Well, if anyone wants a preview of Trump’s America, perhaps they should read about Trump Magazine. Carey Purcell worked for the mag, and has the insider view, at Politico.
I had been at Trump magazine for only four months when my first paycheck bounced.
We’d heard rumors of the company’s financial troubles, but I had no idea how bad it really was until my landlord called me one afternoon to tell me that my rent check hadn’t cleared. I logged into my online banking account and saw, to my amazement, that the magazine I worked for—the one with the billionaire’s name on the cover—had stiffed me. Although it was a stressful moment, the irony was not lost on me. It felt like I was living in an Onion article: “Luxury Lifestyle Magazine Can’t Pay Its Own Employees.”
It was the fall of 2006, and Trump magazine was my first job in journalism—albeit as the receptionist. I’d landed the gig by answering an ad on Craigslist. Fresh out of journalism school, I moved to New York with two undergraduate degrees, my student loans, some meager savings and dreams of becoming a theater critic. The receptionist gig paid a paltry $25,000 per year—barely minimum wage. And that was when the checks cleared.
Personally, I had never been a fan of Donald Trump and knew very little about the man. I had never seen The Apprentice and I was hardly a real estate expert. The piles of fan mail that arrived at our office addressed to him—filled with adoring testaments to his “genius”—amused me to no end. We received handwritten letters asking for money, a formal request for Donald’s daughter Ivanka to escort a woman’s son to his Junior Ring Dance at the Air Force Academy, and incoherent six-page rants about the state of the economy and how Trump was the only man who could fix it. One letter stated, “I sincerely hope you will run for president someday.”
Before I was hired at Trump, the magazine had already gained a reputation, most of which I wouldn’t find out about until after it folded. And by that time, I had been diagnosed with cancer and—thanks to Trump—lost my health coverage.
I don’t think anyone will be particularly surprised by what a slipshod con the whole thing was, an advertisement for Trump’s ego, and little more. It’s damn interesting reading, though, especially the financial aspects.
That’s because Trump can’t just print money like the US Government does. When he’s president none of the checks will bounce because he’ll just write more of them! I’ll be YUGE!
Trump has already demonstrated an amazing ability to run the DoD: no public accountability, off the books spending, secret spending, and gigantic cost overruns and under-delivery, all at someone else’s expense. You’ve got to admit he’s super qualified.
Only related in that it’s about magazines and teh trum-prat, Donald Trump’s Freefall Captured in Two Scathing Magazine Covers.
I’ve had one business simply vanish on me over the weekend, one bounce my check and then quietly ignore it until I noticed and came to get my money, and even one that tried to steal several thousand dollars of hardware from me that they clearly knew I owned. Even with all that I’ve never had anything quite like the ridiculous farce Carey Purcell describes. And that’s without even getting into the day to day indignities of working for bosses who sullenly blamed each employee for destroying their fantasy of pocketing the entire proceeds of a business that requires the efforts of dozens of people to function.
My stomach turns every time I read a line like that. FFS America.