Could Donald Trump take a page out of former BFF Rudy Giuliani’s book and become the first former President of the United States to shoot happy birthday videos for your gun-toting grandma on Cameo? Never say never!
As Raw Story reports, at least one reporter with deep knowledge of the financial predicament Trump could find himself in following his very public parting of the ways with Mazars USA, his longtime personal and business accounting firm, predicts that the former president is going to need to start offloading some assets—and fast. Susanne Craig, an investigative reporter with The New York Times who has been covering Trump’s financial dealings for several years now, appeared on MSNBC on Thursday night to talk about what the fallout from being dumped by Mazars for a decade worth of suspicious financial statements could mean in the short-term. And what Craig sees is: Everything must go!
Trump’s biggest issue, according to Craig, are the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of loans that are about to come due—and how/whether he’ll be able to renegotiate the terms on them. “If this was a public company, you’d be like, ‘Wow!,’” Craig said. “It would just be so much trouble for them. I think their stock would tank. There would be so many ramifications.”
Though a $100 million loan on Trump Tower will be the first to come due, Craig believes that Trump is in a good position there, as the lender is Donald-friendly. From there, however, “there are other loans that are going to be more difficult,” she said, pointing to his Doral golf club, which he borrowed from Deutsche Bank on, as one example.
“Deutsche Bank has been signaling that they may not want to do new business with him,” Craig said. “None of this is good news. And when you think about how he’s going to have to handle this immediate debt, there’s going to be potentially higher rates, and in some cases I wonder who the lender is going to end up being.”
According to Craig, Trump’s recent decision to sell his Washington, D.C. hotel was a surprise—and indicative of an immediate need to raise cash by selling assets. “He must need cash, or he wouldn’t be selling it,” she said. “And I think we’re going to potentially see other asset sales here. Very few of the main assets, golf courses that he has, are making money. He’s got golf courses overseas, none of them are making money. It’s the exception when he has a business that is making money.”
You can watch the full interview below:
(Via Raw Story)