Donald Trump was functionally broke in the early 1990s and technically had a massively negative net worth. During this period, his empire was built almost entirely on high-interest debt, leveraging projected income while hiding severe liabilities.

When the real estate market crashed, his true financial situation was exposed. By 1990, Trump had amassed $3.4 billion in corporate debt.

Crucially, he had personally guaranteed $830 million to $900 million of that debt. Because his personal assets did not come close to covering this, his net worth plummeted deep into the negative hundreds of millions. The "Tin Cup" Anecdote: Trump famously recounted walking past a homeless man outside Tiffany's in 1991 and telling his then-girlfriend Marla Maples, "You know, right now that man is worth $900 million more than I am."

Forbes completely dropped him from their 400 Richest Americans list in 1990, and he did not return until 1996.

The public image of a billionaire master builder was actively sustained by credit and clever accounting. IRS tax transcript investigations later revealed that between 1985 and 1994, his core businesses lost more than $1.17 billion, making him one of the single largest individual tax losers in the entire country during those specific years.

In 1995 alone, he declared a personal net operating loss of $916 million.

He avoided total liquidation strategically. Instead of forcing him into a devastating personal bankruptcy, his lenders (a consortium of major banks) chose to bail him out. The banks realized that Trump was "too big to fail"; if they bankrupt him, his properties would completely collapse in value, and the banks would lose all their money.

To salvage what they could, the banks took the following steps:

1. Personal Budget: They placed Trump on a strict personal spending allowance of $450,000 per year.

2. Asset Fire Sale: They forced him to sell off luxury crown jewels, including his mega-yacht (The Trump Princess) and his commercial airline (Trump Shuttle).

3. Corporate Bankruptcies: They restructured his debt through four corporate Chapter 11 bankruptcies between 1991 and 1992, absorbing massive losses while letting Trump keep a scaled-back version of his company.

This bailout allowed him to survive until the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he successfully shifted his business model from heavy real estate borrowing to low-risk brand licensing and his lucrative television role on The Apprentice.

Edit: This post is NOT what you think it is. Some of you have replied without even reading it first in the entirety.

Why did the crew go to Miller’s Planet first? Or at all?

Was it a plot hole or a fatal flaw in the storytelling?

Some people argue that they should have known that Miller’s planet was inhospitable. But should they have known?

Let’s examine the evidence:

1. Miller was still sending a thumbs-up signal.

When the Endurance crew got there, they found Miller’s signal to be still pinging good. Or so they thought. It was later determined that they discovered that the signal was just pinging in an echo loop endlessly. There was no way for them to know about that. It all seemed optimistic from their initial point of view, while orbiting the planet. Their job was to investigate ALL potential worlds within reach to maximize their fuel and mission objectives. This world was still viable, at first consensus. Edmunds planet signal had stopped, even though it was giving a thumbs up right until the end. Millers planet was still giving a thumbs up signal. That seems like a good omen. There was no reason to distrust it.

2. It was the first stop.

Remember that Cooper said they would need to factor in TIME as a resource and said that it would be essentially a waste to skip Miller’s planet because of how much time and effort it would take to get back there again on another mission. He knew this was a singular opportunity to discover this planet’s suitability. Since Miller’s planet was closest, it was the first stop of potentially three stops. Mann’s planet was next, and Edmund’s planet was the furthest away. All three had potential. Cooper was simply doing the logical thing by stopping at all three planets to maximize their findings.

3. It had water, possibly organics, potentially life.

Remember when Brand said that Mann’s planet had Organics and potentially life? Cooper said ‘you don’t find that everyday.’ And Brand agreed: ‘No, you don’t.’ So they knew that the status of the planet was crucial to choosing whether or not it was worth their time to investigate. Well, based on the fact that Miller’s planet was known to have water, which was observable from their data, there was no reason to assume that it could not also hold life.

4. Not all data was available to them.

Remember that they said that there was data which was just cached on the other side and nothing (except binary pings) was getting back through the wormhole to Earth? This was an unexpected event. Nobody on earth knew that the data was being kept from escaping the boundary of the galaxy within the other side of the wormhole. If they had all the data, perhaps the mission scientists would have outlined a new plan. (Remember Romily saying that it was much closer to Gargantua than they initially thought? This was because the data was obscured until now). But because they gathered new data on the fly, these Endurance crew had to roll with it and adjust and make decisions as they go. As such, they were limited by time and had to make snap decisions when they needed to do so. They simply did not have the luxury of spending lots of time debating and analyzing their new findings. That’s why there was a structure in place for Cooper calling the shots as the captain of the crew. If Romily had more time as a luxury he probably would have realized that Millers planet should be skipped, but again, time was a factor and they didn’t have that luxury.

5. Cooper was flying by instinct

When they were debating which plan to shoot for (Mann or Edmunds planet), Cooper discussed the factors and Brand was drawn to Edmunds because she was in love with him. The fact that she kept this from the crew, as possible motivation, made them all very suspicious that she was not being driven by emotion and not logic. They all knew that making an emotional choice would not necessarily be the best course of action over a purely logical one. When Cooper realized that she was not operating by logic, he immediately dismissed her feelings as a valid point of reference for any mission decisions. Now, circle back to the previous stop at Miller’s planet. This was before Cooper knew Brand was emotionally attached to any of the Lazarus mission astronauts. But he must have felt that she was not being purely logical. Her objections were that they could not visit all three planets, with the current fuel situation. So she wanted to push onward to skip Miller’s planet. But Cooper knew that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see what Millers planet had for them. When he detailed the plan to orbit the planet and conserve fuel, he also conceded that it would cost them time, so they devised a plan to “get in and out” quickly. Brand agreed. So Cooper subconsciously knew that sometime was affecting Brand’s logical decision making ability even if he didn’t know what specifically was motivating her yet. But he knew something was off, and this was the first time we see Cooper essentially casting internal doubts as to the abilities of the crew, especially her. Cooper’s military training and instinct is what made him trust the choice to visit Miller’s planet first.

So, to recap: They had to make logical decisions based on new evidence they found after crossing through the wormhole. The planet was viable, possibly had life, and Miller was sending a signal to them that it was good. They knew they could hit all three planets if they were efficient and deliberate about their actions and plan. Cooper made the plan, and convinced the crew that it was worth a quick stop. It just did not go according to plan as we know.

Where they went wrong:

1. They misjudged the time dilation aspect of the planet. They clearly did not do calculations based on when Miller would have arrived. It was only after they found her dead did they realize that she just landed minutes ago, and died maybe just moments ago “because of the time slippage” as Brand realized. Remember they had to think and act quickly, because time is a resource. They knew that extreme time dilation (one hour equals seven Earth years) is caused by the planet’s close orbit to the supermassive black hole Gargantua. And they even factored that in. They were going to “get in and get out” quickly, with the data. But the way it unfolded was unexpected and the trouble with the engine being flooded only made their time calculations worse. They had the survival instincts of “Boy Scouts” according to Cooper, who acknowledges at that moment that he had an epiphany that this crew was not as prepared as he thought they were. Remember, this crew “never even left the simulator” — they were just rookies, really.
2. They were fooled by the broken beacon echoing endlessly in a loop. Honestly this was not their fault and no one accounted for this scenario, including the mission planners back on earth. Astronauts have to account for many unexpected X factors and this was one that cost them dearly. If only they had built some software to detect this signal anomaly perhaps their instruments would have told them it was a false positive. However, the mission was slapped together as quickly as possible to get the crew into space because time was of the essence. They simply did not have the luxury of accounting for every single edge case. And this edge case would have been deemed extremely unlikely anyway.

Conclusion: Even though this was not a plot hole, in the end, the crew is shown to be human and make mistakes and this makes their characters more interesting, richer, and more relatable, which is just good storytelling.

Why did the crew go to Miller’s Planet first? Or at all?

Was it a plot hole or a fatal flaw in the storytelling?

Some people argue that they should have known that Miller’s planet was inhospitable. But should they have known?

Let’s examine the evidence:

1. Miller was still sending a thumbs-up signal.

When the Endurance crew got there, they found Miller’s signal to be still pinging good. Or so they thought. It was later determined that they discovered that the signal was just pinging in an echo loop endlessly. There was no way for them to know about that. It all seemed optimistic from their initial point of view, while orbiting the planet. Their job was to investigate ALL potential worlds within reach to maximize their fuel and mission objectives. This world was still viable, at first consensus. Edmunds planet signal had stopped, even though it was giving a thumbs up right until the end. Millers planet was still giving a thumbs up signal. That seems like a good omen. There was no reason to distrust it.

2. It was the first stop.

Remember that Cooper said they would need to factor in TIME as a resource and said that it would be essentially a waste to skip Miller’s planet because of how much time and effort it would take to get back there again on another mission. He knew this was a singular opportunity to discover this planet’s suitability. Since Miller’s planet was closest, it was the first stop of potentially three stops. Mann’s planet was next, and Edmund’s planet was the furthest away. All three had potential. Cooper was simply doing the logical thing by stopping at all three planets to maximize their findings.

3. It had water, possibly organics, potentially life.

Remember when Brand said that Mann’s planet had Organics and potentially life? Cooper said ‘you don’t find that everyday.’ And Brand agreed: ‘No, you don’t.’ So they knew that the status of the planet was crucial to choosing whether or not it was worth their time to investigate. Well, based on the fact that Miller’s planet was known to have water, which was observable from their data, there was no reason to assume that it could not also hold life.

4. Not all data was available to them.

Remember that they said that the initial signals were just cached on the other side and nothing was getting back through the wormhole to Earth? This was an unexpected event. Nobody on earth knew that the data was being kept from escaping the boundary of the galaxy within the other side of the wormhole. If they had all the data, perhaps the mission scientists would have outlined a new plan. (Remember Romily saying that it was much closer to Gargantua than they initially thought? This was because the data was obscured until now). But because they gathered new data on the fly, these Endurance crew had to roll with it and adjust and make decisions as they go. As such, they were limited by time and had to make snap decisions when they needed to do so. They simply did not have the luxury of spending lots of time debating and analyzing their new findings. That’s why there was a structure in place for Cooper calling the shots as the captain of the crew. If Romily had more time as a luxury he probably would have realized that Millers planet should be skipped, but again, time was a factor and they didn’t have that luxury.

5. Cooper was flying by instinct

When they were debating which plan to shoot for (Mann or Edmunds planet), Cooper discussed the factors and Brand was drawn to Edmunds because she was in love with him. The fact that she kept this from the crew, as possible motivation, made them all very suspicious that she was not being driven by emotion and not logic. They all knew that making an emotional choice would not necessarily be the best course of action over a purely logical one. When Cooper realized that she was not operating by logic, he immediately dismissed her feelings as a valid point of reference for any mission decisions. Now, circle back to the previous stop at Miller’s planet. This was before Cooper knew Brand was emotionally attached to any of the Lazarus mission astronauts. But he must have felt that she was not being purely logical. Her objections were that they could not visit all three planets, with the current fuel situation. So she wanted to push onward to skip Miller’s planet. But Cooper knew that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see what Millers planet had for them. When he detailed the plan to orbit the planet and conserve fuel, he also conceded that it would cost them time, so they devised a plan to “get in and out” quickly. Brand agreed. So Cooper subconsciously knew that sometime was affecting Brand’s logical decision making ability even if he didn’t know what specifically was motivating her yet. But he knew something was off, and this was the first time we see Cooper essentially casting internal doubts as to the abilities of the crew, especially her. Cooper’s military training and instinct is what made him trust the choice to visit Miller’s planet first.

So, to recap: They had to make logical decisions based on new evidence they found after crossing through the wormhole. The planet was viable, possibly had life, and Miller was sending a signal to them that it was good. They knew they could hit all three planets if they were efficient and deliberate about their actions and plan. Cooper made the plan, and convinced the crew that it was worth a quick stop. It just did not go according to plan as we know.

Where they went wrong:

1. They misjudged the time dilation aspect of the planet. They clearly did not do calculations based on when Miller would have arrived. It was only after they found her dead did they realize that she just landed minutes ago, and died maybe just moments ago “because of the time slippage” as Brand realized. Remember they had to think and act quickly, because time is a resource. They knew that extreme time dilation (one hour equals seven Earth years) is caused by the planet’s close orbit to the supermassive black hole Gargantua. And they even factored that in. They were going to “get in and get out” quickly, with the data. But the way it unfolded was unexpected and the trouble with the engine being flooded only made their time calculations worse. They had the survival instincts of “Boy Scouts” according to Cooper, who acknowledges at that moment that he had an epiphany that this crew was not as prepared as he thought they were. Remember, this crew “never even left the simulator” — they were just rookies, really.
2. They were fooled by the broken beacon echoing endlessly in a loop. Honestly this was not their fault and no one accounted for this scenario, including the mission planners back on earth. Astronauts have to account for many unexpected X factors and this was one that cost them dearly. If only they had built some software to detect this signal anomaly perhaps their instruments would have told them it was a false positive. However, the mission was slapped together as quickly as possible to get the crew into space because time was of the essence. They simply did not have the luxury of accounting for every single edge case. And this edge case would have been deemed extremely unlikely anyway.

Conclusion: Even though this was not a plot hole, in the end, the crew is shown to be human and make mistakes and this makes their characters more interesting, richer, and more relatable, which is just good storytelling.

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