It is no secret that Donald Trump and the Trump Organization have two sets of books, one to look flush to lenders and one to look broke to the IRS. We’ve never seen Trump’s tax returns because to reveal them would undoubtedly expose him as the “clown living on credit” that he has been called. Adam Davidson is a financial writer who contributes to the New Yorker.
So, three businesses that lose around 5 million pounds a year and have a collective value of, say, 70M pounds (being generous) are claimed to bring in 150 million pounds a year!
And, again, those are his MOST trustworthy numbers.
2/
— adamdavidson (@adamdavidson) July 20, 2020
I do think there is fairly strong evidence that he, also, makes money by helping oligarchs launder money.
BUT, he seems to also be bad at that. He makes dumb deals that involve too much risk and too little return.
4/
— adamdavidson (@adamdavidson) July 20, 2020
And he, himself, doesn't understand business.
But I would wager that he is somewhere between broke and worth $150M or so. Which, of course, is very rich but not impressive. A $200M or so (we don't know the real number) inheritance in 2004 should be worth far more today.
6/
— adamdavidson (@adamdavidson) July 20, 2020
But those suburban "common sense" Republicans surely understand that if they leave their kids $200K and their kids are worth $100K 20 years after their death, their kids have messed up badly.
8/end
— adamdavidson (@adamdavidson) July 20, 2020
It has occurred to me that maybe what Vladimir Putin has on Trump is something this basic: Putin could show that Trump is broke. Occam’s Razor dictates that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Maybe there is no pee pee tape or great scandal and there doesn’t need to be. Putin, who actually is one of the world’s richest men, knows Trump doesn’t have squat. And that would explain why Trump is so obsequious to Putin. Putin actually is what Trump wishes he was and can never be. He can’t even be wealthy, let alone powerful and a leader in world affairs. He’s a total fraud.
His base might not be alienated by the fact that he lies about money. They probably will think, cool, he doesn’t have as much as he says, but he flies a big plane and lives in a gold leaf penthouse, and has a gold toilet, even without billions. But how can he hold his head up with actual conservative Republicans, who — purportedly, at least — value a dollar?
So this issue is explosive, make no mistake. It always has been. However, we’re not going to see Trump’s tax returns before the election.
New: The Supreme Court refuses House request to immediately issue judgments in congressional subpoena cases to more quickly restart fight for Trump financial documents. Justice Sotomayor notes her dissent. pic.twitter.com/RGrpj19O4N
— Todd Ruger (@ToddRuger) July 20, 2020
I'll never forget the common sense Republican challenged 2016 with the fact that his casinos went bankrupt 5 times, and she said, "That's STRATEGY. It was a business strategy that shows how smart he is." There is no arguing with that kind of idiocy.
— Abe Whipple (@abe_whipple) July 20, 2020
And "the hustle" his fans love isn't his. It's Putin's and Mogilevich's. And the joke is on the fans.
— !broken need a fix (@brokenNotRecord) July 20, 2020
This is dismaying, but not in the least surprising. We more or less knew that we weren’t going to see Trump’s tax returns before November, in any event, but at least the House should see them at some point. And that will be an interesting day. I wonder how many Republicans actually know the true state of Trump’s financial affairs? Maybe none, because it’s entirely possible that Trump doesn’t know the true state of his own financial affairs. But what a sublime irony, a paradox in fact: the party of fiscal conservatism put a spendthrift clown at the top of their ticket. No wonder the national debt has soared. Everything Trump touches dies, unless you’re a dollar —Â then you just shrivel to worthlessness.
I pray to God Republican voters have figured out that survival is the first order of business, because if Trump is reelected, Hoovervilles are going to look like Bel Aire and it may take a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy a loaf of bread.
We don’t need his financials before the election. We do need to keep an ete on what cozy bear and china, etc, are doing to our voting machines.
Yes. Survival is the first order of business and safeguarding the election is the most important thing. Absolutely.
Talking about voting machines isn’t safeguarding the election — it’s a shiny object that always distracts people in the left from what the GOP is actually doing. There is zero proof that there has been any handsy panky with voting machines in any U.S. election — none, nada, zip. If they could do that (and there are so many safeguards it’s not really possible), why do they work so hard to suppress the vote? The more we indulge in conspiracy theories about voting machines, the more we ignore the dirtier and more difficult work of fighting voter suppression — which is the main way they steal elections. I’m so tired of hearing people on the left put out crazy ideas about voting machines. After 16 years of this, I’m just beat.
Alas, Trump isn’t the first example of the GOP forcing a “businessman” President on the country. The notion that the government should be run like a business is part of conservative dogma. Well, for all his personal faults Clinton handed Bush 43 (a “businessman” who’d also failed multiple times) and a GOP Congress (both Senate and House) an economy in which we were running budget surpluses and paying down the national debt that had been run up by Reagan and Bush 41. We were on track to knock it down so far there were opeds by serious economists debating the wisdom of actually not having a national debt in the (then) foreseeable future! Of course, Bush 43 and his sidekick Cheney (another businessman) went to work and pissed it all away. The fact that GOP donors whined during the summer of 2000 about being hit up for more money, wondering how W had blown through a then record war chest when his primary campaign was effectively won after SC was warning of what was to come. But with “tough, pragmatic and hard-boiled ‘necessary’ choices”, the reason the GOP took it as an article of faith we need a businessman as President it all went to hell.
We quickly went from record surpluses that would have allowed both paying down the national debt and even some tax cuts in the first decade of this new century to record deficits and an explosion of the national debt. Bush 43 inherited surpluses. Obama inhererited record deficits and not just in his first year. It would take more than one year to start reducing the annual deficit, but things eventually got headed that direction. Trump inherited a far stronger (albeit still not working like it should for average and poor Americans) than Obama did and a GOP Congress who of course repeated the Bush 43 first couple of years and ripped the whole structure apart. And now the annual deficits are growing (and “bigly”) again!
Yeah, and try to tell that to a Bush toad. They will come unglued and make up all kinds of shit and try to tell you Clinton was the one that messed up. Clinton had like 700 million in surplus and bush made it disappear in under a year and we were in a deficit.
Bush was also a failed businessman with a rich daddy.
No, this isn’t explosive at all. Maybe 4 to 5 years ago, yes. Now? It’s news that has been chewed so often, it’s practically textbook info.
I disagree. Nobody has come up with an actual estimate of what Trump could be worth, because nobody has had any actual facts to work with. The fact that somebody finally did an audit and there are real figures, means that there’s a starting point from which to make an extrapolation. This is news.
Well you got to admit that a player wouldn’t have a 300 million loan if he was sitting on 3 billion and trying to run for president. Not worth the headache when you have the two boys running your show. At that rate Ivanka worth more.
Your last paragraph makes the assumption that those Republican voters will live long enough to experience such things.
And you’re assuming they’re going to die in droves from COVID-19? You could be right.
Older, spotty healthcare if any, a lifetime of bad habits in terms of diet and exercise, reckless disregard for masks and basic safety precautions on COVID 19…the only way their survival odds could be worse was if they were one of those ethnic groups they despise so much. The disease may not get them directly. But my recently late aunt was a sobering reminder on how coronavirus has many ways to make it happen.
About what I figured.
Let’s recall that Putin is a ruthless killer, former KGB, with a burning hatred for American democracy. Now his ‘useful idiot’ is doing Putin’s will. But, of course, there’s more. When you recover some of your lost wealth through money laundering for the Russian mob, in for a penny, in for a pound. It may be coincidence that Putin’s political opponent was gunned down in broad daylight in front of the Kremlin, or just another ending to Training Day. No wonder the Cheeto puff whimpers around his master begging for approval. Otherwise it could be his head in the basket. It’s really that simple.
I think he probably has about 150 million in cash and a lot of properties that are worth additional millions. But, when he charges the government for rooms and golf carts at Mar-a-Lago, it tells me that he is scrounging in the couch cushions looking for spare change. His family profited from the inauguration, and the hustling has continued.
His income before was from his TV show and from leasing his name out to various places.
I figured he had to be close to broke with all the cheap grifting he was doing. Making secret service pay for his golf carts and hotel rooms. Siphoning money off the campaign through events at Mar a lago. The DC hotel room stays as a way to get in his good graces. If you are a real billionaire you don’t need that small change, but trump surely seems to.
People think that Putin must “have something” on Trump. Ursula suggests that he “could show that Trump is broke”. But it’s simpler than that. Trump may be broke in a sense, but he has all the money he needs … as long as he does what’s expected of him. He’s quite happy to play ball, because Russia is his only source of capital. Nobody else will lend him a dime. Why would Putin want to to show this? — better it should be their little secret. The Russians own Trump. The Saudis also own a piece, no doubt. It’s not a stick, it’s a carrot called money. And they are getting their money’s worth, don’t you think?
They have gotten their money’s worth. The Saudis have literally gotten away with murder. And Jared was in town selling a nuclear start up kit to his Saudi prince buddy. Yep, Putin and MBS are getting the benefit of their bargain. It’s the U.S. that is getting screwed.