Sunday, November 1, 2015

Donald Trump's 1968-74 Rent-Collecting Job and Trump Family-McDonald's Deal Lobbying Experience Revisited

Between 1968 and 1974, celebrity deal-maker and 2016 Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump apparently spent a lot more time collecting rents from tenants in the Brooklyn residential apartments of the Trump family business (that he both inherited and managed) and lobbying local Democratic Party elected officials like then New York City Comptroller [and future New York City Mayor] Abe Beame to approve his family's Trump Village deal with McDonald's--despite local Brooklyn neighborhood opposition to this Trump Village business deal--than he spent studying U.S. domestic and foreign policy issues. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, noted:

"...He [Donald Trump] took on the title of president of an assortment of Trump entities. With Fred [Trump II] as chairman of the boards, Donald [Trump] lay claim to the management of 48 privately held corporations and 15 family partnerships. Between his arrival in 1968 and 1974...his principal job was managing 10,000 to 22,000 apartments...The dollar value of this empire...was said to be as little as $40 million [the equivalent of around $250 million in 2015 dollars] and...as much as $100 million [the equivalent of around $620 million in 2015 dollars]...The job was basically a matter of collecting rent and making repairs...

"...Donald [Trump] and Fred [Trump II] plied their local and citywide political connections, including comptroller Abe Beame, to override neighborhood opposition and open a McDonald's franchise on the extra land the City had sold Fred [Trump II] for Trump Village...With Donald [Trump] doing his first behind-the-scenes lobbying, the Trumps were able to sign a lucrative lease with the fast-food chain...

"...[Then-] City Council President Paul O'Dwyer denounced it as `a windfall' for the Trumps, atop everything else they had already taken out of the Trump Village project..."

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