Throughout his decades as a businessman, President Donald Trump earned a reputation for at times stiffing those he owed money. His former fixer Michael Cohen backed up that reputation publicly, explaining not that long ago how he’d be the go-between carrying Trump’s message of non-payment to those to whom the eventual president owed money. Now, there’s another non-payment issue that’s emerged — apparently, former members of Trump’s golf club in Doral, Florida, have been relegated to waiting essentially indefinitely to get their deposit back following cancelling their membership.
One anonymous former member who left after the 2016 election shared:
‘I have no faith. We’ll never see the money. That’s why I don’t bother worrying about it.’
Although in the mid-2000s, the club attempted to enact a policy of getting refunds back to former members within about two years, one recently resigned former member was told that the process could take up to twelve years. Realistically considering the club’s current rate of payout, there could be a full 85 years of waiting ahead for those who’ve left the club in recent years over Trump’s harsh political rise. It goes without saying — that kind of wait means these people will never get their money back.
Trump himself is no longer in any kind of executive role over his businesses, so it’s not necessarily his own personal doing that these people including those opposed to his politics are getting stiffed. The issue seems to lie with declining overall business at the club — according to terms of membership agreements, individual former members get their deposits after four new members join the club. Once someone gets their deposit back, the rest of the waiting list moves up a place, and former members have access to their place in line and can judge progress. Over the period from December 2017 to January 2019, those progress reports suggest that no more than about eight new members joined the club.
That’s a significant drop from the documented rate for the previous six years of an average of sixteen new members every twelve months. In the wake of the slowdown, the waiting list to get deposits back has grown to a size of more than 265 people.
This Trump establishment is far from the only one whose business has been struggling in the wake of their namesake’s political rise.
A number of buildings have straight-up removed Trump signage or — in the case of a Panama resort — taken to physically kicking out Trump personnel. Trump’s two golf courses in Scotland are losing large sums of money, and he’s even got a course in New York where although up until recently, the city was paying for irrigation and waived rent requirements, he’s losing money. A new project that Trump’s sons have tried to get off the ground including two chains of hotels aimed at middle class consumers has flatly failed to get anywhere. After two years, the projects recently formally closed down. As it turns out, telling the world off with racist rant after racist rant doesn’t exactly pay well.
Featured Image via screenshot
