>

Anyone who was willing to see reality already knew this bumbling blob was all bullshit, long before the taxes were released.
Didn’t need his tax returns to know he was dumb af and shitty at business. >

He bankrupted 3 casinos because he didn’t understand the simple business concept of flooding a market.  He opened one and it was a success, so he opened two more, with pretty much the same concept less than a mile from each other in Atlantic City.
They basically cannibalized each other’s clients and he went from having one full casino to having three mostly empty ones.  For those who say he was not using his money and just fleecing the investors, some of that is true, but Trump tried to make the casinos work, so much so that the he tried to make the last one work for decades despite years of loses and finally shutting it down in 2015.
Furthermore, he kept trying to make his casino work by opening another one that also failed in Gary, Indiana.   
Trump loved the glamour of owning a casino, he was just terrible at running them. >

I thought he used those casinos as disposable money laundering schemes >

There's always someone who has a way Trump's shitty failure is secretly smart but it's usually just a shitty failure. Even if it was a money laundering scheme, why not actually make legit money too? Doesn't that make it easier and more profitable to launder money? >

Money laundering isn't secretly smart, it's illegal and stupid, especially when it's probably mafia money. The loss of them is the point of having them. >

Not only that. Casinos can run, make it rain money like crazy, already with a lot of shadiness that is LEGAL, there is little reason to do shady illegal stuff to make money. >

Cash business based around intangible wagers.
The perfect place for illicit cash to flow through into legitimized income. >

It's not "perfect". Casino gambling is highly regulated. The casino regulators are no strangers to organized crime. That's why unrelated businesses like random "consultants" are much better.
Cash is not required for money laundering anymore, and is actually a large red flag. You can just collect money from "investors" (small time chumps you pay off) and give it to some "investment consultant", who spends most of it on "research" by paying your company in a foreign country. I bet you can pay no more than 15% to clean the money. And this is without involving a crooked banker. They can probably get down to 5% or less. >

Okay let me argue it's pretty perfect, tell me why it's not: everything is on camera. Jimmy the Razor or whoever robs a liquor store. He owes like half to me so I don't kill him, which is steep but the liquor store pays protection, and I have to think about my other extortion businesses. 
So jimmy goes and loses half the money on roulette I mean in like 4 spins, easy, loses 3 grand, gets his room comped, I check the comp list, if Jimmy the Razor isn't comped into my casino, I know he didn't come lose the money he owed me, now I'm gonna send goons to go break his legs or something, hit and run with a stolen car, something like that. 
So this does away with some problems, 1, I don't gotta go get a bag of cash from Jimmy, 2, there is no shady courier to trust, there is a legit roulette dealer who wants to keep his job, and a legit pit boss, all the way up to the legit guards at the count room, 3, I made jimmy launder the money to me, so know I don't have to launder it, 4, I've got a business you can reasonably walk into with any amount of cash and leave without it, even under FBI surveillance, it's all above board, 5, they catch on- now they have to audit a casino to prove it and it takes 5 years, as opposed to raid a sandwich shop or whatever. >

Without even reading, I bet he forced them to license the Trump name at great cost, plus charged hefty "consulting" fees, which likely helped drive the casinos into bankruptcy. Am I correct? >

No, don't be silly, he's not smart enough to to debt leveraged buyouts like Romney does with Bain Capital.
He promised not to use junk bonds during the approval process and as soon as he got approved, he used, you guessed it, junk bonds to fund it. He was paying himself a big salary but it's likely the real money was in untraceable cash skimming and laundering. That's why he got his father to literally buy $18m of chips with cash one night to stave off bankruptcy for just 1 more month, becuase what he could withdraw from the coffers in duffel bags and give to Russian mobsters dwarfed it. The state was also left holding the empty bag when it all went south and the people of NJ really got boned due to the junk status. >

He also dumped his personal debt onto the casino and its shareholders.

He dealt with that danger by first shifting much of his personal debt onto his casinos, then onto a new group: shareholders.
Step 1 came in 1993, when his company sold more junk bonds, adding another $100 million in debt to the Trump Plaza casino. More than half of the new money went to pay off Mr. Trump’s unrelated personal loans. >

Jesus Christ. How has nobody whacked him yet? Not calling for it, just genuinely curious how he can be so cavalier about ripping people off & nobody got fed up >

scam someone else to pay his debt with the people that would wack him.
I'm more surprised he hasn't been JFKed, the amount of damage he done to the country. I guess the CIA gone soft. >

I think his only money making ventures have been the TV program, book sales, and the shifting of assets before his multitude of bankruptcies. >

He's made lots of money from Saudis and Russians overpaying for his properties, plus the Saudis awarded him with the LIV golf tournaments at his clubs. >

His SS was also happy to pay top dollar for the hospitality >

Yes, that too. He was frequently traveling to his clubs during his presidency, and in the process, probably reaped millions from taxpayers by having the USSS (not SS lol) stay at his clubs. >

Don't forget he has lifetime guards, Melania gets some I think, and Baron will keep his until he's 16. So while it's not the full suite of USSS he used to get, he still milks the US with rentals, flight charges, dinners etc. It's just not as big of a scale. 
Also if memory serves he had all his kids and their partners get extended protection for 6 months after he left office. 6 additional months of sweet sweet grift, staying in trump hotels and overcharging them for everything. >

Not lifetime. 10 years.  Which amount to a lifetime for him, even with his stellar health. But still a valid point. >

Obama reinstated the lifetime protection for former presidents in 2012. >

Thanks Obama. >

It worked! >

Melons looks more pissed than she usually does >

Its the shitty plastic surgery >

Can she even show emotion anymore? or is she so plastic and dead inside that it's not possible? >

I promise, the republican side of my family is losing their ever loving shit while dealing with the mental gymnastics of realizing that dickface McGee has been everything that we have all said he is. >

It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled… >

Solid quote. >

I don’t know why this wasn’t more widely known. Idiots elected and support a fabrication >

His voters knew he lied about his taxes, he openly admitted to tax evasion during a televised debate.
They all knew it was a fabrication, he was voted in out of spite for a political system that has failed it’s citizens. >


They all knew it was a fabrication, he was voted in out of spite for a political system that has failed it’s citizens. 

I think some knew but others actually are dumb enough to have been duped. I agree 100% though, it was a pure desperation play by the people because the government has been failing us for decades. So people figured eh why not, at least it's something new. 
Just a sad state for the American government to be in, when it's such a failure Trump got elected out of widespread desperation, and Hillary campaigned like a fucking moron and ignored swing states and said "America is already great" in regards to maga which was tone deaf as fuck, America isn't great for a large part of the country (swing states) so they're not gonna vote for Hillary lmfao. 
A comedy of errors and failures brought us Trump as actual president, it's fucked bonkers >

Not so smart? But, he assured me he was a stable genius. He understands nuclear, military, lawsuits, foreign policy, really any subject better than anyone. He wouldn't lie would he? >

No he wouldn’t. He had an uncle who did nuclear >

This genius claimed he was smart because some family members were smart. >

Of course, he thinks he has superior genes just like Musk does. They are all racists >

Oh, but he's that rich because of his debt is so big. All rich people have all their money in debt /s >

Having no money is the smartest way to avoid paying tax. I've been doing it for years. >

I'd give you an award, but I have no Reddit coins either. >

I would give you both an award, but I don't want to accidentally put you in the next reddit tax bracket. >

Damn, this is a nice comment, and I would award it if I could >

Got you both fam >

If you deduct that silver expense Trump style you can claim reddit gold on your next tax return. >

No. No. No. you deduct gold expense for silver award. >

Just here to remind everyone that Trump, and the Republican Congress in 2018, extended the ability to count Net Operating Losses (NOLs) against your current income from three years back to ten years back.  It is doubtful that any taxpayer benefitted from this change more than Donald Trump himself. >

Ah, the separation or powers working just like it was supposed to. /s >

Trump claims the returns show how smart he is. If they showed how smart he is, he would have insisted they be released years ago. He would have tried to make them required reading in schools. He wanted them hidden because they show he lost more money than anyone in history until Elon Musk out Trumped him. Until this year, Trump was Americas Biggest Loser. >

You’re sitting here on the internet trying to own a billionaire who doesn’t know you exist, I think the biggest loser here may be you >

You have your head shoved so far up Trump’s ass and he doesn’t even know it. How does that ass smell? >

Haha nope I’m born and raised in Canada so I actually don’t care about which geriatric corrupt politician you guys let run your country. I just think it’s funny watching the pot call the kettle black in these comment sections >

I know it’s against Reddit protocol to read the article, but did anyone wade through this one? I tried and failed to find any actual details on how much he is worth. There’s a quote that he has a huge tax loss carry forward, but nothing I could find on what his gross income was for any given year. 
I suspect it’s a lot compared to us common folks and a lot less than he claims, but it would be nice to have actual figures to use. >

It doesn't look like he has much money at all - most of what he has is in the money from marketing his name, and his golf clubs. I was at the Trump Tower back in 2009 and it was a hot mess; dirty, the waterfall on the back wall was partially broken, and looked like it had been for a long time, the food from the cafe there was old and we threw it away, etc. Also, much of the construction while looking nice, was actually done very, very cheaply. I leaned over the rail on the upper mezzanine (where Trump was coming down the escalator) and squeezed the brass handrail only to feel it crush under my hand like a tin can - and I'm female. >

That’s assuming that he doesn’t siphon money from his companies and get paid in some offshore account for laundering money via his businesses.  
It’s hard to estimate net worth of a criminal. >

I didn't need proof that he is broke and stupid. >

trump voters are dissociated from the real world.
Sometimes we say they're living in a bubble, meaning a separate media environment of "alternative facts." That's not wrong, but it's not comprehensive, it's only apprehending a small part of the disconnect.
trump voters tell themselves stories and then they believe in the stories. In exactly the same way a religion works. If you found hard evidence that Jesus was a fabrication, you wouldn't expect to persuade a born-again Christian of that. It's the same with trump. The people who love him are there for the story he tells, the story he permits them to tell themselves. Not for supportable facts, material evidence, and real history.
Edit: Hey, look what I stumbled on in this Olivia Nuzzi story:

“I don’t want to excuse it,” the official continued. It wasn’t like working for Trump had ever been defensible. But it was easy to live in the fantasy world he had created. It encouraged fantasies of your own. “I always wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt,” the official said, “to see the good things, and I think a lot of that was just giving myself a reason to be there.” >

Any of us could have told you that 10 years ago >

Lies on lies on lies. Stacked so high you can't see over them or under them or around them.  I'm awaiting the day with great anticipation when people finally poke the pile enough for it to fall over on top of him. >

Everyone, including his supporters, knows he lies. >

The way they see it, - the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad and it's more than okay to lie to the bad guys. Their whole lives are a long-running Marvel comic LARP because that's the only paradigm in which they're the good guys and the hero. >

And many Democrats are thinking in the exact same lines. There is a lot of division in your country, people fail to realize they have far more in common than what divides them.
No, they didn’t care, the South Park episodes captured this perfectly, Mr. Garrison’s campaign slogan was “fuck them all to death” and this was exactly what Trump’s supporters wanted. Who the good or bad guys were didn’t matter. >

The bad guys went to prison or lost everything, it was pretty clear to the FBI. >

Haha, Trump isn’t “so rich or smart”, duh, anyone with a brain figured that out a long time ago, especially the part about him being a dumbass >

But he told us how important and how much intelligence is lodged into his incredibly important brain! Why ask questions? Asking questions is hard, so apparently, let’s not do that. >

Don’t know why the media always claimed he was a billionaire. With his business track record I’m surprised he’s still a millionaire. >

Because John Barron said so! The source: trust him. >

Where's the Russian ties? That's what I want to see. >

They’re around his neck. >

I’d like to put something else around his neck. >

You have been added to the Gravy Seals’ watchlist >

Bring it lmao >

Dad told me this before he was President.. more bankrupcies than most Americans combined >

I have been aware of him since 1982. I already knew he was a moronic con artist >

Yahoos believed him. Even worse, the yahoos didn't want to know the truth, so they never demanded Trump show that he was smart or rich. The Trump yahoos wanted to just believe Trump lies (as the yahoos continue to do). >

And also, hiding lots of crimes. >

Confirming what the rest of us already knew. >

Rich and smart people don't tell everyone how rich and smart they are. >

And he is reimbursed for his business failures, by the U.S. taxpayer. >

Never in American History has someone been literally handed so much and done so little with it. Fucking dude made $427M from The Apprentice alone and still fucking squandered everything he ever did. >


What Trump tried to hide: The long-secret tax returns show that he’s not so rich or so smart (nydailynews

Lol wut?  Pretty sure Trump is hiding a bit more than just being average. Averageness wasn't a crime, last I checked, but you know what's a crime? Obstruction, how about. 1000+ counts of deliberate theft of Nationally sensitive federal documents while not an office holder anymore, how about. misuse of political campaign donations, how about. Leading an insurrection and deaths occurring as a result, how about.
The GOP DOJ is a family, I get it. GOP AGs have consistently displayed party loyalty by looking the other way, despite the dangers this behavior clearly and presently poses to this country, I get it. >

The funny thing is the Trump Organization even cooked the books for tax purposes so however bad this looks for Dum Dum Donald it’s even worse than what his tax records have revealed. >

Cooking the books for tax purposes usually results in showing less income than what’s realistic though >

I've heard him speak. >

Its more about things that we cant see. The loans that find out the taxes and other claims dont match for example.  But I suspect theres a lot here too.  Lets see what sorts out. >

If Trump had simply invested his inheritance in the S&P500 and sat on his hands instead of trying to bungle his way through a series of bankruptcies whilst stiffing everyone in his path, he'd be richer now than he is. According to someone who wrote an article about it, I guess. I know there's probably more to it than that, but regardless it does prove that Trump's not the wealth generator he makes out to be, and he's certainly no impressive rags-to-riches success story. He's his daddy's boy. >

Well, George W was also daddy's boy...seems to be a pattern here. >

If I had to make an educated guess...a select portion of the generational wealth crowd are herding all the hard working middle/lower classes into fighting for a world in which daddys little boy always comes out on top...there in lay the struggle. It is appealing to the base because they all want their kids to come out on top (all parents do) but  it's a farce...most will be fighting over the crumbs rather than buttering the biscuit but by the time they realize that the power they once possessed  (via the power structure of democracy) will have vanished.  It is the way of King George and royalty.   It is the political equivalent of a pyramid scheme.  Be still my lying eyes and ears...wakey wakey!  ...it's just a thought. >

Neither shocked or surprised. >

... he was never hiding how stupid he is. >

Bigly stupid. >

Curious if the release of this info basically cuts him off from the type of lending he’s been receiving over the years. What are the odds the Russians and Saudis knew the full extent of his business failures? >

100%. >

It's like 90% of the world has been saying this for years.... >

Too late, he already fucked up the country >

I guess Deutsche Bank loaned to him based on his good looks, fabulous body, and using the best words. I mean, they wouldn't do anything so tacky as money laundering through Trump now, right? I didn't think so./s >

We already knew both these things. His biographer said years ago that he's probably worth 200-400 million and someone from the apprentice said he basically gets off on people calling him a billionaire. As for intelligence...I think that's fairly obvious. No secret there.