6/10/2016

Tales of Trump: "My Father Turned Him Down for a Loan"

From rude reader Mary S. over on the Facebook, we get another of the growing red tide of tales about how Donald Trump is a shitty businessman, whether he's dicking over small business owners or banks. This story is purely anecdotal, but it certainly fits into the pattern we've been hearing about for a long damn time about Trump.

"My father actually turned Donald Trump down for a loan. Really. He told him to his face that Trump Enterprises didn't meet the bank's standards for creditworthiness. My father also broke a longstanding personal rule about never speaking ill of anyone he's done business with, for Trump. He told my mother that Donald Trump had 'the WORST business ethics of any businessman I've ever encountered in my entire professional career.' That was saying something.

"I was not there (of course) and didn't witness it personally, but my mother has told me about it, and it's the main reason why she cannot vote for Trump. He asked my father, 'Whose standards are those?'

"My dad replied, 'Since I'm the VP of the real estate development loans department, they are my standards.' Donald Trump then 'threatened' to take his case to the board of directors. My father told him to have at it, the board would side with him. The board sided with my father."

Sometimes, your parents can be goddamned superheroes facing down supervillains.

Responding to this, reader Brian M. added some larger context: "As a retired banker who never did business with Trump, this comment does not surprise me. I have met people like him in the course of my career, though not as rich as Trump claims to be. They are always looking for an angle were they can gain an advantage at someone else's cost. They have no moral compass when it comes to business except what's in it for them. They will say anything, promise anything because truth is relative to the moment and irrelevant in the long run. They are morally corrupt in their business life and usually also in their personal life. Commitments last for a moment and then they rapidly become an anachronism of the past with no purpose in the present. Their promises (campaign and otherwise) are worth as much as the Munich Agreement.

"By the way, most people I dealt with were honest, hard-working people who understood fairness and honesty and expected it from me as much as I expected it from them."

Makes you wonder how a President Trump would think about treaties when he was willing to go to court to prevent payment of $17,000 to a chandelier maker because his work was so shoddy, according to Trump, yet Trump wanted to hire him again. (Yeah, that's a true story.)

If you yourself have Tales of Trump, feel free to send them on over to that email address over there on the side. Hell, maybe we'll even come up with a few totally fictional ones, like how Trump refused to pay a Vegas hooker because "in my America, blow jobs where the chick don't swallow are half-price."

(You can have a big time over on the Rude Pundit's Facebook page. A helluva lot of smart people say smart things smartly - and, like every party, occasionally some asshole comes rolling in to break shit before being tossed. Since comments aren't allowed on this here example of bloggery, the conversation can be rollicking over there.)