Fortune trump first person to make money off the presidency

During this primary season, Donald Trump made a point of not taking outside donations, but now he is. During the first year of his campaign, he spent on average half a million dollars a month at his own companies. Campaigns typically split about the cost of flying with the press corps who fly on their planes — a practice Clinton started this week. On Monday, Trump allowed a small group of reporters onto his plane. The campaign did not respond in time for our story but provided this statement to CBS News after the story aired:. Share Tweet Reddit Flipboard Email. Trump profiting off campaign? CBSN Live watch. Watch Now. Impeachment managers, Trump lawyers to debate rules on Tuesday. National Archives apologizes for editing Women’s March photo.

Trump launched his presidential bid from there, where his campaign leased space. The president has openly speculated that he could make money in the White House. He is expected to spend much of the week in Florida. Since his inauguration in January , Trump has spent days at his properties in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia. However, it is difficult to assess quite how much money has been spent as the information is not yet fully available. Existing public records of federal agencies spending money at Trump properties are incomplete but several agencies have detailed some spending. Before Trump, this pattern of personal of self-enrichment was a characteristic of third-world autocrats rather than the president of the United States. Trump fought off calls to separate himself from his businesses after his election and has declined to release his tax returns, which would give a better accounting of the money he has made as president. But there are calls in Congress to prohibit the spending of federal funds on properties owned by an officeholder, including the president, if those public funds provide a profit to the officeholder. Topics Donald Trump. US politics news.

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Abusing office, breaking promises

Latest Issue. Past Issues. Office of Government Ethics. The filings offer less detailed information about his precise financial situation than would be obtained from his tax returns. Trump broke with modern precedents by refusing to release those returns on the campaign trail or during his presidency. Properties that Trump frequently visited as president saw the largest boost in income. Golfing and vacationing are bipartisan presidential traditions, as are the partisan critiques of the presidents who partake in them. But Trump has taken his leisure time to new levels both in volume and location. A May 5 analysis by The Washington Post found that Trump visited at least one of the properties he owned in 36 of his first days in office, or one-third of his presidency to that time. The trips include almost weekly visits to Mar-a-Lago and his Florida properties, where he mingles with guests and club members as well as hosts foreign dignitaries. Properties that saw fewer or no visits from the president produced no such boost in income for him. Other courses throughout the U.

The numbers show that in , Mr. It was a gross exaggeration. In fact, year after year, Mr. Compare Investment Accounts.

The Atlantic Crossword

Retrieved August 24, Washington Post. Some fraction of that ocean of red ink represented depreciation on Mr. About two weeks before the stock market crash of Oct. Though at the time his losses were reported to be modest, the new tax return figures show that inthe year he sold his American Airlines stake, Mr. Your Money. Furthermore, it had never been properly certified in New York and did not submit to the annual audit that would have been required. Here’s what we do know». The newly revealed tax information sheds light on how those net operating losses snowballed. Retrieved August 17, Retrieved November 11,

Trump lashes out at Comey after explosive interview

Newly obtained tax information reveals that from toDonald J. Trump was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals, according to previously unrevealed figures from his federal income tax returns. Trump was propelled to the presidency, in part, by fortune trump first person to make money off the presidency self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome.

He has attributed his first run of reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that took hold in But 10 years of tax information obtained by The New York Times paints a different, and far bleaker, picture of his deal-making abilities and financial condition.

The data — printouts from Mr. Though the information does not cover the tax years at the center of an escalating battle between the Trump administration and Congress, it traces the most tumultuous chapter in a long business career — an era of fevered acquisition and spectacular collapse.

The numbers show that inMr. In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I. Over all, Mr.

Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years. It is not known whether the I. Since the presidential campaign, journalists at The Times and elsewhere have been trying to piece together Mr. The Times was then able to find matching results in the I.

That is why the president has always scoffed at the tax system and said you need to change the tax laws. You can make a large income and not have to pay large amount of taxes. Mark J. Mazur, a former director of research, analysis and statistics at the I. In addition, I. Trump built a business licensing his name, became a television celebrity and ran for the White House by branding himself a self-made billionaire.

He broke with four decades of precedent in refusing to release any of his tax returns as a presidential candidate, and until now only a few pages of his returns have become public. The new tax information does not answer questions raised by House Democrats in their pursuit of the last six years of Mr. Nor does it offer a fundamentally new narrative of his picaresque career. But always, those gains were overwhelmed by losses on his casinos and other projects.

The new information also suggests that Mr. From throughwhile his core businesses languished under increasingly unsupportable debt, Mr. Trump made millions of dollars in the stock market by suggesting that he was about to take over companies. But the figures show that he lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously.

In Washington, the struggle over access to Mr. Trump had received from his father came from his participation in dubious tax schemes, including instances of outright fraud. They showed that Mr. Several months later, the journalist David Cay Johnston was mailed pages of Mr.

He was still riding high from the completion of his first few projects — the Grand Hyatt Hotel, Trump Tower and another Manhattan apartment building, and one Atlantic City casino. But what the newly revealed tax information makes clear is that, with his vast debt and other expenses on those properties, Mr. He would not be able to convert Mar-a-Lago into a moneymaking club for another decade. The apartments on the hospital site would not be ready for sale, as Trump Palace, untiland another residential project would be stalled for years.

The football league would soon fold. Because his businesses were generally created as partnerships, the companies themselves did not pay federal income taxes. Instead their results wound up on Mr. The I. In his letter, Mr. Trump, to be business owners who received what is known as pass-through income. That data does not include businesses, like most large corporations, that pay their taxes directly. The next years were a time of continued empire building.

The information also documents, year by year, a time of gathering loss. Here is how it added up. Every year from throughDonald J.

Trump reported a negative adjusted gross income on his tax returns. That number grew as new losses were combined with those from prior years. The New York Times previously found that Mr. About two weeks before the stock market crash of Oct. It never made a profit, and Mr. And over the next three years, as Mr. Trump was able to lose all that money without facing the usual consequences — such as a steep drop in his standard of living — in part because most of it belonged to othersto the banks and bond investors who had supplied the cash to fuel his acquisitions.

This is not to say that Mr. Trump never made money on a deal. One that turned out quite well came inwhen he bought the Hotel St. But that rich payday was overwhelmed by his business losses, and Mr. Trump still paid no federal income taxes that year. Some fraction of that ocean of red ink represented depreciation on Mr.

One of the most valuable special benefits in the tax code, depreciation lets owners of commercial real estate write down the cost of their buildings. Trump said during a presidential debate in Trump defended this tax strategy on Wednesday and said in a pair of Twitter posts that this was what real estate developers did in the s and s. Trump said. Trump points to one of his Atlantic City casinos to illustrate the magic of depreciation. But while this example is intended to show the benefits of depreciation, it also demonstrates that depreciation cannot account for the hundreds of millions of dollars in losses Mr.

Trump declared on his taxes. The tax code also lets business owners like Mr. Trump use losses to avoid paying tax on future income — a lucrative deduction intended to help troubled businesses get back on their feet.

The newly revealed tax information sheds light on how those net operating losses snowballed. And the red ink continued to accumulate apace.

Because Mr. Trump reported a negative adjusted gross income in each of the 10 years, he was not allowed to deduct any charitable contributions. So while he has boasted of making large donations at the time, the information obtained by The Times shows no such itemized deductions. Potential deductions could have been carried over to a future year, should Mr. Trump have reported a positive income. As losses from his core enterprises mounted, Mr. Trump took on a new public role, trading on his business-titan brand to present himself as a corporate raider.

He would acquire shares in a company with borrowed money, suggest publicly that he was contemplating buying enough to become a majority owner, then quietly sell on the resulting rise in the stock price. The tactic worked for a brief period — earning Mr. Trump millions of dollars in gains — until investors realized that he would not follow.

That much has been known for years. But the tax information obtained by The Times shows that he ultimately lost the bulk of the gains from his four-year trading spree. The figures do not include an itemization of individual trades. But The Times was able to align the reported total gains with details on trades publicly documented by casino regulators at the time.

As with many things Trump, his adventures in the stock market were more image than substance, helped greatly by news reports quoting anonymous sources said to have knowledge of Mr. An occasional quote from an associate — including his stockbroker, Alan C.

Greenberg — helped burnish the myth. An early and profitable gambit came in Februarywhen Mr. Trump started buying stock in the company that owned United Airlines. That April, The Times reported that Mr. Trump takeover speculation set off a rally in the stock.

At the end of the month, Mr. Trump quietly sold nearly all his shares. The next day, The Journal reported that Mr. It was a gross exaggeration. New Jersey gaming regulators later determined that he had purchased only 2.

The same tactic continued to work through

Donald Trump’s Childhood — Making of a President Part 1

President Donald J. It was at his father’s real estate company that Trump got his start in business. After the hotel chain had failed to obtain a gaming license, Trump renamed this latest purchase, Trump Castle. These two failures pale in comparison to the setbacks that would soon befall the Trump organization. The banks also agreed to defer, for five years, the interest and principal payments on Trump’s outstanding loans.

Trump’s corruption now includes more than 2,300 conflicts of interest that benefit his finances, break his promises and violate the Constitution.

Trump also sold his controlling stake in the Plaza Hotel and turned his Florida beach house, Mar-a-Largo, into a resort. Shortly after, Trump combined his three Atlantic City mmake, forming a single company, called Trump Entertainment Resorts. Fortunes began to change in This building would go on to become one of his most famous properties. The building was available at a discount however after another deal with former Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos fell through, and the owners of the building became desperate. An Oct. In each season, more than fortuhe dozen contestants vied for a six-figure paying managerial position at one of Trump’s many companies. You have to think of Trump as a brand name, just like Coca-Cola Co. Many of the properties that bear the Trump name aren’t actually owned by the mogul. In exchange, they’re given permission to brand their building with the Trump name and logo.