From the back seat of a stretch limousine heading to meet the first contestants for his new TV show “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump bragged that he was a billionaire who had overcome financial hardship.
Trump’s genius, it turned out, wasn’t running a company. It was making himself famous — Trump-scale famous — and monetizing that fame. Just as, years before, the money Trump secretly received from his father allowed him to assemble a wobbly collection of Atlantic City casinos and other disparate enterprises that then collapsed around him, the new influx of cash helped finance a buying spree that saw him snap up golf resorts, a business not known for easy profits. Indeed, the tax records show that his golf properties have been hemorrhaging millions of dollars for years.
In addition, it draws on interviews and previously unreported material from other sources, including hundreds of internal documents from Bayrock Group, an influential early licensing partner whose ties to Russia would come back to haunt the president as questions swirled about his own dealings there.
But if Trump was still living off his residual fame, his biggest splashes were behind him. Something had to change. And as fate would have it, Trump got a boost from an unexpected source, one that would do much to shape his future, if not that of the country itself. Burnett wasted no time spinning the illusion of a successful and high-minded Trump, telling The Times in October 2003 that the new show was all about “Donald Trump giving back” by educating the public on how his can-do spirit had provided jobs and economic security.
The windfall, which continued — though in ever-dwindling amounts — until Trump became president, reflected an unusual arrangement that entitled him, as the show’s star, to half its profits. That included money from product placements on each episode that sometimes numbered more than 100 a month, with household names like Pepsi paying millions of dollars split between Burnett and Trump.
No endorsement was too small. Warner Music paid $100,000 to feature Trump in a collection of cellphone ring tones, with the Donald uttering phrases like, “You’re getting a phone call, and believe me, it better be important. I have no time for small talk, and neither do you.”
Lol at that forged signature hahahaha
When you are a celebrity, they let you do it...
He was handsome here - what happened
The media is either dumb or disingenuous. In the real estate business there is a big difference between having a tax loss and losing money.