Trump Properties Melting Value, a Glimpse of the Future.

Perhaps naming the Doral Club as the next host of the G7 meetings will come around to provide us an important service. In the decision to greedily take advantage of the presidency, Trump is highlighting a fact that might otherwise get by us. Trump’s brand is tanking.

He most certainly needs the money.

Long ago, two and a half years ago, actually (which seems very long ago, now), in the wake of Trump’s victory, but prior to his inauguration, I began a short novel. The premise was rather simple. I wrote a “Supplemental Reading” text from a fictional 2045 college history class: HISTORY 340 “On the Origins of World War III.” The novel had no real characters, and no traditional plot. The action moved through fictional excerpts of newspaper articles, interviews, talks given, and personal papers, all given by fictional characters “on the ground” as this fictional war began.

I had a Navy Seal, a CIA operator from the Middle East, a Washington Post reporter, a State Department employee, among many others, including people from other nations, MI-5, Chinese Military and “anonymous Russian intelligence source.”

The action moved through events I thought entirely reasonable. Putin, having sealed a manipulatable president in Trump, engineered a terrorist attack on three Trump properties in India, all planned and funded by Russian intelligence, but blamed upon Pakistani “Kashmir Separatists.” The “terrorists” issued a faked statement, a secret product of Russian intelligence: “We will continue to attack Trump properties throughout the world until India releases its hold on Kashmir.”

Overnight, Trump properties, his “brand,” lost 95% of their value. No one wanted to be anywhere near a Trump property.

Things then happened. Russia, of course, got outwardly involved, China, too, Pakistan, India, all responding to Trump going ballistic, literally. He pledged to “Make the World Safe Again.”

I gave up 70 pages in. Too much of what I was writing was coming true, too soon. I was no longer writing speculative fiction, I was writing our nation’s prequel.

Regardless, I now know that I needn’t have had all the intrigue and international subterfuge. Trump has an ability to basement his brand all by himself. No violence, no terrorist needed, just Trump being Trump, on the world stage, is plenty.

According to many reports, the income from Doral, one of Trump’s “crown jewels” is down 69%. But that is just the tip of the iceberg, isn’t it USA Today?

The Trump Organization consists of over 500 different business entities around the world that constitute most of Donald Trump’s wealth. Recent reports, though, suggest that Trump Organization properties have been suffering since Trump was elected president…

… Yesterday, Bloomberg noted that Trump Tower had been wracked by financial woes over the last two years. The occupancy rate in the building had fallen from 99% to 83%, and the majority of condos in the building had sold at a loss.

“No one wants in that building,” Michael Sklar, a former Trump Tower condo owner, told Bloomberg.

Now, many in the resistance might look at those figures and only take away some white hot, heartfelt, satisfying schadenfreude. But I can count upon you kewl kidz to know exactly where I am going with this.

People are voting with their feet, and wallets.

Everyone wants to back a “winner,” as seen by those wanting to dump a diminishing property, even at a loss. They damn sure don’t want to be left holding the bag too late. One way to ensure you take on an aura of “losing” is to have the giant name on the building more associated with Russian money-laundering and massive debt than with anything that rings of “luxury” and “good times.”

Trump and his followers are often compared to a cult. And for our purposes, that is close enough. Cult leaders are invulnerable to scrutiny. No matter how beaver-shit insane, nothing touches them. Nothing touches them until one small thing does, and then it all calves like a Greenland glacier, into the sea, unable to crawl back to the mountain top even if it wanted to. Same with Trump, in my opinion. As soon as one small fact pierces the heart of Trump’s mystique, the vast majority of his followers will dive. Suddenly they themselves will take the example set by Trump’s former property owners and bail, before he even “loses” anything on paper.

Is this wishful thinking?

Yeah, okay – part of it might be. Is it entirely wishful thinking? No, because we see the first signs already. The properties are losing money at a faster and faster rate. The people with “skin in the game” (I hate that saying), are the ones most vulnerable to taking a hit. They have already voted. The writing is on the wall, icebergs with giant gold letters spelling Trump are floating, and melting. No amount of three day meetings will freeze them back into existence.

Yes, I am looking into the future. But, I have proven some ability to do so with varying accuracy. One knew Trump’s greatest vulnerability going into all this. That his property and business would come first, last, and everywhere, ahead of the country’s interests. That part was obvious. I think it is also obvious that a nosedive in value portends another nosedive, one measured even more accurately than property values, his value to the nation generally.

On that, as before, he is headed straight to bankruptcy, or an even worse court. The only thing that can “make the world safe again,” is a settlement, among all of us; “Thank god that is behind us.” It is a prequel, but the script is written, and it has promise. I will not be setting it aside.

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For anyone lamenting that they never got to read the novel, I assure you that the ones for sale are exponentially better, and they are complete. They actually end with the world saved, just prior to war, by a regular old college kid alien abductee. Oh, and an Obama-like president oversees this world. What can I say? Humanity likes backing a winner.

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Peace, y’all

Jason

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