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Lucky Loser

How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success

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Lucky Loser

Written by: Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig
Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
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About this listen

An Instant New York Times Bestseller • A Washington Post Notable Book A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year

“A first-rate financial thriller . . . Lucky Loser is one of those rare Trump books that deserve, even demand, to be read.”–Alexander Nazaryan, The New York Times

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters behind the 2018 bombshell New York Times exposé of then-President Trump’s finances, an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump’s wealth, revealing how one of the country’s biggest business failures lied his way into the White House

Soon after announcing his first campaign for the US presidency, Donald J. Trump told a national television audience that life “has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me.” Building on a narrative he had been telling for decades, he spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar business and real estate empire. This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country. Except: None of it was true. Born to a rich father who made him the beneficiary of his own highly lucrative investments, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today via means that required no business expertise whatsoever.

Drawing on over twenty years’ worth of Trump’s confidential tax information, including the tax returns he tried to conceal, alongside business records and interviews with Trump insiders, New York Times investigative reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig track Trump's financial rise and fall, and rise and fall again. For decades, he squanders his fortunes on money losing businesses, only to be saved yet again by financial serendipity. He tacks his name above the door of every building, while taking out huge loans he’ll never repay. He obsesses over appearances, while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits against city officials. He tarnishes the value of his name by allowing anyone with a big enough check to use it, and cheats the television producer who not only rescues him from bankruptcy but casts him as a business savant–the public image that will carry him to the White House.

A masterpiece of narrative reporting, Lucky Loser is a meticulous examination spanning nearly a century, filled with scoops from Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, Atlantic City, and the set of The Apprentice. At a moment when Trump’s tether to success and power is more precarious than ever, here for the first time is the definitive true accounting of Trump and his money–what he had, what he lost, and what he has left–and the final word on the myth of Trump, the self-made billionaire.

©2024 Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Biographies & Memoirs Politics & Government Professionals & Academics True Crime Business
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What the critics say

“A first-rate financial thriller . . . Lucky Loser is one of those rare Trump books that deserve, even demand, to be read. In good part, that’s because it applies the proper lens through which to view Trump’s career. In this telling, his story lies at the intersection of business and media, with politics arriving only as a secondary concern.”—Alexander Nazaryan, The New York Times

“This is a page turner, with spectacular anecdotes . . . [Lucky Loser] shows in meticulously documented detail how 'even when Trump appeared to be at his best, he was failing,' with massive losses on his core business. The authors prove that without his father’s support, Trump would have been nothing. The book also raises a bigger question about the 'fake it ‘til you make it' ethos of modern America. In a world that conflates the 'trappings of wealth with expertise and ability,' where 'fame, detached from any other marketable talent or skill,' is 'a highly compensated vocation,' does it even matter if you never actually make it? The backbone of the book is the numbers. Because Buettner and Craig have such a trove of documents, they are able to prove, in incontrovertible detail, the reality under the hype that is Donald Trump . . . The heartbreaking thing about reading Buettner and Craig’s work is realizing how many passes Trump has gotten over the years, how thoroughly he is a creation of the media, which as the authors write, 'rarely revisited his claims and afforded credibility to everything he said.”—Bethany McLean, The Washington Post

“Combining the groundbreaking reporting of its authors with details unearthed throughout the years by other journalists and financial analysts, Lucky Loser is comprehensive, persuasive, and packed with damning anecdotes.”—The New Yorker

What listeners say about Lucky Loser

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Great collection of data

loved this.
I'm glad I chose Audible.
there's lots of detail that might have been overwhelming by just reading.
hearing it all was much more illuminating then I expected

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well crafted, informative and a page turner.

Disclaimer I can't stand DJT. I've been a sales rep much of my life and you meet his type in that field. Sociopathic types. He is a prime example and this book outlines it wonderfully. The title is appropriate. He is driven by an endless void and ego. Business decisions had nothing to do with how smart they were or profitable. Just how they would make him look.

this book is a must read if you really want to understand the man. we'll written and researched.

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Excellent

Excellent insight into what makes Trump tick and how someone so unintelligent could rise to the heights he has risen …luck of birth

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Excellent

So much information to take in. I couldn’t stop listening. Can’t wait for part 2. Great work!

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Revealing

The marvelous way they combined a lot of interesting facts (gosh, I love that concept) so that we can make sense of what happened to create a real picture of what guides Trump.

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