Lucky Loser by Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig

[Kendra]

God, it's exhausting. Can this asshole finally be relegated to the trash heap of history where he belongs?

I hear ya. I've only posted maybe 1/3 of stuff I highlighted

The drama over the trees in TT atrium the city wanted and what tfg thought of them. I'm just now getting into the football team purchase.

[Kendra]

I am still enjoying this. Lots of stuff we know (or forgot we knew), but fleshed out more.

Those kinds of transactions are not allowed to be used as tax write-offs precisely because of the cozy nature of it all. The IRS has no way to tell whether the loss represented a legitimate investment or a disguised gift. Fred’s investment certainly served as a gift, one that would have been subject to a federal gift tax of 55 percent. Instead of increasing Fred’s taxes, the $15 million write-off on his own taxes reduced his tax bill by about $5 million. Fred did not reveal in his tax returns that the losses were attributable to his son’s failure, an omission that could rise to the level of tax fraud.

[Kendra]

He's hit a low point and staff is bailing. He's a cold one, only out for him

Trump would long harbor ill will toward everyone who jumped ship in his time of need. He didn’t care that they had families and responsibilities and were seeking stability and opportunity. It was a betrayal. Evidence of insufficient loyalty.

This one made me smile

Wallach remembers Trump shouting “You’re fired!” at everyone he saw. He walked over to a man standing nearby and asked, “What do you do here?” Before the man could answer, Trump said: “You’re fired!”

“I’m a guest at the hotel,” the stunned man responded.

[Kendra]

Swimming in debt, the casinos flailing, he tries to milk the Mar a Lago cash cow by making a sub-division.

When Palm Beach rejected his subdivision proposal, Trump filed a $50 million lawsuit against the town for violating his constitutional rights.

That didn't work so option #2 of turning it into a private club.

Trump released a list of prominent people he said would be members, including Prince Charles and Princess Diana; Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state; and the actress Elizabeth Taylor. When reporters checked, they were told Trump had simply sent free and unsolicited membership papers.

[Kendra]

I forget which golf course the contractor his stiffed worked on, but jeez, he a cheap, cheap man.

He recounted the situation to Trump: You owe me $141,000 and I agreed to accept $50,000, which I now regret, but even that wasn’t paid. “What the hell is the trouble?” he asked Trump. Trump put his arm on Tesoro’s shoulder. “You’re the most talented architect I’ve ever met,” Trump said, as Tesoro recalls. “And just because you’re such a nice guy, I’m going to tell them to give you a check for twenty-five thousand dollars.”

[Kendra]

OK, now it's into the first season of The Apprentice. This made me giggle, and lordy I wash we had tapes

Harris turned around to see that the wind at nearly seven hundred feet above street level and the nearby whirling helicopter blades had levitated Trump’s hair, which looked like a cotton candy pancake floating over his head.

[Resume18]

OK, now it's into the first season of The Apprentice. This made me giggle, and lordy I wash we had tapes

Harris turned around to see that the wind at nearly seven hundred feet above street level and the nearby whirling helicopter blades had levitated Trump’s hair, which looked like a cotton candy pancake floating over his head.

Penn Gillette once described Trump's hair as cotton candy made of piss.

[Kendra]

OK, now it's into the first season of The Apprentice. This made me giggle, and lordy I wash we had tapes

Harris turned around to see that the wind at nearly seven hundred feet above street level and the nearby whirling helicopter blades had levitated Trump’s hair, which looked like a cotton candy pancake floating over his head.

Penn Gillette once described Trump's hair as cotton candy made of piss.

[p0rtia]

Thanks Kendra and all!

Keep 'em coming!

[zekeb]

OK, now it's into the first season of The Apprentice. This made me giggle, and lordy I wash we had tapes

Harris turned around to see that the wind at nearly seven hundred feet above street level and the nearby whirling helicopter blades had levitated Trump’s hair, which looked like a cotton candy pancake floating over his head.

Penn Gillette once described Trump's hair as cotton candy made of piss.

There's some confusion here. I think Penn Gillette meant to say that Trump plans to move to Dingo Piss Creek if he loses.

[keith]

I forget which golf course the contractor his stiffed worked on, but jeez, he a cheap, cheap man.

He recounted the situation to Trump: You owe me $141,000 and I agreed to accept $50,000, which I now regret, but even that wasn’t paid. “What the hell is the trouble?” he asked Trump. Trump put his arm on Tesoro’s shoulder. “You’re the most talented architect I’ve ever met,” Trump said, as Tesoro recalls. “And just because you’re such a nice guy, I’m going to tell them to give you a check for twenty-five thousand dollars.”

I thought that was one of his casinos.

[Kendra]

I never watched The Apprentice, but he's really found his cash cow now.

Donald Trump was on the cusp of a moment he had long pursued: money for nothing more than being Trump. No investment. No financial risk. No significant labor. He had made countless business decisions based on the belief that something with his name attached to it was worth multiples more than the same thing without his name. It allowed him to ignore the losses at golf courses and buildings he bought, to look past larger industry and economic trends. He’d made countless bets on that proposition, some of which went horribly wrong. But the success of the show made it seem likely that corporate America would come around. Other companies would take the risk, and Trump would get his check either way.

[Kendra]

Trump was now collecting $1 million or more from each episode just from the product integration. He still showed little interest in how it all worked other than being excited to learn each week during filming how much the sponsor had paid.

In addition to his share of the $2 million that Dove paid to Burnett for The Apprentice episode, Trump received that year another $850,000 from Unilever, and $250,000 from a public relations firm that the company used. In a few hours of hawking soap, Trump had made twice as much money as Mar-a-Lago earned that year.

[Kendra]

I'm done!! Well worth the read and follow all the grift we didn't know about and/or forgot about.

Trump University:

Years later, the Associated Press would discover that more than thirty of Trump’s experts on wealth had bankruptcies, credit card defaults, or other histories of financial problems. At least four of them had prior felony convictions, including the professor who was at the top of his class.

Harris implored the group to buy the $1,495 three-day seminar package, without telling them that if they did, they would be taken into a room and badgered to max out their credit cards to buy the Trump Elite Gold program for $34,995.

[Kendra]

The spawn hawking some exotic resort that never happened.

Eric and Ivanka greeted buyers at a tropical restaurant with tables of gourmet food and champagne. The Trumps helped sell $300 million worth of lots that day. Construction never began. Buyers lost most of their money. The tax returns that we later obtained would show that Trump went on to collect $15.9 million on the project.

[Kendra]

When he got to Scotland and those golf courses, this made me chuckle

Trump said he selected Scotland for a golf course because his mother was “Scotch,” a term Scots use to describe their whiskey and pie, but not so much themselves.

[Kendra]

Loved this paragraph at the end.

► Show Spoiler

The fact-free bubble Fox News created around Donald Trump as president must have felt familiar. He had spent his adult life in a similar bubble financed by his father. In this comfortable place, he could hide his failures, pay for them with his father’s money, and, later, a celebrity’s fortune. There would be no metrics measuring his success, just the impression of self-created wealth that he willed into existence.

[pipistrelle]

The spawn hawking some exotic resort that never happened.

Eric and Ivanka greeted buyers at a tropical restaurant with tables of gourmet food and champagne. The Trumps helped sell $300 million worth of lots that day. Construction never began. Buyers lost most of their money. The tax returns that we later obtained would show that Trump went on to collect $15.9 million on the project.

What I don't get is why all of these people don't speak up. Yeah, it would be fake news. Yeah, they might be embarrassed. But still.

[pipistrelle]

When he got to Scotland and those golf courses, this made me chuckle

Trump said he selected Scotland for a golf course because his mother was “Scotch,” a term Scots use to describe their whiskey and pie, but not so much themselves.

I think it's more than that. Call a Scot "Scotch" to his face and see what happens.

[Rolodex]

The spawn hawking some exotic resort that never happened.

Eric and Ivanka greeted buyers at a tropical restaurant with tables of gourmet food and champagne. The Trumps helped sell $300 million worth of lots that day. Construction never began. Buyers lost most of their money. The tax returns that we later obtained would show that Trump went on to collect $15.9 million on the project.

Where was this? You'd think the buyers could sue for not getting what they'd paid for.

[Kendra]

The spawn hawking some exotic resort that never happened.

Eric and Ivanka greeted buyers at a tropical restaurant with tables of gourmet food and champagne. The Trumps helped sell $300 million worth of lots that day. Construction never began. Buyers lost most of their money. The tax returns that we later obtained would show that Trump went on to collect $15.9 million on the project.

Where was this? You'd think the buyers could sue for not getting what they'd paid for.

I will have to go look, it was something tropical and not in the US.

[Rolodex]

I have a vague memory of this, but only because you mentioned it. I think the trump tower/hotel/whatever in Panama City, Panama was kind of a disaster/scam. But it was a high rise, not lots.

[chancery]

Possibly Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico, an oceanfront condo/hotel resort that sold several hundred units to investors who put down $200,000-300,000 each. No units were ever built.

Trump was not in fact the developer; he had merely licensed the rights to his name, although he went along with and assisted in lots of deceptive conduct on the part of the developer calculated to assure the suckers that it was a Trump project, the success of which Trump would personally guarantee (not using those words in a technical sense).

Trump was sued, along with the developer and the people behind the developer (which was probably a shell without significant assets). Trump settled the claims against him for an undisclosed amount. The developers apparently settled for around $7.5 million, which was probably a good deal less than half of the amounts the investors had lost.

[Kendra]

I think this is the one:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps- ... d=55759829

[Suranis]

So, I was in Limerick today, intending to buy this thing. So when I went into the bookshop, I saw this

IMG_20240926_104548_HDR.jpg (129.29 KiB) Viewed 69 times

Yep, they had stuck the book right beside Hillary Rodham Clintons latest Book. Yes, I was amused.

But the overall feeling I got was... I felt dirty. I felt dirty for even wanting to know about this idiot. Its not that I felt dirty for caring, it's that felt dirty for buying into the whole media frenzy that made me care. Something like that anyway. I guess just didn't want my money to go into feeding this monster about this frankly pathetic and stupid man.

So, I went off bought some tea and biscuits (cookies) from a charity stall that was in the shop (Milford Hospice, a very worthy cause), wandered around the shop sipping tea and browsing the shelves, and bought a couple of books about something completely different.

I will probably pick it up some other day. But today, no. Not today.