I'm making the claim "he's not the billionaire "genius" businessman he purports himself to be". With an emphasis on the words "genius" and "billionaire".
That doesnt mean he doesnt know business or has even made money, I just dont believe he's a billionaire as evidenced by his tax return and other stories I've read where he went bankrupt and lost all of his properties to the banks but his name was so tied to the properties, they didn't want to foreclose and potentially crater the real estates value so they paid him a percentage for the use of his name and that's primarily what Trump did going forward (licensing his name to projects) versus owning the properties that have his name. I think thats primarily how he makes his money and I think he made a lot of money from The Apprentice but it sounds like he loses constantly on his real estate deals.
His acumen is in PR, he's fooled you and many others into believing he is something he is not which again is not a "genius" or a "billionaire" when it comes to real estate especially considering real estate has done nothing but go up since I graduated from college in 1988. Assuming he purchased properties leveraged by loans and held them to this day, they should be paid off and making a ton of money, the fact he is still showing little to no tax paid means the loss carry forwards are wiping out the profits in the current year.
Here's an example, if I start a business and lose 1 billion dollars in the first year but then proceed to make 100 million per year for the next 9 years, I've run a net loss of 100 million dollars at the end of 10 years and would not have paid any income taxes because I could carry forward that first year loss until the loss was fully absorbed by profit or the time limit to apply these losses had expired (IIRC, its 15 years). That's what I think has happened with Trump. He could still be cash flowing while having no taxable income because you can take depreciation on the building which lowers your taxable income without being an actual out of pocket expense. But its really just a deferral of tax because once you sell the fully depreciated building, you pay tax on a fully depreciated asset.
Now I could could be wrong about the billionaire part if it can be shown he actually owns significant real estate with equity, then he could be. I think I heard him claim he is worth 10 billion, I dont believe him and it would be consistent for him to exaggerate the truth for personal benefit or ego. And I dont say this with any sense of Trump derangement, its more an observation that I think is accurate. I'm politically agnostic and ambivalent about whomever is president because I think the government has so fucked us with their out of control spending and printing of money that its simply a matter of time until the dollar crashes and we all pay for the lack of restraint shown by politicians and no President, current or in the future, has the political will, courage and/or ability to stop the coming crash.
In regard to the billion dollar loss, thats been reported for years. Here's one example:
Report: Trump lost more than $1 billion from 1985 to 1994
I believe he also inherited like 400 million from his father. He could have put that in the stock market and played tidily winks for the last 30 years and it would probably be worth more than he is now.
To reiterate, I'm not saying he's broke, I just don't believe he is the multi-billionaire he claims to be, I bet he's not even a billionaire but who cares, he gets to live like one. If we had full access to all his finances, this would become clear but we'll never have full access to this data because I think it would prove what I'm saying.
