Friday, December 05, 2008

Swallow Before Reading!

If not, don't blame me if you spray your drink all over your keyboard. From a piece in today's NYT: Trump Sees Act of God in Recession:
By Mr. Trump’s account, sales [of condos in the Trump International Hotel and Tower] were going great until “the real estate market in Chicago suffered a severe downturn” and the bankers made it worse by “creating the current financial crisis.”

Those assertions are made in what The New York Times’s Floyd Norris calls a fascinating lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump, the real estate developer, television personality and best-selling author, in an effort to avoid paying $40 million that he personally guaranteed on a construction loan that Deutsche Bank says is due and payable.

Rather than have to pay the $40 million, Mr. Trump thinks the bank should pay him $3 billion for undermining the project and damaging his reputation....

Mr. Trump is vigilant in protecting his reputation... after Mr. Norris interviewed him and two associates, his general counsel sent Mr. Norris a note saying “it was a pleasure” talking to him, and adding: “Please be assured that if your article is not factually correct, we will have no choice but to sue you and The New York Times.”

Read the whole thing; it only gets better. The penultimate graf--and Deutsche Bank's legal filing--has a quote from Trump's 2007 bestseller, Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life:
“I figured it was the bank’s problem, not mine. What the hell did I care? I actually told one bank, ‘I told you you shouldn’t have loaned me that money. I told you the goddamn deal was no good.’ ”

1 comment:

Shauna Roberts said...

How arrogant and self-centered.