How Trump Built A Golf Empire With Secret Financing
Forbes Talks
Forbes Media LLC
5 • 4 Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
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Summary
Within months of becoming president in 2017, Donald Trump faced questions about the money behind his golf empire. The intrigue started with a comment from a golf writer, who claimed that Trump’s son Eric said his father got all the funding he needed out of Russia. That story, which Eric denied, caught the attention of people scrutinizing Trump’s business, including the founder of the firm that helped produce the Steele dossier, who hinted at possible money laundering in November 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.
Rumors of money laundering have circled Donald Trump’s golf business for years. Forbes Senior Editor, Dan Alexander, uncovered the true source of the funds.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Rumors of money laundering have circled Donald Trump's golf business for years. Now, Forbes has uncovered the true source of the funds. |
| 0:09.8 | Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now is my Forbes colleague, Dan Alexander. Dan, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 0:18.6 | Hey, Brittany. Thank you for having it. Of course, you wrote and reported how Donald Trump built a golf empire with secret financing. |
| 0:26.6 | So we know the former president has golf clubs all over the world, but when and where |
| 0:31.6 | did his interest in owning and starting golf clubs originate? |
| 0:35.6 | Well, it was interesting golf start when he was about in college. |
| 0:39.3 | And then he joined a really famous club north of New York City called Winged Foot. |
| 0:44.3 | He was a member there for a while. |
| 0:46.3 | But you know Donald Trump, he always wants to be the guy. |
| 0:48.3 | He wants to be the one who owns it. |
| 0:50.3 | And so starting in the late 90s, he really started expanding into golf courses. And his first |
| 0:56.8 | one was Trump International down just outside of Palm Beach, down in Florida. And this is on the |
| 1:04.2 | heels of Mar-a-Lago. So he already had a private club. But Mar-Lago, although it's huge, it's like 17 or |
| 1:09.6 | 18 acres, it doesn't have any golf. So then he started a golf club about 15 minutes west of Mar-a-Lago, although it's huge, it's like 17 or 18 acres, it doesn't have any golf. |
| 1:11.6 | So then he started a golf club about 15 minutes west of Mar-a-Lago, and then the expansion |
| 1:16.5 | just sort of rolled on from there, to the point now where he has 10 courses, four resorts, |
| 1:21.9 | plus Mar-a-Lago. |
| 1:23.7 | A lot of properties there. |
| 1:25.5 | So let's start at the beginning. Let's start at Moralago, arguably one of his most famous properties. The Winter White House, it was also known as when he was president in his first term. So how much did he originally spend on the Marlago property? |
| 1:38.3 | He bought Moralaga for about $8 million. Now, at the time, that seemed like a fair chunk of change. Marlauga was sort of aging |
| 1:45.6 | estate that people had struggled to figure out what to know what to do with it because he was |
| 1:49.7 | so big and so expensive to maintain. Trump buys it in 1985. For 10 years, he has it as a home. |
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