NYT Trump Taxes Part 2 dropped tonight

[Suburban Warrior]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/28/us/donald-trump-taxes-apprentice.html

[jpak]

1. Need details can you post a snippet?

Ugh

[SoonerPride]

3. It's all about his Apprentice money scam

Donald J. Trump bragged that he was a billionaire who had overcome financial hardship.

“I used my brain, I used my negotiating skills and I worked it all out,” he told viewers. “Now, my company is bigger than it ever was and stronger than it ever was.”

It was all a hoax.


Months after that inaugural episode in January 2004, Mr. Trump filed his individual tax return reporting $89.9 million in net losses from his core businesses for the prior year. The red ink spilled from everywhere, even as American television audiences saw him as a savvy business mogul with the Midas touch.

Twelve years later, that image of the self-made, self-saved mogul, beamed into the national consciousness, would help fuel Mr. Trump’s improbable election to the White House.

But while the story of “The Apprentice” is by now well known, the president’s tax returns reveal another grand twist that has never been truly told — how the popularity of that fictional alter ego rescued him, providing a financial lifeline to reinvent himself yet again. And then how, in an echo of the boom-and-bust cycle that has defined his business career, he led himself toward the financial shoals he must navigate today.

[jpak]

4. TY!

[dalton99a]

5. .

Mr. Trump’s genius, it turned out, wasn’t running a company. It was making himself famous — Trump-scale famous — and monetizing that fame.

By analyzing the tax records, The New York Times was able to place a value on Mr. Trump’s celebrity. While the returns show that he earned some $197 million directly from “The Apprentice” over 16 years — roughly in line with what he has claimed — they also reveal that an additional $230 million flowed from the fame associated with it.

The show’s big ratings meant that everyone wanted a piece of the Trump brand, and he grabbed at the opportunity to rent it out. There was $500,000 to pitch Double Stuf Oreos, another half-million to sell Domino’s Pizza and $850,000 to push laundry detergent.

There were seven-figure licensing deals with hotel builders, some with murky backgrounds, in former Soviet republics and other developing countries. And there were schemes that exploited misplaced trust in the TV version of Mr. Trump, who, off camera, peddled worthless get-rich-quick nostrums like “Donald Trump Way to Wealth” seminars that promised initiation into “the secrets and strategies that have made Donald Trump a billionaire.”

Just as, years before, the money Mr. Trump secretly received from his father allowed him to assemble a wobbly collection of Atlantic City casinos and other disparate enterprises that then collapsed around him, the new influx of cash helped finance a buying spree that saw him snap up golf resorts, a business not known for easy profits. Indeed, the tax records show that his golf properties have been hemorrhaging millions of dollars for years.

[mucifer]

7. I could see the deplorables loving him more for all of this.

[Turbineguy]

18. Donate clothing for charity?

another misdirection.

[Cha]

39. So much for "..monetizing that name.. " now.. his

maggots have come home to roost.

Everything trump touches turns to shite..

TY for the snips!

[malaise]

46. maggots have come home to roost

[ecstatic]

6. Is there any way of knowing if the losses were even legit?

After all, he is a tax dodging liar.

[Cha]

40. Mahalo, Sooner.. trump is a real hoax & a FAKE president

[mitch96]

12. pay wall

[Cha]

41. There are two posts with some snips upthread..

[mitch96]

44. Got it, thanks... nt

[StarryNite]

2. Yes, some paragraphs please.

[certainot]

34. 2nd...

[Cha]

42. Two posts upthread have Snips now.. Sooner's & dalton's

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. Among his lucrative advertising stunts was this:

Unilever, which was looking to promote a new version of its All brand laundry detergent, concocted an entire multiplatform marketing campaign around Mr. Trump. In addition to $850,000 the company paid him directly, tax records reveal, he earned $250,000 more from a public-relations firm Unilever hired to help run an ad campaign coined “Softness fit for a Trump.”

Unilever staged a publicity stunt outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, where Mr. Trump hoisted a laundry basket with an ad for “All Cleans & Softens” stuck to the front. He had taken a break from the rigors of “The Apprentice” to wash donated clothes for charity, Unilever claimed.

As part of his agreement, Mr. Trump cold-called journalists to talk up All detergent, telling a Boston Globe reporter, “Unilever is a great company” and “This is a product my mother used.” He also recorded voice-overs for an online game that was part of an All sweepstakes, in which a tiny digital version of Mr. Trump did laundry and squawked one-liners like, “The Donald can do the work of 40 dry cleaners!”

... In his zeal to squeeze ever more dollars out of Mr. Burnett’s golden goose, Mr. Trump signed on to an array of questionable products and services, including some that claimed to sell insights into his business expertise. The first year of “The Apprentice” was barely over when Mr. Trump pocketed $300,000 to speak at an event in Dayton, Ohio, where attendees paid $2,995 to learn the secrets of instant wealth from a company that was later accused in a lawsuit of running a Ponzi scheme.

This is some juicy stuff! It's about his involvement in product promotion - any product at all, as long as he made money from it - and his involvement in dodgy enterprises and real estate deals with some sketchy characters.

[Generic Brad]

26. Does Unilever make bleach?

The kind you could inject to fight off a virus?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

27. They do make Vaseline, and they also make Trump's brand of hairspray.

[niyad]

9. KNR and bookmarking. I cannot take any more tonight.

[NRaleighLiberal]

10. What a grotesque human being. Of course there is a pyramid scheme in the mix.

[rsdsharp]

11. It bothers me that The Times talks about the

“big ratings” for The Apprentice. Trump always claimed it was the number one show. It wasn’t. The first three years the ratings were 7th, 11th and 15th. It never again finished in the top 20.

I don’t think the Times researched this.

[mysteryowl]

31. I never watched it. I would just move on to another channel if I saw it was on.

I was repulsed by him and could not understand why it was not widely known, that he was repulsive.

[A HERETIC I AM]

32. Nor I.

I couldn't stomach him then, either.

[mysteryowl]

33. Exactly,

How people did not see it I will never know.

[certainot]

35. they were drawn to his royal i'm-never-wrong certitude - the secret sauce for

uncertainty-avoiding sex on the wrong brain authoritarians

[mysteryowl]

36. For me, "He" was gross.

I could care less about any message he may have had.
I never got that far to know that he had a message.

How did people not feel how gross he was/is? (rhetorical)

[certainot]

38. that's the certitude - for authoritarians it's more important than truth and

the age old secret of authoritarian power

he helps them reduce their frightening complicated world into simple absolutes

all caused by wrong handed masturbation and genes

[soothsayer]

13. It's on drumpf cashing in on his name

Selling mattresses, burgers, detergent, Ponzi schemes, seminars, etc.

Con artist, huckster, showman, carnival barker, snake oil salesman.

[DeminPennswoods]

14. This is all in Cohen's book, too

nt

[soothsayer]

15. This is slightly more accessible, and repetition is good prolly

But good to know.

This didn’t uncover anything — just some perspective on how he dupes the masses.

[DeminPennswoods]

17. Just saying Cohen also provides

a lot of detail on how Trump went from actually developing projects to just licensing his name.

[soothsayer]

19. Yeah, I getcha'

I’ve not read Cohen’s book yet

[DeminPennswoods]

20. Finished it a couple days ago

Cohen does a lot of self-flagellation throughout and self-pitying in the last couple chapters, but he gives a lot of good insight into Trump.

[soothsayer]

22. I should take a look. I really enjoyed that teaser they published

[Klaralven]

16. Lest we forget -- Trump University

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_University

[SammyWinstonJack]

21. Just bought a fifth wheel that had one of tRump's mattresses, tRump Home collection.

Tossed it out. A used tRump mattress.

[soothsayer]

24. Ewww! I had no recollection of that or the Big N' Tasty burger

Well I vaguely recall the burger but not him

[NBachers]

23. Never once saw The Apprentice; never could grasp why anyone would want to.

[Ponietz]

28. +1

[Mickju]

29. I was mostly unaware of it.

I stopped watching TV for about 10 years years and even got rid of my TV. I barely knew who Trump was. I wish it could have stayed that way.

[fleur-de-lisa]

37. I had cable (still do), watched a lot of tv at night

and I was mostly unaware of it too.

Big ratings, my ass.

[Wellstone ruled]

25. Great story.

[jorgevlorgan]

30. The New York Times has it's faults

But is and will likely remain, a national treasure. Same with WAPO

[Cha]

43. I have to add trump's pic of hawking BEANS from the OVAL Desk.

[dalton99a]

45. +1