Failure

The Failed Trump Tower Tampa

http://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/post/emails-offer-window-failed-trump-tower-tampa?fbclid=IwAR32cLkZZ8H5D9eIXmiS7ukAnuTyF_B-8Ztl1x8BaCqwLP-HyMcF1dNTzMk

In November 2007, The Wall Street Journal infuriated Donald Trump with an article that dissected his recent real estate setbacks. Headlined “Stalled Condo Projects Tarnish Trump’s Name,” the report raised doubt about what the mogul treasured — and banked on — most in business: the value of his personal brand.

Trump responded with a 512-word letter to the editor. Calling the story “one of the most ridiculous I have read in many years,” he complained that it ignored his “tremendous successes with massive projects” and instead focused on “small jobs” in the Florida cities of Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. He dismissed both as licensing deals “for which I am not responsible for development.”

Trump’s reaction offers another capsule of his habit of twisting the truth regarding his real estate deals — one of the patterns revealed in a recent ProPublica and WNYC investigation, “Pump and Trump,” which focused on a deal in Panama. That article concluded that, contrary to the Trumps’ longtime claims that they merely licensed their name, they were deeply involved in their deals.

A trove of until-now unreported emails from inside the Trump Organization, unearthed during a lawsuit against the company filed after the Tampa project collapsed — the building was never constructed — sheds light not only on a U.S. Trump project, but also provides a rare glimpse inside the organization. (The suit, filed by people who had paid deposits in advance to buy condo units, was eventually settled, with the buyers receiving partial refunds of their deposits.) The documents provide copious detail on one of the “small jobs” that Trump would later claim he had merely lent his name to. And they reveal the same patterns of behavior seen in “Pump and Trump.”