Over the past two to three years, we’ve heard a lot about Donald Trump’s various business forays that extended beyond his real estate domain. Among the enterprises: Trump steaks (tough like the boss with fat around the edges), Trump wine (not prized on the grapevine), Trump Shuttle (barely took off before it was financially grounded), Trump University ($25 million in court-ordered refunds).
But there’s one venture that hasn’t gotten much publicity. Trump took part in a video-phone business for a few years before it collapsed. We know about this one because in 2008 we were invited to a party in which about 40 people attended. We were provided with food and a business pitch. You could get in on the ground floor and then talk others into getting involved and they would work for you. In other words, a typical pyramid scheme.
The evening included a video presentation by Trump. I remember it was the first time I’d ever heard Trump give any kind of business pitch, and I was shocked by how much he sounded like a crass carnie barker.
The person who invited us is a long-time friend and she knew we probably wouldn’t be interested, but she was trying to impress her mentor by getting lots of people to show up at her condo for the presentation. The idea was that extended families and friends would all buy the machine and you could see the person you’re conversing with. Sound familiar?
If it was 1985, it might’ve been an interesting venture. But by 2008, Skype had been around for five years and was free. Why, we wondered, would anyone buy into this business much less the machine itself. Maybe the answer to that question is that Trump was promoting it. After all, as we know, about a third of the country is buying into the current scam that he’s running out of the White House.
Here are the first couple of paragraphs of an article about Trump’s involvement in the video-phone con that appeared on a web site called PyramidSchemeAlert.org. on August 10, 2011. It was headlined: Hyped by Donald Trump, ACN Video phone Business may be Collapsing.
“Donald Trump tells Americans that it is a technology breakthrough, a wave of the future; everybody will own one; better get in now! He is personally endorsing and hyping the “revolutionary IRIS V Video Phone”, the flagship product and the new icon of the multi-level marketing company, ACN, for which Donald Trump serves as pitchman-in-chief. He trumpets the video phone on Celebrity Apprentice. ACN, for its part, promotes Donald Trump all over its website and at all its recruitment meetings. “If Donald Trump says this phone is a hot new item, who can doubt it?” is the message ACN sends to hundreds of thousands of consumers.
“But the latest disclosures to the SEC by the video phone’s manufacturer, WorldGate Communications, indicate the market for this device has collapsed. Demand for this product – if it ever existed in the real marketplace – is vanishing. The top management of the company has resigned. Orders from ACN have been drastically cut back. The value of the stock of the phone manufacturer has been virtually wiped out. The company reported to the SEC that it may seek bankruptcy protection very soon.”
Maybe it’s an overstatement to say that everything and everyone who come into contact with Donald Trump eventually ends up in a bad place. But, hey, there’s a lot of evidence to support that contention, and unfortunately for all of us, we are likely to see much more in the new year.
And that certainly is true. He has shutdown a sizable portion of the government going on three weeks, soon to be the longest ever shutdown. Everything he touches…
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Postscript
A wall synchro, you gotta love this one unearthed by the Daily Show
Trump in a 2004 speech to students: “Never, ever give up. Don’t give up. Don’t allow it to happen. If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it. Go over it. Go around it. But get to the other side of that wall.”
See it here:
https://slate.com/culture/2019/01/trevor-noah-trump-commencement-address-daily-show-walls.html
I am appalled that one man can have the power to shut down a government because he is having a tantrum demanding that he get his Great Wall of Trump (which he promised Mexico would pay for. Now it seems that the American people must pay for it OR ELSE, to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. ) On top of the record breaking deficit the republicans have already run up. Billions and billions of dollars that, by the way, will not be spent on the environment, disaster victims, homeless veterans, people in need of medicine, education, or cultural enrichment. No, it will be spent on a wall that experts across the board have demonstrated would be useless. The president and his reactionary cronies, not to mention all the contractors who are drooling at the mouth for those pricey contracts…..never seem to have heard about planes. Which go over walls. Or ladders. Or tunnels, like the many effective ones that go under the Nogales wall, for example, or the one near San Luis. (I live less than two hours from the border, and am quite used to this issue). Here’s John Oliver with a few funny, but true, statistics about the wall: https://youtu.be/vU8dCYocuyI
I might also add that all those Mexican cleaning ladies and Honduran grape pickers (who American farmers have come to depend on) and desperate mothers fleeing gang violence in Guatamala hardly represent a “security crisis”. Border crossing is lower now than it has been in 25 years, by the way.
That he may even make it a federal “emergency”. This stinks of a dictatorship instead of a democracy.
Republican Michael Gerson really nailed it, calling Trump’s actions creeping authoritarianism. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-turning-a-budget-crisis-into-a-constitutional-crisis–all-for-a-fools-impulse/2019/01/10/136b7064-1516-11e9-90a8-136fa44b80ba_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6431c183e98e
I would call it full blown fascist authoritarianism. We are deeply in danger as a democracy the more this goes on………
I totally agree.
Amazingly, one out of every three or four people think he’s just fine, not a criminal, not a madman, not a chronic liar (they all lie, is their retort). Our next door neighbors are fully on board with him, and they are church-going Bible thumpers. Go figure.
Here’s a fact check on Trump’s claim that Mexico will indirectly pay for the wall. He needs to be fact-checked daily because he’s a chronic liar, and there are gullible people who actually believe him. But we’re not giving those people a platform on this blog. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/10/fact-check-mexico-border-wall-1073928
Always good to have a Trump apologist aboard. Did you buy one of his videophones?
We don’t need a wall, BH. We need someone in office who actually governs instead of creating dramas every five minutes. He’s still a carnie act.
I agree agree agree with you. I am astounded at how many believe this liar.
However, a couple of FOX News host-journalists have begun calling out Trump and his administration on the obvious lies. Shep Smith responded to Trump’s Oval Office talk with a clear fact-checking session that destroyed Trump’s reasoning for a wall.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/fox-news-shep-smith-debunks-trumps-border-claims-just-seconds-says/
Meanwhile, Chris Wallace skewed Ms. Sanders for her lies about the dangers of terrorists entering the Southern border. Instead of 4,000 stops of terrorist suspects, there were six for the first half of 2018. Meanwhile, there were seven times that stopped at the northern border. Good going Smith and Wallace!