{"id":43980,"date":"2025-09-17T11:50:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T18:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=43980"},"modified":"2025-09-17T11:50:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T18:50:13","slug":"book-lucky-loser-how-donald-trump-squandered-his-fathers-fortune-and-created-the-illusion-of-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/09\/17\/book-lucky-loser-how-donald-trump-squandered-his-fathers-fortune-and-created-the-illusion-of-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Book: “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Russ Buettner<\/a>,\u00a0Susanne Craig<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters behind the 2018 bombshell\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0expos\u00e9 of then-President Trump\u2019s finances, an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump\u2019s wealth, revealing how one of the country\u2019s biggest business failures lied his way into the White House<\/strong>

Soon after announcing his first campaign for the U.S. presidency, Donald J. Trump told a national television audience that life \u201chas not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me.\u201d Building on a narrative he had been telling for decades, he spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar business and real estate empire. This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country\u2014except none of it was true. Born to a rich father who made him the beneficiary of his own highly lucrative investments, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today via means that required no business expertise.

For decades he squandered his fortunes on money-losing businesses only to be saved yet again by financial serendipity. He tacked his name on every building while taking out huge loans he\u2019d never repay. He obsessed over appearances while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits against city officials. He tarnished the value of his name by allowing anyone with a big enough check to use it, and he cheated the television producer who not only rescued him from bankruptcy but also cast him as a business savant\u2014the public image that carried Trump to the White House.

Drawing on more than twenty years\u2019 worth of Trump\u2019s confidential tax information\u2014including the tax returns Trump tried to conceal\u2014alongside business records and interviews with Trump insiders,\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0investigative reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig track Trump’s financial rise and fall\u2014and rise and fall again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Goodreads.com)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success Russ Buettner,\u00a0Susanne Craig From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters behind the 2018 bombshell\u00a0New York Times\u00a0expos\u00e9 of then-President Trump\u2019s finances, an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump\u2019s wealth, revealing how one of the country\u2019s biggest… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43980"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43981,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43980\/revisions\/43981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}