The Chaser Report - Trump's Sneakiest Business Move Yet

Episode Date: February 25, 2024

Donald Trump owes over half a billion dollars as a result of his recent losses in court, so what genius business move has he done to make a quick buck? Dom and Charles have all the Trump news you need (and a little about Taylor Swift too, because we can't help ourselves). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, we've led a big subject slide in recent weeks, as we've been talking about Taylor Swift and asbestos and all the good stuff. Donald Trump has gotten up to some pretty extraordinary things recently. Just to clarify, we're recording this in February 2024. So, you know, if you're getting confused because you're thinking,

Oh, we're listening to a Donald Trump episode from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2020, 2021, 2021, or 2022. No, no, no. This is 2024. It's happening now. And it'd be pretty amazing to hear a 2017 one because the podcast didn't start until 2020. But you know what I mean? Like, it's always the truth. It does seem as though we're always.

But I might be almost ready. And I know that history is full of people being wrong saying this. But I think it could be just about done, Charles. What? No. That is literally a joke in the John Oliver show that everyone keeps on saying, oh, he's done, and then... Oh, I don't mean his political career. He's obviously going to be the next president. I mean his business career. I think the Trump organization might finally get flushed down in the big golden toilet.

Because the man is getting desperate. Really? How desperate, Charles? Sneaker con. Desperate. This happened last week. We got to talk about it after this. So, Charles, were you aware of sneaker con? Are you a sneaker collector? Do you like fancy shoes?

Yeah. I mean, you know, it's one of those things you dream of going to, isn't it? Absolutely. You know, one day I'll make it to sneaker con. It's sort of like the comic con for even bigger losers. Yeah, that's right. It's people, they don't like pop culture. Like, maybe even the nerdy bits of pop culture.

They just want sneakers, collectible sneakers. And so Donald Trump, the day after getting hit with these record fines, and this is why I think he might kind of be over potentially. at least in a business sense, is he owes 600 million US dollars out of these two judgments that he's lost. Let's talk about what they're for before I play the audio of SneakerCon, because it's quite special. So the first one was the defamation of E.J. and Carol, the writer who claims Donald Trump sexually

assaulted her many years ago, I think in a department store in New York City, and he denied it. She sued. The jury found her convincing, so in other words, he's been proven in court that he's a rapist, not that anyone seemed to care. He denied it again, so she sued him for defamation again and won again. And the damages, I think, was something like $83 million US dollars. So that was, for most presidential candidates, that would be reasonably fatal.

Yes, yes, exactly. Yep. There's nothing more to say. I mean, it was John Edward? It was accused of sexual harassment or something like that. Anyway, it would end most careers. But, of course, in this one, it's just normal. Just like having a porn star saying that you slept with them

and convincing you describe your penis in their book, just normal. stuff that happens to people who are well qualified for president. But then this is the case brought by New York City. District Attorney. Yeah, brought by the District Attorney in Manhattan, I think. And this is to do with fraud. And basically what the Trumps did for years is they would inflate their assets for some applications for loans and stuff and deflate them, essentially just lie on their forms. Now, it's a long time since I applied for a mortgage, Charles. Are you supposed to tell the truth on those forms? Or can you just make shit up? I can't remember. Well, I mean, is the truth. When you've got a name like Trump, then, you know, the vast majority of the worth

of something is tied up in in the name of it, which is an intangible asset. I think that's what he says. I think he says, you know, the Trump brand is worth hundreds of billions of dollars as part of the application. So the thing is like, yeah, sure, the house that I bought might be worth, I don't know, a million dollars, right? The moment I buy it and it's got the first name on it, then suddenly people go, oh, I'll only pay half a million for there. That's right. There's this sort of damage. It's like a house

where a murder's been done. That's right. Exactly. Yeah, but this is basically what he argues. So he massively inflates and deflates the values of assets like Trump Tower and so on. Apparently you're not meant to do that. The damages for that are something like, $530 billion, some crazy amount of money

all up. So he owes more than half a billion dollars in payouts at this stage. How's he going to get the money from? I hate to admit this though, Dom. No, see, the thing that they're not taking into account is you can get a judgment against you, right? But enforcing that judgment is a whole other thing. Because if you, if a judge, it's all fine for a judge to say, you owe half a billion dollars to the state of New York.

But that doesn't mean anything unless you then pursue him for the money, right? Like, he can just hide. Like, he can just literally not write a check. Can you imagine a guy running for president had lots of predefined events trying to hide? That's a sitcom. That's a movie we should make.

Yes. Because it's true. You've got to hire, I've been involved in trying to enforce judgments. And we ended up having to hire a private investigator to track this person so that we could actually serve him with further documents to get him to pay up.

Has there ever been anyone easier to find than that? Donald Trump, the world's loudest and most conspicuous man. Well, apparently, Charles, look, I don't claim to be an expert on New York law, but my understanding is he has to either pay the money. He's appealing it, I think, but he's got to pay the money in the meantime into a trust or something or get like some sort of bail bond agreement. You can get a loan to do it.

I wonder how they'll check out the value of his assets to get that loan. But he can't get a loan. One of the judgments was he's not allowed to engage with any financial institution based in New York. No, no, but he can get a bail bond. He can get a bail. What I think will probably happen, just for the good of democracy, is that Jared Kushner will cut some sort of a deal where he gets to own his father-in-law just

for purely kind of weird, weird psychological reasons. Technical legal reasons. Yeah, and well, that will actually mean that Donald Trump is owned by Qatar and all the Saudis. Presumably, MBS will just buy Donald Trump at this point. Yeah, because can't he just convert some of the rubles that he's got? And also, doesn't he have like $2.2 billion, Dom? Like, isn't the whole point that he keeps saying that he's got... Or is that also he's got a dollar, but because his name is attached to it, it's worth $2.2 billion.

I think no one actually knows it. But it is clear that he owns a whole bunch of properties. But, of course, they're pretty hard to turn into ready cash within 30 days. So we'll see what happens on this front. But, Charles, this is where we come in. And this is why I think he might actually be very much desperate for money, is because he turned up the day after the judgment and he was at sneaker con selling the world's most ostentatious sneakers for $399 a pop they're amazing they're gold colored

they've got sort of you know American flag a detailing on them and they're called victory 47 because if he wins he'll be the 47th president of the United States and so imagine you're a sneaker head you're just going to the sneaker con and you want to find out of the latest shoes and this fuck with turns up So thank you very much. And we have a few young ladies that are up here crying. Look at you with the Trump 2024. Thank you, darling.

I love you too. Wow. A lot of emotion. There's a lot of emotion in this world. Thank you. Charles, I don't know. I've never run a presidential campaign, but is it a good thing if your candidate gets loudly booed at an appearance?

Well, Tom, I mean, there's a lot of theories on that. How many people go to sneak it con? Like, I'm guessing not more than... A few thousand. No, it's not exactly a massive rally. It's not exactly a Taylor Swift concert. So then, you know, like, okay, let's say 10% of people at SneakerCon go, yeah, that's a collectible or buy it. So you're talking at most, what?

Half a million dollars? Like, at very most. If you sell a thousand sneakers, you're making $400,000. It's a drop in the ocean. It's not, yeah, exactly. Like, what is going on? But I just love that his immediate reaction is, let's just sell some shit. Yeah, yeah.

That's not the most cringe-inducing appearance that Donald Trump's made in public in the past week. I've got that for you after this. The Chaser report, less news, more often. Now, Charles, last week on the podcast, we did a whole episode talking about Alexei Navalny, the assassinated Russian opposition leader who killed by Vladimir Putin.

Can you guess what Donald Trump's response were? The two important parts of his response to the situation, and he kind of had it both ways a little bit here. Sure, I mean, even Tucker Carlson condemned Navalny's death. Or did, oh, so did he suck up to Putin and go? He didn't, he didn't criticize Putin. Are you kidding me? Yeah, no.

They still got the pee-pee tape. So did he go, well, Navalny was a bit of a scoundrel anyway or something? No, he was sort of expressed sadness about Navalny's death, but certainly didn't blame anyone for it. There hasn't been a full inquiry into who's responsible. And you know, Donald Trump doesn't like to assign blame before there's been due process. He's not someone who's randomly says shit. That was step one in his response to Navalny. And then what does someone with a narcissistic personality disorder do, Charles, with any bit of news?

Makes it about themselves. Oh, so Trump is the Navalny of America. Bizarrely. He's being persecuted. Bizarrely, despite not wanting to criticize Putin, he made this analogy. I got indicted four times. I have eight or nine trials all because of the fact that I'm, and you know this, all because of the fact that I'm in politics. It is a form of Navalny.

It is a form of communism or fascism. So it's a form of Navalny in what they're doing to him. Yes, yes. And if Donald Trump wants to continue the analogy and be killed to make his point, I mean, that's okay. Yeah, Novachok to the underwear. He does have Trump-branded underwear who he used to anyway. You know, I've never told you the story of,

I went to the Trump Hotel when it first opened in Washington. Did you? Yeah, in D.C. And it is quite an extraordinary experience because it's a converter. I think it's the old post office or something. Yeah, it was the post office. That's why there was the whole issue of him basically using federal resources for his own purposes. It's just an amazing building.

And garishly, as you'd imagine, garrishly fitted out with just awful teal and green velveteen couches, you know, gold gilt couches and stuff. But the thing that was hilarious was, you know, the bar was serving Trump-branded wine. Yes. And the only steak you could order was a Trump steak. And it was hilarious. Like, you'd order a bottle of the Trump-branded wine. And it was like, it was like made in Ohio. Well, this is the thing.

I mean, one of the things that I did a few years ago, I wrote a whole book about Donald Trump called Trumppedia, where I basically looked at his past history. And there are so many hilarious details about what he did, you know, before we were kind of aware of him with The Apprentice. And the Trump wine is absolutely part of it. Like, I found all these reviews of it, which basically compared it to Catspice. He marketed his own Trump steaks that he sold through. You know the sharper image, that weird story that they have in New York? It's just very, very odd businesses.

But Charles, if you went to the Trump at Washington, D.C. today, guess what you'd find? Is it, is it bought it off because they found asbestos? Wouldn't that be great? No, it's not called the Trump in now. National Hotel anymore. It's now called the Waldorf Astoria, Washington, D.C. He sold it. The moment he couldn't grift off being president anymore and have,

because what happened when it operated while he was president around the corner was that, of course, all the Saudi diplomats and whatever, they all stayed there and paid way above rack rate to just as a way of legally, or sort of legally, funneling money to Donald Trump. It's now, he has had to sell out of it. And that's another reason why he might be short on money, Charles. Yeah, right, okay. So let's run through the scenario.

Trump doesn't pay Because Trump doesn't like giving away money So Trump doesn't pay any of the judgments No He runs down the clock Appeals appeals appeals It gets to November He gets elected president

Because Joe Biden Is essentially one foot in a coffin anyway He might be more than one foot by November as well It's like no one wishes anyone to die But he's not in his best shape Is he? I mean let's be honest I know everyone keeps saying

He was fit in private meetings and stuff But she's pretty daughtering trying to brainstorm the front cover for the next chaser annual. Unfortunately, you've got to come up with at least a placeholder cover really early on in the year, right? So even though it's about the end of the year. So I was mucking around with AI trying to get it to generate, you know, images. And the one thing that especially chat GPT and, you know, their image generating versions, which is like called Dali, are very strict about is we will not create unrealistic images of public figures.

Like, if you say generate Donald Trump fucking a horse, it'll say, no, I'm not doing that. Or presumably generate a youthful Joe Biden is also impossible. Yeah. No. But so what I did, I asked it to do an image of Joe Biden as a skeleton, right? That's not a bad bet. It just gave me, it gave me four really great choices for what Joe Biden would look like. And I'll tell you what, you can't really tell the difference.

Like, it's very slight. That's presumably just a skeleton with aviators on, is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But that's a guy on here, Charles. There is literally one. Wow, that it really is a skeleton in aviators. It's all called aviators, Charles. That's very funny.

That's a very good choice because that fits all scenarios. Like if he dies, a little bit intensitive, but perfect. No, this is the thing. I think actually the likely scenario is he does die. And so therefore, it's actually, it is poor taste to have. When's that ever stopped me before? I would have thought you'd love the publicity from that. You're getting old.

It would just be old news. I mean, Joe Budden's already old news. Absolutely. No, no. So I think what we're going to run with is the Albo wedding special on the front cover of the Chaser annual. By the way, if any listeners, if any listeners have good ideas for what we should put on the Chaser front cover for the Chaser annual, please email at podcast at chaser.com. Because I'm still trying to come up with it. But, you know, like we have a commemorative wedding edition.

you know like they do with the royals we'll do that with albo we did it for you we had a commemorative edition at the chase newspaper at your wedding yes and we can do gold gilting and stuff like that on the what if they break up what if what if she goes actually this is a crap gig i don't want to do this yes oh what if what if you know obviously albo went to the taylor concert what if a bit of a thing sparks up couldn't rule it out could you well that is a risk i don't know why jodie's allowing alva to go of the concert. I don't think she, I don't think she did.

I think he just went anyway. Oh dear. There's trouble in paradise. In paradise. You heard it here first. Do you reckon, he'd still get a bump in the ratings though, even if he dropped his fiancé,

the sheer kudos from going out with Taylor Swift. And maybe Travis could go out with Jody. Oh, that'd be sweet, wouldn't it? That'd be really sweet. Or maybe it could be a forsome. It could be like a... Let's just end the podcast here.

I think I prefer to vision. Joe Biden as a literal skeleton. But no, Donald Trump is finished, at least financially, and this may be the end of everything, except that whenever you say that, you know that in the next sentence, it's definitely not. Even when the guy dies, we'll just be going, could this be the end of Trump's political career?

No one knows. Our gears from road. We are part of the iconic list network. See you tomorrow. When in Washington, D.C., we choose to stay at the Trump International.