Trump eyes media empire and may expand business overseas as he fights to pay back $900m debt due over next four years
DONALD Trump is eyeing up a media empire and may expand his business overseas, as he reportedly fights to pay back at least $900million in debt, which comes due over the next four years.
The president is weighing up his options after losing the to Democratic challenger last week.
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Trump reportedly has around $1.1billion of debt tied up in his golf courses and real estate and $900million of this is due soon.
Loans due within the next two years include those for his Avenue of Americas tower in ($285million) and his Street building in San Francisco ($162million).
While the president's net worth is estimated to be around $2.5billion, the current uncertainty in the economy could spell trouble since much of his money appears to be tied up in assets.
How much money does Trump owe?
Donald Trump reportedly has around $1.1billion worth of debt tied up in his golf courses and real estate and $900million of this is due in the next four years, reports say.
He owes $447million for the towers in NYC and San Fransisco and $257million in loans taken out against Trump properties, per .
The president must reportedly pay around $340million back to Deutsche Bank, his biggest single banking backer.
He also owes $25million to smaller banks and an asset manager, as well as $50million to the Chicago Unit Acquisitions Trust with the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago as security.
The final loan is a bit mysterious, as Trump himself owns the company that the debt is owed to.
The New York Times asked the president about the loan in 2016, and he claimed that he "[has] the mortgage."
"That is all there is. Very simple," he said at the time. "I am the bank."
That debt is something called a "springing loan," which means it would only be due under certain circumstances, according to the Financial Times.
Those circumstances could be something like a decline in credit rating.
Although Trump has raged about the election results on Twitter, dismissed Biden as a "phony" president, and launched lawsuits in key states, top aides say he's aware that he lost the battle.
Despite Trump's Twitter fury, , and Trump's repeated vows to "win," he privately understands that Biden won, the aide revealed.
insider told journalist Peter Alexander that the outgoing president is "very aware there is not a path to victory" but his voters "deserve a fight."
Seven anonymous campaign and White House officials said Trump's many legal bids in states such as won't change the outcome, reported the .
But while the public fight continues and officials are concerned the legal battle could drain GOP support, Trump is weighing up his options post-presidency.
“We’ve made tremendous sacrifices over the past several years, faced more scrutiny than one could ever imagine and yet we remain at the top of our game," his son, Eric Trump, told the
TRUMP MEDIA EMPIRE
During Trump's transition from real estate mogul to president, his life and business ventures have played out in the tabloids.
Before and after his Oval Office rise, the president has courted media attention on Twitter and he may set up his own digital media channel in an attempt to rival Fox News, reports say.
Rather than a costly cable channel, this streaming service would probably charge a monthly fee and be cheap and quick to start up, reported .
After bashing them during the election race, Trump attacked Fox again today and claimed their "daytime ratings have completely collapsed," while bizarrely referring to himself as their "Golden Goose."
";Weekend daytime even WORSE," he raged. "Very sad to watch this happen, but they forgot what made them successful, what got them there.
"They forgot the Golden Goose. The biggest difference between the 2016 Election, and 2020, was [Fox News].
2024 PRESIDENTIAL RUN
In his bombshell book, Fire and Fury, author Michael Wolff writes that Trump never expected to beat in 2016.
Wolff claimed the president intended to lose having become "both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary.";
Four years on, after losing the 2020 election to Biden, the losing incumbent has begun to talk about running again in 2024, according to the Mail.
Reports indicate that he would do this to remain relevant and raise interest in his money-making efforts afterfor the White House.
reported that "historians, government legal experts, national security leaders and people close to the administration" don't think the end of his presidency will herald the end of the Trump era.
EXPAND PROPERTY PORTFOLIO
Before dipping his toe in politics, Trump was a career business man with an extensive property portfolio in the Big Apple.
As the pressure mounts to concede, insiders also predict that Trump may get back into the real estate game once he vacates the White House on January 20.
“I put two years as the over-under on groundbreaking for Trump Tower Moscow,” a former national security official told Politico. “It’ll be a huge F.U. to all the coup plotters.”
Rather than selling off his shares, the Trump Organization pledged to forgo new deals outside the United States and also hired an ethics adviser to screen certain domestic ventures.
Before taking over the Oval Office, the company was eyeing a prospective expansion in and doing business in , and , the Times reported.
Now it's not subject to the ethics deal, his company may seek out hotels and business deals abroad as he once more becomes a private citizen, sources told the newspaper.
PUSH TRUMP BRAND
Licensing the Trump name to hotels and residential towers could also be an option for the president.
Company executives said he abandoned 24 such deals in China, and across and his name is widely recognized, according to the newspaper.
It's a lucrative opportunity that may initially make from $500,000 and $1 million a year but that could decrease.
Another issue is the Manhattan district attorney office's investigating Trump and his company for alleged financial crimes, as well as demanding his tax returns.
A last month found that Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes in both 2016 and 2017; he's the only president in modern times to refuse to make his tax returns public.
The State attorney general’s office is conducting a separate civil inquiry into allegations his organization lied about its assets, however.
But Politico pointed out that nothing was off limits – including a “Trumpland” tourist attraction to rival Disney's parks.
MEMOIR & SPEAKING CIRCUIT
The president may also decide to pen another memoir but this time, about his experience in office.
Trump has already penned The Art of the Deal and Crippled America: How to Make Great Again along with 13 other books.
Publishers told Politico a Trump memoir would probably be worth around "mid-seven figures" – and it would certainly appeal to his base.
“He’s still the leader of a movement,” Nancy Gibbs, co-author of The Presidents Club, told the publication.
“I’m hard pressed to recall a past president who left office with a movement intact that wasn’t transferred to someone else. I don’t see him giving it up.”
However publishing houses also told the outlet that choosing to publish his book could result in mass staff walkouts so he may end up self-publishing like his son .
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Given his love of television and attention, other experts and aides argue that he could cash in on public speaking and appearances given the mass appeal of his rallies.
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“He’s going to do whatever it takes to stay in the conversation—and it’s going to take being ever more outrageous to stay there," one anonymous expert said.
In terms of laying down his post-presidential roots, he can choose from Mar-a-Lago, his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump Tower in NYC and the Trump Hotel in DC.
