Loan payments loom as Trump fights for his political future - and the future of his business (WP)

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-debt-election/2020/10/23/411ab8c2-0e33-11eb-b1e8-16b59b92b36d_story.html

Loan payments loom as Trump fights for his political future – and the future of his business
By David A. Fahrenthold, Jonathan O'Connell and Joshua Partlow
Oct. 23, 2020 at 12:29 p.m. CDT

At President Trump’s hotel in Chicago, the most recent board meeting began with bad news. This year’s numbers were awful. Revenue had plunged. The hotel was just 24?percent occupied.

And worse: The hotel expected next year to be bad, too.

In fact, the hotel’s managing director, Gabriel Constantin, said the coronavirus pandemic had hurt the Trump hotel so deeply — reducing business travel and forcing the cancellation of Chicago conferences — that it might be nine years before their business returned to 2019 levels.

“The most optimistic [date] would be 2024,” Constantin said, according to an account of the meeting obtained by The Washington Post. He had a warning about the hotel’s future, if the pandemic’s economic effects didn’t ease: “It’s going to be very, very tough to keep the boat afloat.”

As Trump fights to save his political career, another key part of his life — his business — is also under growing stress.

In the next four years, Trump faces payment deadlines for more than $400?million in loans — just as the pandemic robs his businesses of customers and income, according to a Washington Post analysis of Trump’s finances. The bills coming due include loans on his Chicago hotel, his D.C. hotel and his Doral resort, all hit by a double whammy: Trump’s political career slowed their business, then the pandemic ground it down much further.

If Trump is reelected, these loan-saddled properties could present a significant conflict of interest: The president will owe enormous sums to banks that his government regulates. National security experts say Trump’s debts to Deutsche Bank, a German company, and foreign deals may constitute security risks if they make him vulnerable to influence by foreign governments.

[snowybirdie]

1. Even if he is not arrested

His so called empire will go down in flames. And his actions as President are directly responsible. Would love to see a public auctioning off of all tRump holdings! Poor trumplings.....

[Maeve]

2. My heart just bleeds for him

[Kid Berwyn]

3. Time for some fabric swatches.

Maybe the reason why knows nothing about hotels, golf, casinos or making money...

Trump is a moron fixated by fabric swatches.

Trump, the billion-dollar loser — I was his ghostwriter and saw it happen

Charles Leerhson
Yahoo.com, May 9, 2019

EXCERPT...

I tend to see my time with him — the first part of it, anyway, before things started going bad in a hurry — as his “King Midas” period. I never said this to him; if I had, he probably would have thought I was suggesting he enter the muffler business. But there was a stretch of months when everything he touched turned into a deal. The banks seemed to accept the version of him depicted in his first book, “The Art of the Deal,” which we now know from his previous ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, was entirely invented. They believed it over what they saw on his balance sheets or heard coming out of his mouth, and they never said no to his requests for more money. Often they came up with things he could say yes to before he could think of them himself. As a result, a failing real estate developer who had little idea of what he was doing and less interest in doing it once he’d held the all-important press conference wound up owning three New Jersey hotel-casinos, the Plaza Hotel, the Eastern Airlines Shuttle and a 281-foot yacht.

A real go-getter, right? But Trump’s portfolio did not jibe with what I saw each day — which to a surprisingly large extent was him looking at fabric swatches. Indeed, flipping through fabric swatches seemed at times to be his main occupation. Some days he would do it for hours, then take me in what he always called his “French military helicopter” to Atlantic City — where he looked at more fabric swatches or sometimes small samples of wood paneling. It was true that the carpets and drapes at his properties needed to be refreshed frequently, and the seats on the renamed Trump Shuttle required occasional reupholstering. But the main thing about fabric swatches was that they were within his comfort zone — whereas, for example, the management of hotels and airlines clearly wasn’t. One of his aides once told me that every room at the Plaza could be filled at the “rack rate” (list price) every night, and the revenue still wouldn’t cover the monthly payment of the loan he’d taken out to buy the place. In other words, he’d made a ridiculous deal. Neither he nor the banks had done the math beforehand. Or perhaps Trump knew it because someone had told him, but didn’t want to think about it. The one thing he is above-average at is compartmentalization.

Source:

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-the-billiondollar-loser-his-ghostwriter-recalls-the-king-midas-years-090000640.html

Unstable Moron the Zero.

[dalton99a]

5. +1. Well, he did learn a little something

"Nobody knows more about fabric swatches than Donald Trump!"

[EndlessWire]

4. Fixated on swatches??

Golfing, swatches, eating hamberders...they elected him...why? The leader of the free world--swatches?

Joe and Kamala can't get here soon enough.