Hard to believe, but it seems Donald Trump was an even worse businessman than we thought.
Thanks to New York Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, we've learned that Trump's old tax records show that during his Art of the Deal era he was pretty much the national champion for financial underachievers. In 1990 and 1991 he had losses of over $250 million a year--"more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the IRS information for those years."
Well, you can't deny he was a record-breaker.
Trump likes to portray his old financial troubles as a temporary product of a recession. But even back then it was apparent that he wasn't truly all that great at deal-making. At the time, I called him a "financially embattled thousandaire," and he took great offense.
Trump would like us to believe all that red ink was actually a canny business strategy. "You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes," he tweeted after The Times report, adding that "it was sport."
On behalf of the millions of Americans who filed their IRS returns last month, I want to say that it is always a treat to hear our president explain how only suckers pay taxes.
However, it's becoming increasingly clear that even the cynical version of Donald Trump as a businessman--undisciplined self-promoter who bought and sold things just to convince himself he wasn't a useless nothingburger living off his rich dad's money--was maybe an overestimation.
Which can be sort of unnerving, given his current job. For instance, just before we got this new batch of information on his failure as an empire-builder, Trump met with Democratic leaders of Congress to discuss a big, huge building plan.
Infrastructure! In theory, this is the one thing in Washington everybody likes. When Trump was campaigning, he promised a big exciting $1 trillion agenda for what he would later describe as "gleaming new roads, bridges, railways and waterways."
What we need most is road repair. Filling potholes doesn't come under the category of "gleaming."
We've yet to find out which Donald Trump was negotiating with the Democratic leaders. Once in a while Good Donald takes over the president and he suddenly announces he's going for real immigration law reform, or serious gun control legislation or ... doesn't really matter. Experience suggests the Good Donald doesn't last more than a couple of days.
Still, a big-ticket infrastructure program doesn't require a profile in courage or even a plan. It's the political equivalent of a litter of puppies, only larger and more expensive.
Lately there's been no talk on the presidential side about how to pay for it. That's coming, ha-ha, later.
Trump seems unworried. "Nobody knows debt better than me," he said during the campaign. And on this point, I dare say we can all admit he was right. Frisky little thousandaire.
Editorial on 05/10/2019