Analysis
Scathing court ruling on Donald Trump’s empire is
a bitter blow to his successful tycoon persona
David Smith
Washington
bureau chief
The former president’s image has always been more
about illusion than reality, though no revelation seems to shake the Trump
faithful
Tue 26 Sep
2023 23.07 EDT
For years
Donald Trump was the host of The Apprentice, a reality TV show in which
contestants vied for a management job within his organisation and he would
deliver the verdict: “You’re fired!”
It cemented
the image of Trump as an assertive chief executive who had conquered New York,
an image that still proves seductive to millions of voters who want him to run
America like a business. But like much else about the 45th US president, it was
all a lie.
On Tuesday
a judge found that Trump’s business empire was built, at least in part, on
rampant fraud. Justice Arthur Engoron of the New York state court in Manhattan
said Trump and his adult sons wildly inflated the value of his properties to
hoodwink banks, insurers and others.
These
included his office buildings and golf courses, his Mar-a-Lago estate in
Florida and his penthouse apartment at Trump Tower in New York, which he
claimed was 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size, resulting
in an overvaluation of as much as $207m.
Noting that
Trump’s lawyers were effectively asking the court not to believe its own eyes,
Engoron quoted the Marx brothers’ film Duck Soup: “Well, who ya gonna believe,
me or your own eyes?”
The
decision will make it easier for state attorney general Letitia James to
establish damages at a civil trial due to start next week; she is seeking a
penalty of about $250m. Engoron ordered the cancellation of certificates that
let some of Trump’s businesses, including the Trump Organization, operate in
New York – just possibly the beginning of the end of his empire.
If the
judge’s scathing decision withstands an appeal from Trump’s lawyers, it will be
the first time a government investigation into the former president has
resulted in punishment. It will also deal the biggest blow yet to his persona
as a successful tycoon.
That was
always more about illusion than reality. In The Apprentice, he was effectively
an actor reading from a script in a fantasy board room. In real life, it later
transpired, he shied away from saying “You’re fired!” to anyone’s face at the
White House, preferring to delegate the unpleasant task.
Trump’s
origin story was told in his bestselling 1987 book The Art of the Deal. But the
man who ghostwrote it, Tony Schwartz, describes him as an emperor with no
clothes. “There’s nothing more important to Trump than being seen as very, very
rich, which is why he’s expended so much effort in trying to claim a net worth
far beyond what he actually was worth,” Schwartz told the Guardian in 2020.
A series of
tax revelations and reports have shown that Trump is not as rich as he would
like everyone to believe. But the exaggerations are very on brand for a man who
claimed to have the biggest inauguration crowd ever, that voter fraud is
rampant and that Democrats are so pro-abortion they want to commit infanticide.
None of it
seems likely to shake the Trump faithful ahead of next year’s presidential
election against Joe Biden. Their instant assumption is that politically biased
judges are trying to distract attention from Hunter Biden’s troubles and that
Trump is merely smarter than others when it comes to gaming the system.
At a
campaign rally in Dubuque, Iowa last week, Mathew Willis, 41, said: “I’ve never
seen him be anything but honest. During a debate at one point, they were like,
‘Oh, you don’t pay your taxes,’ and he’s like, ‘Neither do you! I use the legal
system to do what I do. The loopholes are there. They put them there for people
like you and us. I’m just working the system.’ He’s not doing anything illegal.
What’s wrong with that?”
On
Wednesday Trump, who also faces four criminal indictments, will head to the
auto workers strike in Michigan, despite helming a presidency that was avowedly
anti-union. The master of Mar-a-Lago will pretend to be a hero of the working
class. In the words of Judge Engoron: “That is a fantasy world, not the real
world.”
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