TrueValueMetrics ... Impact Accounting for the 21st Century

Date: 2025-01-04 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00027443

THE TRUMP SAGA FICTION IN REAL LIFE Times Radio: Susanne Craig (NYT) on 'Why Donald Trump is no 'self-made man'' PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxweCdInOCU Peter Burgess COMMENTARY By any objective measure, Trump is one of the most obnoxious people on the planet. He is self-centered with no moral compass ... and rich enough to buy popularity. He is also not very bright, and has little idea how things actually work. He is a perfect example of a rich, dumb, fool! And that makes him exceptionally dangerous! Peter Burgess
Why Donald Trump is no 'self-made man' Times Radio 988K subscribers ... 111,570 views ... 3.6K likes Sep 21, 2024 'It became his calling card once he ran for office saying that he did it all by himself and didn't really need any help.' Trump 'appropriated' his fathers wealth early on and then diminished it to make himself look like a self-made man, says The New York Times's Susanne Craig. Join this channel to get access to perks - / @listentotimesradio 📻 Listen to Times Radio - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio 🗞 Subscribe to The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/subscribe/... 📲 Get the free Times Radio app https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio/how-... Transcript 0:00 we in America uh sort of confer uh respectability and maybe even exceptionalism on people who appear to be wealthy we tend to think if you're rich you must be good at whatever you say you're good at and Donald Trump has benefited from that I think more than anybody else in in his lifetime and uh really it's had great consequences for our country Donald Trump often emphasizes his great business Acumen framing his life is a triumphant rise from modest Beginnings my father gave me a very small loan in 1975 he has said and I built it into a company that's worth many many billions of dollars with some of the greatest Assets in the world and I say that only because that's the kind of thinking that our country needs that's Donald Trump's words not mine but Russ Butner and Suzanne Craig of the New York Times have been investigating Trump's finances since he first ran for the White House indeed their work has won them a pullet surprise back in 2019 now in their book lucky loser how Donald 1:01 Trump squandered his father's fortune and created the illusion of success they report on failures and deceptions which belly the attributes many Trump supporters still imbue in their man wealth status and business ability Ross and Suzanne welcome to the program thanks for having us thank you for having us thank you so much for being here um very early morning I imagine where you are little bit not too early not too early well thank you very much for getting up for us um before we dig into the Contex of your book um give us an overview what the state is of Donald Trump's business Empire right now well we don't know the exact State at any particular point in time we know what the trend lines have been for several years and they're not good um the thing that had been supporting much of his businesses was uh tens of millions of dollars a year from The Apprentice television show of which he 2:00 was the host for years and Licensing deals that came from that and uh that was supporting up some businesses that were losing money all The Apprentice money's gone obviously the licensing has really dried up and he's now facing uh judgments Court judgments of close to a half a billion dollars that if that with St withstands appeal could really pose an existential threat to him sorry go on Sean well I was going to say and he's also it's interesting since he's left the White House he's also gone do a number of sort of kind of curious maybe is the best word for them businesses he's Hawking sneakers with his name on them he's got Bibles um that he's selling and those are licensing deals where he puts his name on him and he gets a one-time fee but we're also seeing him go into those kind of areas and I that that's never going to compensate for the money that he lost from things like The Apprentice and and that but we're we're he's definitely made a move into that kind of thing in hoping of getting those sort of one-time checks you'd have to sell a lot of merch 3:01 wouldn't you to to make that same amount of money it's a lot of cats and bbls um now as as I mentioned in the intro you know your book says that Donald Trump started with a you know fairly sizable chunk of cash from his father why does he try and downplay the help that he gave him initially um and to what extent was all of his wealth always actually really just his father's I think when I think about that I think there's sort of a Topline thing there by making his father look smaller it makes him look bigger but it it really is a just a it's so curious every time I hear it I'm just like why don't you just give the guy some credit you know just say he did he was great and I inherited some money from him but Donald Trump just can't do it he just clings to that Hard Scrabble story and I think part of it is it's a great story you're up from nothing and you built this you know he thinks you know he calls it a billion dooll Empire and that's the story that he wants and he wants to be able to say that's sort of knowhow that 4:01 Americans need he's been s he's been saying that story long before he got into the White House but it certainly became his calling card once he ran for office that he did it all by himself and uh and didn't really need the help and and over his life he's not only just sort of made his father look smaller you know he's appropriated his wealth early on and then he's he's just diminished him throughout his life it's incredible he's a smalltime builder he gave me a million loan but I think it really does come down to the idea that he wants this Hard Scrabble story that he's up from nothing and that's the sort of you know business genius that Americans need do you think he's repeated that narrative so often so that he now even believes it himself I do I really do I think he's he just he's clung to it for so long he he thinks that that's how it happened I I definitely do yeah um Russ I understand that you had quite a lot of access to neverbe seeing records and 5:00 documents um what was the most helpful to you and what the most revelatory in uh putting this book together well there were two po big pots of uh of documents we uh obtained for our prior reporting at the times one was uh Decades of Fred Trump the father's Financial records which where we could see all the money that funneled uh to Donald uh and the various ways the father invented to get that money to his children especially to Donald outside of the taxes system another huge bucket was Donald Trump's tax returns for about 20 years which allowed us for the first time to see which businesses were making money which businesses were losing money and then in the course of reporting this book we also obtained uh Financial records from The Apprentice from the show itself so we could see how much money that show was generating and that was really important because the thing that made Donald Trump the richest during those years was that to get him to sign the show that producer Mark brunette offered him half of the product 6:01 integration money and that was a tremendous amount of money in this case because the show was entirely based around product integration each episode featured one product and when they started the sponsors weren't paying much by the time they finished sponsors were paying two three four million do for an episode and Donald Trump was taking half of that that's the thing that really in reinvigorated his finances after years well so it wasn't just the contract it was all the sort of that flowed from it right yeah very much that that was the heart of it yes right yeah um to what extent uh would you both say that this perception I mean created by Him and Amplified by him himself um of him as a successful businessman is the reason that us voters trust him more with the economy than perhaps other candidates I I think it underlies it all and it's interesting because before Donald Trump had The Apprentice Galla poll showed that Americans really didn't view him that f favorably that switched 7:01 afterwards and and today when you talk to voters that show still resonates Mark Bernat and his editors incredibly skilled editors and editing base took Donald Trump and made him a measured thoughtful businessman it's not the businessman that Russ and I got to know during our reporting you know he was um very unpredictable he would lose money um you know I could go on and on about that but Mark Bernett really took him and and made him out to something on TV that he wasn't and so many people saw that show and it you know the just the intro where it's you know meet the billionaire and the intro introduction of the show and and he just looks so wealthy and that that introduction that show repeated over and over into American Homes every week and millions of people watched it and people came to believe it and and it stuck today it was so powerful it's still there yeah um you also say in the book that that the media in the early days at least of The 8:00 Apprentice were very complicit in this kind of idea and fed Trump's false narrative um in what ways did that happen well that really dates back to the 1970s uh part of the difficulty the challenge of reporting on Donald Trump is it's a very small privately held uh family business that he that he is involved in and that's he spent his whole career there unlike a public corporation they don't answer to anyone so there really is no way to to reality check the claims he made and from a very young age he started saying that um all of his father's wealth was his uh he claimed that he had taken over the company when he had not he and then he started claiming that the things that he had built after one or two projects were worth far more than they actually were just to get on the Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans and that continued for years and there was really no way to check it but during that era he also really benefited 9:00 from kind of renewed interest in America in the 1980s A Renewed focus on the lives of wealthy people there was a show hosted by Robin Leech Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous they loved to have Donald on because he would open up his life to them most rich people would not and he had all the acents of wealth you know he had a helicopter he had a fancy apartment that was shiny and and it looked like he was rich and and that's all you really needed then to uh to sort of be be declared rich and so from the mid 1980s like actually 60 Minutes a very esteemed show here said he was a billionaire in 1985 it wasn't really supportable but Donald had told them that and so they repeated it and that just cycled and escalated for years and then The Apprentice really picked up the ball and gave that a whole new sort of uh magnification invalidation um Russ you mentioned before uh about some of the charges that they're facing um uh that in 20 20 2022 uh the Trump 10:03 organization was found guilty of criminal tax fraud for avoiding payroll taxes remind us what the potential consequences of that that might be I'm gonna let Sue talked about that she followed those really closely okay yeah in in that case and that was 2022 there was actually a fairly small fine it was million2 Million so that one actually you know I think well reputationally wasn't wasn't positive for them the fine wasn't huge but but you know since then he's he's faced you know and there was a there was a civil um there's been civil trials and he that one is significant the New York attorney general brought it and it was overvaluations of his properties I was there almost every day it was it was riveting for for vle watch having gone through this and having you know was writing the book at the time and in that one the fine if it's upheld on appeal could come in at more than $400 million and that that bill could come in a matter of a year or two um 11:01 once it's gone through the court system I think that one is going to be significant and you know we don't know and we're we don't know his exact financial situation his exact cash situation right now but he's going to have I I think anybody would imagine trouble meeting it he had trouble posting the bond that he needed to and Russ and I have been seeing you know in recent years it's not something that's got a lot of headlines in the US but he has been selling assets here and there um he sold a hotel in a lease that he had on a hotel in Washington um it was losing a lot of money um and he sold that he got some cash out of that um he's been selling um other properties you know there was a golf course he sold he's been selling individual um condominium units and some of the buildings he owes but we're seeing pressure you know he he seems like he's doing things that may suggest Financial pressure but that fine you know just that one alone is is going to cause him a lot of problems and it may not be the only large fine that he might face in the near future right no he's 12:02 got that egene Carol file too for that another trial that he went through and that one um you know is $890 million they're significant absolutely um Trump supporters will I mean as they have a want to do uh see this as a as a political book with political motivations is it I don't think so at all Sue and I are not we don't usually cover politics and our interest in this is really not the politics of it we sort of skipped the whole White House year I think it's a really an epic American Tale of a particular family that started with like most do here with immigrants coming here became Rich based on government pro programs meant to cure some of the real ills of the 20th century the the Great Depression World War II both before and after and then a an an a battle for succession and then Donald Trump's rise through as much sort of the smoking mirrors of media and and 13:01 wealth as as actual accomplishment and I think it has a lot to say about how we in America uh sort of confer uh respectability and maybe even exceptionalism on people who appear to be wealthy we tend to think if you're rich you must be good at whatever you say you're good at and Donald Trump has benefited from that I think more than anybody else in in his lifetime and uh really it's had great consequ quences for our country

SITE COUNT