Regardless of what your current political views are, it would be hard to argue that President Donald Trump is generally good with money. But as is so often the case, there are exceptions.
One such instance, which was recently brought to light by Jon Machota of the Dallas Morning News. In a 1984 article from Ira Berkow of The New York Times, Trump — then the owner of the USFL’s New Jersey Generals, made some rather interesting comments about NFL, specifically the Dallas Cowboys.
“I could have bought an N.F.L. team,” Trump said in the article. “There were three or four available – that still are available, including, of course, the Dallas Cowboys. I could have bought an N.F.L. club for $40 million or $50 million, but it’s established and you would just see it move laterally. Not enough to create there.”
Trump then went on to focus specifically on Dallas, feeling that whoever bought that team would be walking in to a “no-win situation.”
”I feel sorry for the poor guy who is going to buy the Dallas Cowboys. It’s a no-win situation for him, because if he wins, well, so what, they’ve won through the years, and if he loses, which seems likely because they’re having troubles, he’ll be known to the world as a loser.”
The man who would buy the Cowboys was H.R. “Bum” Bright. In Bright’s 2004 eulogy, it was said that Bright bought the team for $85 million in 1984 and sold it for $170 million in 1989. Selling a team for $85 million more than you bought only five years prior is nothing to sneeze at. But it gets better.
The man who bought the team in 1989 was Jerry Jones. Dallas has recently been valued at $4 billion. Just imagine how much money President Trump could have made if he bought the team in 1984 and sold it in 2015, when he started running for president.
Instead, as Berkow detailed, he bought the Generals for $10 million. The USFL folded before the 1986 season.
Obviously, things have worked out okay for President Trump over the last three decades. But the fact remains, they could have been even better. Dare we say, things could have been bigly better.