Whenever someone say about trump “But he’s a good businessman!” As some sort of defense, I get immediately annoyed. He is an absolute garbage businessman. He has failed or run so many businesses into the ground. He made a casino go broke, you know the business that thrives on basically just letting people come in and throw their money at you and leave?
What he is good at is lining his own pockets. He goes into anything and lies, cheats, and schemes, then shovels as much money into his pockets as he can before someone notices and the bills come due. He makes deals with contractors, then refuses to pay, then drags them through courts until they give up and claims he got a discount. That’s not “good business” that’s theft. It’s despicable and gross.
Every allegory we have for a corrupt, lying, thieving businessman is embodied in Trump. He is not good for business. He’s good for himself until the business fails then he moves on to the next persons pile of money to steal.
And that’s what he is doing as president. He is selling the country piece by piece to line his own pockets, then once everything goes belly up he’ll take his money and walk away.
This is all really the fault of The Apprentice, who made him seem as if he were some kind of business genius.
Trump was decent at making himself seem like he was a good businessman. But, all his self-promotion had to compete with all his failures. Eventually he would have run out of money to self-promote.
Then the people behind The Apprentice came along and did everything in their power to make him seem like he was the best businessman in the world, and idiots bought it. People watched a fictional reality TV show where contestants had to do silly “businessey” things, and somehow they concluded that the guy at the boardroom table set was actually good at business, rather than competent at acting.
This barely competent idiot who had inherited / stolen half a billion from his father and was slowly burning through it with his various failures had worked his entire life to try to create a myth that he was a genius businessman. That attempt had almost failed as he ran out of money. Then the guy who made Survivor came along and made his dreams come true. Finally, he was on TV all the time playing the character of a shrewd businessman, and somehow getting paid for it. This show lasted a decade, and by the end of it, idiots were convinced that Trump was a business genius, and the rest is history.
Oh, and incidentally, Mark Burnett, the guy who created The Apprentice, is now “United States Special Envoy for the United Kingdom”, appointed on Trump’s inauguration day in 2025.
I swear reality TV was a poison to society. The most annoying thing is that YouTube shows that folks just doing things is a completely viable form of entertainment and I’m not even talking about vloggers.
I mean, Berlusconi got rich thanks to his mafia connection, so it kinda seems like making lots of money somehow involves utter disregard for human life.
Long before Trump was in politics, the thing most people knew him for was not his business acumen, but that he was essentially the physical avatar of avarice and greed and everything wrong with capitalism. He was not an aspirational role model, he was a caricature of the negative stereotypes embodied by the average American businessmen, everything dialed up to 11, including his contempt for the common laborer.
He was well hated before getting into politics, and it had nothing to do with his political opinions at the time.
There’s two major types of businessmen: Those that are good at business, and those that are good at scamming. MAGA cannot discern between the two. That’s why a lot of his influencers peddle in obvious scam bait. And ever since meme stocks became a thing through social network engagement cults-on-demand, it doesn’t matter how much they get scammed out and lose as long as they can do so communally on a communal circlejerk while claiming someone else is the real loser. Trump is the materialization of all the efforts to manipulate and profit from society that led up to him
Realistically, there is no difference between being good at business and being good at scamming. Both involve stealing, businessmen just steal from their employees instead of their customers.
Slight counter thought on the ‘business man’ thing – Trump’s clearly done well for himself. Yes, his businesses all tended to fail, he was convicted of fraud, etc etc – he made a stock market entry based solely on his brand name. His entire reputation is based on vapor.
But that’s not much different than a lot of celebrities these days. They’re also rich as fuck, with basically no real ‘deliverables’ to speak of in terms of productivity benefits for the broader community. It’s practically the definition of an influencer.
Also consider the standard advice that young people get in regards to work/business – that they should essentially constantly change jobs / jump around to try and ratchet up that salary. That sort of behaviour is inherently reducing their overall benefit/contribution to the businesses they work for, and is entirely about lining their own pockets.
Americans inherently tie having large sums of money, to being a good business person. It’s not about productivity, sustainability or supplying a need / service or anything of that sort. So lining his own pockets, is him being a good business man by the American definition of what that means.
No he hasn’t. If he’d just kept the money he stole / inherited from his dad and retired, he’d have come out ahead. The timeline diverges when he manages to get elected and starts being able to funnel billions to himself. But, until then, his story was mostly about self-promotion and failing at business.
His stock market name brand did well. The apprentice did well, and was arguably the launchpad for his presidency. He’s owned his Mar-a-lago mansion since 1985.
He seemingly spent his time travelling between his gaudy mansions and a child sex island in a warm climate where he raped people with zero accountability due to his prestige. That sort of freedom / luxury / depravity is not something afforded to the normies.
Even if built on bullshit, his life hasn’t been one of failures in regards to his personal urges and lifestyle. Compared to ‘commoner’ Americans, he’s rich and successful. And that he was able to get away with it, we can use an American quote: “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game” (Ice T). To succeed via corruption and gaming the system, is as American as apple pie.
The Apprentice saved him. If they had cast Michael Dell or Larry Ellison I think Trump would have run out of money and his name would just be one of those people from the 80s and 90s that you forgot about.
He seemingly spent his time travelling between his gaudy mansions and a child sex island in a warm climate where he raped people with zero accountability due to his prestige. That sort of freedom / luxury / depravity is not something afforded to the normies.
Yes, and he could have done that if he’d just retired on the money he inherited / stole from his father. He didn’t need to start and fail at a bunch of businesses, but his ego demanded that he do that. So, slowly he depleted the half a billion and it was almost gone when The Apprentice gave him a lifeline.
Actually, to try and help highlight the viewpoint I’m describing, in light of what you’re putting out, let me try to frame this stuff a little differently.
Consider something like the CEO of Blackberry. His company is now essentially defunct, in part due to the lack of security and stolen IP, but also because they screwed up their business market dominance by trying to chase the retail market when Apple/google started showing up. His business is toast, and for the sake of argument, let’s say the CEO now lives a basic lifestyle, with very little to his name – most likely he’s living pretty damn good though, in reality, but likely not “ultra rich” wealthy.
At the height of his wealth curve, he’d be viewed as a successful business man. At the nadir of his wealth curve, he’s a failure.
Business people are often considered successful or not based on their current positions and most recent endeavours, and their overall hoard of wealth. Given that the apprentice ‘saved’ him, anytime after the apprentice it’d be reasonable to say Trump’s a successful business person, even if he was drastically inflating the actual numbers associated with his wealth. Even if he’d previously failed a bunch. There are lots of entrepeneurs that will see their efforts fail a bunch at the start, and if they have enough wealth they’ll often eventually succeed. Doesn’t make it less of a success when it happens, in some ways.
And now that he’s managed to leverage that into owning America, his profit’s gone up exponentially – for both himself and his entire family line. So by American standards, that’s pretty successful. And we all know there’ll be no accountability, especially not for his family.
The last paragraph highlights something else as well: those who define this way of being as “success” are quite empty of substance. These shouldn’t be American standards of success. It’s up to us what our definition of success is. I reject Trump as any example of success.
At the height of his wealth curve, he’d be viewed as a successful business man.
I guess you’re using Research in Motion as an example of a company that went up and went back down, and are picturing some imaginary CEO, not Mike Lazaridis or Doug Fregin who were the co-CEOs of RIM, but are no longer with the company.
The difference from Trump is that this imaginary “Blackberry CEO” took a company that was worth nothing and then made it into a company that was one of the most influential in the world. That “zero to hero” story is something Trump never did. He started at the peak, with half a billion dollars he inherited / stole from his dad, and then he went down from there.
To be considered a “successful businessman” you have to make something worth more than it was previously worth. That’s not something Trump ever achieved.
Jay Gould was considered a successful businessman because he grew up in poverty and then became a multi-millionaire (a billionaire in today’s dollars). His son George Jay Gould isn’t considered a successful businessman because all he did was inherit his dad’s company and didn’t meaningfully increase its value.
Fred Trump was a successful businessman because he made the fortune that Donald Trump squandered.
And how much money has Trump made pillaging America? Pretty sure he’s got most of those folks beat. Heck, Jared Kushner got like $2billion from the Saudis to play around with, and that was just one of the kickbacks to Trump’s family orbit. Pretty successful at enriching themselves – Gould become a billionaire, Trump’s become a multi-billionaire and made his family connections all billionaires in their own right aswell.
To be considered a “successful businessman” you have to make something worth more than it was previously worth. That’s not something Trump ever achieved.
Trumps made himself worth more than he was previously worth. He’s also made his family and friends worth more than they were previously worth. So he fits your definition of being a successful businessman.
I think you’re correct that this is how Americans define “good businessman”. But there’s some missing cognition when they then decide that he should run things.
“A ‘good dream’ is when you’re in a dream and enjoy yourself. Freddy Kruger has many good dreams. Therefore, I hope Freddy is in my dream.”
Yeah, no argument here. Though I think that’s been a societal norm in America for a very long time, and in many western/capitalist countries. People have value based on wealth, not on historic/potential benefit to the broader public.
I always think back to the time Gene Simmons from KISS had his reality show, like back in the 90s or something ancient like that. One of his asides, he basically says he wants to amass money, and he wants his kids to amass money, cause money is what demonstrates how much value you’ve added to the world. That sort of thinking, I reckon, is baked into Americans. So Trump, Elon and Thiel and them have billions/trillions of dollars, they’ve ‘clearly’ been the most positive forces in American life in recent decades, and are inherently ‘good’ business men. Regardless of how they made that money, or whether anything was delivered. It’s flawed, but as noted, that sentiment’s been around for decades.
So Elon allegedly became an American citizen in 2002. He immigrated, sure, and seemingly spent 10 years as an illegal, but he’s as American as any other immigrant that America’s taken in – you can’t realistically say he isn’t, unless you want to expand the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming out of the current administration. Peter Thiel’s been an American since he was 1 year old, and was naturalised I guess. So similar story on that front.
Point there being that if you want to make a case that they aren’t Americans, you’d need to accept the current administration’s take that immigrants aren’t Americans. Which seems un-American historically (I mean, statue of liberty quotes and all…).
However at the same time, Americans, in the eyes of the current administration, are white protestant sorts. Like how they’re kicking out “immigrants”, but generally haven’t been deporting the absurd number of Canadians who immigrated south, because the Canadian immigrants are generally white protestant sorts (even if non practicing, the same sort of work ethic). To accept the current administration’s take on immigrants, you need to be a white nationalist, like Jack Posobiec and the Trump administration that lauds him.
And to reject the current administrations take on immigrants, you’d need to accept that Musk and Thiel are American.
May as well rant about it here.
Whenever someone say about trump “But he’s a good businessman!” As some sort of defense, I get immediately annoyed. He is an absolute garbage businessman. He has failed or run so many businesses into the ground. He made a casino go broke, you know the business that thrives on basically just letting people come in and throw their money at you and leave?
What he is good at is lining his own pockets. He goes into anything and lies, cheats, and schemes, then shovels as much money into his pockets as he can before someone notices and the bills come due. He makes deals with contractors, then refuses to pay, then drags them through courts until they give up and claims he got a discount. That’s not “good business” that’s theft. It’s despicable and gross.
Every allegory we have for a corrupt, lying, thieving businessman is embodied in Trump. He is not good for business. He’s good for himself until the business fails then he moves on to the next persons pile of money to steal.
And that’s what he is doing as president. He is selling the country piece by piece to line his own pockets, then once everything goes belly up he’ll take his money and walk away.
Fuck Trump.
This is all really the fault of The Apprentice, who made him seem as if he were some kind of business genius.
Trump was decent at making himself seem like he was a good businessman. But, all his self-promotion had to compete with all his failures. Eventually he would have run out of money to self-promote.
Then the people behind The Apprentice came along and did everything in their power to make him seem like he was the best businessman in the world, and idiots bought it. People watched a fictional reality TV show where contestants had to do silly “businessey” things, and somehow they concluded that the guy at the boardroom table set was actually good at business, rather than competent at acting.
This barely competent idiot who had inherited / stolen half a billion from his father and was slowly burning through it with his various failures had worked his entire life to try to create a myth that he was a genius businessman. That attempt had almost failed as he ran out of money. Then the guy who made Survivor came along and made his dreams come true. Finally, he was on TV all the time playing the character of a shrewd businessman, and somehow getting paid for it. This show lasted a decade, and by the end of it, idiots were convinced that Trump was a business genius, and the rest is history.
Oh, and incidentally, Mark Burnett, the guy who created The Apprentice, is now “United States Special Envoy for the United Kingdom”, appointed on Trump’s inauguration day in 2025.
I swear reality TV was a poison to society. The most annoying thing is that YouTube shows that folks just doing things is a completely viable form of entertainment and I’m not even talking about vloggers.
I mean, Berlusconi got rich thanks to his mafia connection, so it kinda seems like making lots of money somehow involves utter disregard for human life.
Long before Trump was in politics, the thing most people knew him for was not his business acumen, but that he was essentially the physical avatar of avarice and greed and everything wrong with capitalism. He was not an aspirational role model, he was a caricature of the negative stereotypes embodied by the average American businessmen, everything dialed up to 11, including his contempt for the common laborer.
He was well hated before getting into politics, and it had nothing to do with his political opinions at the time.
There’s two major types of businessmen: Those that are good at business, and those that are good at scamming. MAGA cannot discern between the two. That’s why a lot of his influencers peddle in obvious scam bait. And ever since meme stocks became a thing through social network engagement cults-on-demand, it doesn’t matter how much they get scammed out and lose as long as they can do so communally on a communal circlejerk while claiming someone else is the real loser. Trump is the materialization of all the efforts to manipulate and profit from society that led up to him
Realistically, there is no difference between being good at business and being good at scamming. Both involve stealing, businessmen just steal from their employees instead of their customers.
Or scamming your subsidiaries, Scamming your investors, scamming the government etc
Implying capitalism is anything other than a bunch of fancy legalese to make mass theft sound legitimate
Accurate post!
His casinos were just a money laundering operation for the Russians.
Slight counter thought on the ‘business man’ thing – Trump’s clearly done well for himself. Yes, his businesses all tended to fail, he was convicted of fraud, etc etc – he made a stock market entry based solely on his brand name. His entire reputation is based on vapor.
But that’s not much different than a lot of celebrities these days. They’re also rich as fuck, with basically no real ‘deliverables’ to speak of in terms of productivity benefits for the broader community. It’s practically the definition of an influencer.
Also consider the standard advice that young people get in regards to work/business – that they should essentially constantly change jobs / jump around to try and ratchet up that salary. That sort of behaviour is inherently reducing their overall benefit/contribution to the businesses they work for, and is entirely about lining their own pockets.
Americans inherently tie having large sums of money, to being a good business person. It’s not about productivity, sustainability or supplying a need / service or anything of that sort. So lining his own pockets, is him being a good business man by the American definition of what that means.
No he hasn’t. If he’d just kept the money he stole / inherited from his dad and retired, he’d have come out ahead. The timeline diverges when he manages to get elected and starts being able to funnel billions to himself. But, until then, his story was mostly about self-promotion and failing at business.
His stock market name brand did well. The apprentice did well, and was arguably the launchpad for his presidency. He’s owned his Mar-a-lago mansion since 1985.
He seemingly spent his time travelling between his gaudy mansions and a child sex island in a warm climate where he raped people with zero accountability due to his prestige. That sort of freedom / luxury / depravity is not something afforded to the normies.
Even if built on bullshit, his life hasn’t been one of failures in regards to his personal urges and lifestyle. Compared to ‘commoner’ Americans, he’s rich and successful. And that he was able to get away with it, we can use an American quote: “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game” (Ice T). To succeed via corruption and gaming the system, is as American as apple pie.
The Apprentice saved him. If they had cast Michael Dell or Larry Ellison I think Trump would have run out of money and his name would just be one of those people from the 80s and 90s that you forgot about.
Yes, and he could have done that if he’d just retired on the money he inherited / stole from his father. He didn’t need to start and fail at a bunch of businesses, but his ego demanded that he do that. So, slowly he depleted the half a billion and it was almost gone when The Apprentice gave him a lifeline.
Actually, to try and help highlight the viewpoint I’m describing, in light of what you’re putting out, let me try to frame this stuff a little differently.
Consider something like the CEO of Blackberry. His company is now essentially defunct, in part due to the lack of security and stolen IP, but also because they screwed up their business market dominance by trying to chase the retail market when Apple/google started showing up. His business is toast, and for the sake of argument, let’s say the CEO now lives a basic lifestyle, with very little to his name – most likely he’s living pretty damn good though, in reality, but likely not “ultra rich” wealthy.
At the height of his wealth curve, he’d be viewed as a successful business man. At the nadir of his wealth curve, he’s a failure.
Business people are often considered successful or not based on their current positions and most recent endeavours, and their overall hoard of wealth. Given that the apprentice ‘saved’ him, anytime after the apprentice it’d be reasonable to say Trump’s a successful business person, even if he was drastically inflating the actual numbers associated with his wealth. Even if he’d previously failed a bunch. There are lots of entrepeneurs that will see their efforts fail a bunch at the start, and if they have enough wealth they’ll often eventually succeed. Doesn’t make it less of a success when it happens, in some ways.
And now that he’s managed to leverage that into owning America, his profit’s gone up exponentially – for both himself and his entire family line. So by American standards, that’s pretty successful. And we all know there’ll be no accountability, especially not for his family.
The last paragraph highlights something else as well: those who define this way of being as “success” are quite empty of substance. These shouldn’t be American standards of success. It’s up to us what our definition of success is. I reject Trump as any example of success.
I guess you’re using Research in Motion as an example of a company that went up and went back down, and are picturing some imaginary CEO, not Mike Lazaridis or Doug Fregin who were the co-CEOs of RIM, but are no longer with the company.
The difference from Trump is that this imaginary “Blackberry CEO” took a company that was worth nothing and then made it into a company that was one of the most influential in the world. That “zero to hero” story is something Trump never did. He started at the peak, with half a billion dollars he inherited / stole from his dad, and then he went down from there.
To be considered a “successful businessman” you have to make something worth more than it was previously worth. That’s not something Trump ever achieved.
Jay Gould was considered a successful businessman because he grew up in poverty and then became a multi-millionaire (a billionaire in today’s dollars). His son George Jay Gould isn’t considered a successful businessman because all he did was inherit his dad’s company and didn’t meaningfully increase its value.
Fred Trump was a successful businessman because he made the fortune that Donald Trump squandered.
And how much money has Trump made pillaging America? Pretty sure he’s got most of those folks beat. Heck, Jared Kushner got like $2billion from the Saudis to play around with, and that was just one of the kickbacks to Trump’s family orbit. Pretty successful at enriching themselves – Gould become a billionaire, Trump’s become a multi-billionaire and made his family connections all billionaires in their own right aswell.
Trumps made himself worth more than he was previously worth. He’s also made his family and friends worth more than they were previously worth. So he fits your definition of being a successful businessman.
That’s post-election.
The timeline is:
At no point was he a successful businessman.
I think you’re correct that this is how Americans define “good businessman”. But there’s some missing cognition when they then decide that he should run things.
“A ‘good dream’ is when you’re in a dream and enjoy yourself. Freddy Kruger has many good dreams. Therefore, I hope Freddy is in my dream.”
Yeah, no argument here. Though I think that’s been a societal norm in America for a very long time, and in many western/capitalist countries. People have value based on wealth, not on historic/potential benefit to the broader public.
I always think back to the time Gene Simmons from KISS had his reality show, like back in the 90s or something ancient like that. One of his asides, he basically says he wants to amass money, and he wants his kids to amass money, cause money is what demonstrates how much value you’ve added to the world. That sort of thinking, I reckon, is baked into Americans. So Trump, Elon and Thiel and them have billions/trillions of dollars, they’ve ‘clearly’ been the most positive forces in American life in recent decades, and are inherently ‘good’ business men. Regardless of how they made that money, or whether anything was delivered. It’s flawed, but as noted, that sentiment’s been around for decades.
Elon and Peter are not Americans. Like not in any way culturally or physically are they American.
Elon is a fucking illegal on top of it.
So Elon allegedly became an American citizen in 2002. He immigrated, sure, and seemingly spent 10 years as an illegal, but he’s as American as any other immigrant that America’s taken in – you can’t realistically say he isn’t, unless you want to expand the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming out of the current administration. Peter Thiel’s been an American since he was 1 year old, and was naturalised I guess. So similar story on that front.
Point there being that if you want to make a case that they aren’t Americans, you’d need to accept the current administration’s take that immigrants aren’t Americans. Which seems un-American historically (I mean, statue of liberty quotes and all…).
However at the same time, Americans, in the eyes of the current administration, are white protestant sorts. Like how they’re kicking out “immigrants”, but generally haven’t been deporting the absurd number of Canadians who immigrated south, because the Canadian immigrants are generally white protestant sorts (even if non practicing, the same sort of work ethic). To accept the current administration’s take on immigrants, you need to be a white nationalist, like Jack Posobiec and the Trump administration that lauds him.
And to reject the current administrations take on immigrants, you’d need to accept that Musk and Thiel are American.
This is a hard pill to swallow even for the people against him.
But when it comes to the state of America, we are all to blame.