I don't care about the inherited money or how much he is worth. Maybe he could have made more money not doing anything. Maybe a small 14 million dollar loan isn't much in the grand scheme. I just hate this notion that Trump is a great businessman and he will run this country like he ran his company. Trump is not a great businessman. He is a great salesman. He's not investing his own money. He has an (sic) stock broker for that. He's not building all those hotels with his name on it, nor does he own them many times. What he does is he loans his name out for builders. They build condos, hotels, etc. and put his name on it. That's definitely savvy marketing but that's not being a businessman. Trump has some good real estate holdings but we aren't calling him a great real estate guy. We call him the businessman. If you at the times he's tried to step out of selling his name to people, he's failed. He failed in casinos, he failed with steaks (which the brilliant business man sold at Sharper Image), with ties, with Trump University, he's failed with Trump vodka (outside of Israel and that's on hold), etc. He's not this great businessman and guess what, the country isn't a company. It can't be ran like a company. Which he is finding out every day. There's a reason that people who do well as president have served in the military or held public office. They know certain things like diplomacy, maybe how the federal budget works. Things that a person running a company doesn't really think about. In your company, you can just hire put your daughter on the board, when running the country, putting your daughter on your staff to be your eyes and ears is unethical. When running a company, you can tweet crazy things and it can tank your stock. When running the country, your crazy tweets loses (sic) us allies, their intelligence sharing, credibility, and so much more. At some point Trump, his supporters, and even Democrats are going to have to stop with the campaign mentality of you hate Trump because he won and you support Trump because you're horrible. The country is split and Trump has to start representing all Americans not just his voters.
Originally Posted by Milly23
Nice post, millsy. (No sarcasm alert.) Some of your criticisms are valid too. Trump is a brilliant marketer more than a brilliant businessman. Real estate is a highly cyclical industry. He figured out it is less risky to license your name/brand and let others assume most of the construction and management risks. That doesn't make it a slam dunk, though. If he teams up with shoddy partners, it can tarnish his brand. I was surprised to see him put his name on things like steaks and vodka. That may have looked tacky, but you have no basis to say he failed. Just because those products didn't “go viral” with consumers doesn't mean they lost money. The more important point you overlook is - even if he did fail a few times, that's part of the learning curve. Have you ever met a successful entrepreneur who was afraid to fail? Too many Democrats are risk-averse, live entirely off the public till, and never take a risk in their lives. Yet they are quick to put the private-sector careers of people like Trump or Romney under a microscope, eager to smear them with any hint of “failure” while pooh-poohing every success. To me, that's akin to the bat boy bad-mouthing the team's leading hitter.
Yes, it takes skills such as diplomacy and budgeting to run government. Trump may not be the best example, but what makes you think those skills are not acquired in business? It takes a certain amount of diplomacy to run a board meeting. Every successful business operates on a budget. Rex Tillerson circled the globe for Exxon – you don't think he is qualified to conduct diplomacy? And what about leadership skills? You don't rise to the top in business without them. In Washington DC they're in very short supply.
