Trump’s financial history is strewn with bankruptcy, loan-after-loan
“I have a lot of cash.” August 11, 2004
“I don’t think [bankruptcy is] a failure, it’s a success.” November 22, 2004
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“I have a lot of cash.” July 10, 2008
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“I have a lot of cash.” September 30, 2015
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“I don’t need banks.” May 20, 2019
Even though Donald Trump reprised his “I have a lot of cash,” refrain on September 28, 2020, that was, again, smoke and mirrors.
Less than a month later, Mother Jones noted that seven lenders held at least 14 Trump loans. “According to Trump’s disclosures (where assets and debts are reported in ranges), these loans could total more than $650,000,000.”
Reporters do not seem to ask Trump what “a lot of cash” actually means.
For example, in 2014, Trump had secured a $100,000,000 interest-only loan with Ladder Capital. Mr. “I don’t need banks” also refinanced his mortgage on the Trump Tower. In addition, Ladder Capital held a $13,000,000 loan on Trump Plaza.
Also in 2014, Deutsche Bank provided Trump a 10-year, $170,000,000 loan to develop a hotel in the Old Post Office Building in Washington, DC.
More than a year ago, Trump’s accounting firm ditched him as a client, advising The Trump Organization:
Statements of financial condition for Donald J. Trump for the years ending June 30, 2011 – June 30, 2020 should no longer be relied upon
The following day, February 10, 2022, the CEO of Axos Bank (formerly Bank of Internet USA) “signed off on a $100,000,000 loan for Trump Tower, the 58-story Manhattan skyscraper that had long been Trump’s home and base of operations, according to the bank.”
Axis Bank CEO Gregory Garrabrants also approved a $125,000,000 loan for the Doral resort, golf course complex in Miami-Dade County. Both are 10-year loans; one is at 4.25 percent interest, and the other is at 4.9 percent interest.
Axos also helped Trump unload his D.C. hotel by helping finance the $375,000,000 ($1,400,000+ per room) that an investor group needed to secure the lease from the federal government.
Trump obtained a 100-year lease in 2012 and reportedly invested $212,000,000 in renovating the 263-room property. [During the inauguration 2017 weekend, staying in the Trump Townhouse cost $100,000 per night, with a five-night minimum.] NPR reported that the hotel had lost more than $70,000,000 while Trump was president.
“I don’t need banks. I have lots of cash.” April 4, 2023
Questionable business acumen, gift for personal enrichment
Did you know (I didn’t) that once-upon-a-time Trump ran a publicly financed company for 15 years?
Trump was the chairman of Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts in Atlantic City from 1995 to 2009, his only outing as the head of a major public company. During that time, the company lost more than $1,000,000,000… He also was chief executive from 2000 to 2005, during which time share prices plunged from a high of $35 to as low as 17 cents.
Trump received more than $44,000,000 in salary, bonuses and other compensation during his time at the company, filings show. He also benefited from tens of millions of dollars more in special deals, advisory fees and “service agreements” he negotiated with his company…
When it debuted that year on the New York Stock Exchange, Trump’s company raised $140,000,000 from investors, at $14 a share, and said the money would go toward expanding the Plaza and developing a riverboat casino in Indiana.
But much of that money went to pay off tens of millions of dollars in loans Trump had personally guaranteed, filings show. Those loans were taken out before the company went public, but Trump’s private fortune could have been at risk if they went unpaid…
In less than a year, the company paid premium prices for two of Trump’s deeply indebted, privately held casinos, the Trump Taj Mahal and the Trump Castle. In essence, he was both buyer and seller, able to set whatever price he wanted. The company bought his Castle for $100,000,000 more than analysts said it was worth. Trump pocketed $880,000 in cash after arranging the deal, financial filings show…
As millions of dollars in shareholder value evaporated, the company gave Trump a $7,000,000 pay package, including a 71 percent raise to his salary…
Between 1998 and 2005, it spent more than $6,000,000 to “entertain high-end customers” on Trump’s plane and golf courses and about $2 million to maintain his personal jet and have it piloted, a Post analysis of company filings shows…
Between 2006 and 2009, the company bought $1.7 million of Trump-brand merchandise, including $1.2 million of Trump Ice bottled water…
In 1998, the U.S. Treasury fined one of the Trump casinos $477,000 for failing to file reports designed to help guard against money laundering. Trump did not comment then on the action. The company agreed [in 2015] to pay a $10,000,000 civil penalty after regulators found that it had continued to violate the reporting and record-keeping requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act.
It was during this period that Deutsche Bank began financing Trump’s deals. In 1998, Mike Offit negotiated approximately $425,000,000 in loans. The bank was Trump’s largest creditor.
Just how large?
The German bank loaned about $2,500,000,000 to Trump projects over a 20-year period.
Or: 2,500,000,000 seconds = the total number of seconds in 79.3 years.
$1 per second. For almost 80 years.
According to WNYC, “the bank continued writing him nine-figure checks even after he defaulted on a $640,000,000 obligation and sued the bank, blaming it for his failure to pay back the debt.”
That would have been around the time Trump crowed “I have a lot of cash” in 2009.
However, after Trump ran for reelection in 2020, Deutsche Bank “cut ties with him””
Bankruptcy: a non-traditional definition of “success”
Trump filed Chapter 11 six times in less than 20 years: 1991, the Trump Taj Mahal; 1992, Trump Plaza Hotel and two Atlantic City casinos (Trump Castle and Trump Plaza and Casino); 2004, Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts; and 2009, Trump Entertainment Resorts.
It’s difficult to identify the most telling statement Donald Trump has made regarding his finances. This lede from the Wall Street Journal on February 26, 2010, comes close:
“I don’t like the ‘b’ word,” Donald Trump declared Thursday from the witness stand in a Camden, N.J., bankruptcy courtroom, explaining why the gambling company that bears his name is now on its third pass through Chapter 11.
Son Eric may have topped that paen to bankruptcy with this acknowledgment in 2014 of their reliance on Russian money to finance golf courses:
“Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia… We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.”
When Trump was running for president in 2015, CNN reported that fewer than 1-in-5 public companies holding assets of at least $1,000,000,000 had filed for bankruptcy since 1985.
NOTE: All numbers converted from words ($2 billion) to numbers ($2,000,000,000).
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com