Oh, and anti-Semite but you knew that already.
You couldn’t pay me enough to live in one of Trump’s sleazy death traps (well, actually you could because I’m a terrible sell-out as you can see by my constant pleas for monetary support and the abundant and aggressive advertising on the site) but for some people it’s not that easy to walk away from a $2.5 Million investment (pretty much a slum based on Manhattan real estate prices) and unfortunately Todd Brassner paid for that with his life.
Todd was 67, and hip and rich by most standards. He was an Art Dealer which explains his relationship with Andy Warhol. He collected antique guitars, amps, and ukuleles valued at over $3 Million for insurance purposes.
Close friend of man killed in Trump Tower fire says President once called victim ‘crazy Jew’
by Esha Ray, New York Daily News
Sunday, April 8, 2018
He died in the home he hated, in a building owned by a man who apparently hated him.
Todd Brassner, a 67-year-old art dealer who lost his life Saturday in the Trump Tower fire, despised building owner Donald Trump, a friend of the victim told the Daily News. The feeling was evidently mutual, with now-President Trump allegedly calling Brassner a “crazy Jew” soon after the art dealer moved into the Fifth Ave. high-rise more than two decades ago, Brassner pal Patrick Goldsmith said Sunday.
A fellow art dealer, Goldsmith said he heard the vile remark in 1996 as he entered the building and passed by the exiting Trump. Goldsmith, who like Brassner opposes the President, took the opportunity to glance at Trump’s petite hands – which gained notoriety in the late 1980s and suffered another wave of scrutiny during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump reportedly became enraged when he caught Goldsmith staring and demanded the gawker’s identity from his doorman, Goldsmith said. The doorman said Goldsmith was headed to the 50th floor to see Brassner.
“Oh, that crazy Jew?” Trump asked, according to Goldsmith.
…
By this year, Brassner was desperate to move out of his apartment – but he couldn’t get the $2.5 million pad off his hands.“He hated living at Trump Tower. He talked about not living there almost nonstop,” said Rachael Cain, a close friend of Brassner’s who lives in Chicago.
“He thought that (Trump) was the worst thing for our country,” Cain added, “not caring about environmental issues – a horrible, lowlife human being.”
It took firefighters just over two hours to bring Saturday’s four-alarm blaze, which began in Brassner’s sprawling apartment, under control.
Fire marshals were combing his charred apartment Sunday looking for the cause, which sources said initially appears to be accidental.
By Sunday evening, Trump had tweeted praise for the firefighters, attacked Syrian President Bashar Assad and thrown punches at former President Barack Obama.
But he hadn’t said a word about Brassner.
…
In 2015, Brassner filed for bankruptcy.“The limited support of his family coupled with his medical problems caused the debtor to fall into arrears on his mortgage, credit card payments and line of credit payments,” the filing says.
The value of condos at Trump Tower dropped dramatically due to the recession and still hadn’t rebounded by last year, The Wall Street Journal reported – bringing Brassner even more agitation.
“He really wanted to sell (his apartment), but the value had gone so far down,” Cain said.
People with a better knowlege of the New York Real Estate Market than I tell me you can hardly give these Condos away. People are better off going through an estate agent group like UpNest than going for these condos, as they have all the attraction of a resort timeshare (heck, even the Plaza Hotel which Trump mismanaged into near oblivion is available now for a mere $625 Million cash on the barrelhead, no cryptocurrency ponzi scams). Economically they are money laundering machines for Oligarchs.
And let’s not forget Trump lobbied extensively to gut a provision to retrofit existing residential space in high rises with sprinklers.
FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro noted the blaze was harder to fight because the building’s residential floors lacked sprinklers and fire was on the 50th floor.
Trump fought against fitting of sprinklers in apartment where man died
Associated Press
Sun 8 Apr 2018
Some fire safety advocates pushed for a requirement that older apartment buildings be retrofitted with sprinklers when the city passed a law requiring them in new residential high-rises in 1999, but officials in the administration of then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani said that would be too expensive.
Trump was among the developers who spoke out against the retrofitting as unnecessary and expensive.
He later changed his views, saying sprinklers made tenants feel safer. He ultimately decided to spend $3m to put sprinklers in all 350 units of another building, Trump World Tower near the United Nations, The New York Times reported.
“People feel safer with sprinklers,” Trump said in 1999, according to The Times. “But the problem with the bill is that it doesn’t address the buildings that need sprinklers the most. If you look at the fire deaths in New York, almost all of them are in one-or two-family houses.”