Hello and welcome to Money Talks, a podcast episode from Slate Money, where we chat with

brilliant and interesting people. I'm Emily Peck of Axios, and I'm co-host of Slate Money,

and today we have guests here who have busted one of the biggest financial myths I think is out there, which is that Donald Trump is a genius businessman.

We're talking with Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times investigative reporters Suzanne Craig and Russ Boutner, who published Lucky Loser,

how Donald Trump squandered his father's fortune and created the illusion of success.

Suzanne and Russ, welcome to Money Talks and congratulations on the book.

Thank you, Emily.

Thank you, Emily.

Okay, so you both have spent, I think, a decade, the last decade looking into the former president's finances. You famously got a

hold of his tax returns. You looked at his father, Fred Trump's financial documents. You've interviewed

hundreds of people. In running for president, Trump said he was an amazing businessman. He could

do for the U.S. what he'd done for himself in business. So what did

you find? Was Trump an amazing businessman? Is that in any way accurate? I mean, he's amazing

at some aspects of it. He's a great self-promoter. I think he's that everyone would guess.

He showed some competency as like a construction manager at times, overseeing jobs, although

he seemed to have a hard time in the projects we could see at keeping things on cost.

But the biggest problem was around 1985, he just took on this belief that he could do

anything he wanted to.

He had had three projects that he worked on with more experienced partners in big companies.

And then he just decided, well, that works.

Now I don't need partners.

And now I can do anything.

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