Ever since he first started running for office, Donald Trump has claimed to be a champion of the common man. But perhaps that’s an exaggeration. In reality, he’s pocketed donations from his cash-strapped supporters, on top of having a long history of stiffing contractors. He’s even having trouble finding competent legal representation now that he’s in a whole mess of real trouble, in part because good lawyers don’t want to be stiffed. Indeed, a new book claims that he’s so averse to reimbursing people for goods and services that he once paid an attorney with a horse.
As per The Guardian, the forthcoming book Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump and the Corruption of Justice, by New York Times reporter David Enrich, features the umpteenth bizarro tale of creative tomfoolery from the former president. The story? Trump once owed a lawyer he employed $2 million. Instead of cash, though, he offered him a deed to a horse he claimed was worth $5 million.
Was the horse actually worth 2 ½ times what he owed? This is Trump, so it’s up in the air. In any case, the lawyer in question reportedly did not take kindly to this form of payment. Enrich writes that “once he regained the capacity for speech,” the attorney “stammered, then informed Trump, ‘This isn’t the 1800s. You can’t pay me with a horse.”
Trump famously dislikes or is at least disinterested in animals. He’s long used “dog” as an epithet, and he was the first U.S. president since Andrew Johnson to have no White House pets, although even Johnson was known to feed mice that lurked in his bedroom. (At least he’s not his oldest son.) But at least he likes horses, if only as a form of currency. He might have to get several bands of horses to get him out of the legal muck that may land him on prison — although at least he can still run for president from the slammer.
(Via The Guardian)