(Douglas Gorenstein/NBC via AP)
Liz Mair hits Donald Trump where it counts — right in the money:
Trump has a track record of piling up his businesses with unsustainable debt, and then having them file for bankruptcy. Per CNN Money, “no major US company has filed for Chapter 11 more than Trump’s casino empire in the last 30 years.” Under Trump’s leadership, just a few years ago, his company missed a $53.1 million bond interest payment—kind of a big deal. And lest Trump try to delude anyone into thinking that these bankruptcies were all just clever corporate maneuverings with no effects for him personally, note that to pay off creditors, he has had to offload huge shareholdings, yachts, and airlines.
As President, one wonders, exactly how much more national debt would Trump pile up? How much would he cause America to default on? And how bad would the impact of his debt policies be for ordinary Americans—just a bit painful, or something much worse? For all his bleating about Asian lenders dictating to America and America getting screwed in the process, it’s hard to imagine that with his private-sector propensity for taking on massive debt to finance grandiose schemes, Trump wouldn’t similarly borrow extensively from the Chinese to finance big government spending, perhaps on a socialized or other big government health care program of the type he strongly supports. And while he is personally wealthy enough to withstand the consequences of bad decision-making, the same cannot be said of the average American family or indeed the average Trump Organization employee.
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