Shortly after Trump was inaugurated early this year, the Trump family announced that they would be developing a new chain of "modest" Trump-brand hotels that would cater to people who aren't filthy rich alongside another new chain that does cater to the rich, but it looks like the real estate deals announced by the Trumps don't exist.
The Trump Organization announced that they had secured deals in Nashville, Dallas, Cincinnati, Austin and New York, but a Pro Publica investigation found no trace of any such deals.
What we’ve found are false starts, fizzled-out partnerships and, for a number of cities that the Trumps said they had deals in, no evidence of deals at all.
Nashville faced petitions after the Trump Organization said it was coming to town. But development and tourism officials we spoke to said they were unaware of any Trump hotel being planned. Bobby Bowers, senior vice president of operations for Hendersonville, Tennessee-based hotel industry research firm STR, said his company has no information about a Trump hotel partnership in Nashville, even among its “unconfirmed” listings. A spokesperson for the city’s convention and visitors bureau said the same thing.
In Dallas, a developer who had been working with the Trumps had declared the deal dead two months before the Trump Organization identified the city as a hotel site. (He also had plans for a Trump hotel in downtown St. Louis before political pressure and protests derailed it.)
Curiously, some developers and local officials who spoke to Pro Publica said the deals in question collapsed even before the 2016 election.
This isn't exactly a revelation or shocking, but announcing "deals" that had already collapsed suggests the Trump family was trying to capitalize off Donald's inauguration to generate new buzz and salvage their flailing business.
But I suppose that's the primary reason Trump ran for office anyway, isn't it?
Business is apparently booming at Trump's hotel at the Old Post Office in DC where lobbyists and foreign agents mingle with Republican politicians, but business is faltering across the rest of the family empire.