Chris Wallace, American Media Fiddle During Debate As BLM, Antifa Burn Our Country – OutKick

https://www.outkick.com/chris-wallace-american-media-fiddle-during-debate-as-blm-antifa-burn-our-country/

Chris Wallace, American Media Fiddle During Debate As BLM, Antifa Burn Our Country

by Jason Whitlock about 3 hours agoupdated about 3 hours ago 89

Last night's presidential debate exposed the American media as Nero, the Roman emperor who according to legend played the fiddle as fires reduced 70 percent of his country to rubble.

The mainstream media desperately try to frame President Trump (or any sitting president the media deems unworthy of office) as Nero, when in reality the Fourth Estate rules the priorities of the American public. The media are the Supreme Court of public opinion. Our power is protected by the First Amendment, and our importance to a well-run constitutional republic was articulated by Founding Father Thomas Jefferson. 

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government," Jefferson said, "I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

The death of newspapers is killing America. Our country is rudderless without a healthy and deliberate newspaper industry serving as our watchdog. Reflective and nuanced journalism, the hallmark of traditional newspapers, has been replaced by instantaneous analysis and clickbait, the tent poles of social media.

FOX News host Chris Wallace is the focus of an avalanche of criticism today after his pot-stirring, one-sided performance as debate moderator. Wallace was bad, but I don't blame him. He dutifully adhered to the dictates of the new Fourth Estate, Twitter. 

Anyone unwilling to comply with Twitter standards isn't a candidate to play the role of presidential debate moderator. 

Our country is burning. The global corporations holding the mainstream media's purse strings have instructed their beneficiaries to distract the public while America burns to the ground. 

Wallace played the role of Nero at the behest of corporate advertisers. The instructions given to Wallace and debate organizers were simple: 1) Create a choppy format that doesn't allow either candidate to say anything of substance. 2) Escalate President Trump's natural desire to be hyper combative. 3) Ask a series of pointless, race-related questions so that it appears you addressed the most important issue facing this country. 

The 94-minute debate included seven questions tied to America's racial dilemma, the problem that has our cities on fire and our country at the brink of civil war. 

The second-biggest topic was the COVID-19 scamdemic, oops, pandemic. Wallace asked four questions related to COVID-19. 

Tuesday's debate centered on race. Wallace did all he could to make sure the discussion of it avoided the heart of the problem — the violent fascist behavior of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. 

Twitter and the media want you to believe Trump's call for the Proud Boys to  "stand back and stand by" was a critical moment revealing the president's allegiance to white supremacy. Trump made the comment in response to Wallace and Joe Biden repeatedly asking him to denounce white supremacists and militias.

Trump initially said "Sure. I will do that." 

Why wouldn't he? He's done it previously. It's the equivalent of saying "I disavow cancer." He then asked for a specific name of a group that Wallace wanted him to condemn. Wallace didn't give him one. 

Here's the deal. This summer American citizens have watched Minneapolis, Kenosha, Louisville, Atlanta, Rochester, Chicago, New York, Portland, Seattle and a few other cities that I can't remember at the moment be vandalized, looted and burned by people claiming an affiliation to Antifa and Black Lives Matter. We've seen policemen shot, killed, attacked and harassed by people claiming an affiliation to Antifa and BLM. We've seen ordinary citizens violently confronted and harassed by people claiming an affiliation to Antifa and BLM. 

People claiming an association to Antifa and BLM have created the appearance that Antifa and BLM are domestic terrorist organizations akin to the KKK. 

The Proud Boys? I spent a couple of hours last night researching them. I've heard of them, but I know very little about their activities. They were in some way connected to the events in Charlottesville three years ago. What happened in Charlottesville was bad. Does it in any way compare to the pervasive, daily violence and criminality we see in the name of Antifa and BLM?

Hell no. 

I'm not here to defend the Proud Boys, a multi-racial group. But let's quit pretending they're as big a problem as Antifa and BLM. 

The entire debate last night should've been about Antifa and BLM and how we shut down the violence and mayhem associated with those two groups.

If you go to Antifa.com, it redirects you to Joe Biden's presidential campaign website. I'm not lying. There are numerous reports that financial donations to BLM go directly to the Democratic Party. 

The KKK was started in 1865 as a direct result of the Emancipation Proclamation that freed black slaves. The KKK served as the violent enforcers of the Democratic Party, the political party that supported slavery. 

History is repeating itself. When you don't learn from it, it repeats. 

Last night Joe Biden said that he is the Democratic Party. Why didn't Chris Wallace ask Biden to disavow Antifa and BLM, the violent enforcers of the Democratic Party? Biden called Antifa an idea, not an organization. Ideas are breaking windows and burning buildings in Portland? How much more violence and racism do we have to see from Antifa and BLM before the American media acknowledge their wickedness?

Silence is violence. Silence is betrayal. 

BLM and Antifa have destroyed lives and livelihoods all across this country. They've created a climate of fear and racial animosity. They're trying to reduce America to rubble while falsely claiming they want to promote racial harmony. 

The American media are as complicit in this country's fall as Nero was to Rome's.

If you want Jason Whitlock for your TV or radio show or podcast, contact gary@outkick.com.

Best regards,

Dr. Jeff Darville 

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Here is the questions and approach that Wallace should have taken. 

Instead the Media will caterwaul about how mean Trump is and how he provoked Joe into telling him to shut up and calling him a clown. What a dunce! 

https://www.westernjournal.com/cal-thomas-1st-debate-wallace-ask-biden-principles-wont-violate/

Cal Thomas: At 1st Debate, Wallace Should Ask Biden if There Are Any Principles He Won't Violate

Cal Thomas

Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty ImagesDemocratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participates in a virtual grassroots fundraiser along with his vice presidential running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, at the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington, Delaware, on August 12, 2020. (Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images)

By
Published September 28, 2020 at 7:15pm

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has made himself largely unavailable to questions from reporters since before his nomination. In contrast, President Trump has made himself available numerous times a day to reporters and their often hostile and confrontational questions.

This is why the moderator of the first debate, Chris Wallace of Fox News, should ask Biden the most questions.

Not that Wallace needs any help from me, but here are some things I would ask.

Mr. Biden, why would you raise taxes when the president's tax cuts stimulated the economy and created millions of new jobs before the pandemic?

Follow-up: The federal government is approaching $27 trillion in debt. Your spending plans have been estimated to add $11 trillion to the debt.

TRENDING: Report: Dem Senators Worried About Feinstein Ahead of Monumental SCOTUS Battle: 'She's Not Sure What She's Doing'

Even if your tax increases passed by Congress, it would not be nearly enough to cover what you plan to spend. Where is the money coming from and if from a foreign power, like China, doesn't that put us in hock to a hostile state?

Are there any government programs or agencies you would eliminate?

You have said your Catholic faith has deeply influenced you, but your church's teachings, and the statements by several popes, have opposed abortion, same-sex marriage and other social issues, which you reportedly favor.

How can one be a faithful Catholic and disregard such fundamental principles of one's church?

Do you think Wallace should ask Biden these questions?

And isn't the right to life the most basic right of all?

Speaking of principles, you have changed positions on a number of bedrock beliefs, including federal funding of abortion. Do you have any principles that to you are inviolate and if so, what are they?

How do we know you won't flip on those if it proves politically expedient?

You have said that you would shut down the country if scientists say it would help kill off the virus, but as we've seen, even a partial shutdown has harmed the economy, which was growing dramatically before March.

Isn't there a better way to fight the virus, as now appears to be happening, rather than the disastrous effect a complete shutdown would have on businesses and employment?

RELATED: Dan Calabrese: If We Want a Meaningful Debate, Here's What Chris Wallace Should Do

If elected, would you commit to regular testing to assure the public you do not have any mental acuity problems?

Your running mate, Kamala Harris, is regarded as the most liberal member of the Senate. How can voters be sure that she and her fellow liberals won't be the driving force behind policies should you win the election?

It appears from media reports that you were aware at some level about your son, Hunter, and his dealings with Burisma in Ukraine and with China while you were vice president.

Explain how he could make so much money in so short a time if he was not peddling his name and influence for personal gain. Your campaign has said a Senate report on this is part of "right-wing" and "long-debunked" stories.

But did he or did he not make millions of dollars from these ventures? Yes or no?

The Green New Deal is estimated to eliminate many jobs. You have said these jobs would be replaced by eco-friendly jobs.

Isn't that a case of limiting people's freedoms, especially when the main polluters on the planet are China and India?

You have declined to publish a list of "black women" you would name to the Supreme Court. Is it because they would be very liberal, and isn't this a case of racism, since you have excluded every other ethnic group?

If African-Americans are to be preferred for the court, why do you not approve of Justice Clarence Thomas?

Why do you use a teleprompter to answer the few questions asked of you?

Just thought I would ask, Mr. Biden. I'm not expecting an answer, even if you remember the questions.

© 2020 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

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The Atlantic thinks that Christians are so stupid they will listen to their paper about how evil Trump really is. 

Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters

Former aides say that in private, the president has spoken with cynicism and contempt about believers.

McKay Coppins

President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and faith leaders say a prayer in the Oval Office in September 2017.Alex Wong / Getty

One day in 2015, Donald Trump beckoned Michael Cohen, his longtime confidant and personal attorney, into his office. Trump was brandishing a printout of an article about an Atlanta-based megachurch pastor trying to raise $60 million from his flock to buy a private jet. Trump knew the preacher personally—Creflo Dollar had been among a group of evangelical figures who visited him in 2011 while he was first exploring a presidential bid. During the meeting, Trump had reverently bowed his head in prayer while the pastors laid hands on him. Now he was gleefully reciting the impious details of Dollar's quest for a Gulfstream G650.

Trump seemed delighted by the "scam," Cohen recalled to me, and eager to highlight that the pastor was "full of shit."

"They're all hustlers," Trump said.

The president's alliance with religious conservatives has long been premised on the contention that he takes them seriously, while Democrats hold them in disdain. In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion. "My administration will never stop fighting for Americans of faith," he declared at a rally for evangelicals earlier this year. It's a message his campaign will seek to amplify in the coming weeks as Republicans work to confirm Amy Coney Barrett—a devout, conservative Catholic—to the Supreme Court.

But in private, many of Trump's comments about religion are marked by cynicism and contempt, according to people who have worked for him. Former aides told me they've heard Trump ridicule conservative religious leaders, dismiss various faith groups with cartoonish stereotypes, and deride certain rites and doctrines held sacred by many of the Americans who constitute his base.

Read: The Christians who loved Trump's church stunt

Reached for comment, a White House spokesman said that "people of faith know that President Trump is a champion for religious liberty and the sanctity of life, and he has taken strong actions to support them and protect their freedom to worship. The president is also well known for joking and his terrific sense of humor, which he shares with people of all faiths."

From the outset of his brief political career, Trump has viewed right-wing evangelical leaders as a kind of special-interest group to be schmoozed, conned, or bought off, former aides told me. Though he faced Republican primary opponents in 2016 with deeper religious roots—Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee—Trump was confident that his wealth and celebrity would attract high-profile Christian surrogates to vouch for him.

"His view was 'I've been talking to these people for years; I've let them stay at my hotels—they're gonna endorse me. I played the game,'" said a former campaign adviser to Trump, who, like others quoted in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

It helped that Trump seemed to feel a kinship with prosperity preachers—often evincing a game-recognizes-game appreciation for their hustle. The former campaign adviser recalled showing his boss a YouTube video of the Israeli televangelist Benny Hinn performing "faith healings," while Trump laughed at the spectacle and muttered, "Man, that's some racket." On another occasion, the adviser told me, Trump expressed awe at Joel Osteen's media empire—particularly the viewership of his televised sermons.

In Cohen's recent memoir, Disloyal, he recounts Trump returning from his 2011 meeting with the pastors who laid hands on him and sneering, "Can you believe that bullshit?" But if Trump found their rituals ridiculous, he followed their moneymaking ventures closely. "He was completely familiar with the business dealings of the leadership in many prosperity-gospel churches," the adviser told me.

The conservative Christian elites Trump surrounds himself with have always been more clear-eyed about his lack of religiosity than they've publicly let on. In a September 2016 meeting with about a dozen influential figures on the religious right—including the talk-radio host Eric Metaxas, the Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, and the theologian Wayne Grudem—the then-candidate was blunt about his relationship to Christianity. In a recording of the meeting obtained by The Atlantic, the candidate can be heard shrugging off his scriptural ignorance ("I don't know the Bible as well as some of the other people") and joking about his inexperience with prayer ("The first time I met [Mike Pence], he said, 'Will you bow your head and pray?' and I said, 'Excuse me?' I'm not used to it.") At one point in the meeting, Trump interrupted a discussion about religious freedom to complain about Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska and brag about the taunting nickname he'd devised for him. "I call him Little Ben Sasse," Trump said. "I have to do it, I'm sorry. That's when my religion always deserts me."

And yet, by the end of the meeting—much of which was spent discussing the urgency of preventing trans women from using women's restrooms—the candidate had the group eating out of his hand. "I'm not voting for Trump to be the teacher of my third grader's Sunday-school class. That's not what he's running for," Jeffress said in the meeting, adding, "I believe it is imperative … that we do everything we can to turn people out."

The Faustian nature of the religious right's bargain with Trump has not always been quite so apparent to rank-and-file believers. According to the Pew Research Center, white evangelicals are more than twice as likely as the average American to say that the president is a religious man. Some conservative pastors have described him as a "baby Christian," and insist that he's accepted Jesus Christ as his savior.

To those who have known and worked with Trump closely, the notion that he might have a secret spiritual side is laughable. "I always assumed he was an atheist," Barbara Res, a former executive at the Trump Organization, told me. "He's not a religious guy," A. J. Delgado, who worked on his 2016 campaign, told me. "Whenever I see a picture of him standing in a group of pastors, all of their hands on him, I see a thought bubble [with] the words 'What suckers,'" Mary Trump, the president's niece, told me.

Greg Thornbury, a former president of the evangelical King's College, who was courted by the campaign in 2016, told me that even those who acknowledge Trump's lack of personal piety are convinced that he holds their faith in high esteem. "I don't think for a moment that they would believe he's cynical about them," Thornbury said.

Read: God's plan for Mike Pence

Trump's public appeals to Jewish voters have been similarly discordant with his private comments. Last week, The Washington Post reported that after calls with Jewish lawmakers, the president has said that Jews "are only in it for themselves." And while he is quick to tout his daughter Ivanka's conversion to Judaism when he's speaking to Jewish audiences, he is sometimes less effusive in private. Cohen told me that once, years ago, he was with Trump when his wife, Melania, informed him that their son was at a playdate with a Jewish girl from his school. "Great," Trump said to Cohen, who is Jewish. "I'm going to lose another one of my kids to your people."

One religious group that the Trump campaign is keenly fixated on this year is Mormons. In 2016, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rejected the Republican ticket in unprecedented numbers. To win them over in 2020, the campaign has made Donald Trump Jr. its envoy, sending him to campaign in Utah and other Mormon-heavy states. The president's son has cultivated relationships with high-profile conservatives in the faith. Earlier this year, he invoked Mormon pioneers in a call with reporters to describe his father's "innovative spirit."  

In fact, according to two senior Utah Republicans with knowledge of the situation, Don Jr. has been so savvy in courting Latter-day Saints—expressing interest in the Church's history, reading from the Book of Mormon—that he's left some influential Republicans in the state with the impression that he may want to convert. (A spokesman for Don Jr. did not respond to a request for comment.)

I've been curious about the president's opinion of Mormonism ever since I interviewed him in 2014 at Mar-a-Lago. During our conversation, Trump began to strenuously argue that Mitt Romney's exotic faith had cost him the 2012 election. When I interrupted to inform him that I'm also a Mormon, he quickly changed tack—extolling my Church's many virtues, and then switching subjects. (He remained committed to his theory about 2012: During his September 2016 meeting with evangelical leaders, Trump repeatedly asserted that "Christians" didn't turn out for Romney "because of the Mormon thing.") I've always wondered what Trump might have said if I hadn't cut him off.

When I shared this story with Cohen, he laughed. Trump, he said, frequently made fun of Romney's faith in private—and was especially vicious when he learned about the religious undergarments worn by many Latter-day Saints. "Oh my god," Cohen said. "How many times did he bring up Mitt Romney and the undergarments …"

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

MCKAY COPPINS is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of The Wilderness, a book about the battle over the future of the Republican Party.

The story of Trump's business career, his taxes and his debt - Business Insider

The story is personalized and bland but telling. This is how everyone must tell the story of Trunk taxes. 

I just like the fact that his "tk" or as I like it ZZZ used for "insert later" is still in the article. Not the best proof reading going on. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-trumps-business-career-his-taxes-and-his-debt-2020-9?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider%2Fwarroom+%28War+Room%29

The story of Trump's business career: Giant windfalls that he blows on bad investments

Nick Lichtenberg

9 minutes ago

President Donald Trump

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

• A bombshell New York Times report claims that Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, and nothing at all for much of the previous decade, a major contrast with his image as a self-made billionaire.
• Trump's business career shows a series of flashy and ambitious investments that go bust, sometimes ending in bankruptcy, with Trump moving on from the wreckage each time.
• Multiple reported windfalls throughout Trump's career — from inheriting millions as a child to the millions he began earning as a reality-TV star from 'The Apprentice' — have given major boosts to Trump's investments over the decades.
• Another windfall arguably came in 2016, when Trump was elected president.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Visiting my grandmother in Queens in the late '80s and early '90s meant a few things.

There were the M&M's she always had laying out on her coffee table, usually next to her daily copy of New York Post. There was a haze of cigarette smoke from the Parliaments she was always smoking, and, somewhere in the ether, there was mention of Donald Trump.  

He was everywhere in the tristate area in those years, long before NBC's "The Apprentice" made him a national figure. His name blanketed the Post's gossipy Page Six and the buildings up and down I-95, from Atlantic City to Central Park West. 

By the turn of the '90s, a string of corporate bankruptcies meant that Trump's name migrated from the sports and gossip pages to other sections of the paper. This set in motion a long-running series of reports on Trump business failures that may have culminated with the New York Times' bombshell from this weekend. Tax records show Trump claimed chronic losses for much of the last decade, per the Times, leading to just a $750 federal income tax bill in 2016, and nothing at all for many of the previous years. 

Donald Trump and Ivana Trump watch tennis at the US Open circa September 1997 in New York City.

PL Gould/Getty Images

The quirky northeastern story of the property developer with the distinctive hair has gone national, but the story is remarkably similar to what played out in tristate tabloids decades ago: Flashy and ambitious investments that turn bad, with Trump always moving on to even higher-stakes projects, like running for president.

This is the pattern of Donald Trump: Giant windfalls, bad investments, big debt loads, and nonetheless a rise to power. 

Going down the shore

I remember my parents taking me down the New Jersey shore in the summer of either 1988 or 1989, right in the middle of Trump's ambitious program of buying up casinos along Atlantic City's boardwalk. In all, Trump bought tk properties for $tk from 1982 through tk. His big spending in south Jersey gave him a ton of visibility on TV, in the papers, and (in at least regional) pop culture. For instance, when I was a little kid entranced by then-WWF superstars Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior, they became associated with Trump because Atlantic City's Trump Plaza hosted Wrestlemania in both 1988 and 1989.

Donald Trump gets taken to the mat by 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin after the the Battle of the Billionaires at the 2007 World Wrestling Entertainment's Wrestlemania on April 1, 2007 at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan.

Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

Within a few years, starting in 1991, Trump began to file businesses for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, many of them Atlantic City casinos. In all, he filed six corporate bankruptcies between 1991 and 2009, a record in which Trump has displayed pride. "I do play with the bankruptcy laws — they're very good for me," he told Newsweek's Howard Kurtz in 2011. 

In one sense, Trump's use of the bankruptcy process for troubled businesses is appropriate: Chapter 11 has evolved into a process designed to help loss-making businesses negotiate a way to keep operating as going concerns.

Almost any businessman seeking to keep his business viable would use Chapter 11 to revive a struggling operation, but Trump doesn't appear to be almost any businessman. The pattern that emerged in Atlantic City was a sophisticated use of the legal system that allowed Trump to leave his losses behind and keep himself moving forward, a pattern that the Times reports is similar to his use of the tax code for much of the 2000s. 

President Trump supporter wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat gambles at Hard Rock Casino after it reopened on July 3, 2020 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Mark Makela/Getty Images

Business Insider and other news outlets including the Guardian have reported on how the post-Trump Atlantic City has become a ghost town.

In its Trumpian heyday, the Guardian reported, his casinos employed 8,000 and were nearly a third of the area's gambling revenues. Running for president in 2016, Trump said he took "incredible" amounts of money out of Atlantic City. The Times reports that Trump took similarly incredible amounts out of his businesses, claiming as expenses items such as $70,000 to style Trump's hair for television and $95,464 to style Ivanka Trump's hair, while his tax records show $47.4 million in losses.

The first windfall: inherited wealth

The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the president's business career. The White House referred to Trump's remarks from the podium, in which he dismissed the reporting as "fake news," as well as Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten's remarks to the Times, saying "most, if not all, of the facts" reported by the paper "appear to be inaccurate." 

Trump was elected to the presidency having largely run on his reality-show persona as a self-made billionaire who could run the country as he had his successful business empire. 

Another major Times investigation, from 2018, reported that much of Trump's big spending in his '80s heyday and afterward came from inherited wealth derived from his father Fred, also a New York City-area developer. Donald pocketed the equivalent of $413 million from Fred Trump's real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler, per the Times. More specifically, he was making $200,000 per year in today's dollars when he was 3 years old, and became a millionaire at age 8. Trump had long claimed that he grew a $10 billion empire out of a $1 million loan from his father, which he repaid with interest.

By 1990, the Times reported in 2016, Trump had acquired, among other things, Manhattan's Plaza Hotel for $407 million, an airline for $365 million, and a yacht for $29 million. He needed his own millions to get his foot in the door, but went into massive debt as well, racking up $3.4 billion in debt by 1990, with himself personally liable for $832.5 million of it. Soon, he would need another windfall.

Donald and Fred Trump are seen at the opening of the Wollman Rink on November 6, 1987.

Dennis Caruso/NY Daily News Archive via Getty

In 1997, Donald and his siblings inherited Fred Trump's remaining real estate empire providing a financial shot in the arm after Donald's string of mostly Atlantic City-related bankruptcies in the early '90s. The Times reported that the Trump family claimed Fred Trump's buildings were worth $41.4 million in tax documents, then sold off the portfolio for more than 16 times that much over the next decade.

While continuing to buy and sell properties, Trump's spending spree after 1997 largely fell within the private, murky realm of The Trump Organization, although he continued to amass assets. Golfweek reported in 2015, for instance, that Trump had amassed 18 golf resorts around the world, while he also had interests in the '90s and 2000s in the Miss Universe Organization and a modeling agency. 

Trump also got a new lending source after a 1998 meeting with Deutsche Bank. He mainly dealt with the commercial real estate bankers Mike Offit, son of the writer Sidney Offit, and Justin Kennedy, the son of former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Offit was fired in 1999, he told the Times in 2019, and Trump kept dealing with Kennedy for years afterward. 

The second windfall: 'The Apprentice'

After the turn of the 21st century, Trump's starring role in "The Apprentice" was his next big windfall, providing him with $197.3 million from 2000 to 2018, per the Times. This figure expands even further when factoring in endorsements and licensing deals that traded off his "you're fired" image. 

Trump still filed two corporate bankruptcies during this era — in 2004 and 2009 — but his assets' struggles were largely hidden behind the opaque wall of The Trump Organization as Deutsche Bank grew to become his main lender, loaning him $2 billion over the next two decades, per the Times.

Instances of deceptive accounting have arisen in lawsuit claims or in reporting similar to the Times', such as The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold Pulitzer-winning work on the Trump Foundation. Ostensibly a charity, Fahrenthold reported that the foundation runs on few of Trump's own dollars, and that Trump had used funds from it to settle legal disputes.

The Times concluded in its analysis that Trump has largely spent on golf courses in recent years, and these assets lose millions, or tens of millions, every year, and his revenue from "The Apprentice" and licensing deals have been withering away.

Since 2000, the Times found, Trump has lost $315.6 million from his 15 golf courses in the US, Scotland, and Ireland, including $162.3 million in losses on his National Doral golf resort in Miami between 2012 and 2018, and $63.6 million on his three European golf courses. 

The third windfall: the presidency

A new revenue stream became obvious in the Times' analysis of Trump's tax documents: presidential visitors.

Trump's "winter White House," the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, pocketed an extra $5 million more off new members starting in 2015, and in 2017, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association paid at least $397,602 to Trump's hotel in Washington DC.

Also, despite Trump saying he wouldn't pursue new foreign deals as president, his first two years as president saw revenue from abroad reach $73 million.

My grandmother died in 2003, the same year Trump set a record by divesting his stake in the General Motors building for $1.4 billion. Trump had bought the building back in 1998 in partnership with Conseco, a financial services firm. By the time they sold, Conseco was in bankruptcy, having "collapsed under the weight of its debt," the Times reported.

''It's a great building in a great location,'' Trump said at the time. ''I did a great job in order to make it a great building.''

Trump put up just $11 million himself in the initial purchase of the building, the Times reported.

As for my grandmother, she never liked Trump. I remember asking her why, and she responded, "Because he's a Democrat."

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Trump campaign strategy to deter millions of Black Americans from voting in 2016

You mean Trump used negative ads to campaign? He got out the vote of his base and discouraged Dems. That is a legitimate election strategy and we all know it. This is not even remotely close to a scandal.

All politics has become a form of fraud when Obama campaigned he completely misrepresented himself. Bush hid behind a mountain of party machinery. Politicians consistently lie. That's how you know they are lying, their lips are moving.

28 Sep 2020
Revealed: Trump campaign strategy to deter millions of Black Americans from voting in 2016
By Channel 4 News Investigations Team
3.5 million Black Americans were profiled and categorised as 'Deterrence' by Trump campaign – voters they wanted to stay home on election day

22m
Channel 4 News has exclusively obtained a vast cache of data used by Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign on almost 200 million American voters.

It reveals that 3.5 million Black Americans were categorised by Donald Trump's campaign as 'Deterrence' – voters they wanted to stay home on election day.

Tonight, civil rights campaigners said the evidence amounted to a new form of voter "suppression" and called on Facebook to disclose ads and targeting information that has never been made public.

The 'Deterrence' project can be revealed after Channel 4 News obtained the database used by Trump's digital campaign team – credited with helping deliver his shock victory to become president four years ago.

Vast in scale, it contains details on almost 200 million Americans, among more than 5,000 files, which together amass almost 5 terabytes of data – making it one of the biggest leaks in history.

It reveals not only the huge amounts of data held on every individual voter, but how that data was used and manipulated by models and algorithms.

In 16 key battleground states, millions of Americans were separated by an algorithm into one of eight categories, also described as 'audiences', so they could then be targeted with tailored ads on Facebook and other platforms.

One of the categories was named 'Deterrence', which was later described publicly by Trump's chief data scientist as containing people that the campaign "hope don't show up to vote".

Analysis by Channel 4 News shows Black Americans – historically a community targeted with voter suppression tactics – were disproportionately marked 'Deterrence' by the 2016 campaign.

In total, 3.5 million Black Americans were marked 'Deterrence'.

In Georgia, despite Black people constituting 32% of the population, they made up 61% of the 'Deterrence' category. In North Carolina, Black people are 22% of the population but were 46% of 'Deterrence'. In Wisconsin, Black people constitute just 5.4% of the population but made up 17% of 'Deterrence'.

The disproportionate categorising of Black Americans for 'Deterrence' is seen across the US. Overall, people of colour labelled as Black, Hispanic, Asian and 'Other' groups made up 54% of the 'Deterrence' category. In contrast, other categories of voters the campaign wished to attract were overwhelmingly white.

The 2016 campaign preceded the first fall in Black turnout in 20 years and allowed Donald Trump to take shock victories in key states like Wisconsin and Michigan by wafer-thin margins, reaching the White House despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

Trump's digital campaign, called 'Project Alamo' and based in San Antonio, Texas, involved a team from the now defunct British company Cambridge Analytica, working with a team from the Republican National Committee. Two senior members of the Cambridge Analytica team are working on the Trump 2020 campaign.

Cambridge Analytica collapsed after investigations by Channel 4 News, The Observer and the New York Times in 2018.

Facebook is facing calls to ban political advertising, following an international backlash over the use of its platform to spread misinformation, disinformation, and suppression during election campaigns.

The Trump campaign spent £44 million on Facebook ads alone during 2016, posting almost six million different versions of highly targeted messages that were pumped directly into the feeds of target voters across America, helped by a Facebook employee embedded within the Trump campaign.

But many of the ads were so called 'dark posts', which could vanish from recipients' feeds once a campaign stopped paying for them.

It means no complete public record exists of the ads posted on Facebook during the 2016 campaign or the audience lists used to target voters. The platform offered no 'Ad Library' at the time.

Without Facebook or the campaign itself revealing the information, it means it's not possible to ascertain exactly how potential voters in the 'Deterrence' group may have been targeted on Facebook.

The Trump campaign itself has categorically stated that it did not target African Americans.

Brad Parscale, the campaign's 2016 digital director told PBS Frontline: "I would say I'm nearly 100 percent sure we did not run any campaigns that targeted even African Americans."

But Channel 4 News has uncovered evidence that the campaign did target Black voters with negative ads designed to crush Hillary Clinton's turnout.

These included videos featuring Hillary Clinton referring to Black youths as "super predators" which aired on television 402 times in October 2016 and received millions of views on Facebook.

In one confidential document seen by Channel 4 News, Cambridge Analytica admitted the Trump campaign did target "AA" (African Americans) with what it called the "Predators video" – spending $55,000 USD in the state of Georgia alone.

Reacting to the Channel 4 News revelations, Jamal Watkins, vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branded it a modern-day suppression campaign, using data and digital technology to keep Black voters at home.

He said: "The thing that's shocking slash troubling about this is that there's this category of suppression. That 'Deterrence' part. So, we use data – similar to voter file data – but it's to motivate, persuade and encourage folks to participate. We don't use the data to say who can we deter and keep at home. That just seems, fundamentally, it's a shift from the notion of democracy.

"It's not 'may the best candidate win' at that point it's 'may the best well-funded machine suppress voters and keep them at home thereby rigging the election so that someone can win'."

He added: "I don't believe Facebook has fully disclosed their role, and fully disclosed the types of ads that were run, who was involved and literally how they may have been embedded in, say, the Trump campaign to make this all come to life.

"Facebook is a very profitable platform. It reaches billions of folks every day. It doesn't need this kind of money. If it were to monitor and check these suppressive ads and say this is not the platform for this type of misinformation disinformation suppression tactics, Mark Zuckerberg would still live well, and eat well."

Today, a Facebook spokesperson said: "Since 2016, elections have changed and so has Facebook – what happened with Cambridge Analytica couldn't happen today. We have 35,000 people working to ensure the integrity of our platform, created a political ads library… and have protected more than 200 elections worldwide. We also have rules prohibiting voter suppression and are running the largest voter information campaign in American history."

The Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and the White House did not provide any comment to Channel 4 News prior to broadcast.



Investigations Team:

Job Rabkin, Guy Basnett, Ed Howker, Janet Eastham and Heidi Pett.

News Production Team:

Sola Renner, Michael French, Josh Ho, Matthew Cundall, Tim Bentham, Tony Fryer, Dani Isdale and Anna-Lisa Fuglesang.

Contact the investigations team here.


Best regards,
Dr. Jeff Darville
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Tax records reveal how fame gave Trump a $427 million lifeline - Chicago Tribune

You mean that Trump is a hustler? Yeah. Okay. 

https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-trump-tax-return-apprentice-20200929-yl5fltkgdbbblivpv5hm7xtj4m-story.html

Tax records reveal how fame gave Trump a $427 million lifeline

By Mike McIntire, Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig

The New York Times

Sep 28, 2020 at 9:37 PM

Mark Burnett, left, creator and producer of the

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(Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times)

From the back seat of a stretch limousine heading to meet the first contestants for his new TV show "The Apprentice," Donald Trump bragged that he was a billionaire who had overcome financial hardship.

"I used my brain, I used my negotiating skills and I worked it all out," he told viewers. "Now, my company is bigger than it ever was and stronger than it ever was."

Months after that inaugural episode in January 2004, Trump filed his individual tax return reporting $89.9 million in net losses from his core businesses for the prior year. The red ink spilled from everywhere, even as American television audiences saw him as a savvy business mogul with the Midas touch.

Twelve years later, that image of the self-made, self-saved mogul, beamed into the national consciousness, would help fuel Trump's improbable election to the White House.

But while the story of "The Apprentice" is by now well known, the president's tax returns reveal another grand twist that has never been truly told — how the popularity of that fictional alter ego rescued him, providing a financial lifeline to reinvent himself yet again. And then how, in an echo of the boom-and-bust cycle that has defined his business career, he led himself toward the financial shoals he must navigate today.

Trump's genius, it turned out, wasn't running a company. It was making himself famous — Trump-scale famous — and monetizing that fame.

By analyzing the tax records, The New York Times was able to place a value on Trump's celebrity. While the returns show that he earned some $197 million directly from "The Apprentice" over 16 years — roughly in line with what he has claimed — they also reveal that an additional $230 million flowed from the fame associated with it.

The show's big ratings meant that everyone wanted a piece of the Trump brand, and he grabbed at the opportunity to rent it out. There was $500,000 to pitch Double Stuf Oreos, another half-million to sell Domino's Pizza and $850,000 to push laundry detergent.

There were seven-figure licensing deals with hotel builders, some with murky backgrounds, in former Soviet republics and other developing countries. And there were schemes that exploited misplaced trust in the TV version of Trump, who, off camera, peddled worthless get-rich-quick nostrums like "Donald Trump Way to Wealth" seminars that promised initiation into "the secrets and strategies that have made Donald Trump a billionaire."

Just as, years before, the money Trump secretly received from his father allowed him to assemble a wobbly collection of Atlantic City casinos and other disparate enterprises that then collapsed around him, the new influx of cash helped finance a buying spree that saw him snap up golf resorts, a business not known for easy profits. Indeed, the tax records show that his golf properties have been hemorrhaging millions of dollars for years.

In response to a request for comment, a White House spokesman, Judd Deere, did not dispute any specific facts. Instead, he delivered a broad attack, calling the article "fake news" and "yet another politically motivated hit piece full of inaccurate smears" appearing "before a presidential debate."

Unlocking the mysteries of Trump's wealth has been attempted many times with varying degrees of success — an exercise made difficult by the opaque nature of his businesses, his penchant for exaggerations and lies, and his willingness to threaten or sue those who question his rosy narratives. He has gone to extraordinary lengths to maintain secrecy, most notably his refusal to honor 40 years of presidential tradition and release his tax returns.

This article is based on an examination of data from those returns, which include personal and business tax filings for Trump and his companies spanning more than two decades. Every dollar is disclosed for the first time: $8,768,330 paid to him by ACN, a multilevel marketing company that was accused of taking advantage of vulnerable investors; $50,000 from the Lifetime channel for a "juicy nighttime soap" that never materialized; $5,026 in net income from a short-lived mortgage business; and $15,286,244 from licensing his name to a line of mattresses.

In addition, it draws on interviews and previously unreported material from other sources, including hundreds of internal documents from Bayrock Group, an influential early licensing partner whose ties to Russia would come back to haunt the president as questions swirled about his own dealings there.

Together, the new information provides the most authoritative look yet at a critical period in Trump's business career that laid the foundation, and provided something of a preview, of his personality-based and fact-bending presidency.

As trouble loomed in the new millennium, Trump found an opportunity that would change his life forever.

Divorced for the second time, and coming off the failure of his Atlantic City casinos, Trump faced escalating money problems and the prospect of another trip to bankruptcy court. On his income tax returns, he reported annual net losses throughout the 1990s, some of it carried forward year to year, a tide that would swell to $352.8 million at the end of 2002.

Few people knew this, however, because he kept up the relentless self-promotion that had served him well: a half-serious 2000 presidential campaign that lasted four months but got him on Jay Leno; a TV ad touting McDonald's new $1 "Big N' Tasty" burger; another ghostwritten book.

But if Trump was still living off his residual fame, his biggest splashes were behind him. Something had to change. And as fate would have it, Trump got a boost from an unexpected source, one that would do much to shape his future, if not that of the country itself.

Mark Burnett, a British television producer best known for the hit series "Survivor," approached him with an idea for a different reality show, this one based in a boardroom. In Burnett's vision, a cast of wannabe entrepreneurs would come to New York and compete for the approval of the Donald, with the winner to work on a Trump project. Trump eagerly agreed to host "The Apprentice" and went on to ham it up as the billionaire kingmaker, yelling "You're fired" each week until one contestant was left.

Some of Burnett's staff members wondered how a wealthy businessman supposedly running a real estate empire could spare the time, but they soon discovered that not everything in Trump's world was as it appeared.

"We walked through the offices and saw chipped furniture," Bill Pruitt, one of the producers, told The New Yorker in 2018. "We saw a crumbling empire at every turn. Our job was to make it seem otherwise."

Burnett wasted no time spinning the illusion of a successful and high-minded Trump, telling The Times in October 2003 that the new show was all about "Donald Trump giving back" by educating the public on how his can-do spirit had provided jobs and economic security.

"What makes the world a safe place right now?" Burnett said. "I think it's American dollars, which come from taxes, which come because of Donald Trump."

A surge in popularity brought Trump's reality-TV persona to ring tones, hamburgers, even laundry detergent.

Trump himself had not owed federal income taxes in years, thanks to the regular large business losses that smothered whatever income he had.

But the ratings success of "The Apprentice," and the advertising dollars it generated, quickly pushed him into the unfamiliar position of declaring positive adjusted gross income on his IRS Form 1040. After netting $11.9 million from the show in its first year, he really hit the jackpot in 2005 with $47.8 million, the tax records show. He made so much that over three years he paid a total of $70.1 million in income taxes (later refunded, with interest, via an aggressive accounting maneuver now under audit).

The windfall, which continued — though in ever-dwindling amounts — until Trump became president, reflected an unusual arrangement that entitled him, as the show's star, to half its profits. That included money from product placements on each episode that sometimes numbered more than 100 a month, with household names like Pepsi paying millions of dollars split between Burnett and Trump.

When they conceived the idea in 2002, however, the show's success was far from certain. If nothing else, as Trump told an NBC executive at the time, it would allow him to market his other endeavors: "Even if it doesn't get ratings, it's still going to be great for my brand."

Those benefits began flowing almost immediately. As early as July 2004, internal marketing plans for various Trump projects called for "exposure through casting on 'The Apprentice,'" and by 2006, his New York hotel, Trump SoHo, was featured as the winning contestant's project.

Product endorsements and speaking engagements rolled in as never before.

In the two years preceding the debut of "The Apprentice," Trump's side income was mostly confined to $500,000 for appearing in the Big N' Tasty burger ad and a small amount of book royalties. But over the next two years, his tax records show, he collected $5.2 million from 11 different ad campaigns and speaking gigs, all propelled by his growing popularity as a reality-TV businessman.

Trump was not terribly discriminating in his choice of endorsements. He slapped his name on everything from steaks and vodka to a board game and cologne. For the benefit of "consumers interested in experiencing the Trump lifestyle at an affordable price," as a news release put it, he signed a licensing deal with the Serta mattress company that eventually netted him more than $15 million. Another $15 million would pour in from Trump neckties, shirts and underwear by clothiers like Phillips-Van Heusen.

No endorsement was too small. Warner Music paid $100,000 to feature Trump in a collection of cellphone ring tones, with the Donald uttering phrases like, "You're getting a phone call, and believe me, it better be important. I have no time for small talk, and neither do you."

Unilever, which was looking to promote a new version of its All brand laundry detergent, concocted an entire multiplatform marketing campaign around Trump. In addition to $850,000 the company paid him directly, tax records reveal, he earned $250,000 more from a public-relations firm Unilever hired to help run an ad campaign coined "Softness fit for a Trump."

Unilever staged a publicity stunt outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, where Trump hoisted a laundry basket with an ad for "All Clean & Softens" stuck to the front. He had taken a break from the rigors of "The Apprentice" to wash donated clothes for charity, Unilever claimed.

As part of his agreement, Trump cold-called journalists to talk up All detergent, telling a Boston Globe reporter, "Unilever is a great company" and "This is a product my mother used." He also recorded voice-overs for an online game that was part of an All sweepstakes, in which a tiny digital version of Trump did laundry and squawked one-liners like, "The Donald can do the work of 40 dry cleaners!"

The sweepstakes winner was Tracy Wright, a young mother from Brazil, Indiana, who had bought her jug of detergent from a local Walmart. She got an all-expenses-paid trip to New York, where she had her picture taken with Trump.

"We met him the day after 'The Apprentice' season finale, so he was incredibly friendly," she told her local newspaper. "He was in a great mood."

Business Wisdom, at a Price

Around the world, the self-made billionaire myth became a product to lure those in need of money.

With his penchant for using what he called "truthful hyperbole" to play on people's desires, Trump had always skated close to the edge of fraud. Soon, he would be accused of crossing the line completely.

In his zeal to squeeze ever more dollars out of Burnett's golden goose, Trump signed on to an array of questionable products and services, including some that claimed to sell insights into his business expertise. The first year of "The Apprentice" was barely over when Trump pocketed $300,000 to speak at an event in Dayton, Ohio, where attendees paid $2,995 to learn the secrets of instant wealth from a company that was later accused in a lawsuit of running a Ponzi scheme.

In his monologues, he made a virtue of his first round of casino failures, portraying himself as a victim whose grit and intelligence saved the day. People ate it up.

"His presence gives me reassurance," Lillie Moss, who raided her retirement fund to buy an investment kit at the Dayton event, said of Trump.

The tax records show that another series of speaking engagements, sponsored by the Learning Annex, paid Trump $7.3 million for events with titles like "Real Estate Wealth Expo: One Weekend Can Make You a Millionaire." A book he co-wrote with the Annex's founder, "Think Big and Kick Ass: In Business and Life," earned him royalties of $1.4 million.

Unmentioned in the mythologizing were the millions in bailout money from his father or the losses he was reporting to the IRS. Nor was there any sense of the gigantic payday — revealed only through an examination of the tax data — that Trump was enjoying in exchange for lending his imprimatur to an increasingly cynical array of business ventures.

As the years went on, and the success of "The Apprentice" made Trump a household name far beyond New York, the chasm between truth and hyperbole widened. It was one thing to bray about his late mother — a multimillionaire with a maid and a Rolls-Royce — using All laundry detergent. Now, he was flogging things that could hurt people economically.

In what would be his most lucrative side deal, he teamed up with a multilevel marketing company, ACN, whose clients were told they could make a living from home by selling video phones, satellite television and other services. Investigated in several countries, ACN has left a trail of complaints that people were suckered into spending far more than they earned trying to peddle the company's products.

Regulators in France concluded that "only 1% of people recruited could claim a satisfactory income," and that the rest lost money or, at most, made about $35 a month, according to court records. Montana officials came to a similar conclusion, finding that the average participant in that state paid ACN about $750 in various fees but got back only $53.

ACN, which has never admitted wrongdoing while settling legal actions by state regulators, claims its business model is misunderstood; on its website, it once posted a page helpfully titled "The Difference in ACN and a Pyramid Scheme." A class-action lawsuit pending against Trump and his family asserts that the Trump brand became central to ACN's business strategy, citing one plaintiff who signed up after she "watched clips of ACN appearing on 'Celebrity Apprentice.'"

ACN sold DVDs of Trump promoting its products, and devoted part of its website to its "Trump partnership," featuring photos of him appearing at ACN events and his glowing testimonial: "ACN has a reputation for success. Success that's really synonymous with the Trump name and other successful names, and you can be part of it."

By the time Trump featured ACN's video phone on "The Apprentice" in 2011, the technology was close to obsolete, and yet he played it up, saying, "I think the ACN video phone is amazing."

His tax returns reveal just how much the company was paying him for the happy talk: $8.8 million over 10 years, including $1 million in 2009 — the nadir of the Great Recession, when desperate people were drawn to promises of a fast payday. In fact, Trump actively capitalized on the economic anxiety.

In a separate deal he struck that same year, this one to promote the multilevel marketing of vitamins by a company that was rebranded the Trump Network, he gave speeches that persuaded some people to spend almost $500 for a starter kit and try to recruit friends and relatives. Trump said in a video that people "need a new dream."

"The Trump Network wants to give millions of people renewed hope, and with an exciting plan to opt out of the recession," he said.

Within a couple of years, the company behind the Trump Network, Ideal Health, was sold, and its owners declared bankruptcy. Still, it was long enough for Trump to make $2.6 million selling hope in a vitamin bottle, according to his tax records.

In 2016, he agreed to pay $25 million to settle litigation over Trump University, an unaccredited seminar that persuaded people to pay as much as $35,000 to learn the real estate trade. But that legal reckoning was the exception in a decadelong run by Trump and his company, described in the class-action suit, filed in 2018, as a "large and complex enterprise with a singular goal: to enrich themselves by systematically defrauding economically marginalized people looking to invest in their educations, start their own small businesses and pursue the American dream."

Trump lent his name to buildings he didn't own, collecting big fees as his investors lost millions.

In his sales pitches, Trump frequently boasted that he "owned buildings all over" Manhattan. Actually, although at one point "Trump" was emblazoned on at least 17 buildings, Trump owns all or a portion of only a half-dozen. Many of the others he had developed decades earlier and then sold, before his casino bankruptcies made credit harder to come by.

With the prospect of building suddenly less viable, Trump explored licensing his name to other developers' projects. The idea gained traction after an obscure developer, Bayrock Group, started leasing office space on the 24th floor of Trump Tower, directly below Trump's headquarters. At about $400,000 a year, and a total of $2.2 million by the time the lease ended, according to the tax records, it proved a good investment for Bayrock, which used its proximity to pitch project ideas to Trump.

Bayrock was a bit of a mystery. Its founder, Tevfik Arif, was a former Soviet-era official from Kazakhstan whose 2003 financial statement, showing $70 million in assets, had a caveat saying his own accountant could not vouch for it. Arif's right hand was Felix Sater, a Russian émigré with ties to mobsters, who sometimes went by another name to obscure his criminal past.

Still, it was all good enough for Trump, who signed on to pursue an exciting concept: condo-hotels, in which buyers of units could rent them out when not using them. Even better, Bayrock mostly just wanted his name; the construction money would come from somewhere else.

Bayrock proposed to bring the Trump brand to hotels around the country and overseas, where Trump's flamboyant taste for gold and glitz played well among wealthy foreigners with a caricatured notion of American success.

Years later, in a lawsuit deposition, Trump said that he discussed "numerous deals all over the world" with his new partners, and that "this was going to be Trump International Hotel and Tower Moscow, Kyiv, Istanbul, etc., Poland, Warsaw."

At the same time, Trump asserted that because he was not actually the developer, he knew very little about what Bayrock was doing just two floors below his office. But internal Bayrock documents reviewed by The Times show that the company, right from the start, went looking for financing from Russia to pay for its Trump-branded hotels.

A draft plan from November 2003 titled "Russian fee agreement" called for an unnamed broker to provide $50 million for three Trump hotels in the United States and potentially "raise capital for all" of Bayrock's Trump projects. A former Bayrock executive said the proposal never panned out, although the company later received $50 million from an Icelandic bank suspected of having Russian ties.

Ultimately, despite multiple attempts, the Trump-Bayrock partnership would find success only with the Trump SoHo condo-hotel in Manhattan. But it was a milestone in the evolution of Trump's business model during the "Apprentice" era, showing that he could find easy profits from licensing his name not only to neckties and bedding but to entire buildings — and use the TV show to market them.

Unlike his Chicago tower, where he became embroiled in lawsuits over hundreds of millions of dollars in construction loans, Trump's SoHo hotel was essentially risk-free for him. His tax records show that, between licensing and management fees, Trump companies involved in the project ultimately netted as much as $9 million, even though they did not build or finance it.

Awash in new licensing offers while riding the "Apprentice" wave, Trump in 2007 inaugurated the Trump Hotel Collection, with an emphasis on foreign projects. It was largely aspirational: A new website listed "future properties" in Toronto, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Scotland and Dubai, among other locations.

But the fees were already pouring in. Trump's profits from licensing deals, which in 2003 barely registered, climbed to $1.3 million two years later and then skyrocketed, hitting $29.7 million in 2010 before steadily declining, according to his tax records.

Because of how the licensing agreements were drafted, with sizable fees up front, Trump stood to gain even if a project failed. Of the 10 "future properties" initially listed on the hotel collection's website, three never got off the ground, and five others either were not completed or later severed ties with Trump. Yet he still managed to collect a total of $46 million from them.

Questions have repeatedly been raised about Trump's choice of projects, which often fell apart amid allegations and disputes.

In Rio de Janeiro, where his tax records show he deducted $14,000 for the cost of a background investigation when signing onto a hotel deal, Trump was later forced to pull out amid a bribery investigation into the developer. In Azerbaijan, where there is a history of corruption, developers with ties to a Cabinet minister paid Trump $5 million to brand and manage a hotel that was never completed after a major backer dropped out of sight.

And buyers of units in a planned Trump condo-hotel in Mexico were burned after putting up some $32 million in deposits, only to see the project canceled with no refunds. In a lawsuit that was eventually settled, some of the buyers claimed they had been duped into believing Trump was an active participant in the project.

"In doing so," the lawsuit said, "defendants induced buyers to rely on the 'Trump brand' and the Trump name as a legitimate, dependable, luxury real estate developer."

In what became a recurring theme, Trump's defense was that he had merely licensed his name, and therefore had no responsibility for the project's collapse. As he explained in a deposition for another lawsuit, this one by investors in a failed Trump hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, "the developer is really the one that is responsible."

"We're like a hotel company, Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons or Waldorf Astoria," Trump said. "We are a name."

Flush with new cash, Trump bought luxurious golf courses that would fall deep into the red.

While Trump's tax returns tell the story of how reality TV and its reflected glow made him rich, they also shed some light on an enduring question that has generated much head-scratching, if not dark speculation: Where did he get hundreds of millions of dollars to buy and prop up his golf resorts?

Trump had only two open golf courses and two more undergoing renovations at the time of his plunge into television, but golf — a pastime that he "spent an inordinate amount of time on," his niece, Mary Trump, wrote in her recent family tell-all — always seemed destined to become his next financial sand trap.

"I have the best buildings in Manhattan. I have the best casinos in New Jersey. I build a great product," Trump boasted to a reporter in 2002. "I actually have more fun building courses than I do playing."

Beginning in 2006, and continuing over the next decade, he would accumulate 11 more golf courses, forming a new core of what he describes as his empire.

The amount of capital Trump has spent on his golf properties is staggering and has echoes of his earlier, ultimately disastrous, embrace of casinos. During a three-year period starting in 2014, he pumped $144.5 million into his Turnberry golf course in Scotland, his tax returns show, even as the property has continued booking losses year after year. He has put $213 million into his Doral resort in Florida, with similar results.

Meanwhile, Trump's main source of income — "The Apprentice" and licensing deals — went into a steep decline starting in 2011, falling, along with the show's ratings, from $51 million that year to $21 million by 2014, and eventually to less than $3 million in 2018.

Which is where those unsubstantiated theories of secret payments from Russia or the mob come in.

His tax records provide more mundane answers. They reveal that as he was pouring money into the golf resorts, he also pulled money out of other places in ways that suggested an immediate need. In 2012, he borrowed $100 million against his equity in Trump Tower in Manhattan, one of his more valuable properties. A year later, he withdrew $95.8 million from his share of a real estate partnership that owns buildings in New York and California. And in 2014, he sold $98 million in stocks and bonds.

These one-time maneuvers, coupled with the more than $427 million from "The Apprentice" and licensing deals, would probably have provided enough cash to cover his golf course investments. But they cannot be repeated, and in at least one case — the Trump Tower mortgage — they need to be paid back.

In addition, he has huge balances on loans, soon to come due, from Deutsche Bank, including $160 million on his Washington hotel in the Old Post Office building and $148 million on the Doral golf resort. Neither of those businesses is turning a profit.

In a series of tweets on Monday morning, a day after The Times published the first part of its investigation of his tax-return data, Trump sought to refute any negative impression of his wealth, insisting that he has "very little debt compared to the value of assets," and suggesting that he might release statements "showing all properties, assets and debts." It is unclear what sort of statements he was referring to; the public financial disclosures he must file as president already list his assets and debts.

As the president enters the final weeks of his reelection campaign trailing in virtually all the polls, he is a man politically and financially challenged.

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Many of the old financial escape hatches have closed. After he announced his candidacy in 2015 with racist comments about Mexicans, NBC, which carried "The Apprentice," cut ties with him and he sold his interest in the Miss Universe pageant, another reliable moneymaker. Hotel licensing deals have mostly dried up.

Last month, as he prepared for a Republican convention that would market him as America's savior in this dark and disordered hour, Trump turned to two entertainment industry veterans with experience generating the kind of razzle-dazzle that had worked so well in the past.

Both had helped produce "The Apprentice."

c.2020 The New York Times Company

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Best regards,

Dr. Jeff Darville 

Brevity due to mobile device

Sent from my iPhone