The New York State judge in Donald Trump's civil defamation lawsuits has denied Trump's request to reduce or eliminate his obligation to post a bond for the full $93 million dollar judgement for penalties and interest. It seems certain the judge in his larger civil fraud trial and its whopping $455 million dollar judgement will come to the same decision shortly.
Trump CLEARLY does not have the cash nor can he produce it even with fire sales of some of his assets. It seems pretty clear at this point that one of Trump's many, MANY problems is that he probably understands very little about accounting, even when he really needs to. He and his lawyers stated under oath and in court documents during these cases that he was worth $14 billion dollars. His current judgments total about $554 million dollars. That's 4.0% of $14 billion. Most smart billionaires like to keep some powder dry, some cash in their pocket in case some incredible buy comes up. Might be a new IPO. Might be a deal with a buddy with can't miss potential. Might be some dumb-ass having to unload an asset to cover some other business failure, divorce settlement, etc.
Trump has ALWAYS been highly leveraged from the 1970s through today. He maintains virtually zero cash because he is either a) spending it to maintain appearances of a much wealthier person as part of his business charade or b) using it to pay transaction fees as he constantly rolls over existing debt that hasn't been paid down into new loans. That's one problem. The other problem is that Trump and his ADHD-addled, narcissistic mind likely does not understand the difference between the VALUE OF A PROPERTY he "owns" and the value of his SHARE of the property. Other than Mar-a-lago, I would guess Trump owns 100% of virtually none of the properties he lists in his mind as his. I would estimate on MANY of those properties, he only owns a twenty percent interest. Even if one believes his PROPERTIES might be worth $14 billion dollars, his OWNERSHIP share of those assets is likely far below 100%, meaning he ISN'T worth $14 billion dollars. He might be only worth twenty percent or $2.8 billion and NONE of that has ANY liquidity.
And everything up until now? The plotting? The riot? The doing nothing during the riot? The illegal relocation, housing and failure to return national security documents upon subpoena? The two civil defamation suits? The civil fraud trial? The four criminal indictments?
Those are NOTHING.
THIS is when the real problems start.
An individual who just cemented the nomination of a major party to run for President of the United States is literally broke, in every meaningful sense of the word and owes over ONE HALF BILLION DOLLARS as ajudicated in the American legal system. The judgment for his civil fraud trial put his company under a microscope for all business transactions but did NOT subject his personal accounts to the same external review. He will be literally accepting any visitor to Mar-a-lago to take in contributions to sustain his lifestyle while continuing to fend off four prosecutions involving crimes that strike at the heart of our democracy and threaten its very survival.
What do the potential conflicts of interest look like for America? Elon Musk already made the trek to Florida to discuss SOMETHING with Trump. Does anyone think they talked about battery charging standards for autos? Control system design for rocket systems? What else could the world's richest individual have to talk about with the world's neediest individual who needs tens of millions in cash per month to sustain efforts to keep him out of jail? What could Musk expect from someone so cash-strapped? Well, if that person becomes President again, he could throw a lot more money at Elon Musk for defense / spy satellite launches. He could manipulate auto and labor regulations in ways to aid a major car maker navigating uncertain markets for battery electric vehicles. He could manipulate regulation of social media providers in ways that could help Musk while harming the country.
March 7, 2024 happens to be the planned date for the State of the Union address of the President to Congress and the public. Biden will attempt to outline his accomplishments so far in steering the American economy out of a COVID funk better than any other western economy, his work to provide student debt relief to millions of college graduates and efforts to provide significant, sustained funding to beef up infrastructure of all types across the country to counter decades of decay and underfunding and evolve for a more climate-friendly electrified future. All very notable accomplishments and goals. However, the impact of those efforts will be completely undone if Donald Trump becomes beholden to more domestic and foreign billionaires in his efforts to climb out of his own legal and financial black hole.
If Trump regains power, it is one hundred percent certain he will do so on the shoulders of some of the most corrupt players on the world stage and even more corrupt players currently hiding backstage. And no one gives a half billion dollars to someone else without expecting something in return. They already know Trump is not good for the money. But no worries. A man that dumb and corrupt is good for other many other things.
WTH
