The Ugly Truth Behind Trump’s Wealth

It’s no secret that Donald Trump has filed bankruptcy four times.  His explanation for the bankruptcies is that it wasn’t personal bankruptcy, but bankruptcy of some of his business entities.  He said:  
“Hundreds of companies” have filed for bankruptcy,…I used the law four times and made a tremendous thing. I’m in business. I did a very good job.”  Forbes did an article back in 2011 that explained the difference between personal and corporate bankruptcies.

The problem with Trump’s corporate bankruptcies was that Donald profited personally, while investors lost millions of dollars. It is an undisputed phenomena that the wealthy use chapter 11 for corporate restructuring of debt while enhancing their personal net worth. Both expensive and litigation-heavy, the process of filing chapter 11 allows the affluent an opportunity to sell some of their assets to satisfy certain creditors, arrange a payment schedule for others and discharge the remainder.  The case of Donald’s bankruptcies is a perfect example of a wealthy person using corporate bankruptcy to enhance his personal wealth.  Donald Trump ran his public company into the ground, but pocketed millions for himself.  The Republican front-runner has made much of his supposed “success” in business and says he now wants to do the same for America.  “But the only part of his business track record for which we have the full picture shows that Trump wasn’t a successful executive but an absolute catastrophe.
For 10 years between 1995 and 2005, Donald Trump ran Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts — and he did it so badly and incompetently that it collapsed into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. His stockholders were almost entirely wiped out, losing a staggering 89% of their money. The company actually lost money every single year. In total it racked up more than $600 million in net losses over that period.
 
What is more revealing is that over the same period, all his competitors were enjoying an enormous boom.

While Trump was running Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts into the ground, the Dow Jones index of gambling stocks — the index that Trump himself cited in public filings as his best benchmark — soared 160%. Investors in Harrah’s saw their stake go up by nearly 150%. MGM MGM, -2.56%  quintupled. Yet, Trump ran the worst performing casino company on the stock market. A review of the company’s public filings show that over that period, while his ordinary investors were getting hosed, Trump himself was siphoning millions through salary, “bonuses” and cozy “service agreements” or side deals with his private corporations.
In total, Donald Trump pocketed $32 million over nine years, while his public stockholders lost more than $100 million.  While Trump may not have broken the law, he clearly was focused on increasing his personal wealth with no regard for the losses suffered by those who believed in him.  Can America afford to trust a man as our President who has such a history of promoting himself at the expense of those who have trusted him?


https://malialitman.com/2016/03/09/the-ugly-truth-behind-trumps-wealth/

Called the "Art of da Deal"! Hope he runs the country like that as the outsiders (others) come 22nd .....

or texas bullsh#t

Donald Trump Is Not a Liar

He's something worse: a bullshit artist.

By Jeet Heer

December 1, 2015

Falsehoods fly out of Donald Trump’s mouth with such unstoppable frequency that it’s tempting to describe him as a liar. Among the recent Trumpian untruths is his claim to have seen a video showing “thousands and thousands” of Muslim Americans cheering 9/11 in Jersey City, New Jersey, an event there is no record of, video or otherwise. Trump has also retweeted and vigorously defended the claim that 81 percent of whites who are murdered are killed by blacks (the actual number for last year is 15 percent). And he has asserted, contrary to fact, that the federal government is sending refugees to states with “Republicans, not to the Democrats.”

Signal

Trump wants to take us to a land where subjectivity is all, where reality is simply what he says.

Jeet Heer








Yet the increasingly frequent tendency of Trump’s critics to label him a liar is wrongheaded. Trump is something worse than a liar. He is a bullshit artist. In his 2005 book On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt, emeritus philosophy professor at Princeton University, makes an important distinction between lying and bullshitting—one that is extremely useful for understanding the pernicious impact that Trump has on public life. Frankfurt’s key observation is that the liar, even as he or she might spread untruth, inhabits a universe where the distinction between truth and falsehood still matters. The bullshitter, by contrast, does not care what is true or not. By his or her bluffing, dissimulation, and general dishonesty, the bullshit artist works to erase the very possibility of knowing the truth. For this reason, bullshit is more dangerous than lies, since it erodes even the possibility of truth existing and being found.
The contrast Frankfurt draws between lying and bullshit is sharp. “It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth,” Frankfurt observes. “Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all bets are off. … He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are.”
Frankfurt’s analysis works extraordinarily well in explaining why Trump is so unfazed when called on his bullshit. Trump’s frequent response is to undermine the very possibility that the truth of his claims are knowable. When asked why there are no videos of “thousands and thousands” of Muslim-Americans cheering the 9/11 attacks, Trump told Joe Scarborough that 2001 was so far in the past that the evidence has disappeared. “Don’t forget, 14, 15 years ago, it wasn’t like it is today, where you press a button and you play a video,” Trump said in a phone interview on yesterday’s Morning Joe. “Fourteen, 15 years ago, they don’t even put it in files, they destroy half of the stuff. You know, if you look back 14, 15 years, that was like ancient times in terms of cinema, and in terms of news and everything else. They don’t have the same stuff. Today you can press a button and you can see exactly what went on, you know, two years ago. But when you go back 14, 15 years, that’s like ancient technology, Joe.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/124803/donald-trump-not-liar

Five “very rare” times Trump settled NYC real estate lawsuits



very rare – because once you settle lawsuits, everybody sues you – very simple,” said Republican front-runner Donald Trump during a press conference last week.

Trump’s aversion to making legal deals may go back decades – “You don’t use the term ‘settlement’ with Donald,” his attorney Roy Cohn told the New York Times more than 30 years ago – but he has in fact cut a few over his career.

The Real Deal looked at five major New York real estate cases where Trump got out while the gettin’ was good.



100 Central Park South

100 Central Park South (now Trump Parc East)

Trump bought this park-facing address with its neighbor, the Barbizon Hotel, in 1981, and quickly announced his plans to demolish them both. At the 15-story 100 Central Park South, Trump struggled to find any legal means of dismissing dozens of rent-regulated tenants. He famously offered that the City of New York let him house homeless people in the building and brought a number of lease violation suits against tenants, some of which were thrown out (and which Trump himself admitted were brought “stupidly” in his 1988 autobiography, “The Art of the Deal“). Meanwhile, the residents of the building sued Trump for harassment. In 1986, Trump and the tenants association struck an agreement. In exchange for dropping their harassment litigation, Trump dropped eviction proceedings against rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenants and scrapped his plans to demolish the building. DHCR, the state affordable housing regulator, would monitor any forthcoming the luxury renovations.

Trump Spin: Thomas Macari, a Trump spokesperson at the time, said, “They [tenants] haven’t really won. They’ve lost because they wanted to buy their apartments.” In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump wrote that he had already decided not to demolish the building anyway, and said that because the Manhattan real estate market skyrocketed during the litigation, it actually benefitted him in the long run, as building condos on only the Barbizon site would now return more income than if he had knocked down and redeveloped both building sites at the time of purchase. “In effect, I was sitting on gold,” he wrote.

The Trump rental portfolio

In the early 1970s, the federal government brought an enormous housing discrimination action against Trump Management, the real estate company started by Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump. The government alleged that the Trumps had discriminated against prospective tenants at dozens of rental properties across New York City, refusing to rent apartments to individuals on the basis of race. The Trumps settled in 1975, promising the government they would not discriminate and would personally read up on the Fair Housing Act. They also agreed to provide the Urban League with a list of available apartments every week for two years, as well as allow the Urban League to present the them with eligible tenants for vacancies at certain buildings.

Trump Spin: Donald Trump said the agreement was to his “full satisfaction” because it didn’t include a mandate to take tenants on welfare unless they were fully qualified. In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump wrote “we ended up making a minor settlement without admitting any guilt.”


Trump Tower at 721-725 Fifth Avenue

Trump Tower

In 1983, a housewreckers union member named Harry Diduck filed suit against Trump for cutting Laborers Local 95 out of $300,000 in benefit fund fees during the demolition of the Bonwit Teller Building, the art deco building Trump axed for the construction of Trump Tower. Much of the sum would pay out medical and pension benefits to Polish workers that had been contracted to work the Trump Tower site. The lawsuit went on for 15 years. In 1991, a federal judge ruled Trump and his partner Equitable had illegally withheld funds, conspiring with the head of the union. The estimated worth of the unpaid money with interest was upwards of $4 million. Trump appealed, but decided to settle in 1999 before it got any further. The year before, Trump said “It [settling] would be cheaper, but on principle I won’t… We did nothing wrong.”

Trump Spin: The settlement was sealed and Trump did not comment on it at the time. Marco Rubio claimed in a recent debate that Trump had paid out $1 million in a judgment, to which Trump interjected “wrong, wrong.” It is not known what the actual settlement payment was.

GM Building

Now the stuff of an upcoming Hollywood film, Donald Trump famously settled with his former partner Conseco Inc. in the sale of the GM Building in the early 2000s. With Conseco in bankruptcy, Trump wanted to buy the GM building all for himself. But the parties feuded over whether Trump, a stakeholder in the tower, actually had the means to do so. Trump later sued Conseco for $1 billion, claiming they blocked his bid, issuing an “improper demand” to obtain a letter of credit from Deutsche Bank as a term of the closing. Trump also claimed that the attacks of September 11^th had made it impossible for him to find financing after Conseco delayed a September 6^th, 2001 closing, causing him further damage.

Ultimately, an arbitration panel ordered Trump to sell his stake in the building to Conseco for $15.6 million. The panel’s order was later affirmed by a state Supreme Court judge. And, according to court documents obtained by The Real Deal, the $15.6 million check Conseco would write to Trump would only be a $4.5 million check, once city and state transfer taxes were subtracted. Trump motioned for contempt, but this was withdrawn when Trump entered into a confidential settlement with Conseco in summer of 2003.

Trump Spin: Though the precise terms of the agreement are secret, two sources briefed on the terms told the New York Times in 2003 that Trump ended up selling his stake to Conseco for $15.6 million after all, with Trump receiving a modest amount of the proceeds from Conseco’s full sale of the GM Building for $1.4 billion to Harry Macklowe. But the same day, the New York Post reported that, according to sources, Trump would be getting at least a $100 million pay out. “Both parties made a wonderful deal,” Trump said, declining to discuss the terms of the settlement.


Trump Soho at 246 Spring Street

Trump Soho

The developers of the Trump-branded condo-hotel at 246 Spring Street refunded 90 percent of security deposit dollars to 15 buyers, including French soccer star Olivier Dacourt, when those buyers sued over “deceptive” marketing tactics. Donald Trump, who was not a co-developer but whose company manages the building and was involved in marketing the units along side Bayrock Group and Sapir Organization, was named defendant in the suit. The plaintiffs claimed that Trump and the other defendants misled them by publicly reporting that 60 percent of Trump Soho’s units were already sold when in reality just over 15 percent had. To dissuade buyers from joining the suit, the developers offered to refund half the deposits to buyers who had not yet closed on their condos. The plaintiffs who did participate in the action, however, reached a settlement for bigger refund payouts in 2011.

Trump Spin: Trump did not comment on the lawsuit at the time, but did say that it was probably a good idea for the developers to change unsold units from condo-hotel to just regular hotel (especially once everyone knew what the real sales numbers were). “Business is so strong that we’re delighted to get the units back,” Trump’s daughter Ivanka said at the time, a positive take bearing an uncanny resemblance to something her father might have written in “The Art of the Deal.”



http://therealdeal.com/2016/03/14/five-very-rare-times-trump-settled-nyc-real-estate-lawsuits/

I think Cruz wipes his ass with baby wipes too. Point is who cares and who is best for the country. I say the one with out lobbies and not apart of the freaking same o same o establishment. Will that be a good thing....not sure but sure willing to get away from the last 40 plus years of it.

Point is who cares and who is best for the country.?????
 you got to be kidding right?

Hey... Only got two choices with only one coming out.

so being best for the country doesn't matter?

Absolutely, why I have switched from Cruz to Trump!

"Til the end" when will that be? Ha!ha., should change it to "sell,sell,sell!"