How To Lose a Billion Dollars in Ten Years Starring Donald Trump

As you probably know by now, The New York Times has done an expose on the state of Donald Trump's finances during the 1980's and 1990's. Based on a decade's worth of income tax returns, if Donald Trump were to star in a movie it would be titled, "How to Lose a Billion Dollars in Ten Years".

The data — printouts from Mr. Trump’s official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, with the figures from his federal tax form, the 1040, for the years 1985 to 1994 — represents the fullest and most detailed look to date at the president’s taxes, information he has kept from public view. 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 in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.

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.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.

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.R.S. later required changes after audits.

Naturally, his apologists such as Sean Hannity dismiss the report as "old news" and Trump Derangement Syndrome. But he isn't calling it fake news.

These returns won't have the import of his returns during the 2010's particularly where it concerns foreign sources of income (i.e. Russia), but they do demonstrate a man who isn't what he seems. Of course, there are many who will not care about such details. But for others they will create reasonable doubt not only about his claims as a successful businessman, but whether he conducted his business on the up and up. Should the state of his current finances be exposed during the 2020 campaign it could do damage to his brand especially if economy turns south. If today's feature is "How to Lose a Billion Dollars in Ten Years", the sequel could be titled "How to Profit From The Presidency".

With that said, if the unemployment rate is below 3% next year it might prove impossible to unseat Trump no matter how much he misrepresented his wealth and even if it is proven he received enouements from Russia during the 2016 election.