It doesn't matter if he's never held public office - he's a successful businessman and is going to Make America Great Again!™
This is an argument heard by Trump skeptics around the nation, echoed by the frenzied masses of supporters sporting their bright red MAGA hats. Around forty percent of Americans today are willing to vote for a man who is objectively sexist, racist, and who has relatively zero idea how to actually run a country, simply based on his track record in the private sector. Regardless of all his faults, he's at least an incredibly successful businessman with a track record of success, right? Right?
On the contrary. Donald Trump, as it turns out, has a history of spectacular failures in the business sector. As it turns out, when comparing Trump's investments with the general trend of interest rates over the past few decades, Trump's business deals have been so breathtakingly terrible that he'd be richer today if he had done nothing at all.
To really grasp how terrible of a businessman Donald Trump actually is, one needs to look at some of the products in which he has invested.
Trump Airlines
In 1988, Trump took out a $245 million loan to purchase Eastern Air Lines Shuttle, an east coast airline service. He re-branded all of the company's assets, slapping TRUMP all over the airline's planes, and covering the bathrooms in gold fixtures. Two years after he launched the Trump Shuttle, however, the airline wasn't even making enough money to cover the interest payment on his loans. Eventually, Trump defaulted and turned over ownership of the company to his creditor to escape bankruptcy.
Trump Casinos
Trump has filed for bankruptcy on his Atlantic City properties alone four times. After one year of operating the Taj Mahal, the operation was $3 billion in debt, and Trump filed for bankruptcy in 1991. In 2004, he filed again for bankruptcy. Citing $1.8 billion in debts, he filed for bankruptcy for the Trump Taj Mahal, the Trump Marina and Trump Plaza casinos, as well as a riverboat casino in Indiana. After the bankruptcy, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts reorganized as Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. Again in 2009, the company filed for bankruptcy, and again in 2014.
Trump Steaks
In 2007, Donald Trump struck a deal with Georgia company Buckhead Beef and consumer store Sharper Image, allowing the newly branded Trump Steaks to be sold nationwide.
"[W]e literally sold almost no steaks," said Sharper Image CEO Jerry Levin. "If we sold $50,000 of steaks grand total, I'd be surprised." The steaks were pulled from shelves after just two months of abysmal sales, but the Trump Steaks commercial has been saved, allowing for future generations to understand just how ridiculous this business venture was from the start.
Trump University
Also known as the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative, Trump University was a series of wealth-building seminars for which students paid as much as $34,995 for to learn all about Donald Trump's secrets of success (really though, what success?). Trump had promised that seminars filled with this information would be delivered by the best of the best, hand-picked instructors. In the end, however, they were delivered by motivational speakers, often without degrees, and sometimes with criminal records. Now, Trump University is the subject of two class-action lawsuits in California related to Trump University, and a third suit, for $40 million, brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
Trump Vodka
Trump Vodka hit the market in 2006, with Trump stating: "I fully expect the most called for cocktail in America to be the T&T or the Trump and Tonic." The liquor flopped, and was out of circulation by 2011.
All of these failures serve as definitive proof that Trump is not the success story he claims to be. In reality, he is nothing more than a con man. American voters would be wise, then, to take his words with a grain of salt, and to be sure that the vision he claims to have for the United States of America is not just his next failed enterprise.
