Donald Trump's time in the White House could hurt his business significantly, with new vision emerging of an eerily empty Trump hotel. Photo / Getty
Donald Trump's time in the White House could hurt his business significantly, with new vision emerging of an eerily empty Trump hotel. Photo / Getty
Over the past five years, Donald Trump repeatedly bragged about the quality of his hotels to world leaders, reporters and basically anyone else who would listen.
"I have a lot of hotels all over the place, and people, they use them because they're the best," the 74-year-old told reporters in 2019.
"We haven't found anything that could even come close to competing with it," he gloated of his Florida resorts to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But now, in his second week post-presidency, the cost of the self-described billionaire's time in the Oval Office on his businesses has been revealed.
Donald Trump, along with his children Eric, Donald Jr and Ivanka, breaking ground at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. in July, 2014. Photo / Getty
Video emerged this week of the famed Trump International Hotel's lobby in Washington DC – once brimming with lobbyists, White House officials and Trump supporters – now eerily vacant.
In typical Trump form, the hotel's manager spoke in hyperbole when questioned by The New York Times over the empty space – which has a 625-person capacity, yet held only eight guests – insisting they are "doing very well" and "are looking forward to welcoming many travellers back to DC over the next few months".
But a financial disclosure report released last week by The New York Times showed the Trump hotel in Washington had suffered a 63 per cent decline in revenue, dropping to US$15.1 million (NZ$21m).
While his son, Eric Trump, who serves as executive vice president of the Trump Organisation, attributed the revenue loss to Covid-19 and policies in the city that have the closure of the hotel's restaurants and bars, even before the pandemic many of his resorts were bleeding millions of dollars a year.
Trump had "burned through" much of his cash and easy-to-sell assets, yet personally guaranteed repayment of a US$100m (NZ$139m) loan on Trump Tower next year; US$125m (NZ$174m) on his Doral golf resort in Florida in 2023; and U$S170m (NZ$236m) on Washington's Trump International Hotel in 2024.
The hotel in Washington isn't the only venue paying the price of the Trump presidency. Once-loyal members of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida have fled since Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, shedding themselves of any connection to the former leader just as he arrived there.
"It's a very dispirited place," historian and author of Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump's Presidential Palace, Laurence Leamer, told MSNBC over the weekend.
He added members are "not concerned about politics and they said the food is no good".
"It's a sad place," he said. "It's not what it was."
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel recounted a dinner at the club before Trump became president on The Ringer's The Bill Simmons Podcast, describing it as covered in photos of its owner and "just quiet and a terrible place".
"Even here, people don't like him," Leamer said of Palm Beach's residents – many of whom voted for Mr Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections in hopes of lower taxes and a booming stock market.
"It's just another measure of how his power has declined."
Trump is 'so reputationally toxic that a lot of financial institutions won't want to do business with him', one Georgetown professor said. Photo / Getty
While in the past Trump could pull himself out of similar binds by banking on his mainstream marketability and television stardom, the chaotic, final months of his presidency have eroded any of the charm or gravitas he once held.
"Donald Trump will be remembered as the first president to be impeached twice," Matthew Continetti, journalist fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the BBC.
"He fed the myth that the election was stolen, summoned his supporters to Washington to protest the certification of the Electoral College vote, told them that only through strength could they take back their country, and stood by as they stormed the US Capitol and interfered in the operation of constitutional government.
"When historians write about his presidency, they will do so through the lens of the riot."
Had he "followed the example of his predecessors and conceded power graciously and peacefully, he would have been remembered as a disruptive but consequential populist leader", Continetti said.
But the "attack on democracy" that was January 6 – when Trump's reputation was already on a knife's edge – saw his "last-ditch lenders vow to cut him off".
As Georgetown University's Professor Adam J Levinton, who focuses on finance and bankruptcy, told The Times, "Trump is so reputationally toxic that a lot of financial institutions won't want to do business with him."
