Memories of the 28th Century

Donald Trump has made a lot of his skill in negotiation and making deals. He hasn't been crowing about that recently, but there still are implicit claims. Those claims don't stand up to scrutiny, and he seems to have been more skilled at stealing than in dealing.

A large amount of his money he gained through bankruptcy court, rather than through doing business. There are questions as to how many bankruptcies he has had. He admits to four, but there have been at least six, and if one tosses in the bankruptcies for all of his related entities, then it is more than a dozen, but it's hard to tell, because there are so many entities in so many places.

But recovering debts costs money, so there are debts he has defaulted on that the creditors did not go after. I searched and found some articles about unpaid contractors, but I got the impression that there are more. Not paying contractors makes it easier to make money on a real estate project. I have looked for foreign bankruptcies, but none appear quickly, and I didn't feel like digging too deeply. Other countries have very different ways of dealing with bankruptcy.

Trump has used bankruptcy as a way to make money from a failed project. With deals where a few billion in debt are written off it is easy to turn a profit. There was a period of time in the 1990's when I was considerably wealthier than Donald Trump. He had a net worth of about negative $900 million, while I was worth something around $50,000 to 100,000. When the court wrote off a couple billion, Donald gained that.

A simple way to look at the deals and steals of Mr. Trump is that he has used and abused the bankruptcy laws. Maybe I should have done the same thing. When a Bankruptcy court writes off a million dollars in debt, it is the same as having an income of a million dollars, except that it is not taxable.

I don't know what Trump plans to do to make really big money from being President (recent presidents have written books and given lectures), but Donald isn't bright enough to write a book or to give lectures, so I wonder if he will steal government assets. I don't know how he would do that, but it should be possible, especially for an insider. He might buy property acquired by the government as hurricane relief for the former owners; buying at ten cents on the dollar. Or maybe he's thinking about buying up Puerto Rico on the cheap after it goes bankrupt. That would explain why he has refused to help bail out their bonds. If those drop to two cents on the dollar and are mortgage bonds, then he could buy up whatever they cover for pennies on the dollar. He could turn vast stretches of beach into Trump resorts.

But there are people who defend Trump. I just saw a headline: 'The National Rifle Association (NRA) has claimed Donald Trump is being subjected to the most "ruthless attack on a president.... in American history".' I don't think the word "ruthless" fits. According to dictionary.com, ruthless means: without pity or compassion; cruel; merciless. (https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-tr...161423632.html) I can't say how it is with others, but I feel sorry for the guy, because he seems to think that he isn't a terribly bad guy, but he does appear to have no sympathy for anyone.

I would contend that he has received less criticism than he deserves. Other presidents have been slammed even more thoroughly than Trump. Reagan got all sorts of criticism, and he deserved it, even though he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Harding was slammed as hard when he was in office as he has been since and with good reasons. On the other hand, Hoover was criticized much more when he was in office than he deserved, and FDR got credit for some programs that were first proposed by Hoover. More recently, W was slammed almost as much as he deserved while he was in office, and we are still suffering from his stupidity, but neither Obama nor Trump has ended W's mistaken invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. If Trump feels that he has been excessively criticized, then it is his ego that is demanding greater criticism, because it is so big.





https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.fde2a01b0648

Trump companies worldwide
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/28/politi...ses/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/u...rump-debt.html

Unpaid contractors
http://www.npr.org/2017/01/11/509168...-owed-millions

13 business failures
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...lures-20160314

Ties to Russia
http://time.com/4433880/donald-trump-ties-to-russia/