Joseph Gordon-Levitt claimed Trump is not a “self-made” or honest businessman, but a “conman.”
While Trump did inherit some money and receive loans from his father when he was starting out, he built his business into what it is today.
Trump’s father, Fred Trump, owned a real estate business called Trump Management, which is now known as The Trump Organization.
According to The Week, Trump “left Brooklyn and Queens” to pursue success in the “more glamorous environs of Manhattan.”
The former president ended up taking a $1 million loan from his father, as well as over $100 million in bank loans that his father helped secure.
A Wall Street Journal report from September 2016 revealed that a 1985 casino license disclosure showed Trump had taken out several loans “from his father and his father’s properties” early in his career:
The document, a casino license disclosure in 1985 by then-wife Ivana Trump, shows Mr. Trump taking out numerous loans from his father and his father’s properties near the start of his career in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
At the time of the disclosure, Mr. Trump owed his father and his father’s business about $14 million, according to the document.
Trump then used the money and “leveraged” it into several building projects in Manhattan, such as the Grand Hyatt Hotel, Trump Tower, and Trump Plaza.
In 1983, the Trump Tower in Manhattan officially opened. According to the organization’s website, it is “one of the most iconic buildings in the world” and serves as the headquarters for The Trump Organization.
The Week noted that Trump also “branched out into golf courses, luxury resorts, and dozens of other industries.”
Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, during a live call hosted by the group “White Dudes for Harris,” claimed that Trump is not a “self-made man” and highlighted that he had “inherited a ton of money from his dad.”
“I’m not so sure Trump has been a good businessman,” Gordon-Levitt claimed. “He likes to say that he’s a self-made man, but he’s lying. He inherited a ton of money from his dad, and when you start out with that much initial capital, it’s a little like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“Even if he were a successful businessman, which I’m not sure he has been, I think there are pretty much two different types of successful business people in this world,” Gordon-Levitt continued. “There are the honest business people who have an honest-to-goodness valuable product, or good, or service that they can bring to the world, and they treat their employees well. They treat their investors and their vendors and their customers well, and in turn, they are treated well and they do well as a businessman or businessperson.”
“There’s another type of successful businessman,” he added. “That’s a conman.”
Gordon-Levitt said that “a conman, different than an honest businessman might or might not have an honest-to-goodness product or service to offer the world.”
WATCH:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt demolished the whole โDoNaLd TrUmP iS a BuSiNessMaNโ narrative on the White Dudes for Kamala Harris call.
— Art Candee ๐ฟ๐ฅค (@ArtCandee) July 30, 2024
Incredible!!!! Worth the watch.
๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ pic.twitter.com/Hn3MGvUDpb
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