Trump’s projects  went bust

                                                        

It appears that almost everything Donald Trump puts his name to, turns out to be a colossal failure. They include the following.

Trump University. First; That so-called university was never a university. When the so-called University was established in 2005, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) warned Trump that he was in violation of state law for operating without a NYSED  license. Trump ignored the warnings.

At the so-called free 90-minute introductory seminars to which Trump University advertised and solicited, he invited prospective students to attend. Trump University instructors had engaged in a methodical, systematic series of misrepresentations designed to convince prospective students to sign up for the Trump University three-day seminar.

The s0-called free seminar was the first step in a bait and switch scam to induce prospective students to enroll in increasingly expensive seminars starting with the three-day seminar costing them $1,495 for the first seminar.  Ultimately one of the respondents’ paid the fee for an advanced seminar such as the Gold Elite program costing the victim as much as $35,000. This scam is not unlike the one of the Church of Scientology scams that keeps making its members pay ever increasing fees as they move up from the first program to the next, etc. 

The instructors touted Trump’s own promises that students would be mentored by handpicked real-estate experts, who would use Trump’s own real-estate strategies. According to the New York complaint, none of the instructors were handpicked by Trump. Many of them came from professions having nothing to do with real estate, and Trump never reviewed any of Trump University’s curricula or programming materials. The materials were in large part developed by a third-party company that creates and develops materials for an array of motivational speakers and seminars and timeshare rental companies. In other words, it wasn’t what Trump’s people were telling the prospective students who paid thousands of dollars to be a student of—what turned out to be a bogus university.  As to be expected the phony university was closed down.

Early in September 2014, David Rebuck, director of the state Division of Gaming Enforcement, announced that Betfair would be allowed to continue its operation of internet bets until when Trump Plaza surrenders its casino license. Then the operator would have ample time to find a suitable replacement. Meanwhile Betfair signed an agreement with Caesars that they are still a licensing partner with Trump Plaza. The continuation of the partnership served to help pay off creditors transpired by Trump.  Betfair ranked on the bottom of the market in terms of yearly revenues and active players.

On September 18, 2014, the official end of the gaming day by state regulation for Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino came down like the final nail in a coffin at 5:59 a.m as it became the fourth casino to shut its doors thirty-year. The 30-year old casino closed its run- down doors for good. 

The saga of the fallen Trump Atlantic City Casino in New Jersey continued as the final stages were set in motion over the once glamorous 39-story hotel and casino in Atlantic City. The sounds of demolishing and disdain were the only evidence that the former boardwalk hotel and casino had left to offer.

Trump posted a one-year loss of more than $900 million US a few years later, enabling him to avoid paying federal income taxes for perhaps 18 years. At issue is how Trump was able to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars of debt as his casino empire in Atlantic City went broke in the early 1990s. Cancelled debt generally is treated as taxable income, meaning Trump would have owed the Internal Revenue Service significant money on debt that his creditors forgave.

Alas, the City of Toronto got hooked into Trump’s scams. In the last decade, more than 400 condominium towers of 14 stories  or more have been successfully built in Toronto.  

An investigation by the Toronto Star and Columbia Journalism Investigations in New York revealed that the tower until recently bore the U.S. president’s name. The project was so hamstrung by inexperienced partners and an unorthodox foreign financing deal that it couldn’t be saved by Trump’s public assurances of excellence.

With the rotating cast of players involved in a deal that lasted over more than a decade, provides new insights about Trump’s business approach, the unconventional partners he works with and the risks for those who bet on the Trump brand.

“Trump never put money in; he just took money out,” said John Latimer, a former Toronto developer who worked briefly on the project.

Now that Trump is the American president, his conduct during the Toronto project gives us all an indication of how he might manage presidential challenges with far higher stakes than a mere real estate deal.

“Trump made inaccurate statements that may have influenced people who invested in the project,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in legal and government ethics. She also said, “He has shown a willingness to speak inaccurately and encourages people to rely on his inaccuracies, even when that ends up causing harm to them.”

In the case of the Toronto project and other deals he ventured into, the harm was financial. In the case of the presidency, it could be apocalyptic.

I and I’m sure millions of other television viewers have also seen and heard him state facts that have later turned out to be  bogus. Let me ask you this question. “Would you buy a used car unseen by this scammer?”  If you did and it turned out to have no motor in it, would you be pissed off? That is how all those many people he scammed out of their money feel.

Just to show you how this scheming dishonest man fleeces people out of their money, consider what he did with the project in Toronto. He charged a great amount of money to those investors who took over the Toronto project just to have the building named Trump Tower. When it was decided that this name wasn’t drawing in investors or purchasers of the condo apartments in the building, he demanded that investors pay him more money for taking his name off the tower.

His scams work at least for a while. Maybe I should try some of them. I am willing to sell you a nice home in Florida. Admittedly it is in the middle of a swamp but the good side of this deal is you won’t get bothered by pesky next door neighbors or sales people, I will sell it to you real cheap. No reasonable offer will be refused. 

Hey. If Trump can do it, I can’t  I do it?