At some point, rank-and-file Republicans are gonna wake up like a circa 1986 Geena Davis and realize they’ve been dating Brundlefly. He’s never going to deliver on his Pollyannish promises to build that wall or bring back deadly coal jobs or walk down a shallow ramp without wheezing, but he might dribble a corrosive enzyme on you in your sleep in order to predigest your head (metaphorically, most likely).
Truth is, he’s a colossal loser—whether you’re talking about life, politics, or simple children’s games, like pin the crime on the donkey. But Trump’s at his most loser-ly in the world of business, where he first got his start as a risible wad of discount clown smegma.
And now he appears to be returning to his roots!
Bloomberg:
The mortgage on former President Donald Trump’s tower at 40 Wall St. in Manhattan was placed on a lender watchlist because of rising vacancies and costs.
The vacancy rate at the 72-story building, Trump’s most valuable skyscraper, climbed to almost 18% as of last year’s third quarter, and expenses rose 11% since the mortgage’s 2015 origination, according to a monthly filing on the loan, which has a current balance of $126.5 million. The servicer, Wells Fargo & Co., “has reached out to the borrower for a status of leasing developments” and plans to improve the property’s performance, according to the filing.
Hmm. Well, if you want to improve the property’s performance, maybe take Trump’s name off it. Unless the Aryan Brotherhood can suddenly afford to lease Manhattan real estate or Dairy Queen invents a machine that can continuously spray Blizzards into Trump like foam insulation, few are likely to see the upside to renting there.
To be fair, though, commercial property has taken a hit across the board in New York City.
Office values have been declining in lower Manhattan for years as vacancies rose. The pandemic exacerbated the problem by making remote work commonplace and reducing demand for space.
Other Trump properties in Manhattan have survived brushes with financial difficulties. Last year, he refinanced the $100 million debt on Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.
If only he’d successfully diversified his business with, I don’t know, a steak brand or a thriving casino business or a real estate university or something.
Of course, this isn’t the first time one of Trump’s properties faced a reckoning. A September 2021 Washington Post story noted that Trump Tower had long been bleeding tenants, many of which had fallen behind on their rent. But Trump was able to make up for some of that by wasting his supporters’ money propping up his own slovenly corpus. In March 2021, according to the Post, Trump’s Make America Great Again PAC began paying $37,541.67 per month to rent space in the building that had previously been occupied by his campaign.
This may not be the most efficient use of donors’ money: The person familiar with Trump’s PAC said that its staffers do not regularly use the office space. Also, for several months, Trump’s PAC paid the Trump Organization $3,000 per month to rent a retail kiosk in the tower’s lobby — even though the lobby was closed.
Campaign-finance experts said the payments do not appear to be illegal. This kind of PAC has very few restrictions and no expiration date, so Trump is free to spend its money at his own properties as long as he wants.
But they said Trump is continuing a practice that was a hallmark of his presidency by exploiting loose regulations — and his own supporters’ trust — to convert political donations into private revenue for himself.
In other words, he was essentially doing this to his most devoted cult members:
We’ll see what happens—and who Trump chooses to screw over in his next bankruptcy. But the fact that the Trump Org is now officially a criminal organization probably won’t help his buildings much.
If only that darn Ukraine war would end so he could finally build Trump Tower Moscow. After all, his globetrotting loser tour won’t be complete until he loses more rubles in a decade than anyone else in Russia.
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.