I'm merely pointing out that you cherry picking a number of unsuccessful Trump startups is not comprehensively indicative of his lack of business acumen.
Not really cherrypicking. Just naming a few (and I missed quite a few, too). Either way: Trump inherited the business from his father. He didn't start anything, he built (extremely slowly) on an already successful business.
ALso you should be aware there has been a huge amount of fuckery considering Donald Trump's personal finances since he's been in the "public eye":
In 1976, The New York Times published a fawning profile of Trump in which he was quoted as saying he was worth $200 million, even though he was only 30. But that figure –which has been widely cited – was false, according to examination of Trump’s finances in 1981 by the Casino Control Commission. (The document is embedded below.)
Trump’s tax returns at the time indicated his salaried income in 1976 was less than $100,000 a year, which he received as an officer in his father’s company. (His father remained chief executive of the company.) His income taxes reported $76,000 in income in 1975, $25,000 in income in 1976 and $118,000 in income in 1977. He paid no income tax in 1978 and 1979 as he reported negative income, likely because of tax shelters.
Trump also benefited from three trusts that had been set up for family members. In 1976, Fred Trump set up eight $1 million trusts, one each for his five children and three grandchildren, according to the casino document. (That today would be worth about $4 million in inflation-adjusted dollars.) The 1976 Trust paid Trump $19,000 in 1977, $47,200 in 1978, $70,000 in 1979, $90,000 in 1980 and $214,605 in 1981. Trump also received about $12,000 a year from a 1949 trust set up by his father and nearly $2,000 a year from another 1949 trust created by his grandmother. He also received a $6,000 gift every December from his parents.
Trump’s tax returns at the time indicated his salaried income in 1976 was less than $100,000 a year, which he received as an officer in his father’s company. (His father remained chief executive of the company.) His income taxes reported $76,000 in income in 1975, $25,000 in income in 1976 and $118,000 in income in 1977. He paid no income tax in 1978 and 1979 as he reported negative income, likely because of tax shelters.
In 1993, according to the 2005 book “TrumpNation,” by Timothy O’Brien, the children of Fred C. Trump expected to receive about $35 million each when their father passed away. With his casinos failing in the early 1990s, Donald Trump needed to borrow about $10 million to fund his living and office expenses but could offer no collateral to his siblings. He later sought another $20 million but his siblings balked, and a smaller amount was arranged, O’Brien said.
Trump insisted to O’Brien he had made “zero borrowings from the estate” and later unsuccessfully sued the author for libel. In a 2007 deposition related to the lawsuit, Trump admitted he had borrowed “a small amount” from his father’s estate: ‘I think it was like in the $9 million range.”
http://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2016/mar/07/did-donald-trump-inherit-100-million/
stay in the public eye for decades.
This is not difficult or impressive. Plenty of shit people are in the public eye for decades. Means nothing.