Literary Corner: Born Under a Trump Sign

Donald's Blues

By Donald J. Trump

I was treated really badly during the election.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that I’m treated even worse.
I’m treated bad.
And I’m working hard.

This job is from an economic —
you know, I get a kick out of these people saying
“Oh, a rich Arab stayed at his hotel,”
you know, I’ll bet you,
between opportunity cost and actual cost, you know
but I lost massive amounts of money doing this job.

I was treated really badly during the election.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that I’m treated even worse.
I’m treated bad.
And I’m working hard.

This is not the money.
This is, this is one of the great losers of all time.
You know fortunately I don’t need money.
This is one of the great losers of all time.

But they’ll say that somebody from some country stayed at a hotel.
And I’ll say “Yeah.” But I lose, I mean, the numbers are incredible.

I was treated really badly during the election.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that I’m treated even worse.
I’m treated bad.
And I’m working hard.

If it wasn't for Arabs, wouldn't have no guests at all. Text from A.G. Sulzberger's interview of the president of the United States.

It's pretty well known that the presidency hasn't been at all good for the business.

“He can be very polarizing. ... The brand has been diminished,” says Jeff Lotman, CEO of licensing firm Global Icons. New York brand consultant Robert Passikoff puts it more bluntly: “The Trump brand has lost its mojo.”

Though it’s difficult to know just how badly Trump’s privately held businesses are hurting, Associated Press interviews with two dozen club members, condo buyers and real estate experts suggest the impact has been broad and sustained, with the same political divisions among voters playing out on the links and in clubhouses and condo board meetings.

But it doesn't look like he was planning it as a sacrifice:

Those familiar with him saw his 2016 run as a surreal marketing strategy, and Trump has said as much, telling Fortune way back in 2000, “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” Since his unexpected ascent to the White House, Trump has tried to leverage the trappings of the presidency to benefit his commercial projects, from visits to his golf courses to hosting summits at Mar-a-Lago to launching a new hotel-licensing business aimed at his voters.

As far as the rich Arab staying at his hotel, if we're talking about 500 room-nights paid by Saudi Arabian lobbyists to house veterans in the Old Post Office hotel where they demonstrate against a congressional proposal to allow 9/11 victims' families to sue the Kingdom, plus 218 room-nights for unidentified Saudis at the Trump International in Chicago and some unknown but very large amount of money on a party attached to Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman at the Trump International in Manhattan, the big question is whether Trump is doing anything in return, like combating Congress's attempts to end US support for the Kingdom's brutal war on Yemen, or refusing to believe (in a way that is eerily reminiscent of his refusal to believe that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin had anything to do with the foreign interference in the 2016 election) that the Crown Prince had any involvement in the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

If he's selling himself too cheap, that's his problem.