Tag: trump golf course
Trump’s European Golf Courses Have Lost Over $100 Million

Trump’s European Golf Courses Have Lost Over $100 Million

Here’s a feel-good story for the beginning of 2022! Forbes reports that even though the golf industry has seen a boom during the pandemic, Donald Trump’s European golf interests have tanked to the tune of $100-plus million. It’s almost like the guy who has reportedly squandered hundreds of millions of unearned capitol numerous times over the last five decades continues to be terrible at everything he does.

It is almost a talent to be as bad at business as Donald Trump is. You could probably run an organization better by making binary decisions using a goldfish’s location in a fishbowl. According to Forbes, the issue for Trump is that his golf courses in Europe are tied to large-scale resorts, and so while tee times increased at golf courses all over the world, people booking “resort” time decreased sharply—you know, global pandemic and all that.

One of the shiniest objects on the list is Trump’s money pit investment in the Turnberry golf resort in Scotland. Turnberry was reportedly purchased for more than $60 million back in 2014. Trump then poured upwards of 200 million into the place and has only taken one loss after another. Turnberry under Trump has yet to do anything but bleed money, and the pandemic—and even “a $3.2 million Covid-related grant through the British government,” did not stop them from losing $4.7 million in the last year and a half. Since taking over the resort, Turnberry has lost almost $70 million.

In fact, all of Trump’s golf resorts throughout Europe have consistently taken losses every year leading up to the pandemic. The pandemic doesn’t seemed to have done much of anything to change the trajectory of what was clearly a bad investment by a bad business man. That, of course, is if Trump’s plan was to actually do business in the first place.

The most money Trump’s gold resorts seem to have made over the past few years were directly connected to Trump spending about a third of his entire presidency playing golf. Secret Service, diplomats, and dignitaries have to sleep somewhere—and ride around in golf carts.

Back in 2018, The New Yorker ran a story by Adam Davidson that asked a lot of questions about Donald Trump’s move of borrowing large loans and flipping places to spending tons of “his” own “cash” on real estate projects like Turnberry. As Davidson writes, organized crime and other criminal entities like to launder money by way of throwing down cash on real estate. Golf courses offer up large laundering options. Are the losses Trump’s European properties taking Trump’s losses, or just a part of doing the business of being the single most obviously corrupt elected official of the last few years? Hard to say.

Maybe Trump’s previous bankruptcy judge secretly left the Trump organization with a treasure map into the dragon Smaug’s Lonely Mountain?

Article reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Danziger: Up To His Neck

Danziger: Up To His Neck

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.

Scottish Government Burns Trump In ‘Reverse Emoluments’ Case

Scottish Government Burns Trump In ‘Reverse Emoluments’ Case

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

In Scotland, President Donald Trump battled the government over a wind power development that, he complained, would alter the view from his golf course in Aberdeenshire. But he lost that battle. And a court in the U.K. has ruled that the Trump International Golf Club Scotland must pay all of the legal costs that the Scottish government incurred fighting Trump.

In late 2015—before Trump was president—the U.K. Supreme Court rejected the Trump Organization’s legal challenge to the wind farm. Former First Minister Alex Salmond asserted that the ruling left Trump a “three time loser.” And the Trump Organization had a characteristically Trumpian response: “Does anyone care what this man thinks? He’s a has-been and totally irrelevant.”

The wind farm, which contains eleven turbines altogether, generated its first power in July 2018 and was developed by the Swedish energy group Vattenfall.

According to the BBC, the exact sum that the Trump Organization will owe the Scottish government has not been disclosed.

The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold commented on the ruling on Twitter, posting, “Here’s a reverse-emoluments case that the Founding Fathers didn’t plan for…what happens when @realDonaldTrump owes a large debt *to* a foreign government?  In Scotland, it’s happening.”

The U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause restricts presidents and other federal politicians from receiving payments or gifts from foreign powers.