Air Trump!
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So there it was, minding my own business, Saturday evening, relaxing, I had an ever fun afternoon, wife taking me look for lighting fixtures for our new house. Boy, I love doing stuff like that. Anyway, I look at my phone and I see Donald Trump launching a sneaker line. Shut the front door. I, again, smile comes on my face and I start thinking about the many.
many things over the years that Donald Trump has put his name on. He doesn’t drink, but he did have Trump vodka. He’s got I found out later on this year, one of my wonderful listeners out there sent me Trump wine. He’s got a, you know, he’s got his name on a vineyard in Virginia. It was quite good. What else? Oh, Trump water. We had Trump water. We had the Trump board game.
I also remember as well, he actually had like Trump, like furniture and throw pillows with his crest on. I remember being in a furniture store. This had to be, I don’t know, 15 years ago. And I’m like, who would buy this? Anyway, people do. So why is Trump launching a sneaker line? Supposedly, it’s going to be the greatest sneaker line of all time. Because it’s Donald Trump. It’s supposedly it’s sold out.
But I got a sink in suspicion that they’re going to keep making these things. Let’s just leave it at that. I want to talk a little bit about this and Donald Trump and how he goes about making money and the verdict that was thrown out last week. First and foremost, let’s talk a little bit about the verdict here. It’s ridiculous. And I said from the get go that this was a joke.
It really was this court case was patently absurd. There had been times in the past. I mean, I’m going back to this like 2009. I came down very hard on Donald Trump for sticking his name on things that he wasn’t even invested in. Again, giving the illusion that this construction project or condo project was going to be great because he had his name on and many of them falling apart, never being developed.
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and people putting deposits down on these places and losing a fortune. Now, if you’re going to go after somebody, go after something for something like that. In this situation, nobody lost a dime. So a breakdown exactly what happened. You have to put numbers forward. It’s a statement of your financial condition when you’re going out to borrow money and probably the most egregious claim.
that he put out there was that his 11,000 square foot triplex and Trump Tower was 30,000 square feet. So basically three times the size.
Again, I try to imagine a 30,000 square foot apartment, but anyway, neither here nor there. The accountant that basically put together the statement of financial conditions, a gentleman by the name of Donald Bender, and he drew up the documents. And in the case, he was interviewed by investigators. He said that the Trump,
the Trump organization withheld records. They didn’t put everything forward. They didn’t put appraisals forward that he requested. And the accountant said that he would not have issued the SFC if he had known that this was the case. Okay. Then they went on to Deutsche Bank, who didn’t lose any money on any of these loans they gave. This gentleman by the name of Nicholas High.
He’s the managing director at the private wealth management division, and he relied on the 2011 SFC and assumed the representations were accurate. He affirmed that Trump’s personal guarantee was the reason for the favorable pricing on the loan. And again, these loans included covenants requiring that Donald Trump to maintain a minimum net worth of $2.5 billion, excluding
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any value related to his brand, which is again, I find that $2.5 billion number interesting because that’s the exact number that Forbes put his wealth at, I think several years ago. And again, do I think it’s that much? No, no, no. Based upon his real estate holdings, I do not. Anyway, neither here nor there. Okay. We all know, okay, and I’ve talked about this before. Donald Trump, he is
I mean, if you haven’t figured out that he’s a salesman, he’s a salesman. And he’s a serial exaggerator. And I mentioned I’ve got a very near and dear friend, if not, I would call family members of mine that they’re classic exaggerate. We crack the relative, they crack jokes about it. So take whatever so and so says and reduce it by half. It’s just.
That’s a person. We all see that with Trump. Everything touches is the greatest. It’s the biggest. It’s the best. It’s all time. Uh huh. Okay. If you haven’t figured that out. Well, I mean, come on. You know, you gotta you gotta think a little bit here people. But I like that the Wall Street Journal had to say the editorial board. I gotta give him credit for this line. I wish I had thought of this. What this case is this ridiculous $355 million
They basically described it as using a hellfire missile to annihilate a shoplifter. Deutsche Bank made money on the loans and its valuation teams gave a haircut to the numbers provided by Trump. There was no victim here.
Again, you know, a lot of people coming out with an interesting article about the obscene award was put out by Jonathan Turley. It’s basically testing New York’s legal integrity. And I, I hear what Jonathan truly saying, but I listen, this year, you’re in New York.
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Okay, you’re in New York and Donald Trump has got himself into some public spats in the past with the politics today, but they were popular spats. In particular, we talked about how he was able to repair at a very low cost the ice rink in Central Park. And you talk about all he was basically pointing out, he was sticking it at some of the politicians that be just how ineffective they were.
But because again, the entire city wanted that eyesore fixed, he came in. I mean, it was bipartisan. He came in as a bipartisan hero. What I remind everybody, Donald Trump played the game in New York for a long period of time. He’s guys, not a life long Republican by any stretch of the imagination. And it’s a guy who was going to Chelsea Clinton’s, uh, wedding. He buddies with all of these politicians.
You want to go back in time a little bit. He was a regular on morning Joe. They loved having him on one of the guys that has been ripping into Donald Trump on morning Joe, uh, what’s his name there? Donnie Deutsch, the guy who had the advertising, uh, firm that, uh, his father gave to him and somehow he’s, he decided to get out of that. And now he’s a, he’s a voice on morning Joe.
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challenges on the show The Apprentice. Go back and watch some of that. Big in with all of the liberals in the city of New York. Listen, this is just how business is done here in this city, in many respects this state.
You either you play ball and you get your mind right politically or you’re just not going to play.
Again, there are certain industries out there. You want to talk about the financial services industry. They can get away with a lot more simply because of the type of revenue that they’re able to generate. But, you know, let me throw this out there. Does anybody think that in today’s day and age based upon Elon Musk and some of the positions that he’s taken publicly over the past 18 months, does anybody think that the state of New York would have given him?
the free factory that they gave him for his solar company outside of Buffalo, New York, no way.
So yeah, I mean, you could still do business in this city, in this state. I don’t know why you’d want to based upon the various different taxes and whatnot, but you better, better get your mind right. Now, the problem that Donald Trump is going to have right now, again, they talk about, he’s a billionaire. Well, what does that mean?
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What does that mean? Do you think he’s got this type of cash sitting around? You think he can go down to a bank and make a withdrawal and say, here you go, here’s, I gotta put, because he’s gonna have to. If you wanna appeal the case, you actually have to put up the money. Now you can do that in a couple of ways. He could put up 10% of that money. Again, I’m sure he can find that fairly quickly, but then you gotta go out and you’ve gotta borrow it. You gotta get a bond.
and at interest rates at 9%, that’s a hefty bloody loan. That’s a serious loan right now. Gant, I don’t know, he may have some, you know, somebody that’s a hell of a lot more liquid than him, lend him the money in this situation. Other than that, I mean, you’re gonna have to start, in essence,
Borrowing his properties you have, but I would assume that a lot of these properties already have loans against him. That’s how these real estate guys play. Or you’re going to have to start selling him. I want to remind people a lot of the cash flow, a lot of the cash flow that Donald Trump gets is generated by licensing his name. Just because you see a building somewhere, I know many might be listening, well I saw a building over there that’s got Trump on it. No, he licensed his name. He doesn’t own the building.
That’s part of what he did. I mean, you want to go back to the 1990s. His entire real estate empire was falling apart. He was essentially bankrupt. And you take a look at the failures that he had in regards to a myriad of different casinos. This is a true story. I think I might have told this before here on the show. This is when DJT going public on the New York Stock Exchange, his Jersey casinos, the
due diligence meeting, 19, I think there was now a defunct brokerage firm by the name of Sands Brothers was the one of the underwriters in this thing. And I mean, he did his due diligence meeting, he came out like it was a wrestling event. I never seen anything like in my entire life. And speakers and lights, ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump, who talked about his stock and his casino that eventually went under. But again, he booed he was able to boost his
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profile in so many ways. Again, his PR people, the way he handled things, I mean, did a great job. Books, everything, right? Guy was on, think about the movies, Home Alone. They talked about him in, what was it, the third Die Hard movie. Oh, what he would, I’m dating Donald Trump. What was the other one? He was in Sex and the City. He was on all of this stuff. He knew how to get his name and face out there. And again, by having that and building up that brand, that tump.
Trump brand is able to stick his name on things. And again, like I said, you know, it’s not like he’s bottling the water or he’s making the sneakers. Somebody contact them and said, hey, we got an idea, we’re gonna sell Trump sneakers. We’re gonna put you in this, we’re gonna do the design and we’ll pay you. And that’s what it is. I mean, it’s funny, you listen to him, he’s announcing his speakers. Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this for, I don’t know, some 12 years, maybe 13 years. Come on, man.
Give me a break. But anyway, okay. Stakes, Trump Stakes, that was another one for crying out loud. Anyway, let me go through some of the properties that he has here. And he owns some of them, does own parts of other ones. And I do wanna remind everybody, once he was elected president, his name started coming down all over New York City. Trump Place.
Luxury high rises, Upper West Side, he gets beats Hillary Clinton, the condo board, take those things down. He had, there was a hotel in Soho, was the Trump, Trump Soho, Trump Grand, Trump Soho Grand, something like that. It’s now the Dominic. His name, as far as high end real estate is concerned, ain’t gonna fly anymore, and some of these liberal bastions, where there’s a lot of money.
Anyway, by February 2019, his name had vanished from all six Trump Place condo buildings. Now, again, we all know Trump Tower, it’s where he announced his campaign, Fifth Avenue, coming down the Golden Escalator there. That, as far as I, that was built in 1983, that’s his, 257,000 square foot mixed use building, okay? There’s 40 Wall Street, which is the Trump,
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building. This building was used to be at the one point in time was the tallest building in the world. 40 Wall Street was built in 1930 but it’s owned by a German family and they’ve owned it since 1982. Trump doesn’t own the structure he just owns the ground lease. That’s the Trump building but he just owns the ground lease. The Trump International Hotel and Tower it’s one central park west
He owns part of that, this is what he owns as far as that building is concerned. He includes, he owns a parking garage, room service kitchens, valet booth, lobby bathrooms, a restaurant space, and a single unit. It’s actually owned by General Electric and a real estate group out of Ohio. 1290 Avenue of the Americas, he
owns part of that building, a 30% profit share in that building through 2044 due to some legal issues that he had with some Hong Kong business people. Trump Park Avenue, Upper East Side condo, 120 units. I think it was used to be a hotel. I think he owns all of that one. And obviously, we could talk about some of that. This is just some of his real estate in New York City. Talk
Mar-a-Lago and what that’s worth. Again, you’re a real estate guy. You don’t like cash. You don’t like having cash lying around because then cash is a target when you get sued. You wanna always put that cash to work. So gonna be looking at a situation right now where I think it’s kind of a bit of a difficult time coming up with it. I know, but he always finds his way around this. Maybe somebody will lend him a hand. With that being said.
Again, you know, love Trump, hate Trump doesn’t make any difference. This is quite frankly, it’s a travesty of justice. It really is. I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever. And as soon as this case came down, we were making fun of it here on the program as being patently absurd and ridiculous. And again, you know, it kind of draws us further and further into Banana Republic type territory. And we’re supposed to be equal under the law here.
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in this country. And you might not like somebody politically, but that doesn’t mean you’re gonna go out and look to destroy them and use the law or loopholes in the law to go ahead and do that. And quite frankly, I’m sorry, I don’t care how liberal you are. If you can’t see through the BS in this case, something’s amiss. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.
