Occasionally I have cause to reprise a commentary in full with relatively little explanation. This is one of those occasions. It stems from the following headline in the June 3 edition of The Independent:
- Trump condos going for bargain prices because no one wants to live in them
More to the point, that report includes the following:
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In Chicago, condo prices are down 34 per cent. In Las Vegas, even as prices soar at other properties, hotel rooms are down 4 per cent. In Waikiki, Hawaii, prices have taken a 23 per cent hit over the last four years. These are just some of the dire numbers facing the Trump business empire now that its famous figurehead is out of the White House. …
‘Fifty percent of the people wouldn’t want to live in a Trump building for any reason … but then there are guys like me,’ Lou Sollecito [a car dealer who recently bought a two-bedroom unit with views of the Empire State Building] told the AP on Friday.
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Given that, I hope you will understand why I could not resist reprising “Toxic Brand Trump,” January 13, 2021:
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“Trump” has been a toxic brand ever since the US government sued Donald and his father Fred in 1973 for systematically discriminating against Blacks in the gentrified apartments they rented in Brooklyn and Queens.
Regretfully, I did not begin admonishing anyone with a conscience, especially Blacks, to avoid anything branded Trump like the plague until decades later. Specifically, I began when his racist rhetoric and birther antics made him unfit to host a reality TV show, let alone serve as president of the United States.
I joined the vanguard (of mostly white liberals) in calling for a boycott of Trump’s businesses – to hit him where it hurts – as the following from “Trump for President? Don’t Be a Sucker!” April 8, 2011, attests:
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Donald Trump is nothing more than the P.T. Barnum of business: a huckster who thrives on the notion that ‘there’s a sucker born every minute’…
This is why I urge the rich folks he depends on to patronize his eponymous resorts and buy up his eponymous condominiums to begin shunning him – just as they would a two-bit racist like David Duke. I urge this especially of the Black Hollywood and sports stars he likes to feature as extras in his one-man freak show.
Trump is entitled to say whatever he likes. But, at the very least, he should suffer truth and consequences for accusing this country’s first Black president of being a Kenyan Muslim who has perpetrated ‘the biggest scam in U.S. history.’
CBS fired Charlie Sheen from One and a Half Men for hurling anti-Semitic remarks at a TV producer. NBC should feel even more compelled to fire Trump from The Apprentice for hurling racist remarks at the president of the United States.
So, here’s to this fiendishly thin-skinned huckster having his trademark words thrown back in his face: Trump, you’re fired!
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I continued in many other commentaries, including in “‘I can’t hear, or see, or say that name [TRUMP] without spitting’,” March 14, 2016, in which I added:
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All Americans should appreciate the categorical imperative of treating anything branded ‘Trump’ — from hotels to neckties and vodka — as if it were branded ‘KKK.’ It only hints at his cynicism and hucksterism that he makes such a public show of touting his Made in China products to ‘Make America Great Again.’
But the legacy of his publicity stunt masquerading as a presidential campaign should be a Trump brand so tarnished that the only people willing to patronize his businesses are the fools who voted for him.
Given that the vast majority of them are poor and uneducated, by his own estimation, it would only be a matter of time before he’s forced into the mother of all his bankruptcies (i.e., for failing to make payments on the debt he brags about using to finance his businesses). And trust me, this Croesus-envying narcissist would rather go bankrupt than depend on the rabble-rousing suckers who attend his rallies to keep his real-estate empire afloat. Which is just as well given that most of them can barely afford a night at a budget hotel.
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That’s why I hope you’ll forgive me for thinking that my commentaries might have had something to do with the world waking up today to this Drudge Report headline:
- TRUMP BRAND TURNS TOXIC
It links readers to a SF Gate report on the PGA’s decision to move its tour championship away from Trump’s Bedminster, NJ, golf course, and warns of the domino effect this is bound to have:
Now, through his encouragement of rioters who ransacked the U.S. Capitol, Trump has made his company a pariah and driven away allies who could have brought it revenue and post-politics credibility.
‘Most financial institutions and investors avoided doing business with him before he ran for president, and the situation now has only gotten worse,’ said Kathryn Wylde, the leader of the Partnership for New York City, an influential group that includes the leaders of banks and Fortune 500 companies. …
‘If he remains a visible player, no one will want to be associated with him in any kind of public way, because he is going to symbolize the destabilization of the American political system,’ Wylde said.
Sure enough, NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio made news this morning by announcing that his city is severing all contracts with the Trump Organization. And anyone familiar with the Wollman Skating Rink or the Central Park Carousel knows what a blow this will be to Trump’s ego. Oh, and Chicago is following New York City in having his name stripped from as many buildings as possible.
Then there’s this from The New York Times:
In the span of four days, President Donald Trump’s family business has lost its online store, the buzz from Trump’s promotional tweets about its luxury resorts and bragging rights as host to one of the world’s most prestigious golf tournaments. …
Other companies linked with the Trumps, including Deutsche Bank, the president’s largest lender, and Signature Bank, are also seeking distance from him and his business.
Finally, bear in mind that this orange-painted pariah is a billionaire poseur whose businesses are hemorrhaging millions per month, but who now has no access to credit, and is over $400 million in debt. Therefore, I’m just waiting to read that loan sharks are repossessing his properties. Moreover, that they’re doing so with such vengeance, the only place Trump can find any refuge is in one of those rental buildings in Brooklyn, where he used to discriminate against Blacks in the 1970s. Karma: it’s a bitch.
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Mind you, the schadenfreude is not just in having written that six months ago; it’s also in having called for Trump to be shunned a decade ago, and now seeing it be done.
Granted, it has not helped that Covid-19 caused high-end city dwellers to flee New York City like rats abandoning a sinking ship. Still, as indicated, this fallout – from a confluence of his dystopian presidency and a once-in-a-century pandemic – has a lot to do with good old-fashioned karmic comeuppance.
Indeed, it seems fitting and ironic that, by the time he finishes tarnishing his name, and the legal system finishes meting out the justice he deserves, the only people who will be frequenting Trump hotels and living in Trump condos will be red necks and used car salesmen, respectively. In other words, the very people Trump’s former buddy Howard Stern famously said he held in such disdain, Trump wouldn’t even want them setting foot in any of his properties, let alone owning a piece of them.
Frankly, Trump made himself permanently toxic for short-term gain. Now his businesses are floundering and his Teflon is rusting – just like his “gold-plated” 757 has been at a New York airfield for over a year now because he can no longer afford the maintenance fees.
All of which is why Trump will be the first man in history to rue the day he was ever elected president of the United States.
In the meantime, sowing division between Republicans and Democrats seems to provide Trump his only reason for living these days. And he seems hell-bent on doing so until sectarian politics in America make what led to a 1000-year war between Sunnis and Shias for the soul of Iraq look like a typical family dispute during Thanksgiving dinner.
Donald Trump’s speech before the North Carolina Republican Party Saturday night was a reminder of the danger the former President poses as he undermines America’s election system while attempting to reassert himself as kingmaker on the national stage.
His address to the party faithful was a familiar screed to anyone who tuned in to his 2020 campaign rallies. He attacked President Joe Biden’s foreign policy maneuvers, claimed Biden is destroying the economy, insisted that he deserves more credit for the rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines, and argued that the radical left and “cancel culture” are destroying America’s freedoms. But it was his continuing disinformation campaign about the November presidential contest that was most disturbing — in part because the past few months have proved that Trump’s lies are now accepted as gospel by a majority of Republicans.
And the former President continued to fan those flames of disinformation on Saturday night, stating that the 2020 election will ‘go down as the crime of the century.’
(CNN, June 6, 2021)
In other words, it was a groundhog-day feast for fools …
Of course, Trump’s supporters have shown time and again that no lie is too big or farfetched for them to buy hook, line, and sinker. And they’ll probably donate hundreds of millions more for his grift to be “reinstated” in August … too.
But the ultimate showdown will come when Congress convenes in January 2025 to count the electoral votes and certify the presidential election of 2024. After all, what do his voter-suppressing MAGA pawns – who are now passing laws to rig elections in red states across America – think is going to happen when they attempt to present their trumped-up electors? Do they think bona-fide electors from blue states are just going to roll out the red carpet for their two-legged orange calf to return as president?
Civil War II: Red States vs. Blue States! As it happens, I commented on the combustible nature of this simmering conflict in my podcast episode “Biden’s Foreign Policy ‘A-Team’ Is Failing Him,” May 15, 2021.
But, trust me, just as Trump himself dodged the fight on January 6, no Trump will be among the idiots fighting this war for his cause either. Oh, and Biden, not Trump, will be Commander in Chief; so, in the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, prepare to die, suckers.
Related commentaries:
I can’t hear or see… Trump-led insurrection… Toxic brand Trump…
Joe Biden, the restoration… Biden’s A-Team…
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