You Knew Trump Sacrificed While Working for Free as President, Now We're Learning How Big a Financial Hit He's Taking BY VICTORIA TAFT JAN 24, 2021 4:00 PM ET
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Like many American business owners, Donald Trump took a huge financial hit in COVID America in the past year. But since leaving office, we’re getting a look at how much worse things have gotten for him.
At the White House, Trump worked for free, donating his $400,000 yearly salary to charities and government programs. In civilian life, his companies, run by his kids while he was in the White House, were bleeding money, according to financial disclosure forms he filed before leaving office.
The Washington Post reported:
Financial disclosure forms … revealed that his hotels, resorts and other properties had lost more than $120 million in revenue last year, as the pandemic forced long-term closures and kept customers home.
Those losses were worst in the places where Trump could least afford it: His Washington hotel, which has a $170 million loan outstanding, saw revenue drop more than 60 percent. His Doral resort in Miami — also carrying a huge debt load — saw a 44 percent drop.
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But there were also sharp declines at … his Doral resort in Florida, and his Turnberry resort in Scotland. Their combined revenue fell from $149 million in 2019 to $71 million last year, a drop of more than half.
Worse, in addition to the coronavirus taking a huge hit on his hospitality holdings and Big Tech cutting off his online stores, Trump’s bankers, law firms, and tenants have abandoned him, according to The Washington Post. It’s believed that the corporations leaving now are largely due to the media and Democrat-inflamed perception that Trump encouraged the January 6th Capitol siege.
On Thursday, the company’s troubles grew: One of its banks and one of its law firms said they would cut their ties with the Trump Organization. They are the latest in a string of vendors and customers who severed their relationships with the company after Jan. 6, when a mob of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol directly after he addressed them at a rally.
The Democratic leadership and some Republicans, horrified that a group of conspirators crashed the Capitol, blamed the president for inflaming the protesters. As I pointed out on PJ Media, the timeline doesn’t support this, nor does Trump’s speech to the peaceful rally-goers.
The Save America rally, organized by the group “Women for America First” on January 6th, is where President Trump was still delivering one of his typically entertaining and windy speeches as a separate group of people assaulted the Capitol building. Groups of people were let in by police and, in another part of the Capitol, swarmed police and broke windows to get inside.
QAnon conspiracy theorists reportedly chatted about assaulting the Capitol before the event. But on the ground, paramilitary types urged rally-goers to go to the Capitol, and direct orders came from at least two people helping others to break into the Capitol. One, an avowed Antifa and BLM protester, barked orders and stood near Ashli Babbitt when she was shot and killed. Another, a mysterious woman with a pink ski cap, instructed people where to go with a bullhorn. Inside, protesters meandered around the building breaking things, carting off Nancy Pelosi’s podium, conducting performance art, live- streaming, and chatting on the phone, while congressional representatives were locked down by Capitol Police.
Others walked around, taking photos, staying within the velvet ropes designed to rein in tourists.
In addition to Babbitt, Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick died after reportedly being hit by a fire extinguisher police say was tossed by a protester. Three others died from a heart condition, stroke, and collapsing, possibly due to reactions to the gas being deployed, according to videographer Elijah Schaffer.
Later, two state prosecutors claimed the rioters intended to kill people, a notion quickly snuffed out by federal law enforcement, though the libel lives on in Leftist media.
Speaker Pelosi and other Democrats have cheered on the Leftist Antifa and Black Lives Matter protests responsible for the deaths of at least 25 people, including a political assassination, in 2020, according to the UK Guardian. The “summer of love” riots, looting, arson, and worse, were cheered on by Pelosi and other Democrat leaders.
Yet Pelosi has used the opportunity in the foggy aftermath of the riot, before the facts were known, to rush through an impeachment.
Trump is being canceled seemingly everywhere. Two standards, no waiting.
The organizer of the triathlon at Trump’s Charlotte, N.C., golf course told The Washington Post that the event “was all on track before the Capitol. … [And now] the name’s toxic. It’s toxic to some people. That’s never going to change.”
The president’s initial tepid response to the Capitol attack was seized upon by his detractors. He subsequently denounced the violence vehemently, as he has done for the riots in the past year, but it was too little too late for some.
Now the former president’s law firms have joined banks in dropping him. They include Morgan Lewis and Alston & Bird, in addition to his finance partners at BankUnited, Signature Bank, Capital One, and Professional Bank.
Democrats, media, and activists, but I repeat myself, want to crush Trump and perhaps dissuade any other rich baller, not beholden to politicians, from running for high office.
They may succeed, but if past is prologue, Trump may confound all of them. Again.