Alright, pull up a stool, kid. Or don’t. Doesn’t matter. Just pour me another. This ain’t DC, thank Christ. No tinpot fascist dictator parades here, just the sweet, sticky floor of a place that smells like stale beer and a complete lack of smoke or fire. Perfect for contemplating the magnificent, sprawling, utterly predictable failures of the man-child whose birthday, I’m reliably informed, is today. HQ wanted me back in the swamp for the pomp and circumstance. I told ’em where they could stick their cherry blossoms and their brass bands. Seen one military parade, seen ’em all. Especially when it’s for a guy whose biggest battlefield victories are against unpaid contractors and common sense.
Just got away from the coast, where the ‘revolution’ turned out to be mostly hot air and a few smashed windows, nowhere near the ‘LA is burning’ hysteria the cable news junkies were drooling over. Disparate groups, zero coordination. Like trying to herd cats, or trying to make a Trump business venture turn a consistent profit.
So, here I am, nursing a cheap whiskey, staring into the middle distance, and compiling a list. Not of accomplishments, obviously. That’d be shorter than his attention span. No, this is a celebration of the glorious, the spectacular, the truly yuge Trump Business Failures. A monument to the Midas touch in reverse.
The Golden Parachute of Failure: Trump’s Business Graveyard
Let’s start with the classics, shall we? The hits just keep on coming.
High-Profile Ventures and Loan Defaults
Remember Trump Shuttle Airlines? Flew that baby right into the ground. Defaulted on loans faster than you can say “Chapter 11.” Then there was Trump Mortgage. Launched just as the housing market was about to crater. Pure genius. Folded quicker than the Donald in a trade negotiation.
Ah then, Trump University. The diploma mill of broken dreams. Pitched as real estate enlightenment, ended up settling fraud lawsuits for twenty-five million bucks. Didn’t admit wrongdoing, naturally. That’s rule number one in the Trump playbook: Never admit you screwed up, just pay people off and move on to the next mark.
Short-Lived Lifestyle Brands
And the lifestyle brands! Sweet Jesus, the sheer, unadulterated tackiness of it all. Trump Vodka? “Success Distilled,” they said. More like “Failure Bottled.” Lasted about as long as a snowflake liberal in the heartlands of MAGA hell. GoTrump.com, the travel site? WentTrump.gone within a year. And who could forget Trump Steaks? Sold through Sharper Image and QVC. Two months. Two months before they were yanked because nobody wanted to pay top dollar for mediocre meat hawked by a reality TV star. The surprise is, well negligable.
Casino and Hotel Bankruptcies: A Pattern of Stiffing Small Businesses
This isn’t just bad luck, folks. This is a pattern. A beautiful, consistent, soul-crushing pattern of over-promising, under-delivering, and leaving a trail of wreckage. The bankruptcies? Multiple. Mostly casinos and hotels. He walked away, debt restructured, while the little guys – the painters, the plumbers, the guys who actually built his monuments to ego – got stiffed. Hundreds of them. Sued him, they did. And won. But getting blood from that particular stone? Good f’ing luck.
Even back in ’73, the feds had to sue his company for racial discrimination in real estate. Settled that too. Always settling, never admitting. It’s the Trump way. His business judgment? His ethics? Look at the record. It’s less a golden escalator to success and more a greased pole leading straight into a legal quagmire.
From Boardroom Busts to Global Blunders: The Foreign Policy Follies
And it’s not just business, is it? The man applies the same chaotic, self-serving, short-sighted approach to the world stage.
Dismantling the Iran Nuclear Deal & releasing the Taliban
Take the Iran Nuclear Deal. Obama’s deal wasn’t perfect, but it kept Iran’s nuclear ambitions in check. Trump tore it up, slapped on sanctions, and what happened? Iran cranked up enrichment and funded proxies. He got nothing but increased instability. And as I write Israel is launching targetted strikes on the Iranian military. Brilliant, the art of the deal!
Then there’s Afghanistan. Negotiated a deal with the Taliban that released 5,000 fighters, completely undermining the Afghan government. Set the stage for the whole damn collapse. A masterclass in snatching defeat from the jaws of… well, from the jaws of a fragile, imperfect peace.
Ukraine Policy: Criticism, Coziness, and Extortion
And Ukraine. Oh, Ukraine. “I’ll solve it in a day!” he crowed. Then a month. Then six months. What did he actually do? Criticized Ukraine, cozied up to Putin, tried to extort Zelenskyy, and cut funding. I was neck-deep in that mess, reporting on the Trump and Vance’s Rotten Ukraine Compromise. It’s the t.a.c.o. principle in action: Trump Always Chickens Out when faced with actual, complex problem-solving, preferring to cut and run or make a dodgy deal.
Gaza? Yemen? Same story. More chaos, no strategic wins. Even the Panama Canal got the Trump treatment – not reasserting control, just leaning on Panama to annoy China. Petty, ineffective, classic.
The Intervision Interlude: A Symphony of the Absurd?
And in the middle of all this, this glorious symphony of failure and international fumbling, I get a report about the USA participating in the Intervision Song Contest. Intervision! The Eastern Bloc’s answer to Eurovision!
Is this the level of reality we’re operating on now? A world where a man with a business record built on quicksand and unpaid bills thinks he can fix global conflicts with a handshake and a tweet, while somewhere, someone is floating the idea of America competing against… who? Belarus? Kazakhstan? In a song contest nobody in the West has thought about since the Cold War? It’s so perfectly, exquisitely absurd. It’s almost beautiful. Almost.
So here’s to the birthday boy. To the king of the deal that falls apart, the master of the venture that tanks, the architect of the foreign policy that makes enemies stronger and allies nervous. May his next year be as spectacularly, predictably, undeniably unsuccessful as his last fifty years in business.
Now, bartender. Another whiskey. And maybe put on something loud. Something that drowns out the sound of empires crumbling and reality bending. Something that isn’t a military march. System of a Down might seem appropriate, BYOB!
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