Reason # 36: Real? Estate
Why do we need to defeat Donald Trump and ensure that a Democrat occupies the White House?
Up to this point, we have focused on the many disastrous business ventures that Donald Trump has initiated, which failed disastrously, ending in enormous personal loss of money and far larger losses for those who were foolish enough to invest their money in his schemes and or work for him. Today, we will start to review what is purportedly his primary business, real estate development and management. In this realm, Donald claims that he has been a superstar, parlaying a “small” startup fund from his father Fred Trump into a multibillion-dollar real estate empire. The truth is far different.
For a start, Donald Trump inherited a vast real estate conglomerate from his grandfather, who started the business and then his father Fred Trump who greatly expanded it to include as many as twenty thousand apartments in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. (I had friends on Staten Island, whose families rented from the Trumps) Did young Donald work his way up in the family firm? Nope. He started at a salary of one million dollars a year at age 22 and was named president of The Trump Organization within a few years. The prosaic apartment rental business was not exciting enough for Donald; he wanted to conquer Manhattan.
His first major project was the Commodore Hotel. I know this part of New York City well. My mother ran an employment agency on 42nd St. adjacent to Grand Central Station. When the Pennsylvania Railroad that owned the station and hotel went bankrupt, they had to sell, and Donald Trump obtained an option to buy. Except that he didn’t. He could not even come up with the $250,000 to pay for the option and fraudulently reported that he did. His lie succeeded and he not only got the go ahead to renovate the giant Commodore; N.Y. city threw in an enormous sweetener. The hotel would not have to pay city taxes for 40 years! This gimme was provided by NYC Democratic mayor Abraham “Abe” Beam. (Beam had defeated my father’s college roommate John Marchi in the mayoral race and was run out of office in four years.) The city was under dire threat of bankruptcy. Fred Trump had contributed large amounts to the campaign and Beam responded.
“Whatever my friends Fred and Donald want in this town, they get,”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/08/trump-files-how-donald-tricked-new-york-huge-deal/
Pro Publica reports that this political favoritism has cost the city of New York $410,068,399.55.
Did Donald cut the deal with Abe Beam? Nope, his daddy did. In “The Big Cheat”, David Cay Johnson recounts how Beam summoned his office police detail to drag an obnoxious young Donald from his office, so that he could talk alone with Fred Trump.
Trump went into partnership with Hyatt to renovate the run-down hotel into The Grand Hyatt. They put up $20 million and two banks provided the other $120 million for construction.
After years of suit and countersuit, Trump sold his interest in the Grand Hyatt to the Pritzker family in 1996 for $140 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Grand_Central_New_York
The NY Times reports that NYC has given Trump more than $885 million in tax breaks, grants and subsidies to build other buildings.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/nyregion/donald-trump-tax-breaks-real-estate.html
Rather than a rags to riches parable, the Commadore Hotel is a sleezy saga of political corruption and a “welfare queen” corporation.
Don’t be taken in by a scheming shyster. Do not vote for Donald Trump or the sycophants who enable him.
Have a heart; use your mind, search your conscience, and vote for Democratic candidates – across the ballot – on November. 5th.
Please share this message with your friends and please, add your thoughts, to expand upon what are only brief sketches here.
Fred Grannis
August 24, 2024