Trump and many of his supporters claim his ‘success’ at business is his main qualification for president, he gets things done. But is Trump really good at business and getting things done?
Yet perhaps the most telling comparison is between Trump and his golf buddy, Richard LeFrak. The LeFraks and the Trumps have been rivals in New York's real estate business for generations. LeFrak's father, Samuel LeFrak, took a no-nonsense approach to the business. He focused on minimizing risk and making money, according to a 1992 profile in Business Week, before the magazine became Bloomberg Businessweek.
"He might be strutting around like a peacock today, but he's gonna be a feather duster tomorrow," the elder LeFrak told Business Week when asked about Trump.
....Citing an independent evaluation, Business Week put Trump's net worth at $100 million in 1978. Had Trump gotten out of real estate entirely, put his money in an index fund based on the S&P 500 and reinvested the dividends, he'd be worth twice as much -- $6 billion -- today, according to the calculator maintained by the blog Don't Quit Your Day Job.
Trump keeps claiming his 4 bankruptcies don’t mean anything, they were used to “pare” his debt. Working class American heads spin at the notion of using bankruptcy every few years to “pare” one’s legally incurred debts. Those debts might be why Trump is in debt to Deutsche Bank and the Chinese for hundreds of millions.