump’s business skills had amassed debts of $4 billion, including $975 million he personally guaranteed.
In 1991, unable to pay a $3.5 billion loan, he declared business bankruptcy. He was $900 million in personal debt, selling his Trump Princess yacht, his Trump Shuttle airline, and other investments. He learned his lesson then, and ever since has hid the risk of his business dealings behind the protection of corporate entities. “I’ve cut debt — by the way, this isn’t me personally, it’s a company,” Trump said. “Basically I’ve used the laws of the country to my advantage.”
Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., a casino company founded in the 1980s, which ran the Taj Mahal, the Trump Plaza and the Trump Marina in Atlantic City, N.J., has declared bankruptcy 4 times.
In 1992, Trump filed Chapter 11 on the Trump Plaza Hotel in Atlantic City, owing $550 million. Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts again filed for bankruptcy in 2004 with $1.8 billion dollars of debt.
As part of that deal, Trump kept three casino properties in New Jersey, along with the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan and a then-undeveloped West Side tract, kept some of the Trump Towers on Fifth Ave., and the Trump Palace condo tower on Third Ave. He had to give up the Trump Shuttle airline, a 49% stake in the Grand Hyatt Hotel, his 282-foot yacht, a 27% stake in the retail store Alexander’s and portions of the Trump Parc on Central Park South, records show.
His creditors put him on a $450,000 monthly allowance. In 1995, his salary from the Trump Plaza was upped to $1 million.
In 2004, Trump declared bankruptcy again, after eight years of losses and $1.8 billion in debt, and reduced his share in his own company to 27%, leaving bondholders with 65%. After Trump filed bankruptcy for the second time on his casinos, he remained chairman and CEO and kept his $2 million dollar salary. In 2005, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts came out of bankruptcy and renamed itself Trump Entertainment Resort Holdings.
Trump sued Deutsche Bank to get out of a $40 million loan during the 2008 financial crisis saying it was a ‘act of God’.
In 2009, Trump Entertainment Resorts again filed for bankruptcy with a debt ratio of $50 million in assets to his $500 million in debt. This was the third bankruptcy for Trump Enterprises.
In February 2009, Trump filed for bankruptcy again, telling Fox News: “I have nothing to do with [the bankruptcy]. I have nothing to do with the company. I am not involved in the management of the company. I’m not on the board any longer.” The same day he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “We quit before it was filed … I was not involved with the management of the company. It represents less than 1% – substantially less than 1% of my net worth and has for quite some time …The one bad thing is, it has got my name on it, which I’m not exactly thrilled about.”
Trump’s Hollywood official publicity photo
While resigning from Trump Entertainment, later in 2009 he bought back the company for $100 million and the company was released from bankruptcy in 2010.
In 2010, Trump once again blamed others while raking in the cash. “Other than the fact that it has my name on it — which I’m not thrilled about — I have nothing to do with the company,” he said.
“I’ve come out almost always as the victor, and I have to say that. Because, you know, I don’t want to be braggadocio, but that’s the kind of person, whether it’s me or somebody else,” the country needs as president, he said.
In September, 2014 Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. again filed bankruptcy. Trump Plaza also closed down in September, 2014 and the Trump Taj Mahal casino closed 2 months ago in November, putting 2,800 workers out of jobs.
Trump, once again, blamed other people for the failure of his businesses. “What happened to Atlantic City, there’s a lot of competition from a lot of other locations. It’s happening all over.”
Trump and other political stances
In April 2006, Trump said he was expanding his real estate business into mortgages.Trump told CNBC, “Who knows more about financing than me?”
Apparently, plenty. By 2008, Trump Mortgage was shuttered. It turns out Trump had hired one E.J. Ridings, who claimed to have been a top investment bank executive as CEO when Ridings’ had been a real estate broker for only six days. So much for the TV ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ genius businessman hype.
In 1973, the U.S. Justice Department sued Trump Management Corporation, which Trump was president, for racial bias against blacks.
After a white female jogger was raped in Central Park in 1989, Trump paid for full-page newspaper ads demanding the death penalty for four black youths arrested but not yet convicted. All of them were later proved to be not guilty and received multi-million dollar settlements for the accusations.
In a 1991 book on Trump, authored by the president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, Trump was quoted as saying “laziness is a trait in blacks” and “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
In 2011, during his last flirtation with the U.S. presidency, Trump said “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.” At the time, Trump said the only reason Obama was admitted to Harvard Law School was because he is black.
In April, 2013, after being criticized by Jon Stewart of the The Daily Show: “I promise you that I’m much smarter than Jonathan Leibowitz – I mean Jon Stewart @TheDailyShow. Who, by the way, is totally overrated.”
In June, 2013, Trump tweeted: “According to Bill O’Reilly, 80% of all the shootings in New York City are blacks-if you add Hispanics, that figure goes to 98%, 1% white” and “Sadly, the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and Hispanics tough subject-must be discussed”.
In 2010, Trump told Fox News “The problem with our country is we don’t manufacture anything anymore. The stuff that’s been sent over from China falls apart after a year and a half. It’s crap.” But in fact, Trump had created a clothing line which was made in China.
In 2011, Trump laid out his Middle East Policy. Regarding Saudi Arabia, he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos “I’m going to look ’em in the eye and say, “Fellas, you’d have your fun. Your fun is over” and then laid out his Iraq policy suggesting that the U.S. simply seize Iraqi oil fields and keep the money.
“So, we steal an oil field?” said Stephanopoulos.
“Excuse me. You’re not stealing anything. You’re taking — we’re reimbursing ourselves,” Trump said.
In 2013, the New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed suit against Trump accusing him of defrauding more than 5,000 people of $40 million he promised to teach them his get rich techniques at his “Trump University”–a ‘free introductory 90-minute presentation’ to build a real estate empire which was in fact an advert for a three-day, $1,500 seminar which offered people “elite” further seminars costing from $10,000 to $35,000.
In August of this year, Trump said two American doctors who contracted Ebola in West Africa should not be permitted to return to America for treatment because “they have to suffer the consequences.”
In 2011, the Wall Street Journal interviewed Trump:
Q: Should someone who filed for bankruptcy multiple times be running national finances at a time when we have a big debt problem?
T: I’ve never filed for bankruptcy.
Trump is sort of not lying. He has never filed personal bankruptcy.
But Trump’s wealth and “success” is a blueprint for socializing his losses and ‘free-marketing’ his profits.
His company is Donald Trump; his personal brand of which he wants to poison the rest of the country.
The truth is Trump went broke in 1990. What Trump is selling is all he has: Himself. presidential candidate Trump says America needs a President who is a “winner, not a loser”. Donald Trump’s real business is as a television huckster. As a businessman, he is, in fact a failure, perhaps sharing that distinction with George W. Bush.
“Look, if you look at bankruptcies, I’ve used the laws of this country to, on a very few relatively speaking, number of deals to chapter a certain company in order to negotiate debt…”
He told a Tea Party rally in Florida in 2012 he was a master businessman whose financial prowess qualified him to lead the free world. “We need people that win. We don’t need people that lose all the time. I’ve beaten many people and companies, and I’ve won many wars. I … earned many, many billions of dollars. It’s both a scorecard and an acknowledgment of certain abilities.”
In 2013, he told the Washington Post that he “never went bankrupt.”
“How many billions do you have?” Trump was asked.
“What do they say? 9,” Trump replied.
“Forbes said $3.2,” said Mary Jordan of the Washington Post.
“I say 9. It’s a big difference,” Trump replied. “I say 9 but that’s OK. I don’t know. Whatever it is, it is. It’s plenty of money.”
So, the record appears to show that Donald Trump is a common huckster and an idiot, if not a criminal.
The real question is why one of the biggest political parties in the United States–the Republican Party–is giving this embarrassment an endorsement and a platform to run for president on their political parties ticket?
