A nice little summary of Trump's way of doing business from the New York Times. I could post the entire article as it's less than complimentary but I think readers will get the drift from this extract.
His businesses went bankrupt repeatedly, and multiple others failed. He was taken to court for stiffing his vendors, stiffing his bankers and even stiffing his own family. He avoided the draft during the Vietnam War and avoided paying any income tax for years. He was forced to shell out tens of millions of dollars to students who accused him of scamming them, found liable for wide-scale business fraud and had his real estate firm convicted in a criminal court of tax crimes.
He has boasted of grabbing women by their private parts, been reported to have cheated on all three of his wives and been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, including one whose account was validated by a jury that found him liable for sexual abuse after a civil trial.
He is the only president in American history impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanours, the only president ever indicted on criminal charges and the only president to be convicted of a felony (34, in fact). He used the authority of his office to punish his adversaries and tried to hold onto power on the basis of a brazen lie.
Trump beat some of the investigations and lawsuits against him and some proved unfounded, but the sheer volume is remarkable. Any one of those scandals by itself would typically have been enough to derail another politician. Joe Biden’s first bid for the presidency collapsed when he lifted some words from another politician’s speech. George W. Bush came close to losing after the last-minute revelation of a long-ago drink-driving arrest. Hillary Clinton fell short at least in part because of an FBI investigation into emails that led to no charges.
Not Trump. He has moved from one furore to the next without any of them sinking into the body politic enough to end his career. The unrelenting pace of scandals may in its own way help him by keeping any single one of them from dominating the national conversation and eroding his standing with his base of supporters.
He even turned that mugshot into a marketing tool, selling T-shirts, posters, bumper stickers, coffee mugs and even beverage coolers with the image and the slogan, “NEVER SURRENDER”. And victory next month may yet help him to escape the biggest threat of all – potentially prison.
Nonetheless, the full record stands out.
His business career vaulted him to fame, and he had notable successes, perhaps most prominently the rehabilitation of the Commodore Hotel and the construction of Trump Tower. But he often reached further than he was able to deliver. His record in business was pockmarked with plenty of failures.
The Trump Shuttle airline? Failure. His dreams of building a Television City in Manhattan? Failure. A United States Football League franchise? Failure. The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump Taj Mahal, Trump’s Castle Casino Resort, Trump Mortgage, Trump Vodka, Trump University, Trump Steaks, GoTrump.com? All failures.
His most spectacular flameouts came in the gambling mecca of Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he overextended himself building or buying three casinos that ultimately cannibalised each other’s clientele as he failed to keep up with enormous debt payments. He filed for bankruptcy for the Taj Mahal in 1991 and then for the other two casinos in 1992. He also filed for bankruptcy in 1992 for the Plaza Hotel.
Even after recovering from that debacle, Trump failed again. His casino company filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and then again in 2009, for his sixth trip into that process. In his various bankruptcies, he was compelled to sell assets, and creditors were forced to write off some of his debt. But Trump has boasted that he still made money in Atlantic City, even after leaving a trail of losses for nearly everyone else involved, including workers who lost jobs.
