Lawrence O’Donnell mentioned this on MSNBC tonight on The Last Word, and I couldn’t resist passing it on. We all know that The Mango Messiah is not only totally transactional, he is egomaniacal as well. The thought of turning the old Post Office Building in Washington DC into a flagship Trump hotel was irresistible, and Trump wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Trump got his wish. And after being elected President, immediately ran into trouble. The risk of emoluments violations was almost guaranteed. But the Trump dominated General Accounting Office, which actually holds the deed to the property refused to intervene, and courts refused to rule on emoluments violations to go forward. Trump had his cash cow.
Except maybe not. Independent reporting shows that over his four years of presidency, the Trump Hotel Washington lost $70 million. But that’s only on paper. In reality, through accounting boondoggles, In reality, the hotel pumped millions of dollars into the Trump organization coffers, as well as Trump’s personal family doffers.
It has been common knowledge for months now that the Trump organization, bleeding red ink, was looking to ditch the Washington DC property. And now they’ve done it. It has been announced that the Trump organization has agreed to sell their lease to the hotel to a Florida consortium for $375 million. One of the terms is that upon completion of the sale, the consortium will remove the Trump name and replace it with Waldorf Astoria.
But here’s Lawrence’s question, which intrigued me. Would Donald Trump, the potential 2024 Presidential candidate want to unload a property that, while losing millions on paper, was shoving millions into his personal pocket? If he were reelected to a second term in 2024, Trump could use his newly reestablished control of the government and the GAO to let the losing hotel siphon millions into his personal accounts.
It seems far more likely that the criminal defendant Trump is far more worried about trimming the sails to get rid of losing properties in order to maximize his cash flow for the army of lawyers to defend him from a myriad of criminal and civil charges moving forward against him. At this point, Trump has to make sure that he has the ready to keep his own sorry fat ass out of federal or state prison.
Remember one thing. Trump is nothing if not one thing, transactional. If he saw a realistic path back to the White House in 2024, barring his conviction, there would be no reason for him to divest himself of an asset that could lose on paper, and yet enrich him personally by millions of dollars. Just something to think about.
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The picture is completely crude and tasteless – basically an excellent visual representation of Trump himself. As for dumping the hotel, you’re correct about both the overall losses and Trump doing his thing grifting to siphon money out of it like a mobster with a silent interest in a casino skimming money. His problem now is that the costs of operating that place are such that the 70 million figure is a drop in the bucket compare to what’s coming. Without getting all those outrageous room fees from a close to capacity booked hotel as was the case when he was squatting in the WH the joint simply isn’t getting the bookings or even when they do the overpriced room rates. Again, I’d take that 70 million figure of losses with a huge grain of salt because when the books are closed on 2021 his DC hotel will prove to have not just been bleeding but gushing blood like severed carotid arteries!
I hadn’t thought of you main point though. Yes, he’s been shopping the place to get out from under the lease for a long while now. That part isn’t news, nor is the concept that he needs cash and lots of it to keep afloat. Not just for lawyers btw. What I hadn’t considered is how he probably agonized over the decision because he sure as hell wanted to hang on to it and wring money from it if he could get back into the WH. His deciding to sell his lease is I think a pretty strong indicator that for all his bluster he’s not going to run again. As many have suggested he’s just toying with people to raise money. I also think he was hoping to get quite a bit more than 375 million, but now that it’s news that “Munchkin”, Wynn, the remaining Koch and no doubt other conservative mega donors aren’t going to pony up the cash he would need for another run. Sure, he can milk MAGA goobers for a lot of money but he’s already got regulators and prosecutors scrutinizing his suckering people with fine print in their small dollar donations into recurring donations and bleeding them dry. That’s a message that needs to get spread word-of-mouth out there in “real Mur – ick – uh” red states. Not being President has curtailed his travel and rallies already because even if he wanted to spend all that money he probably doesn’t have the cash flow to do so. For all his bluster he couldn’t afford to pay for his own campaign in 2016 as he promised he would (like he promised so many times about a check being in the mail or not cumming in some poor gal’s mouth) and if he hadn’t been President and abused that power beyond all other President’s running for re-election combined would have lost even worse.
So I agree with you. If he was really planning to run again he’d sell Trump Tower to generate badly needed cash before giving up that DC hotel.
I found the photo hilarious and accurate.
Trump Tower being sold wouldn’t do much for him. It had lost 40%of its value in the first couple of years he,was in office. I doubt it was helped by the death of an old gentleman in an electrical.fire because Fat Donnie Donuts bribed the NYC a council to allow him to avoid retrofitting the dump with sprinklers. I also think they got his attitude toward Tiffany right.
One thing I have noticed in all the reporting (especially the NYT expose) is former guy does not make good decisions. He does not make good decisions with regard to his life nor with regard to his businesses. He has, I think it is safe to say, ZERO business acumen. The only person keeping him afloat is whatever lawyer he is using at the moment such as Cohn once did….well, and whatever is left of daddy’s money. I just don’t think he is capable of taking any kind of long view on anything: business investments, future elections, whatever. He reacts. That is all he can do.