What is it at this point, like four tweets?
That exchange from December looks like a win for Trump, to me. I mean, a demented fantasy land creepy person win, but that's what's been working for him so far. Some arabic muslim guy thinks he's bad and unAmerican, and Trump responds with "you can't buy me I'm already a billionaire!" That's like half his campaign right there.
Personally, I'm amazed he hasn't been attacked more for being a daddy's boy who inherited all of his wealth and did worse with it than an index fund would have. Serious business people think the guy is a joke.
Is this the Break Out thread because, oops, I did it again.
Yeah, I think Trump gets the better of that one in the real world of US politics - Arab princes aren't going to win that kind of PR battle in this country.
And on merits, Trump is right that the Prince is a big holder of Fox - second largest to the Murdoch clan, I think, with roughly 6.5 percent of the company. So what if he uses a photo illustration to make his point?
And the Prince is wrong to say he bailed Trump out. He bought stuff from Trump.
I think the bailout line (though, yeah, it's not really that true) would have been a good attack line against Trump, but it's probably too late for it. If you can get in early enough to influence peoples' perceptions of a candidate on something important - and 'gets bailed out a bunch' or 'owes stuff to those people would have been good ones - it might have had a really strong impact. But you can't get very far trying to convince supporters that their main/biggest impression of a candidate is fundamentally mistaken.* And "businessperson who is a winner" has been Trump's brand for a really, really long time now, so trying to convince people that he isn't probably wouldn't be very effective (or at least not without a massive investment in it).
*This is why I'm willing to bet that while Clinton's all out barrage of attacks will hurt Sanders a lot (and his refusal to fire back will make it even worse), the "wants to repeal Obamacare and eliminate Medicare" line isn't going to have any effect, because even if it wasn't a (really appalling) lie it's way too far from the public impression of him and what his campaign is selling to come off as anything but nonsense.
Is someone going to explain to Trump that you can't engage in twitter wars with foreign royalty when you are president? Or are we just going to enter a world where where world leaders act like twerpy internet trolls?
Argentina under the Kirchners might be a good general guide to what the US would look like under Trump, actually.
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I look forward to President Melania Trump then in 2024.
They'd have to amend the constitution to make her eligible, but I'm sure Donald would find a way.
+1 to 2 and 6. Just looks like Trump doing more of the same stuff which got him this far in the first place.
And on merits, Trump is right that the Prince is a big holder of Fox - second largest to the Murdoch clan, I think, with roughly 6.5 percent of the company. So what if he uses a photo illustration to make his point?
In the context of Trump's explicitly xenophobic campaign, the photoshopped picture is pretty racist.
On the original topic: although of course Trump is a horrible person, buffoon, and unadmirable businessman, "bailout" still seems overstating it. They both came out ahead - Trump cleared enough of his debts to move forward and the Prince got some assets presumably at a cut-rate price.
It's similar to my annoyance at the descriptions of Trump's bankruptcy history as somehow inherently dishonest or dishonorable. Given the cyclical, risky business he's in and the number of ventures made over the decades, though I don't know specifics, I can't see three bankruptcies as an a priori sign of gaming the system. Give me some investigative journalism into the subject, but until then, it strikes me as risking tarnishing the very concept of bankruptcy, which is a good one.
How could Trump inherit all his wealth when his father had five kids? Presumably the inheritance would have been split five ways, leaving each kid with less than $20M after taxes. Are the rest of the Trump siblings also billionaires? The idea that he's not been a success at real estate just doesn't fly.
That's the marvel of long term investing. if he inherited $40 million in 1974 then put it in the S&P 500 then he'd have $3-4 billion today.
And Fred Trump died in 1999. It's unlikely he wanted to hand $40-$200M to Donald before he died. How many wealthy parents hand over their entire fortune to their kids before they (the parents) die? Fred probably held onto the money till his death or let Donald run the business at some point, without Donald owning the business. And Donald didn't want to own garden apartments in the Bronx, so I don't really see him running that business.
Or Queens. Probably not many garden apartments in the Bronx.
Has anybody tried to separate the "owning and managing real estate" part of Trump's fortune from the "being on TV and licensiing his name" part? I imagine the former is a mediocre business with poor long-term returns and the latter is extremely profitable (but hard to sustain; the "Ivanka" brand extension has had middling success).
I actually read the book by Trump's lawyer, George Ross. He says that Trump's method is to find some property with what are considered insurmountable obstacles to development (zoning/neighbors/etc), buy the property for cheap with lots of leverage, then use his connections to get the obstacles removed. So it's not unreasonable that he managed to build up a large fortune following that formula, especially in the 70s-80s NY real estate market.
Has anybody tried to separate the "owning and managing real estate" part of Trump's fortune from the "being on TV and licensiing his name" part?
Probably comes up for taxes.
Forbes has been monitoring this for decades. They say his net worth is $4.2b, of which $253m is "real estate licensing deals, brand, and branded developments". He values that same category at $3.3b and a grand total of $8.7b.
Wait, so Trump just goes around saying his net worth is twice what it's been assessed to be? God, what a blowhard.
His appeal to blue-collar people just continues to astound me. I just don't see how they can't tell he's just the rich boss's son pretending he made it where he was through hard work.
Ladies and gentlemen, when I started this company I had just two things to my name: a dream, and six million dollars.
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I get it. Trump is a working class fantasy of what obscene amounts of money looks like. I read someone saying something along the lines of: there's Old Money, Nouveau Riche, and Trump, who spends money like the guy in the trailer next to you who just won the billion dollar jackpot
That's basically John Mulaney's line: "Donald Trump is a hobo's idea of a rich person"
I know what it would take to bring him down in the polls, but it won't be pretty.
Someone on the debate stage needs to take one for the team and just beat the crap out of the guy. I vote for Christie, but I think most of those guys could probably take him. This race is about violence and bullying because that's all a significant part of the base understands. Once that happens, they'll all drift to whoever did it, even if he gets an assault charge.
24: Net worth might not be the right metric. A luxury golf resort might lose money hand over fist, but it's a big asset. Slapping your name on a board game is pure profit.
Trump, who spends money like the guy in the trailer next to you who just won the billion dollar jackpot
That's more Elvis than Trump. I think the fantasy isn't how he spends it but how he treats others and the idea that "deals" are how you make money.
I don't even like Elvis music, but I don't see the point of having that kind of money and not spending like he did. Especially the jumpsuits.
The first two times I read 30.2, I read, "beat the crap out of they guy," as a metaphor for strong rhetoric, which just goes to show what a milquetoast Trump I am.
Trump gold-plates the seat belts on his private jet. That's worth a few bedazzled jumpsuits.
Elvis didn't fuck around with 2nd Amendment rallies. He just shot the fucking TV.
35: My parents have silver plate on their tea set. That's not even worth a tacky cardigan.
Apparently, older relatives just figured that's the kind of thing a couple in their circumstances should have so they gave them a silver tea set. I don't think it was ever used after 1975 or so.
I don't even know if it's expensive--you can get gold leaf on a hot fudge sundae FFS--but it sure as hell is tacky.
It wasn't all rhinestone jumpsuits. Elvis was also constantly getting ripped off by The Colonel.
My hot fudge sundae is the biggest one you've ever seen. It's yuge. It's the most gold plated fudge sundae you've ever seen. And it's so classy. It's the classiest gold-plated sundae you have seen. Melania loves fudge. She tells me, "Donald, this fudge is the best fudge I've ever had." I'm gonna make America great. I'm gonna gold plate the White house. Because you know what is classier than a white house? A gold house. It's going to be so classy.
Net worth might not be the right metric. A luxury golf resort might lose money hand over fist, but it's a big asset. Slapping your name on a board game is pure profit.
What exactly are you hoping to measure? I'm unclear.
42: His net income, I suppose. Just because he owns a lot of land doesn't mean that's where the profit is coming from. The brand stuff is relatively low-value as an asset (it won't transfer or depreciate well) but high-profit; it should contribute disproportionately to his cash flow.
Because the topic is 70s music, I'll just mention that someone in the bar keeps playing "Jolene". Dolly Parton really can sing.
In Trump's defense, I will say that Melania is very attractive.
I have yuuuge tracts of land.
Trump would easily secure the position of supervisor of the Sunnyvale Trailer Park.
That's basically John Mulaney's line: "Donald Trump is a hobo's idea of a rich person"
Oh, dear. That just won't do. Not our kind of hobo at all.
I'm not sure "Trump is so classless, he figured out a way to inherit nouveau riche status" is the right strategy for damaging his common-man appeal.
44: Maybe; maybe we'll see with campaign disclosure. But the advantage of net worth as a metric is that it folds in security of income: the income Trump makes from branding is even more volatile and tenuous than what can be gotten from real estate, I bet. For example, if he wanted to withdraw from public life, his brand value would wane pretty rapidly. And who knows what all his current idiocy will do to it in the long run - viz., he already burned his bridges with Univision et al.
I dunno, he could have a lucrative career ahead of him playing telenovela villains, I mean, after his presidency.