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“There's always an element of self-delusion among people who believe they ought to be President. There's an underestimation of your opponent and an overestimation of your own abilities. This is compatible with being rich and powerful, the idea that we were blessed by God because we deserve to be blessed.”
Jimmy Carter
I have to hand it to former President Donald Trump . . . and, no, this is not going to be a back-handed compliment. He figured out – and I’ll wager as early as midway through his tenure – how to get out from under a job he did not like and take care of anticipated post-presidency financial obligations so he wouldn’t have to keep the wearying job.
Quite a few reputable pundits opined right from Election Day 2016 on that Mr. Trump had not expected to be elected and furthermore had not wanted to be elected President. The original goal of the campaign was a combination of boosting his popularity across a wider audience and enhancing his various businesses, and by doing so producing higher profits (or in a few cases, simply producing a profit). By actually being elected, however, Mr. Trump had less control of the Trump corporate message and could not be nearly as involved in his business empire. And at age 70 when he took office, the expectation was he would be spending less, not more, time at his golf courses with friends and those who wanted to be, reducing his quality of life.
But Mr. Trump found a way to make the presidency work for him. He could hand out jobs to pals, cronies, family members, etc. And this was without owing anyone anything for his election because it was Mr. Trump, much more than his party or any political faction, who had taken the White House. Between TV and Twitter, he had all the attention he wanted. Whatever their levels of competency, he could delegate most of the hands-on work to appointees. And he could love the links even more – in his first year in office, Mr. Trump played more rounds of golf than President Obama had in his eight years.
But then came November 2018 and dark clouds. Mr. Trump was already tired of being attacked incessantly – and sometimes unfairly – by some of the media, his Republican majority in the House and Senate had just been halved and that did not bode well for 2020, and his business empire, perhaps because he was no longer piloting the ship, was doing poorly, especially with mounting, unresolved debt. It became clear to Mr. Trump that not only did he not want to spend eight years in the White House, he could not afford to. If he did, he’d be leaving broke (or worse) at age 78 – too old to start over and with fewer rounds left in his golf bag.
So he determined to lose. How else to explain his bizarre campaign antics last fall? And he had to have a reason he lost that was rotten – a stolen election. And this reason was also a cause for which he could raise lots of money and take care of the looming debts that could crush his empire, and with it, him. With enough money, he could add to that empire and become a power broker to get others elected to do stuff he found too tedious. He was about to give new meaning to Harry Truman’s line, “The buck stops here.”
Let me emphasize, there is nothing unseemly about a former President trading on having been chief executive to make the most money he has ever made in his life. Just looking at the 21st century, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have practically printed money thanks to speaking engagements and book contracts, and who knows what we don’t know about. (By the way, every president since Calvin Coolidge has written an autobiography except Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.) And Mr. Trump, despite the economic downturn, is not starting from scratch. When he was sworn in, he became by far the richest American President ever, being worth (on paper) $4.5 billion.
What other Presidents had the biggest bucks? According to Wall Street’s valuation and in today’s dollars: George Washington with $587 million, Thomas Jefferson with $236 million, Theodore Roosevelt with $139 million, Andrew Jackson with $132 million, James Madison with $113 million, and Lyndon Johnson with $109 million. After that, we’re talking about Presidents with paltry eight figures or less (such as Joe Biden, with $9 million). Obama is at $40 million, lodged between George W. Bush at $39 million and John Tyler at $57 million. Ironically, speaking of bucks stopping, the “poorest” President was Truman, who at no time in his life was a millionaire. He even struggled to make a living after his presidency, and when the Social Security Act of 1965 was passed, Harry and Bess Truman were the first two people to receive Medicare cards.
Back to the cleverness of Donald Trump. As his presidency wore on he could see the necessity of having a lot of money and soon. According to a report in Forbes magazine after reviewing Mr. Trump’s annual financial disclosure forms and other documents, it is believed that the reported $400 million he owes is underestimated by quite a bit and in reality he owes more than $1 billion. The loans are spread out over more than a dozen different assets—hotels, buildings, mansions, and golf courses. Most are listed on the financial disclosure report Mr. Trump files annually with the federal government. Two, which add up to an estimated $447 million, are not.
“Some people also like to suggest that Deutsche Bank is the only institution willing to lend to Trump,” Forbes reports. “That’s not true. The president’s creditors include at least six other institutions, two of which began or reworked deals while the president was in office. One reason for all the confusion: Trump’s loans are not fully transparent.”
The biggest and most pressing debts:
* 1290 Avenue of the Americas: $285 million owed. Due November 2022. Mr. Trump’s share of the debt on the building appears to be the largest liability in his entire portfolio. In 2012, he and his business partner, Vornado Realty Trust, got a $950 million loan from four financial institutions: Deutsche Bank, UBS, Goldman Sachs, and the state-owned Bank of China.
* Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.: $170 million owed to Deutsche Bank. Due in 2024.
* 555 California Street in San Francisco: $162 million owed. Due this September.
* Trump Tower in New York: $100 million owed. Due this September.
To be sure, Mr. Trump has resources to draw on, but why use his own money or do a refinance with now-balky banks when he can milk the cash cow of some of the 74 million people who voted for him? The lure from November 3 on was that there was massive voter fraud and the election was stolen, and money is needed to overturn that fraudulent election result and restore Mr. Trump to office. During the rest of that month and in December 2020, he raised a quarter-billion dollars. And only $4 million of that went to actual legal costs, which explains why cut-rate lawyers like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell (now both facing huge lawsuits) were carrying the ball instead of blue-chip attorneys. None of the money was spent in support of the Republican candidates in the Georgia Senate races, and their losses gave the Democrats a majority in Congress. Most of the money spent has been in an ongoing campaign to raise more “Stop the Steal” money – in other words, the more raised, the more that can be spent on raising more money. It’s an endless financial spin cycle. The Save America political action committee has proven to be extraordinarily successful and Mr. Trump can use that money however he sees fit.
So, those chortling over the former President being in deep financial doo-doo have, once more, underestimated him. Broken by debt is not the likely scenario. If anything, Mr. Trump’s worst nightmare is not that he can’t pay off his debts but that some of his loopiest supporters will turn out to be correct and the election result will be overturned and on March 4 he’ll be inaugurated for a second term.
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including, most recently, “Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride From Hell.” The next collaboration with Bob Drury, “Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier,” will be published in April by St. Martin’s Press. Please go to your local bookstore or to Amazon/bn.com to pre-order.
A psychotic and delusional grifter who never saw past his next tweet. I believe you overestimate his intelligence, ability to strategize and his business acumen. He would have been far richer had someone else managed his inheritance. To credit him properly is to acknowledge his ability to steal detracted only by his constant and easy self-incrimination. He is what he hates - a moron, a coward and a loser.