Seizing Trump Assets Not That Easy
Most of the things with his name on them are not in his name.
TNR’s Tori Otten gleefully reports, “Letitia James Is Prepared to Seize One of Trump’s Favorite Assets.”
Donald Trump has just days left to post the nearly half-billion-dollar bond in his New York civil fraud case before the state attorney general can start seizing his assets, and Letitia James seems to know exactly where she wants to start: Westchester.
Trump was fined $354 million in mid-February for committing real estate–related fraud in New York. With interest adding $112,000 per day, and adding the fines his adult sons also face, the total sum has already exceeded $464 million. James formally registered the judgment in Westchester County on March 6, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
James’s filing did not give a reason for the registration, nor did it specify which of Trump’s Westchester assets she intends to seize, but the registration will make it easier for James to secure liens. Westchester is home to two of Trump’s most valuable properties, the Trump National Golf Club Westchester and Seven Springs, a mostly undeveloped 212-acre estate.
CNN’s Kara Scannell goes more straight news with “New York Attorney General takes initial step to prepare to seize Trump assets.”
The New York attorney general’s office has filed judgments in Westchester County, the first indication that the state is preparing to try to seize Donald Trump’s golf course and private estate north of Manhattan, known as Seven Springs.
Alas, trying and succeeding are not the same thing:
Entering a judgment would be the first step a creditor would take to attempt to recover property. Additional steps, such as putting liens on assets or moving to foreclose on properties, or taking other actions in court would follow, if the asset is going to be seized.
[…]
The process to seize assets would not be quick or easy. Trump has structured his business by setting up limited liability companies for nearly every property or asset – over 300 in total – which ultimately are controlled by his trust.
“They are complexly organized and he is not on paper the owner and therefore a judgment against him would not be executable directly against certain properties. Sorting this out is not going to be simple and it’s not going to be quick,” said Nikos Passas, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University.
So, James is unlikely to be able to seize anything any time soon. Still:
“In the meantime, she could also obtain bank levies and go after the bank assets. She could put liens on properties. There are all kinds of things that she’s able to do in an effort to collect,” Passas said.
“All this is completely undermining the brand, which he uses for the most part for making any kind of money around the world not just the United States,” Passas said. “In the end I think this could very much mean the end of Trump business in New York and not only – it could spell trouble in other jurisdictions too.”
With any other person, having built one’s reputation as a highly successful businessman only to be proven to be a con man unable even to secure a bond for the appeal would be catastrophic. Trump’s fans constantly seem able to shrug off such details.
From NY magazine–
We all know how peaceful Trump protesters are.
Creating later after layer of empty LLCs as nominal owners of Trump’s assets, and establishing a trust to control said LLCs, shows that, at least sometimes in the past, he hired and actually listened to some smart lawyers. That was when Alina Habba(dabba do) was using her legal expertise to harangue monthly parkers who were behind in their payments.
@Charley in Cleveland: I know nothing about this subject but aren’t LLCs assets that can be seized?
No matter what, if this process goes forward I assume the unraveling will all be public. If so we are going to learn a lot about what Trump is really worth and who has partnered with.
@Bill Jempty:
Ok, given I don’t know the details of NY sheriff’s sale laws, but this strikes me as wildly inaccurate. In IL the process would go something like this:
1. Record the judgement against the property;
2. File suit to foreclose the judgement;
3. Sheriff sells it at a special auction and collects the winning bid;
4. Winner moves the court to confirm the sale and start the redemption period;
5. Redemption period ends and the Sheriff issues the deed;
6. Buyer records the deed and extinguishes the defendant’s right to the property as a bonifide purchaser.
Now, there is some risk that the defendant redeems the property, it could happen, usually doesn’t. If the defendant does, the buyer gets all their money back and I believe scan recover some expenses they took to preserve the property, like taxes.
In most cases, the senior lien holders are going to bid their paper to ensure they don’t get wiped out.
It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s how they would go about seizing his hotel in Cook County. I’m sure it’s got a bit of a different flavor in NY, but it’ll be similar.
@Scott:
They absolutely can. And as @MarkedMan: notes these assets are all buried under all sorts of interests like other LLCs and trusts that NY and the monitor overseeing the org will have to disclose to the various courts.
It will be an ugly grinding process. Just the act of it happening will make Trump absolutely nuts this summer. Hilariously so.
Cash is an asset isn’t it? Trump is keeping his plane flying, his fat ass covered and his face fed. So he has cash flow. Freeze and seize his accounts. Just like we seized the accounts of his Russian master. Trump manages buildings and hotels, those management contracts should be considered assets – anything that throws off income is an asset. If you have no cash flow, you can’t make payroll, and if you can’t make payroll you cease to provide contracted services.
The people who really have the money, the bankers, the mortgage holders, the partners, the people holding Trump’s leash, should be warned by Judge Jones that they are now in bed with the government, that their own assets and valuations could be at risk if they help Trump conceal assets. Big Sister will be watching.
Say you own 70% of a hotel managed by Trump Org., licensing the Trump brand, while Trump owns the other 30%. If I were the 70% owner I’d be looking for ways to put some distance between myself and Trump, while picking up a bargain. I’d cancel the management contract citing the fraud conviction, and offer to buy Trump out at a steep discount.
Or less speculative, the Trump hotel in Vegas is 50% owned by Phil Ruffin who also owns Treasure Island and Circus Circus. He’s licensed to run casinos, Trump is not. If Phil bought out Don at a discount he could wipe the Trump name off the building and vastly increase its value by adding gambling.
Also, some helpful friend should point out to Melania that if she was ever hoping to come out of this faustian marriage rich, now may be her last chance to file for a profitable divorce.
Is it just that Trump’s ownership is, on paper, through a complicated LLC, or is it that he is not the sole owner? Are there partners of some sort with ownership claims? At least lenders with claims? I read the commercial real estate market is down. Is he even above water on “his” buildings? There have been statements all along that in order to pump up his claimed wealth Trump has claimed the full value of stuff in which he has only partial ownership. I saw him referred to as a BINO, Billionaire In Name Only.
@Michael Reynolds: Couple of thoughts:
1) I think ol’ Donnie-boy has been doing whatever the real estate version of check kiting is – We will find out that his 30% share has been encumbered by a loan to purchase a 20% share in a different building, which in turn is encumbered to buy something else. Illegal? Of course. But this is Donnie boy.
2) I’ve seen it mentioned in several places that Melania has been working with lawyers since day one to secure her and Baron’s financial future regardless of what happens to Trump. If these vague asides are true, she’s been asking for cash in return for everything Trump has asked of her (#1 – stay married to him) and then locking it away from any claims on him.
@Michael Reynolds:
According to what I’ve read, Melania has about 50 million bucks of her own stashed away somewhere. I have no idea how she acquired it, but I assume it’s mostly payments from Trump to stay married to him. If that money is solely in her name, or her and Barron’s names, it’s probably untouchable by the court.
Trump revived New York City and he’ll likely take it with him as they work to take him out. Popcorn time for watching NYC decline
So laugh it up while you still can. Lamentations are coming
Isn’t there a court-appointed overseer, with full access to the internal documentation, who has had months to figure out the ownership maze?
What i wonder is how much Lardass will accrue in contempt fines, as he tries to hide his assets, tries to delay all proceedings, and overall behaves like his usual asshole self.
@JKB: These are such weird, garbage takes. Suggesting that one person “revived” the country’s largest city is ridiculous. Giving one person–any one person–that kind of credit is just not serious.
@JKB:
Trump didn’t revive anything, you credulous nitwit. Even when Trump was pretending to be worth 12 billion dollars, that is a rounding error on any random six blocks’ worth of Manhattan. Everyone serious in NY real estate knew he was an empty suit, a conman.
But I do savor your impotent rage. Because you know what you’re finding out? You’re finding out, day by day, that we liberals were right about Trump from Day One. Why were we right? Because we’re smarter than you are. It’s just that simple. MAGAts are nasty, rage-fueled fuckwits who have been taken to the cleaners by their golden calf. And are still giving money because they’re too weak to face the fact that they’ve been used.
Told you so. Told you so. Fucking told you so.
@Kathy: Doesn’t matter. This is one of those “if you owe half a billion and can’t pay, the bank has a problem” things except the government isn’t a bank and is less concerned.
@JKB:
Just wanted to add that the total value of Manhattan real estate is ~1.7 trillion. With a ‘t.’ And Orange Jesus can’t find half a billion. If you imagine that real billionaires are going to suddenly abandon their 1.7 trillion dollar investment because Mr. Cognitive Test got caught fleecing the suckers, you’re even dumber than we all thought.
Prepare your new ‘lost cause’ myths. You’re gonna need ’em.
@Jen:
Such a monumental task and herculean effort, that went unnoticed for decades until a pro-Lardass third rate propaganda rag discovered it.
Sounds legit.
@CSK:
Looking forward to the moment when Donnie sues Melania for spousal support.
I’m still thinking Trump comes through with a bond at the last minute. It might be one he’s had in his pocket for several days, but has been keeping quiet just to get more leverage. And to fundraise.
The notion that somehow Manhattan will go into recession or decay should Trump be forced to sell his properties is at heart an empirical one. If se can agree on a metric, we could have a bet over the outcome.
I would bet on Manhattan, not Trump. There are dozens of developers working in Manhattan (and also other major cities at the same time). He’s just the only one that wants that kind of publicity.
The Trump Truth Social media merger was just approved…a lifeline! Now, he can pay up.
Time to open up the checkbook, sir.
@JKB:
Repeating this because, regardless of whether or not JKB believes that, this is exactly the sort of messianic framing that Republicans regularly accused Democrats of during the Obama years… except on steriods.
And to @Jen’s point, anyone with more than a passing curiosity of the history of NYC–let alone lived in the area around those times (and I grew up/came of age outside of the city during those years)–knows how ridiculous this is. Or more accurately, how this is uncritically buying the narrative that Trump has pushed for his entire adult life.
But, remember kids, it’s the college professors who are blinded by ideology and can never be trusted (unless of course @JKB agrees with them).
Like I said @JKB, I am always happy to make a wager (friendly or otherwise) on this having a net-0 negative impact on NYC (or rather Manhattan) if you seriously believe this.
BTW, outside of the partisan press, I think this article (which I won’t have time to blog about) has done the best job I’ve seen at laying out the broader context of what comes next and it’s impact on commercial real estate in Manhattan:
https://www.metro-manhattan.com/blog/trump-judgment-day-assessing-the-future-of-a-fallen-empire-and-new-york-city-real-estate/
@Jen:
Slight correction: Not for 6 months. You cannot immediately cash out of an IPO or if memory serves, transfer the stock. Now, in theory, he might be able to get a bond out of this with the promise of a future payout as collateral. But that rests on it maintaining it’s value.
@Jay L Gischer:
Trump has been ordered to keep Barbara Jones informed of any efforts to obtain a surety bond, so he won’t be surprising the court or prosecutor.
@Matt Bernius:
Excerpt from one of my newsletters:
@charontwo: Well, that’s interesting, but it’s hard to see how such an edict wouldn’t have some wiggle room for him to work with. He’s expert at wiggling.
@charontwo:
Interesting newsletter, more from it:
Can’t show the gamestop chart.
Note that at least one pair had resold for $9,000.
snip
Trump bragged on Truth Social this morning that he has $500 million cash on hand. I thought he said he couldn’t afford the bond.
@Jay L Gischer:
Did you even read my post?
Double posted
@Matt Bernius: Re: the 6 months–I knew that, but the article says he can ask the board to waive that, which if true, could free up the money a lot sooner.
ETA: here’s the relevant excerpt:
“The deal’s approval comes as Mr. Trump is facing a Monday deadline to cover a $454 million penalty in a civil fraud case in New York. He is restricted for six months from selling any of his shares or using them as collateral for a loan, although he could ask the board of the merged company to waive that rule for him.“
@JKB: “Trump revived New York City and he’ll likely take it with him as they work to take him out.”
If anyone here has wondered if JKB has ever stepped foot outside of Arkansas, well, here’s your answer.
@Jen: @Michael Reynolds: @Matt Bernius: @Jay L Gischer: My friends, come now! JKB has provided us with a column in the NY Post as clear and concrete evidence of his claims!
Surely he wins this exchange, does he not?
@wr:
“…ever stepped foot outside of a barn located in the state of Arkansas…”
Fixed that for you.
@CSK:
Senile dementia, maybe? Living in his imagination?
BTW, you’d think being single-handedly responsible for reviving Manhattan (ok, a major, major player–I wouldn’t want to exaggerate!) would mean that he would have made more money than he did or, at a minimum, creditors would be so grateful for his hard work that they would be falling over themselves to provide what he needs for the bond.
Just a bunch of ingrates!
Bigly sad!
@charontwo:
His lawyers are having a really fun time scrambling around trying to deny this and explain what Trump REALLY meant by that contention.
I’ve practiced law for almost 40 years, but never had an appeal where the defendant didn’t get an appeal bond so I’ve never had to research this even in my home jurisdiction, much less New York. Anyone here know the answer to this question: If New York seizes Trump assets and the judgment is reversed on appeal, what is Trump’s remedy?
Does he get paid back the amount New York got when liquidating the assets, which likely is much less than fair market value? Does he get FMV as determined by a judge or jury based on expert testimony? Does he get to force New York to do whatever is necessary to return the property that was executed on? Is there another remedy altogether? Depending on the answer, executing on anything other than assets that are essentially cash seems like it could be very risky.
@Steven L. Taylor: I will be stealing Bigly Sad for use here in Desantistan. LOL
@charontwo: I may well have misunderstood it, but I definitely read it.
Thing is, I was responding to this:
I may not have even seen the later, longer post you made when I replied.
@Not the IT Dept.: “Fixed that for you.”
I would have gone for a trailer, but you’re more generous than I…
@Jay L Gischer:
Barbara Jones was recently given additional powers, and she has authority to hire contractors to assist her. I don’t see Trump as having much ability to hide assets from the court or prosecutor.
@Paul L.: “Idiot NY AG James filled the wrong LLC for Trump Tower.”
Hmm. If an idiot is able to prove Trump liable for half a billion dollars in fraud, what does that say about him and his lawyers?
“Trump’s lawyer forgot to check box for a jury trial.”
My God, are you really gullible enough to believe anything Trump says? They made a choice to forego a jury trial. When it turned out to be a stupid choice, Trump thought it would make him look smarter if he claimed they were simply all too incompetent to read a form.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Channeling my really awful Yoda impersonation,
ETA I don’t think I’ve ever seen you hip-check someone into the glass quite that vigorously before. Well done!
Josh Marshall points out today (no subscription needed) that while Trump is fundraising off of the “The Attempt to Seize Trump Tower”, the reality is that Trump doesn’t own a significant portion of Trump Tower and hasn’t since his bankruptcy. What does he have?
This brings me back a few years. Back when Trump first squandered his father’s fortune and went into Bankruptcy, the creditors did not force Trump into personal bankruptcy despite the fact that he had visible assets and they were still underwater. Although they never said why (and ethically, they shouldn’t) it was widely reported that they felt they were better with him on the inside than the outside. In other words, he was worth more to him in some way than his assets would have been. During the time it seemed to be generally accepted without comment, but it always puzzled me. In what way could he be useful? By this time it was widely known he was a horrendous businessman and had merely taken credit for what his father built. It was only many years later when Trump was seriously running for President and the investigations revealed (to me at least) that the Trump Tower apartments weren’t sold off en masse as you would expect in a bankruptcy, instead they were sold off to individual investors one by one. Why would a bank go through this madness and keep so much on their books for all the years it took to go through them all? Well, Donald was a master at convincing schmucks to buy at huge markups over their real value. Despite the cost of carrying them, and whatever fees they had to pay, the schmucks paid so far over market value that they came out ahead.
The hotel side of the business was even worse. The banks sold individual rooms off, with Donald acting as the huckster promising a sort of time share money machine – owners could stay there when they were in NYC and only pay the house keeping fee (the rate, of course, set by Trump Enterprises) and then get a percentage of the room rate all the rest of the time (the percentage, of course, set by Trump Enterprises). The real beauty though is that Trump Enterprises does own a small but significant portion of the rooms outright. Those rooms get booked out first and are virtually always full. The individual owners get to soak up all the deficits. And if they are unoccupied enough nights, they actually pay for upkeep (at rates set by, you guessed it, Trump Enterprises).
There seems to be a never ending supply of suckers to glom onto ever scheme hatched by this clownish nincompoop.
@Paul L.:
No one is doubting Trump’s lawyer screwed up in foregoing a jury trial, we’ve all known that for months.
Why don’t you ask yourself why the former POTUS, an alleged billionaire and adjudicated rapist, can’t get decent lawyers? Is it a Left-wing plot that has your cult leader reduced to hiring clowns? Explain that us, please. How is it that the guy who said he’d have all the best people has seen every competent person run from him, his own cabinet secretaries – who describe him as a “moron” – as well as his lawyers?
@Paul L.: “Easy to win a case when the Judge is biased.”
Oh, wait, is this one of those really clever things you say without meaning because it makes the libs so mad? I’d better check my blood pressure!!!
@Paul L.: “How did Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein get convicted? Couldn’t they get decent lawyers?”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, as with Trump, they were convicted because there was a massive amount of evidence proving their guilt.
I’d ask what your point was, but I’d feel dishonest pretending that I cared.
If one is reduced to using Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein as examples of your guy’s moral compass and innocence, you might, yourself, be an immoral cretin.
@Paul L.:
They got convicted for the same reason Orange Jesus is going to be nailed to his cross: they were guilty.
See, there’s a difference between competent lawyers who lose a case, and Melania-looking nincompoops who can’t file a brief without evoking derisive laughter.
@Michael Reynolds:
What Trump has been called, and by whom…
Rex Tillerson: “a fucking moron”
John Kelly: “an idiot”
James Mattis: “a fifth or sixth grader”
Steve Mnuchin: “an idiot”
Reince Priebus: “an idiot”
Gary Cohn: “dumb as shit”
H. R. McMaster: “a dope”
You’re welcome.
@JKB:
Now this is funny.
Both as an attempt and as an illustration of what the ignorant rubes in the USA believe.
@charontwo: The extent to which he drains speculative cash out MAGA and gullible punters who may desire to try to play in-out ahead of MAGA this is likely to be a right circus –
@CSK:
Hmmm, three to one for ‘idiot’ over ‘moron.’ And every one of these people hand-picked by Trump.
@Jen:
@Matt Bernius:
Besides needing to wait 6 month, which he can be released from by the board, he can’t sell more than 1% of the stock in each quarter. That’s an SEC reg that keeps large investors from tanking a company’s stock value by dumping shares. Trump Social isn’t his financial lifeline.
The SPAC (DWAC) which is going to handle the truth social merger is down 28% over the last two days. There is already 12% of the outstanding shares being sold short. Smart Wall Street money is going to drive this down to under a dollar. Watch. They have no revenues, they have no profit, they have no future. A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money while some very savvy Wall Street. Traders are going to make a freaking fortune.
The stock will close today, near its lows for the day, which is never ever a good sign from a technical trading standpoint.
@Sleeping Dog: Excellent. That’s really excellent news. Although there’s no way he doesn’t at least TRY to start pulling cash out ASAP. I’m pretty sure that’s coded in his DNA.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yeah, I noticed that “idiot” seems to be the clear winner in the Derogatory Names for Trump Sweepstakes. Clinically, idiots rank lower than imbeciles and morons, having the intelligence of a two-year-old child.
@MarkedMan:
This has been a feature of time share “ownership” since the beginning–which goes back to before I stayed at the Inn at Spanish Head in Lincoln City, Oregon, while I was still in university (BA 1975) and actually considered becoming a time share “owner”–for about 30 seconds before I realized that it’d never pencil out for me. Trump hadn’t even been “discovered” for the NY bailout yet–he was still fighting the looking for Mr. Goodbar campaign in “his own personal Viet Nam.”
@Paul L.:
By being disgusting, perverted sex criminals. Like Trump is.
Apt comparison, thanks for providing it.
@EddieinCA:
I don’t doubt for a minute there are savvy traders that will make money off this, but those traders are gonna have to have diamond balls and stellar timing. I would guess it’s gonna take out some rubes and a couple of guys who think they’re savvy. The risk is just atrocious.
@Beth: Quite agreed, for a stock that one absolutely knows will not behave in a manner that is financially coherent, this is somewhere between lottery and card sharking. Any real market player knows it is a meme pump and dump.
On other hand Eddie evokes shorts, and they are likely to have a play
@EddieInCA:
Here’s the thing: I think he’s given plenty of evidence that it’s worse than that. He becomes apoplectic with rage anytime any man is accused of rape, under any circumstances and brings every conversation back around to the sometimes decades old rape cases he considers injustices. I wish to god it wasn’t true but I think the odds are he was/is a rapist himself and perhaps worse. Unlike our other trumpers where I think engaging with them is merely a waste of time, I think with him it is actually dangerous, for some future or current victim. Riling him up is not a good thing to do.
@Paul L.:
Even easier to claim a judge is biased when you have no actual argument or evidence.
@MarkedMan:
Yep, my take as well.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think that’s likely true, but the question in my mind is if Trump’s bank accounts belong to the State or City of NY, what incentive is there for Trump to convert his share of a business to cash?
I would not despair, a major headache for Trump is, again, if his bank accounts belong to someone else, how will he pay the enormous legal bills incurred in defending all the entities? No competent lawyer is going to do anything for a known deadbeat without cash up front, and he’s gonna need a small army of them.
@Lounsbury:
I think it’s worse than that. At least with the meme loonies a good chunk of the point was to get sustained pumps going to stick it to the shorts. With this it’s all erratic Trump. I don’t think I’d wanna be holding a bunch of short positions and then have Trump go on some weird-ass tear about something that gets his rubes to jump in and send the price up.
How do you mitigate a risk when you’re against a shameless lunatic that probably doesn’t really understand what they are doing? I mean unless it’s for a tax loss? But I’m sure there are more pleasant ways to do that.
@Roger:
Assuming the assets went to bonafide purchasers wouldn’t the remedy be that he only gets cash back? Is that the whole point of getting a bond? The bond substitutes for the irreplaceable property that you could lose.
Also, for what it’s worth I’ve only filed a couple of appeals and I managed to skate on the bond each time. I think I’m 50/50 on appellate work. What a hassle.
@Beth: I don’t have a clue. I assume (without knowing) that he only gets cash back and I would guess that as long as the sale of the property was commercially reasonable (which, in my experience, is generally reasonable only in the eyes of judges and not of anyone who truly was trying to get FMV for property) he’d be limited to the sale proceeds, but I can see arguments for why that shouldn’t be the case and wondered if anybody knew.
The most striking evidence of Mr. Trump’s entrepreneurship, however, is in New York.
From your beloved NY Times, 1983
Maybe they were just kissing up to Donald Trump before turning on him in 2016, but Trump being the one developer seeking to build iconic buildings of steel and glass in 1980s Manhattan is “on the record”.
@Paul L.:
Dude. Don’t ever accuse anyone of being gullible.
You’re a member of a cult of personality built around a rapist, who keeps saying he’s a billionaire and yet keeps fleecing the rubes like you with worthless NFTs and golden sneakers.
He’s a man with multiple bankruptcies. A man caught money laundering at a casino he managed to bankrupt.
A man who had his charity shut down because he was absconding with the funds.
A man so incapable of controlling himself that he lost 83 million dollars because he couldn’t stop attacking the woman he raped.
A man who lies like normal people breath.
A thief, who then committed multiple felonies trying to cover up his theft. A man who blatantly endangered national security in the process.
A man who is known to shit his diapers and walk around repulsing world leaders in that condition.
A man who praises Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Il, while attacking our own allies, and inviting the Russians to attack them, even as he betrays Ukraine. Incidentally, a man impeached for trying to extort political lies from that same beleaguered country.
A man whose daughter – you know, the one openly lusts after – was awarded preferential treatment by the Chinese Communist Party, and whose son-in-law took a 2 billion dollar payoff from Saudi Arabia.
A man who was renting rooms to the KSA while he was president.
A man who for the first time in American history refused to accept an election outcome, launched an attack on the US capitol where his goons threatened to lynch his own vice president.
You’re a toady to a piece of garbage, a vile, foul, treasonous, weak and cowardly, grubby little con man who even now, even today, is trying to squeeze money out of fucking idiots like you. Why don’t you sell your pick-up and send cult leader the cash, you utter waste of skin.
@Paul L.: Come on, dude. Even I remember Tillerson, Kelly, Mathis, and Mnuchin’s comments.
ETA: And I don’t even listen to podcasts.
@JKB:
Numbskull. You’ve had that refuted a dozen different ways upstream. Is this the official MAGA message of the day and you get a gold star if you keep repeating the same bullshit enough times. Or maybe an NFT of Trump as superman. Are you genuinely stupid enough to think Trump being broken is going to have any effect on the value – 1.7 trillion – of NYC real estate? I mean, seriously. You don’t actually believe that, right? Just whisper it my ear, I won’t tell anyone.
@JKB: “Maybe they were just kissing up to Donald Trump before turning on him in 2016, but Trump being the one developer seeking to build iconic buildings of steel and glass in 1980s Manhattan is “on the record”.”
Again, I realize you’ve never been within a hundred miles of Manhattan, but the Grand Hyatt is not now and has never been an “iconic building.” The only reason — literally, the only reason — that it hasn’t been torn down and replaced already with a mixed-use tower approved five years ago is that no one has come up with a plan to keep the construction project from gridlocking midtown for a decade.
@Paul L.: “Are you really gullible enough to believe anything the MeidasTouch Network says?”
As far as I can tell, you are the only person here who watches something called “the MeidasTouch Network,” and quite possibly the only one who knows what it is.
Oh, fuck, now I get it @JKB. This is the prelude to Traitor Trump pretending he’s glad to be selling out of New York. God, sorry, I should have caught that. The sour grapes defense. The Cartman ploy: screw you guys, I’m going to Florida.
Here’s a joke for the trolls:
In a dystopian 2025 a man stands in front of the Capitol with a sign that reads “DONALD TRUMP IS A MORON.”
He’s arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 30 years in prison for revealing state secrets.
@Kathy:
So, reassure me. Is Mexico really fairly safe for expats? Cause I just saw what a million dollars will get you in San Miguel Allende, and it was not the garage you’d get for that in LA. But in the ad they mention that the house is located just past, ‘the second security gate.’ Which is not as reassuring as they might have hoped. It begs the question, is there a third security gate? And are we talking burglars or Ninja death squads?
@Michael Reynolds:
It depends on where you go and how much attention you draw to yourself. Gated communities with 24/7 rent-a-cops are common.
I’ve never lived outside the metro area of Mexico City. I can’t say what other places are like. You’d do better to ask other expats who’ve lived there.
@Paul L.:
Paul, none of those quotes were from Meidas. They were from Politico, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, etc. If you don’t consider those legitimate news sources, then there’s nothing more I can do for you. Believe whatever makes you feel warm and cozy.
@JKB: I can speak from personal experience on this one. In the fall of 1987, about two weeks after Black Monday, I attended a business meeting at this property (I spent a night there back in the 70s when it was the Hotel Commodore) to prepare for a professional conference the following summer. One of my fellow attendees asked the convener if we were going to get a block of rooms for the conference. The convener said, “No, Donald Trump’s people said they can get rack rates for their rooms. Besides, he needs the money.”
@MarkedMan: @Michael Reynolds: Could we please not speculate about the criminal behavior of people without anything other than vibes as our guide?
@Steven L. Taylor: If it were just vibes I wouldn’t bring it up. His statements for years now have been disturbing, and I truly believe that people taunting him here could have real world consequences for someone.