Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Trump threatens to sue reporter over reporting the facts about his biggest business failure

Donald Trump doesn't like the story about how he demonized "junk bonds" then turned right around and used them to finance one of the worst business deals of his life (it went bust). Print that story, he said, and he'd sue the reporter that wrote it.

Here's Trump explaining it in his own words:

“I didn’t want to have any personal liability, so I used junk bonds. I accept the blame for that, but I would do it again,” he said. But Trump vehemently denied that the deal represented a personal failing or affected his personal wealth.

“This was not personal. This was a corporate deal,” he said. “If you write this one, I’m suing you.”

Even if the deal doesn't reflect on him personally, the threat sure does. That's how Trump deals—in threats. If he doesn't like the deal he's getting, he threatens people. How many times now has he threatened GOP leaders if they didn't acquiesce to his every wish?

Here's the damning part of the Washington Post story, reported by Robert O'Harrow Jr.: Trump testifying before the Casino Control Commission in February 1988 to get permission to take over completion of the gargantuan Taj Mahal casino project in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He told the commission he didn’t need junk bonds to finance the venture because banks were practically throwing money at him.

“I’m talking about banking institutions, not these junk bonds, which are ridiculous,” Trump testified, according to transcripts of the hearing. “The funny thing with junk bonds is that junk bonds [are] what really made the companies junk.”

Trump received the approvals he needed for the Taj, but the prime-rate loans never materialized. Determined to move forward, he turned to the very junk bonds he had derided in the hearing. He agreed to pay the bond lenders 14 percent interest, roughly 50 percent more than he had projected, to raise $675 million. It was the biggest gamble of his career.

Six months after its grand opening in April 1990 as the largest casino-hotel in the world, Trump started defaulting on his payments. By July 1991, the Taj went belly up, filing for bankruptcy.

Not surprisingly, the Post found that Trump did something bullheaded, failed, then minimized his responsibility for the failure.

The Washington Post reviewed hundreds of pages of legal, regulatory and financial records relating to the Taj Mahal. The Post found that Trump’s statements during the campaign about his companies’ bankruptcies play down his personal role in the downfall of the Taj. Trump took extreme risks in a shaky economy, leveraged the Taj deal with high-cost debt, and ignored warnings that Atlantic City would not be able to attract enough gamblers to pay the bills, documents and interviews show.

Wonder if he'll make America as great as he made the Taj Mahal casino.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/19/1471885/-Trump-threatens-to-sue-reporter-over-reporting-the-facts-about-his-biggest-business-failure