Trump Is, Quite Literally, America’s Biggest Loser
On This Day In 2019
You may know that Donald Trump got his big start in business when his family stole $509 million, in today’s dollars, from U.S. taxpayers. (Mark your calendars for the OTDI of Oct. 2 for that full story.)
And you may know that if Trump had simply given his ill-gotten fortune to an orangutan who then threw darts at stock charts for him he’d now be at least $10 billion richer than he actually is. (Well, minus the commission to the orangutan.)
And you may know that dozens of Trump’s business dealings have failed, gone bankrupt, and/or been determined in court to be an outright fraudulent fake. A partial list of his failures includes an airline, a vodka brand, a university, a pro football team, multiple casinos, luxury food products, hotels, and resorts.
But what’s notable is the extent to which Donald Trump’s ineptitude cost him mind-boggling sums of money. He frittered away so much wealth in bad deals that Trump was literally the biggest financial loser in the United States for multiple years.
The data: Trump had promised – and then refused – to reveal his tax returns. But OTDI 2019, based on newly-received information, the NYT published the findings from their multi-year investigation. What they found was startling: Year after year, Trump’s core businesses were losers. Bigly.
In 1987, even while he was publishing his myth-making “The Art of the Deal” about his acumen, he personally was deep in debt and barely holding onto his failing businesses.
And then things got bad. In 1990 and 1991, Trump’s losses “were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.”
And over the 10-year span 1985-’94, Trump’s core businesses cumulatively lost $1.17 billion dollars. (And that was back when “a billion dollars” actually meant something; $1.2 billion from then is the equivalent of ~ $3 billion today).
How did Trump respond to the curtain being pulled back like this? He tweeted gobbledygook about how taking real estate losses could have strategic tax advantages.
But no, this was not some clever tax avoidance scheme. Trump does not play three-dimensional financial chess. As @JohnCassidy summarized in the New Yorker: “Don’t let anyone tell you…that the businesses Trump operated were successful, or that the huge losses they sustained were simply tax dodges. They weren’t.”
The conclusion: The legend Trump had crafted about himself as an eternally successful self-made billionaire was largely a con. Instead of earning billions through savvy deals, he actually lost an enormous fortune through his bad deals and poor management skills.
Why does any of this matter? Because millions of Americans fell for his act. They voted for him in 2016 because they thought he could do for our country what he did for his personal finances. Sadly, they were right.
Dive Deeper
Note about the image: That New York Magazine cover image of Trump-as-loser ran on 10/31/16. It referred to his electoral chances, but the concept also applies to his finances. As the cover proved wrong about the election, it became a collector’s item. The image above is a snapshot of a printed copy which, as of this writing, is for sale here.
The NYT’s blockbuster report revealed the depth of his woes and incompetence
The New Yorker summarized the findings
Fortune disclosed back in 2015 what a horrific investor he is
The New York Times details The Trump Family theft of $509 million, in today's dollars, from the United States as part of their Pulitzer Prize-winning series
CNN explained why Trump’s losses are not business-as-usual, despite what Trump claimed