Quote (Prox1m1ty @ 26 Sep 2024 14:29)
Is Trumps business record not worrying for potential voters?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/sep/26/lucky-loser-review-how-donald-trump-squandered-his-wealth"Donald Trump started his career at the end of the 1970s, financed by his father Fred Trump. Over the years this transfer of wealth added up to around $500m in today’s money in gifts. My rough calculations say that, had he simply taken the money, leveraged it not imprudently, and passively invested it in Manhattan real estate – gone to parties, womanised, played golf, collected his rent cheques and reinvested them –
his fortune could have amounted to more than $80bn by the time he ascended to the presidency in 2017.
And yet Trump was not worth $80bn in 2017. Instead,
Forbes pegged him at $2.5bn – which, given the difficulties of valuing and accounting for real estate, is really anything between $5bn (£4bn) and zero (or less). "
If there's a lucky loser in politics, it's the guy currently occupying the White House, lol.
His 1988 and 2008 presidential runs were miserable failures, then he becomes VP because Obama was looking for the most boring, inoffensive, mid old white dude on all of Capitol Hill, then his window stays open because his rival Hillary completely blows her race. Then, in 2020, he had a horrid start to the Dem primaries, Bernie was on the verge of running away with the nomination, Biden becomes the nominee because the party establishment panics and forcibly closes the ranks behind the most high-profile candidate they can agree on - which he only was due to his VP status.
Then, he was on track to lose the 2020 race decisively to Trump before a once-in-a-century health crisis fucked it all up for Trump AND gave cover to all of Biden's weaknesses. And although Trump really screwed up that year, although the media, big tech, corporate america, academia and the federal bureaucracy all tried their best to tip the scales in his favor to an unprecedented degree, he still just barely ekes out a win against a seriously wounded Trump.
Joe Biden becoming president was quite literally a historical accident. And now, history might repeat itself; his mediocre VP - who was picked for her race and gender rather than her ability - has a decent shot at the presidency.
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