After The New York Times revealed that everyone’s least favorite orange creamsicle Donald Trump had lost upwards of $900 million in 1995 and probably doesn’t pay income tax, we all said, “Yeah, that sounds about right.” Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald has been diligently uncovering the various angles of how terrible Donald Trump is, and he has just released some new findings.
All of the tax information that has been publicly revealed—The Washington Post published figures for 1978 and 1979 in May, Politico reported in June he had paid no taxes in 1991 and 1993, The New York Times published 1995 information last week and now Newsweek has further information from the 1970s—show the same thing: Trump paying little or no taxes because of poor financial performance and huge mistakes he made in his business. Trump has steadfastly refused to release any tax returns on his own, but the headline numbers for the eight years of financial returns that have now been disclosed demonstrate that Trump’s self-celebrated business genius is a pose.
What these records show is exactly how a pretty mediocre mind, along with a boatload of money, gets to pretend he isn’t an awful businessman. After being gifted a personal line of credit at Chase Manhattan bank for $35 million—without a written agreement—Trump went on to blow that money. But don’t worry, his dad’s rich.
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But Trump was unable to control his spending. He loaded himself up with debt from the credit line in an apparent belief that he could make enough money through other deals and investments to cover the interest payments. This was the same logic that led him to assume billions of dollars in borrowings during the late 1980s for the casinos, the almost incomprehensible business decision that led to their bankruptcies that played out for more than a decade.
In 1978, the same year that Fred Trump set up the credit line for his son at Chase Manhattan, Trump’s personal finances collapsed. By then, he had borrowed $38 million from his line of credit—the bank adjusted the available amount up by $3 million when Trump exceeded his credit limit.
Trump learned a lesson from his bad business decisions and that was this: if you’re the son of a very well connected and very rich real estate mogul, you don’t have to be good at anything. Eichenwald goes on to show that Trump shows nothing but huge “personal” losses in his 1978 and 1979 taxes, while also showing virtually nowhere near the amount of income needed to cover even the interest on those debts. Donald Trump is not a self-made man. He’s a rich kid being buoyed by the wealth his father created in a world rigged for his success.