Due to the Reagan Era, Trumps wealth expanded beyond his wildest imaginations. Many business adventures were set up. He made Trump Magazine, which explored real estate. He bought up an airline and renamed it to Trump Shuttle, an airline company which had planes with faux marble panelling, gold plated sinks and carpets so thick that the snack cart could not be pushed down them, to which Trump responded by telling them to push harder. He made Trump: The Game, a board game based on Monopoly featuring parts of his real life. He opened a large number of casinos in Atlantic City, most notably the Taj Mahal in 1990. However, many of these casinos were used as fronts for money laundering.
He started the United States Football League to compete with the NFL. He launched a vodka brand, despite not being a drinker himself. He bought up major beauty pageants and began selling clothing, most notably the Trump Tie. There was also the Trump Winery, Trump Steaks, Trump Fragrance, Trump Mortgage, even the Trump Urine Test Kit. Anything you can think of, Trump probably owned it in the 90s. And if he owned it, his name was definitely on it.
However, dear reader, I would like to pose a question to you, that is if you were born this side of 9/11. Have any of you, who are not well versed with the pre-politics career of Donald Trump ever heard of any of these products. Of course not. Many of these businesses were absolute, undeniable failures. Trump Airlines went out of business only 3 years after its establishment, after a massive net loss and a very serious incident in 1989. The United States Football League only played 3 seasons and went caput in 1986. Trump: The Game didn’t even sell half of it’s expected sales, and was only revitalised in 2004 after Trump’s appearance hosting the US Apprentice, an even then the game still performed awfully, with the only copies being found on eBay now. Donald actually lost money running the casinos, maybe one of the few people to ever do that in history. However, not many of these adventures were actually his. With the exception of a handful, these products paid a licensing fee in order to use his name for a sense of prestige. When the businesses went under, he would pocket the money and move to the next one and the cycle would repeat. Trump’s true asset was being able to market himself, not being an actual businessman.
Not only that but during his time running the beauty pageants, many cases of sexual harassment were claimed against Trump. At least 2 dozen named women have come forward against Trump, citing sexual harassment or even assault committed against them by Trump, including his own wife, Ivana, who cited sexual assault before retracting after legal action was threatened. One of these incidents ended up going to court, as Trump publicly denied sexually assaulting and abusing E. Jean Carroll in 1995, to which she sued him for defamation, once in 2019 and again in 2022 citing battery, and won $88.3 million in damages. He has also been seen multiple times associating with notorious child sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested for his crimes
Epstein was utterly preoccupied with Trump, and I think, frankly, afraid of him. […] Here are these two guys both driven by a need to do anything they wanted with women: dominance and submission and entertainment. And one of them ends up in the darkest prison in the country and the other in the White House.
Michael Wolff, author of 3 books on Trump, speaking on their relationship in a podcast
A Jane Doe who was a victim of Epstein came forward and testified that Epstein had introduced her to Trump when she was only 14. After being caught with tapes of high profile figures engaging in sexual acts with minors intended as blackmail, Epstein allegedly killed himself in prison in 2019. During his apparent suicide, he had a cellmate and a guard who would check his cell every 30 minutes. This guard check was not going ahead on the night of his death and his cellmate was transferred out and not replaced. Not only that but the cameras watching his cell also malfunctioned.
Trump also allegedly expressed concern when Ghislaine Maxwell, one of Epstein’s partners in crime, was arrested for sex trafficking of minors in 2020. However, this concern was not expressed for the victims of the families thereof, but more for himself, when he asked campaign advisors if “She [said] anything about [him]?”