The profiteering profligate *resident got into politics for the sole reason of making a buck off it. And he did. His first day of office he launched his reelection campaign. Donor money kept pouring in, and Trump’s companies kept charging rent to the campaign, with the net effect being that Trump turned more than $900,000 worth of donations into revenue which came straight back to him. Now if that gets you boiling, chill: those days are over. Trump’s plan isn’t working. The Forbes 400 yearly list just came out and he’s lost $1.4Billion and dropped 138 spots lower on the Forbes 400. He must be bouncing off the walls. Forbes:
How would the most divisive presidency in modern American history affect a company built on the president’s persona? Forbes has been working to answer that question since the moment Trump got elected, interviewing nearly 200 colleagues, partners and industry observers. While the experiment continues to unfold, in real time, the early results are in. Much as he’s trying—and he’s definitely trying—Donald Trump is not getting richer off the presidency. Just the opposite. His net worth, by our calculation, has dropped from $4.5 billion in 2015 to $3.1 billion the last two years, knocking the president 138 spots lower on the Forbes 400,
Three factors are at play. Much of that decline is due to deeper reporting, which revealed, for example, that the president had been lying about the size of his penthouse. Some of it is due to larger market forces. Trump owns commercial space at a time when e-commerce is decimating brick-and-mortar retail, shaving more than $100 million off his fortune—and no amount of bully-pulpit Amazon-bashing will change that.
But the third factor comes from how Trump the president affects Trump the brand. Those familiar with him saw his 2016 run as a surreal marketing strategy, and Trump has said as much, telling Fortune way back in 2000, “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” Since his unexpected ascent to the White House, Trump has tried to leverage the trappings of the presidency to benefit his commercial projects, from visits to his golf courses to hosting summits at Mar-a-Lago to launching a new hotel-licensing business aimed at his voters. (The Trump Organization denies the licensing business has to do with politics.)
You know what they say about the best laid plans, and in this case, politics and business are not mixing well for Trump, as his charming personality and his utter incompetence send people running.
In Chicago, values of Trump condos have crept downward, the opposite direction of the overall market. “People bought into the building based on the brand being synonymous with luxury,” says Cyndy Salgado, a real estate broker who once worked for the Trump Organization, selling condos in the Chicago tower. “Now many people feel that the brand represents divisiveness, embarrassment and questionable morals.” All told, the shift in perception has erased an estimated $50 million from the value of his residential units in Chicago and New York.
Simply, nothing about Trump can stand up to too much scrutiny. He should have stayed in the shadows. Truth is eventually going to burn him like sunlight burns Dracula and we just have to wait for that day. Trump had a really, really bad year financially and it will be so satisfying to watch it get even worse. He must be gnashing his teeth, plummeting 138 spots. Maybe next year he won’t make the cut at all?
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