Check Out The Top 10 Donald Trump Failures:
Donald Trump is very
proud of himself for forcing President Obama to release his birth certificate,
ending the debate over whether he was legally fit to lead the country. But not
everything the Donald has put his name behind has succeeded. TIME takes a look
at some gambles that went bust. Take a Look at his Failures in different business sector :
Trump Airlines
Trump Vodka
The Donald had a vodka.
Trump vodka (labeled super premium, naturally) was introduced in 2006 to much
fanfare. Under the slogan "Success Distilled," the liquor was touted
as the "epitome of vodka" that would "demand the same respect
and inspire the same awe as the international legacy and brand of Donald Trump
himself." At the time, Trump predicted the T&T (Trump and Tonic) would
become the most requested drink in America, surpassed only by the Trump
Martini. On Larry King Live, he said he got into the vodka business to outdo
his friends at Grey Goose. Six years later, Grey Goose is still on top shelves
throughout the country. As for Trump vodka? Yeah, we'd never heard of it
either. The New York City blog Gothamist reports the vodka has stopped
production "because the company failed to meet the threshold
requirements." Two weeks ago, Trump's company filed an injunction to
prevent an Israeli company from selling Trump vodka without his consent or
authorization. Meaning the Donald stopped the only people in world who wanted
to drink his vodka from doing so.
The Bankruptcies
"I don't like the B
word," Donald Trump said in 2010 while testifying in a New Jersey
bankruptcy courtroom about his gambling company, Trump Entertainment Resorts
Inc., which had filed for bankruptcy for the third time. Given the number of
times Trump has flirted with bankruptcy, you'd think he'd be used to that word
by now.
In 1990, the banking
institutions that backed his real estate investments had to bail him out with a
$65 million "rescue package" that contained new loans and credit. But
it wasn't enough, and nine months later the famous developer was nearly $4
billion in debt. He didn't declare personal bankruptcy, although his famous Taj
Mahal casino in Atlantic City, N.J., did have to file for it (bondholders ended
up taking a 50% stake in the investment). Trump's economic troubles continued
through the early '90s, while he was personally leveraged to nearly $1 billion.
In 2004, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts also filed for bankruptcy. The
company was only a small portion of Trump's real estate empire, but he did
still have to personally cough up $72 million to keep it afloat. In 2009, the
same company (by then renamed Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc.) filed for
bankruptcy again. Yet during all of this, no one ever told Trump, "You're
fired!" Probably because no one could.
The Hair
Trump isn't fooling
anyone with that hairdo. That's not his real hairline, he just blow-dried it
forward and then combed it backward. Surprisingly, his hair started out kind of
normal in the 1980s. It appeared to be hair sprayed into a pouf, but that was
to be expected in the decade in which everything went big. But as the real
estate mogul aged, he tried to will himself younger with his hair. It got
blonder and blonder until it went yellow. Then it turned into — well, whatever
it is that it is now.
The Marriages
For all his success in
the boardroom, Donald Trump's life in the bedroom has been messy at best. The
real estate magnate married his first wife, Ivana, in 1977, but things got
rocky after Trump's affair with actress Marla Maples surfaced in New York City
tabloids. "You bitch, leave my husband alone!" Ivana (pictured) told
Maples on a ski trip in Aspen, Colo. Ivana's warning fell on deaf ears, and in
1992, Trump left her with a reported $25 million settlement and married his
mistress one year later. His marriage to Maples was even shorter-lived, and the
couple divorced in 1999. These days, Trump's married to Slovenian supermodel
Melania Knauss. Together in marital bliss since 2005, this relationship's
proving the third time really is a charm — so far anyway.
Trump Mortgage
In April 2006, Trump
announced that, after years in the real estate business, he was launching a
mortgage company. He held a glitzy press conference at which his son Donald Jr.
predicted that Trump Mortgage would soon be the nation's No. 1 home-loan
lender. Trump told CNBC, "Who knows more about financing than me?"
Apparently, plenty. Within a year and a half, Trump Mortgage had closed shop.
The would-be lending powerhouse was done in by timing (the housing market
cratered in 2007) and ironically enough, given Trump's Apprentice TV show, poor
hiring. The executive Trump selected to run his loan company, E.J. Ridings,
claimed to have been a top executive at a prestigious investment bank. In
reality, Ridings' highest role on Wall Street was as a registered broker, a
position he held for a mere six days.
Trump: The Game
In 1989, the Donald
teamed up with Milton Bradley to release Trump: The Game, a Monopolyesque board
game in which three to four players must buy and sell real estate and try to
trump one another in business deals. A year later Trump admitted the game was vastly
underselling the predicted 2 million units he and the toy company had hoped
for. Not one to abandon ridiculous ideas, Trump revived the game 15 years later
after his success on The Apprentice, making sure to incorporate the series
catchphrase "You're fired!" into the game. Other updated features
included a sterner-looking Trump on the box cover, somewhat simpler rules and
cards with business tips. Enduring feature? The considerable tack factor of a
Donald Trump board game.
The
China Connection
"The problem with
our country is we don't manufacture anything anymore," Donald Trump told
Fox News a year ago. "The stuff that's been sent over from China," he
complained, "falls apart after a year and a half. It's crap." That
very same Donald Trump has his own line of clothing, and it's made in ...
China. (O.K., O.K. — not all of it. Salon, which reported this intriguing,
head-scratching fact, notes that some of his apparel is from Mexico and
Bangladesh.)
Trump Casinos
Donald Trump's gambles
don't always go as planned. Especially when that gamble is gambling itself. In
February 2009, Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection for the third time in a row — an extremely rare feat in American
business. The casino company, founded in the 1980s, runs the Taj Mahal, the
Trump Plaza and the Trump Marina. All three casinos are located in Atlantic
City, N.J., where the gambling industry has faced a decline in tourists who
prefer gambling in Pennsylvania and Connecticut instead. Trump defended himself
by distancing himself from the company, though he owned 28% of its stock.
"Other than the fact that it has my name on it — which I'm not thrilled
about — I have nothing to do with the company," he said. He resigned from
Trump Entertainment soon after that third filing, and in August of that year
he, along with an affiliate of Beal Bank Nevada, agreed to buy the company for
$100 million. The company reported it emerged from bankruptcy in July 2010.
The Middle East 'Policy'
When recently discussing
oil prices on air with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Donald Trump blustered on
about the scheming malfeasance of OPEC and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Trump
insisted the U.S. could leverage its military supremacy to persuade OPEC to
lower prices. In his words: "I'm going to look 'em in the eye and say,
'Fellas, you'd have your fun. Your fun is over.'" But this rather naive
suggestion of bullying one of the U.S.'s most longstanding and essential allies
in the Middle East — not to mention the recent customer in a megabillion-dollar
U.S. weapons sale that would create tens of thousands of American jobs — was
comparatively harmless when set against his next suggestion. Trump bemoaned
U.S. costs sustained during its wars in the Middle East and floated the idea of
"taking" Iraqi oil. Stephanopoulos countered incredulously, "So,
we steal an oil field?" Trump responded, "Excuse me. You're not
stealing anything. You're taking — we're reimbursing ourselves." Given how
many U.S. leaders have had to stress to their Middle East interlocutors that
they're not in it simply for the oil, Trump would be starting off regional
relations on pretty slippery ground.
Source: Time
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