Trumpster Fire

Trumpster Fire

          The New York Times (aka Failing Fake News) has landed with both feet on Donald Trump’s neck in a big way.  They have laid bare his tax record (or approximations thereof) from 1985 – 1995.  The bottom line is that he was, for much of that time, THE most unprofitable individual in the United States.  This Master of the Universe, self-proclaimed best of the best businessman.  He wrote-off more than $1 billion dollars in losses for eight of the ten years reported upon.  This is almost not new news, but it is anything but fake.

          Trump’s tweets this morning declare that all that he did was take full advantage of the tax laws as they stood to depreciate properties he built like all developers did.  Of course, he says that everyone should ignore the reports because it is all untrue while he defends what he did as though it is all true.

          I was a senior officer of Bankers Trust in those days and we were the unfortunate primary lenders to Mr. Trump at the time.  Our beloved and departed Chief Credit Officer, Joe Manganello, was the point man on the work-out of the Trump bankruptcy debacle.  We had already taken whatever collateral there was (the Grand Hyatt that is now due for demolition) and there was much more owing.  I remember the discussion around what to do about his personal situation.  To be clear, we had the ability to end the myth that since then has become Donald Trump.  My recollection is that someone (maybe Donald, maybe his lawyers, maybe Joe) came up with the idea that the Trump brand was worth something.  However, it was only worth something if he survived seemingly in one piece.  The decision was made to prop him up with a $400,000 monthly allowance (the amount deemed necessary to keep him in the high-profile manner to which he had become accustomed).

          Think about that, almost $5 million per year in living costs so that he could continue to look to the world as though he was still Billy Big Deal.  This was both devastatingly brilliant (dare I say unprecedented?) and devastatingly irresponsible for reasons only history would bear out.  The brand did indeed survive and while I have no clear records or accounting of this, I presume it meant that Bankers Trust recouped more of its money owed from some of the benefits of that brand survival.  And it perpetuated the Trump myth into the new millennium so that he could become a reality TV star and eventually the devastatingly horrible President of the United States that he now is.

I feel that if Joe (a wonderful and humble man) knew what this scheme had led to, he would be rolling over in his grave. By the way, I attended Joe’s funeral and wake and we were indeed graced by the presence (at least for a cameo appearance) of the great and mighty Donald Trump. In many ways, Joe was the perfect foil for Donald. He was a hard-working and simple man who was as self-effacing and humorous as anyone I have ever known. When you told him something he didn’t understand (whether because he couldn’t follow or because you couldn’t explain it well), he would say, “Listen, I’m just a poor blind student from Bologna and you’re going to have to go over that more slowly.” I’m not sure any of us ever really knew exactly who that blind student was, but we got the point. Don’t ever pretend you know something when you don’t. There is no dishonor in lack of knowledge, only in lack of admission to your lack of knowledge. Just like Trump operates. Not.

So, what does all of this mean about Donald Trump and his continuous flim-flam of the American public? It means several things that don’t seem to matter to his base. First, the image that he is a great deal-doer and businessman is done, gone, shattered, debunked. I wish that mattered to them, but it seems not to. Second, it means he may well be a tax fraud to add to his long list of fraudulent and indictable activities. Again, I doubt that matters since his slippery self is so good at not getting tagged and suffering the punishment that would impale anyone else. But what might well stick to him, even with his base, is that he pays no taxes while they all must pay their taxes. Now we are talking about something that has some small chance to hit home and hurt him with his base.

          I believe that the congressional efforts to get his tax returns will prevail.  I believe that those returns of the past ten or more years will show more of the same pattern of understating income and overstating assets for write-off purposes.  It will likely show that he continues to not pay taxes or much of them and that the American public is subsidizing him and his lavish lifestyle. 

          What is perhaps the most intriguing part of these old returns and the thing that he is most likely trying hard to hide from Congress and the American people is these mysterious interest income items.  There was one year where he suddenly got $55 million from parts unknown.  What’s that about?  I believe that in the past ten years there is likely to be many more mysterious income sources that he was afraid not to report, but which he clearly does not want to explain.  This is where the possibility of undue allegiance to Russia and others may well come into play.  He may, indeed, be “on the payroll” of God knows who.  I wouldn’t put it past him for a moment since he probably feels he’s so smart that they can never get the best of him, when they do every day.

          I’m thinking that whoever bought Donald Trump is very happy with their purchase.  My guess is that they hoped to get X and got 10X through his stupidity.  That may be the thing that everyone, including his handlers, have vastly underestimated about Trump, that his stupidity is so magnified by his venality and ego that he goes above and beyond to serve those who he is beholding to.  Remember he’s the guy who was too stupid to see that saying Putin impacted the 2016 election (“Why would he?”) would be pounced on by his critics.  But then he was so uber-stupid as to suggest that people should believe that he MEANT to say, “Why wouldn’t he?”  Only the severely mentally challenged would have gone there and then doubled down on their stupidity.

          Some of his base love that he gets away with his shit.  But these new revelations of him paying no taxes may stop them in their tracks and say, “Hey, wait a minute….”  At some point I wonder whether there is any cumulative effect with his base of this constant and overwhelming evidence that Trump is not anything that he claims to be.  He is not brilliant.  He is not a good businessman, He is not honest.  He is not chaste.  He is not honorable.  And, most importantly, he is not good for the country.