Commentary

Trump's Brand Graveyard

by Steven Rosenbaum , Featured Contributor, September 21, 2026

If you don't think Trump can destroy America, look at what happened to the brands that carried his own name.

His record is not simply a few bad bets. It is a long pattern: attach the Trump name, promise exceptionalism, extract attention and money, then leave behind a closed business, a bankruptcy, a lawsuit, or a partner desperate to scrape his name off the building.

And the bill is staggering. His own tax records, obtained by The New York Times, show his businesses reported $1.17 billion in losses from 1985 to 1994 on casinos, hotels and residential buildings, more than nearly any other individual American taxpayer.

In Atlantic City, the people who trusted him with their money fared worse. Stock and bondholders in his casino company lost more than $1.5 billion, while Trump kept collecting for himself with the help of a compliant board. They lost. He got paid.

America is a much bigger brand. But it is still a brand built on trust.

The Graveyard

Trump Shuttle: Dead. It defaulted on its loans and ceased operating under the Trump name in 1992.
Trump Taj Mahal: Bankrupt a year after it opened, then dead as a Trump casino. It reopened under a new owner as the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino: Bankrupt, closed, and ultimately demolished.
Trump Castle, later Trump Marina: Dead as a Trump property. Sold and reborn as the Golden Nugget.
Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts: Bankrupt in 2004. Its successor, Trump Entertainment Resorts, filed again for bankruptcy in 2009 and in 2014.
Trump University: Closed. Trump paid $25 million to settle fraud lawsuits brought by students and New York State.
Trump Mortgage: Dead after roughly 18 months, launched just before the housing market collapsed.
Trump Steaks: Dead. The Sharper Image discontinued them after only two months.
Trump Vodka: Dead in the United States. It failed to achieve the distribution needed to survive.
Trump Magazine: Dead. Closed after less than two years.
GoTrump.com: Dead. The travel-booking site closed in 2007.
Trump Ice: Dead as a retail bottled-water brand. Discontinued in 2010.
Trump Home: Dead. The furniture, mattresses, lighting, bedding, and home-goods line disappeared from retail.
Trump Network: Dead. The multilevel-marketing venture was sold and the Trump name came off.
Trump Institute: Dead. The real-estate seminar business was closed after consumer complaints and legal scrutiny.
Trump Model Management: Dead. Closed in 2017.
Trump: The Game: Dead twice. The board game was discontinued after its 1989 launch and again after a failed relaunch.
Trump Fragrance: Dead. Retail distribution was wound down.
Trump SoHo, New York: De-Trumped. The owners ended their arrangement with him and the hotel became The Dominick.
Trump International Hotel Toronto: De-Trumped. The owners paid to end the management agreement. It is now the St. Regis Toronto.
Trump International Hotel Panama: De-Trumped. After a public ownership fight, Trump management was forced out and the name came off the building.
Trump International Hotel Rio: De-Trumped. The licensing arrangement ended and the Trump name disappeared.
Trump International Hotel Vancouver: Dead as a Trump hotel. It closed, entered bankruptcy, and reopened as the Paradox Hotel Vancouver.
Trump International Hotel & Tower Honolulu: De-Trumped. It is now Ka Lai Waikiki Beach.

Not every closure has one cause. Businesses fail for many reasons. But the pattern is unmistakable. The Trump brand repeatedly becomes too expensive to carry. It gets discontinued, bought out, removed, or buried.

Yet Trump himself does not simply survive the wreckage. He often emerges with his name, his audience, and his power intact, while employees, investors, creditors, and partners absorb the losses.

The Institutions Heading to the Graveyard

The private failures matter because they show a pattern. But the more consequential version is happening now with public institutions.

These are not companies Trump built and then mismanaged. They are institutions created to serve Americans, protect public knowledge, support culture, defend consumers, or project American values abroad. Some are gone. Others are being hollowed out in real time.

USAID: Effectively killed as an independent institution. The agency that delivered U.S. humanitarian and development assistance around the world has been dismantled, with much of its work ended or shifted to the State Department.
Voice of America and the U.S. Agency for Global Media: Maimed. VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio Martí, and other U.S.-funded broadcasters have faced mass layoffs, canceled programming, and repeated attempts to shut down their parent agency.
The U.S. Institute of Peace: Seized and gutted. The congressionally created peacebuilding institution had its leadership removed and its independence attacked.
The Wilson Center: Gutted. A 2025 executive order cut the bipartisan foreign-policy institution to the minimum required by law, and about 130 employees were locked out of email and placed on leave. Founded by Congress and named for President Woodrow Wilson, it survives as a legal shell.
The Kennedy Center: Under siege. Trump removed board members, installed loyalists, made himself chair, drove away artists and audiences, and put his name on Kennedy's memorial. A federal judge ruled the renaming unlawful, ordered the signage removed, and blocked the planned shutdown. When the court also barred him from putting his name back, his board voted to close the center anyway. A judge now has to require 30 days' notice before any demolition, which Trump has threatened. If he cannot own it, he will close it.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Dead. Congress eliminated its federal funding and the corporation voted to dissolve, threatening the system that supports PBS, NPR, and especially local public stations in rural and underserved communities.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services: Hollowed out. The small federal agency that supports libraries, museums, literacy, and local access to culture has been targeted for elimination and stripped of staff and grants.
The National Endowment for the Arts: Diminished. Grants and programs have been canceled or redirected, weakening one of the country's few national sources of support for artists and cultural institutions.
The National Endowment for the Humanities: Diminished. Funding and staffing cuts strike at the agency that supports history, scholarship, archives, documentaries, libraries, and public understanding of American life.
The Department of Education: Hollowed out. Its workforce has been cut dramatically while the administration openly pursues its elimination.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Crippled. Its enforcement, supervision, and consumer-protection work have been sharply curtailed, leaving Americans more exposed to predatory lenders, fraud, and abusive financial practices.
AmeriCorps: Targeted for destruction. Programs, grants, and staff have been cut or canceled, though courts and Congress have so far prevented a complete shutdown.
The federal civil service itself: Under assault. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees have departed. Agencies lost institutional memory, subject-matter expertise, inspectors, scientists, archivists, civil-rights investigators, and the people who make government function after the cameras leave.

That is how you destroy an institution without formally abolishing it. You fire the people, cancel the grants, freeze the work, punish the mission, replace the board, and call the wreckage reform.

Trump’s old business wreckage was private. His investors lost $1.5 billion, and the buildings could be sold, renamed, or demolished.

These institutions belong to the country. This time the investors are all of us, and when they are killed, there is no buyer to reopen them under a different name.

He has been telling his supporters, over and over, to “pretend I'm on the ballot” this November. On this one point, it's hard to disagree. He is.

13 comments about "Trump's Brand Graveyard".

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Dan C. from MS Entertainment, September 21, 2026 at 3:44 p.m.
Following this ridiculous analysis, then Martha Stewart is a failure when you look at how many products and businesses were licensed under her name - along with her own offerings.

Licensing deals and running a business are totally different animals. And an agreement ending or business coming to a natural end of the lifecycle doesn't = fail.

You guys have so much to write on with all of the changes going on in the industry and the constant focus on far-fetched silly narratives about Trump is a massive waste of time and energy.

You're not going to find a billionaire who does not admit that they failed more times than they succeeded. Focus on what's important instead of lazy clicks.
Reply

Steve Rosenbaum from SustainableMedia.Center, September 21, 2026 at 4:15 p.m.

Dan, OK, I'll take your challenge.

Trump: 24 failures. (Count the tombstones.)

Martha Stewart: 3. Blueprint, a magazine for younger homeowners, closed in 2007 after about two years. Everyday Food, a digest-sized cooking magazine, folded in 2012. The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, her spinoff of Trump's own show, was canceled after one season. Her company was sold twice, but her name stayed on it both times.

You're right that licensing and operating are different. But the casinos, the airline, Trump University, and Trump Mortgage weren't licensing deals. He ran them, and four of those casino entities went bankrupt. The hotels didn't reach a natural end either. Owners in Toronto, SoHo, and Panama paid or fought to get his name off. When Martha's deals ended, buyers paid to keep her name.

And, to be fair, I don't think I'd like Martha to be President of the United States either. But if you want to go further, we could list wars, gas prices, food prices, Americans killed by ICE... I'm just getting started. Why don't you share Trump's great successes?

Mark Anderson from Zebra Advertising replied, September 21, 2026 at 5:33 p.m.

Just lazy ideas from a rabid partisan Democrat....what was listed represented less than 1% of the 500+ entities.

IMO, the greatest success is not financial, but rather that Gloria Steinem got to see President Trump beat not one but two female US presidential candidates for the presidency.

Steve Rosenbaum from SustainableMedia.Center, September 21, 2026 at 9:50 p.m.

Mark, you may be right that the Trump name still has enormous marketing value. In fact, that’s part of my point.

But Trump isn’t selling hotels, steaks or vodka anymore. He’s President of the United States.

So the question isn’t whether the Trump brand is winning. It’s whether America is.

His job isn’t to increase the value of his own brand. His job is to protect and strengthen the institutions, credibility and trust of the country he was elected to lead.

And your Gloria Steinem example actually makes the distinction pretty clear. Beating two women may be a political victory you take pleasure in. But the presidency isn’t a trophy, and America isn’t a Trump brand extension.

America is the much bigger brand. And the argument of my piece is that that’s the brand he’s damaging.

Mark Anderson from Zebra Advertising replied, September 21, 2026 at 10:11 p.m.

How does winning two elections make a disctinction as campaigns and presidencies are two seperate entitities? Also, it feels insincere to frame this around the status of America. The goal was clearly to highlight just 1% of his business ventures—specifically handpicked, one-sided examples—and honestly, it seemed like you took pleasure in doing so. That's fine; cheap partisan shots were the intent as pretending this is a broader commentary on America doesn't ring true to me.

Furthermore, imo, reducing America to a mere "brand" only cheapens it.

Dan C. from MS Entertainment replied, September 22, 2026 at 2:37 a.m.

I expect MediaPost to cover the media and ad industry. Trump administration policies or hostility towards the media, making threats through the FCC - sure - fair game. Analysis on how different networks and outlets cover the administration - some are too favorable - some are too hostile - again, fair game.

But concocting an analysis of Trump's personal brand ventures—successful or otherwise—to federal policy decisions you disagree with is partisan at best and intellectually lazy at worst. The entire MP team has a habit of getting hostile towards readers who point out their bias and labels us "MAGA" when all we are doing is using common sense and pointing out failed analysis. My personal feelings about Trump aside, you don't become POTUS as a failed brand.

Finally, these are all of the failed product launches and offerings from Apple. Using your approach, I guess Apple is a total failure as well. Now the key is to tie Apple's failures to Steve Jobs' political leanings.

Apple Lisa
Apple III
Macintosh Portable
Newton MessagePad
Apple Pippin
eWorld
Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh
Macintosh TV
eMate
Power Mac G4 Cube
iPod Hi-Fi
Apple TV (1st generation)
MobileMe
Ping
Apple Maps at launch (even now)
Apple Watch Edition
HomePod (original)
AirPower
Butterfly Keyboard
Apple Arcade — althought this is arguably a disappointment rather than a failure

Ronald Kurtz from Retired, September 22, 2026 at 1 p.m.

Rosenbaum has done an excellent review of Trump's business failures and the impact on investors, employees, and vendors he has hurt and bullied. Steve has also done a good job of responding to the defensive retorts of the apparently gullible Trump supporters who fail to see Trump;s policy bungles and self serving corruption are a risk to our country and instituions. Trump is an impressive snake oil salesman (always promising he will make things better and rarely delivering). He was well known to have run his business as an authoritarian who accepted no disagreements from his employees. He is trying to run our government and country in the same manner. He is obviously not smart enough or really concerned about the welfare of our people.

Artie White from Zoom Media Corp replied, September 22, 2026 at 1:14 p.m.

"Just lazy ideas from a rabid partisan Democrat....what was listed represented less than 1% of the 500+ entities."

Nice try Marc. But “entity” does not mean “separate Trump business venture.”

Most of those 500+ are LLCs, holding companies, property-specific corporations, etc. In fact,105 of the entities were variations on “Trump Marks,” used for licensing arrangements. Source: FEC.gov

So, for example, one Trump property might involve several separate legal entities for ownership, management, financing, licensing, etc. Those are not individual brands.

Meanwhile your sad and desperate Gloria Steinem comment says more about how your brain is malfunctioning than your inablity to do math does. (24 is not less than 1% of 500.)

Steve Rosenbaum from SustainableMedia.Center replied, September 22, 2026 at 1:40 p.m.

Ronald, thanks for reading so closely and for the kind words. What struck me in pulling the record together was how consistent the pattern is: the people who paid the price were rarely the ones at the top. Contractors, small vendors, employees, investors. Those stories deserve more attention than they get, and I appreciate you adding your voice to the conversation.

Steve Rosenbaum from SustainableMedia.Center, September 22, 2026 at 1:41 p.m.

Artie, thanks for doing the homework. You're right that "entity" and "business" aren't the same thing. A single property can sit inside half a dozen LLCs for ownership, financing, and licensing, so counting filings tells you about legal structure, not track record. The column was about ventures that failed and the people left holding the bill, and that list stands on its own.

And yes, 24 out of 500 is closer to 5%. But the math matters less than the contractors and investors behind each of those names.

Artie White from Zoom Media Corp replied, September 22, 2026 at 2:03 p.m.

Thanks Steve. I was intending to reply to Marc above, but for some reason my note showed up under your comment. Did not mean to cause any confusion.

Ronald Kurtz from Retired, September 22, 2026 at 3:57 p.m.

Steve, glad I could support you.

Dan C. from MS Entertainment replied, September 23, 2026 at 6:50 a.m.

@Steve "What struck me in pulling the record together was how consistent the pattern is: the people who paid the price were rarely the ones at the top. Contractors, small vendors, employees, investors. Those stories deserve more attention than they get, and I appreciate you adding your voice to the conversation."

Those stories deserve more attention? Then why did you chose to conflate perceived failed brand ventures to perceived poor governing policies? How does this commentary serve the readership, especially considering that Trump cannot run for president again?

Good grief.