Nope, I respectfully disagree. Trump is a fuck-up in the purest sense. He's consistently managed to fuck his way up to the next level (I don't mean in the carnal sense, just in terms of an odd combination of scrupulousness, idiocy, and greed). When he got elected, I said he was going to do to the country what he did to Atlantic City, and damned if he didn't exceed all expectations.

The way he survived the AC debacle was that he borrowed a billion dollars to open his casino (which he did against the express orders of the NJ gaming commission). Then he turned around and used those losses as a write-off against his other businesses (otherwise, he'd have even more bankruptcies).

It's a cardinal rule in taxes that you don't write off other people's losses, but what the fuck does Trump care about that sort of thing? His lawyers managed to find a loophole that let him do it, and it was borderline-legal even so. The federal gov't subsequently closed that loophole. Trump's always been lucky that way, I'll give him that.

BTW, the NYC gangster class thinks he's a joke.