What will Donald Trump do after four years in the White House
It is very likely that the president will be lecturer and author of books in the next few years - just as his predecessors did. However, he will also provide regular commentary on Washington's latest political events via Twitter.
Even if Trump and many of his followers are unwilling to resign, after Joe Biden's election victory and his next White House inauguration in January 2021, the current president will once again be a private citizen. What is he going to do?
Will he begin to lay the foundations for the presidential campaign of 2024?
Hardly anyone predicted that Trump would get so many votes in this election. Without the Covid-19 pandemic, perhaps he would have been re-elected. At present, there are no other Republican candidates who appear to stand a better chance than he does in 2024. But Trump has longtime detractors within the GOP, many of whom have held their tongue in the last few years - but from now on then it will no longer be like this. It won't take long for anti-Trump Republicans to find their voices and for new candidates to emerge.
It is also unclear whether Trump wants to run. In the early years of his presidency, he often gave the impression that he didn't like being president. The office is associated with many personal restrictions and constant public criticism. He may very well no longer want to run for president. Then we will also have to see how all the lawsuits that will soon be brought against him will turn out.
Will he focus on his activities?
Apparently, Trump's business empire hasn't been doing well for many years. According to the New York Times, which obtained confidential data covering two decades of Trump's tax returns, in 10 of the 15 years leading up to his election he paid no federal income tax and in 2016, the year of his election, he paid only $ 750. He did the same again in 2017. Trump denied this, but as he refused to show his tax returns, choosing instead to define the NYT reports as fake news, serious doubts remain as to whether he is truly a man of law. business as rich and successful as he has always claimed.
These doubts have been around for some time. They fueled an ongoing dispute between Trump and Forbes because the magazine did not agree on the size of the assets Trump claimed to have. In his opinion, the financial value of the Trump brand is underestimated. On one occasion he gave two different figures to quantify his fortune, one of 6 billion dollars and the other of 3.5 billion dollars, arguing that the discrepancy was due to the value of the Trump brand. According to Trump, his name was worth $ 2.5 billion at the time. Although the name "Trump" was not on the Interbrand ranking of the most valuable brands in the world, Trump wrote (in 2010) that an evaluation made by an independent person had estimated its value at 3 billion dollars.
Based on that valuation, his name would be the single most valuable item in her portfolio, as none of his properties or his other investments were worth that much. But how much is the Trump brand worth today? It is true that it has many supporters and admirers, but it also has many detractors. The brand's economic value, which has never been as high as Trump claimed, has certainly not increased. If anything it has decreased.
Trump has also consistently exaggerated his achievements in real estate. In many cases, his vanity has hindered his investments. While his father got rich building well-equipped but not luxury apartments for the middle class in Brooklyn, Trump was drawn to Manhattan, where he bought real estate like the Plaza Hotel at fully inflated prices, because for him the image of the building it was more important than his financial profitability.
Trump himself admitted at the time that the price he paid for the Plaza was absurd, whatever the commercial success of the hotel. His only concern was to own a trophy building that would further enhance his image. No rational real estate investor would ever have paid the amount Trump paid out. It is not surprising then that the hotel turned out to be a bad investment. The same story repeated itself with many more Trump investments in trophies, which he bought at inflated prices to improve his image.
He has made far more money on assets that never belonged to him, despite being marked with the name "Trump" in large letters (usually in gold). From these buildings he collected huge royalties, which the owners paid to use the name "Trump". So he capitalized directly on the strength of the Trump brand. While it seemed to everyone that Trump personally owned or had built all the buildings that bore his name. Licensing his name like this turned out to be a very good deal - he made money as a licensee even though the partners he sold his name to had huge financial problems. But this type of business has no future for him.
Will he return to the world of media and entertainment?
More than anything else, Trump is an entertainer. Alone, his television series The Apprentice earned him a total of $ 427.4 million. But it's hard to imagine that Trump will return to reality TV again after he was president of the United States. It is possible, however, that he will find sponsors with whom to build a media empire.
Will he write his memoirs of him and travel the country as a lecturer paid by the weight of gold?
Trump will likely end up following the path already trodden by the presidents who preceded him: writing his memoirs (or, more precisely, hiring someone else to write them on his behalf) and lecturing. Former US presidents earn large sums of money just this way. Obama was not rich before he became president of the USA. But he and his wife are said to have received advances totaling $ 65 million for their books on their years in the White House. In addition to this, the Obamas earn huge sums for giving speeches and making appearances the most varied. According to a calculation made in 2017 by the American University, Bill Clinton increased his fortune by an astonishing 6,150 percent after leaving office: largely thanks to his memoirs and fees for speeches and appearances of various kinds.
It is very likely therefore that Trump will earn his money as a lecturer and book author over the next few years - just as his predecessors did. However, he will also provide regular commentary on Washington's latest political events via Twitter.
