Piano dealer accuses Donald J Trump of not paying his bills
mainA New Jersey music store owner says the Republican candidate shortchanged him of $30,000 in a piano sale.
My relationship with Trump began in 1989, when he asked me to supply several grand and upright pianos to his then-new Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. I’d been running a music store for more than 30 years at that point, selling instruments to local schools and residents. My business was very much a family affair (my grandsons still run the store). And I had a great relationship with my customers — no one had ever failed to pay.
I was thrilled to get a $100,000 contract from Trump. It was one of the biggest sales I’d ever made. I was supposed to deliver and tune the pianos; the Trump corporation would pay me within 90 days. I asked my lawyer if I should ask for payment upfront, and he laughed. “It’s Donald Trump!” he told me. “He’s got lots of money.”
But when I requested payment, the Trump corporation hemmed and hawed. Its executives avoided my calls and crafted excuses. After a couple of months, I got a letter telling me that the casino was short on funds. They would pay 70 percent of what they owed me. There was no negotiating. I didn’t know what to do — I couldn’t afford to sue the Trump corporation, and I needed money to pay my piano suppliers. So I took the $70,000….
Read the rest of Michael Diehl’s letter to the Washington Post.
There are dozens of similar stories from Trump’s businesses. The man is a crook, a disgrace to humanity. I like the last para of this piece on Huffington Post:
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
Agreed. My favorite USA bumper sticker: Save the Republican Party, vote for Clinton.
Why so angry, my man 😀 Get some fresh air into those lungs of yours and prepare for the Trump Train 😀
Yes, and the other candidate is also a serial liar, perjurer, traitor, corrupt, dishonest woman who should be in prison. We know she lied to congress and to the American people. Neither is fit for office, and there are no credible 3rd party candidates. So, why support Trump? Because he’s not a politician. He’s not “one of them”. God help us.
RING RING RING !!!
(False Equivalence Alert!)
She’s not a liar, she’s a politician. You know, like your man George W. Bush, who presented himself in his debates with Al Gore as a man of peace who would foster bi-partisan dialogue — and then after being elected he flipped America to the right and invaded a sovereign nation to steal their oil for his daddy’s oil business – and while doing so managed to irreparably destabilize the middle-east . If Hillary is a criminal, she’s got a lot of catching up to do if she wants to join the ranks of George W. Bush.
But one–that would be Trump–is “certifiable” and the other is not. And since, in the US, there are really only two candidates running for the office and since we are living in an age of nuclear weaponry, the choice (such as it is) seems clear. I don’t want someone as psychologically unbalanced as Trump–just look at the debate when he is NOT talking and then listen to the unfocused rambling word salad when he IS–with access to the nuke codes.
Are you speaking personally or on behalf of the CBSO?
When you act like a troll, are you doing it personally, or on behalf of your employer?
Nobody speaks here on behalf of anything but his or herself. Quit trolling.
(Not that other JOHN)
Thank you, Norman.
You talk with your actions and reality talks of you
In other words, the Taj Mahal has drawn the trump card.
Hardly. I believe it’s one of trump’s ventures that went belly-up. It’s still there but under different ownership (though I noticed Wikipedia said it closed after Labor Day this year). If any of those pianos are left, look for them at some auction.
Very often rich people want to skim their bills, because money is their identity signifyer. Paying-out money feels like blood-letting to them.
I agree, John, but a supposed billionaire stiffing a small business person? He apparently has a pattern of doing this if all the people who come forward can be believed.
I fear that if this clown will become president, he will try to blood-let the entire world. I am not much interested in politics, but since this man rose on the waves of populism, I have become attentive and sleepless. The Spanish philosopher Gortega y Gasset wrote about ‘The Rebellion of the Masses’ at the eve of fascism, and his message is as relevant today as it was in the twenties.
That’s why he picks these mom-and-pop businesses to subcontract to — if he signed a contract with a large corporation, they’d have the money for lawyers, too. He knows these little guys can’t afford to defend themselves. What a scumbag.
Why the Two-Minutes Hate? I am told by my betters that Trump has no chance of winning. With all the media, all academia, all the arts community, all the entertainment industry, in short all the right-thinking people opposed to him, how can he possibly prevail? Only a scattering of flyover rubes – “coal people” as Mr. Clinton called them – can be induced to vote for Trump.
So don’t worry. Hillary Clinton is set for victory. We’ll forget this bout of hysteria from the vulgar herd and things will get back to normal soon. A nakedly-weaponized bureaucracy will go after Trump and his band of deplorable irredeemables and put them through fines, lawsuits and investigations that will make them wish they had never been born. Seditious resistance to the Right Side of History will be criminalized. Public servants can get back to the business of monetizing their offices, steering lucrative contracts to non-profit groups and foundations run by relatives. Through the courts, the rights of the peasantry will be limited to those that government deigns to grant them.
Intellectuals, journalists and artists – who can always be bought cheap – will as usual whore themselves out for crumbs from the table of the Ruling Class: awards, advisory positions, influence without responsibility. President Clinton II will, on occasion, attend a concert and musicians will pathetically clasp their hands, jump up and down and tearfully squeal, “She loves me! She really loves me!”
And in 2024: Ready for Chelsea!
Spanish Philosopher Ortega y Gasset. Probably a slip of the…finger.
Yes, thank you, sorry for the G that interfered. It was my cat wanting to cooperate (he’s called Geoffry).
I have question at this juncture. What did the Trumps and the Clintons ever did for Classical Music? And/or for enriching the cultural life of those that in the end by voting entrust to a politician the government of the people, for the people and by the people.
All of this sorry and pitiful charade reminds so much to my eternal dismay of Monty Python’s “What Did The Romans Ever Did For Us?”
Incidentally, buying and not paying for a bunch of pianos and/or playing the saxophone does not qualify anybody as bing musically and culturally inclined.
We really got ourselves into a mess of our own making – we should start practicing Beethoven’s “Eroica” 2nd. movement just in case.
Granted this a blog about classical music, but is that to become a yardstick for the man or woman who will have their finger on the nuclear button? The more I see of Trump, the more I see a serial liar, a bigot, a man whose whole life has been about himself and enriching himself. I see nothing that remotely qualifies him to lead any country. Mind you, I thought much the same of Gearge W Bush and we know what happened there.
I’m not that enamored with Mrs Clinton either. But at least I’d feel safer under her watch than Trump’s. And I suppose we should be glad that the Independence Party hasn’t a hope. For its nominee not to know “what is Aleppo?” and more recently could not name one living world leader he respects – i.e. he could not name any world leader, period! (he shrugged that off as an Aleppo moment!) – illustrates the depths to which American politics has sunk.
That said, it seems little better anywhere else!
Whilst I have not a good word to say for Trump, I really hope that the piano portrayed above was not the one for which one of his (now ex-) businesses was charged $100K; even with the woman draped over it thrown in with the price, this would seem to be a case of gross overcharging. But perhaps this was for illustrative purposes only and the piano sold was a quite different one.
“several grand and upright pianos”
Fair comment!
Where the lady in the picture demonstrates a wholehearted dedication to piano music, it is the sight of the man at the keyboard which is utterly offensive and provokes moral disgust.
The picture is by now a historic piece from times gone; publishing such pictures will soon be forbidden and all we’ll have are memories from the good old 1980’s (but what I really miss are the good old 70’s).