According to several presidential polls, the majority of voters say that the most important issue in the 2024 election is the economy, and that Donald Trump is a better economic manager than President Joe Biden. They believe the economy should be run more like a business and that Donald Trump is a savvy businessman. To that I offer the following proverb: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
Mr. Trump indeed assured voters in 2016, “If we could run our country the way I’ve run my company, we would have a country that you would be so proud of.” And during Trump’s presidency, he was as good as his word: he ran the country the way he ran his business. But that just meant he fleeced American taxpayers, betrayed them with false promises, and left our children and grandchildren in debt to his moral bankruptcy.
Far from being a self-made businessman, Trump proved he’s no more than a nepotist beneficiary, inheriting his father’s financial empire and subsequently trading on his father’s name and assets.
Unlike many legitimate businessmen whose investments are tempered by the risk of personal loss, Mr. Trump has always had the luxury of playing with house money. As an investigation by The New York Times concluded, “in every era of Mr. Trump’s life, his finances were deeply intertwined with, and dependent on, his father’s wealth.” Consequently, Trump has played with his inherited real estate empire like the game of “Monopoly.” To him, the money was never real. That probably explains why he’s lost so much of it.
Trump is actually more of a promoter than a savvy businessman. His so-called “business” model amounts to gaudily stamping his father’s name on buildings, cheap products, and things that pander to those American consumers impressed by shiny objects and bad taste. He’s hawked Trump Bibles, Trump gold sneakers, Trump Steaks, Trump Wine, Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage, and now Trump Truth Social, whose public stock has already lost investors billions.
He also misled college students with his bogus Trump University. And he was forced to dissolve The Trump Foundation, his so-called charity, because of what New York Attorney General Barbara called its “egregious pattern of illegality—including repeatedly using charitable assets for unlawful purposes.”
Despite Trump’s six corporate bankruptcies, he’s reportedly suffered no personal bankruptcy since he he’d “put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses, and other payments.”
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Real bondholders, creditors, contractors, and employees, however, have paid for Trump’s careless gambles, as well as for his legal fees. So, though Trump promotes himself as a business genius, his record suggests that he only played one on TV’s “The Apprentice.”
Once Mr. Trump won the presidency in 2016, he no longer played with his father’s money—he played with ours. He frequently jetted to all of his several golf courses, hotels, and other properties, where his sizable retinue stayed, played, and dined, compliments of American taxpayers.
His public policies, too, were designed for his own political profit at taxpayers’ expense. Who actually paid for Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” along the Southern border? It wasn’t Mexico. And remember the president’s boasts that he would win a trade war with China? Who paid for that strategy? The American taxpayers paid billions of dollars to bail out struggling farmers that suffered from Trump’s tariffs; not to mention consumers who paid increased prices at the cash register. Meanwhile, China never blinked.
And who will pay for the trillion-dollar tax cut he promoted and signed? According to the Congressional Budget Office, “the federal budget deficit [grew] faster than expected as President Trump’s spending and tax cut policies force the United States to borrow increasing sums of money.”
So, it will be our children and grandchildren that will pay the two trillion dollars that Trump’s tax cut added to the national deficit.
As for Trump? He paid no taxes in 2020 and boasted, “That makes me smart.” But, as it turns out, that is not true. In a civil fraud case this year, he was found liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth by illegally inflating and deflating his assets both to receive loans and to avoid paying taxes.
Trump, now convicted, also promises that if he wins a second term, he’ll boost the economy by relaxing regulations on fossil fuel industries, drilling operations, and auto emissions. Again, for his political profit, our children and grandchildren will pay in the form of increased health problems, higher health care costs, frequent wildfires, rising oceans, flooded coastlines, and polluted air.
Finally, Trump’s present campaign platform amounts to selling the blatant lie that the last election was stolen from him. In other words, it’s business as usual for him. The question for voters: Will he fool us twice?
Thomas Cangelosi lives in Avon
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