May 11 2018 17 mins 4
Last week, the Washington Post had an intriguing story: In the nine years before now-President Donald Trump announced his candidacy, his company paid $400 million in cash to buy a number of properties.
Real estate companies doing deals usually borrow money for the same reason that many homeowners take out mortgages: Leveraging your money—especially when the cost of borrowing is low, as it has been for a decade—makes your money go farther.
The fact that Trump, the self-styled “king of debt," didn’t do that in these deals has raised a number questions, including how the Trump Organization had so much cash, and why it would use it to purchase properties in all cash.
Eric Trump told the Washington Post that the money came from profits that his father put back in the business. “He had incredible cash flow and built incredible wealth,” the younger Trump said. “We invested in ourselves.”
In this Trump Inc. podcast extra, we speak to the New Yorker’s Adam Davidson and the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold, who wrote last week’s story with Jonathan O'Connell and Jack Gillum. Davidson and Fahrenthold talk about trying to make the numbers and the explanations add up. (Spoiler: They can’t.)
“There's this fundamental question we have,” says Davidson. “Where did the money come from and why was it spent the way it was spent? There’s some piece of information that we are missing because none of the explanations make sense.”
