Lucky Loser
** THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * LONGLISTED FOR THE FT AND SHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 * A TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT AND FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2024 **
Inheritance. Fraud. Deceit. Drawing on decades' worth of confidential tax information, business records and insider interviews, Lucky Loser is an explosive investigation into the reality behind Trump’s wealth.
'Meticulously documented ... This is a page turner, with spectacular anecdotes' Washington Post
'Scalpel-like ... Damning' Sunday Times
'A first-rate financial thriller ... deserves, even demands, to be read' New York Times
Soon after announcing his first campaign for the U.S. presidency, Donald J. Trump declared life has ‘not been easy for me’. He spun a fable of how he turned a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar empire, and argued this made him singularly qualified to lead the country.
Except none of it was true.
Born to a rich father, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today.
The story of Trump’s finances is one of rises and falls, of squandering fortunes on money-losing businesses to be saved by blind luck. He tacks his name to buildings while taking out huge loans he’ll never repay. He obsesses over appearances while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits. He tarnishes the value of the Trump name by allowing anyone with a big enough cheque to use it. He makes side deals to cut out the television producer who not only rescued him from bankruptcy but casts him as a business guru – the image that carries him to the White House.
Here, for the first time, in a meticulous masterpiece of narrative reporting filled with scoops, 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 millionaire.
*New York Times bestseller list, 6 Oct 24.
Russ Buettner (Author)
Russ Buettner is an investigative reporter at the New York Times. Since 2016, his reporting has focused on the personal finances of Donald J. Trump, including in-depth articles with Susanne Craig and other Times reporters that revealed the fortune Trump inherited from his father and the record of business failures hidden in twenty years of Trump’s tax returns. Those articles were awarded a Pulitzer Prize and two George Polk awards. Buettner, who joined the Times in 2006, was also a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for articles with Danny Hakim highlighting abuse and neglect in New York’s care of developmentally disabled people. He previously worked on investigations teams at the Daily News in New York and New York Newsday.
Susanne Craig (Author)
Susanne Craig is an investigative reporter at the New York Times. Since 2016, her reporting has focused on the personal finances of Donald J. Trump, including in-depth articles that revealed the fortune Trump inherited from his father and the record of business failures hidden in twenty years of Trump’s tax returns. Those articles were awarded a Pulitzer Prize and two George Polk awards. Craig previously covered Wall Street and served as Albany bureau chief for the Times. Prior to joining the Times in 2010, Craig was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. She is a member of the Order of Canada and serves as an on-air analyst for MSNBC.