The *real* secret of Donald Trump's success revealed by his tax returns - 2020-09-29

"I said, 'I gotta go into Manhattan. I gotta build those big buildings. I gotta do it, Dad. I've gotta do it,'" Trump said when he announced his run for president , recounting a conversation with his father as a young man. He went on to add: "And now I'm building all over the world, and I love what I'm doing."
But Trump is not, in fact, rich because of the buildings he has built. (Or the golf courses.) He is rich because he turned "Donald Trump" into a remarkably powerful marketing brand.
That's according to new reporting from The New York Times, based on two decades of the President's tax returns. (Trump has refused to release any of his tax returns publicly, the first President in the post-Watergate era to do so.) Here's the critical piece of the latest reporting from the Times