Mortgage employees’ testimonies revealed Trump management style

Former Trump Mortgage employees provide a window into the U.S. presidential aspirant’s administrative style

When Donald Trump launched his Trump Mortgage venture back in 2006, he dismissed experts’ claims of a major housing crisis looming over the horizon.
 
“I think the market is very good. We’re going to have a great company. It’s Trump Mortgage and trumpmortgage.com. And it’s going to be a terrific company,” he told CNBC at the time.
 
Trump added that observers are not capable of predicting significant events, and confidently said that the new business would fast become an industry leader. Not a year has transpired, however, when the company folded, reaching only a third of its declared transaction volume of $3 billion.
 
Then-Trump Mortgage national sales director Jan Scheck said that he was all on board with the famed mogul’s aim of making the nascent company a major player.
 
“I told myself, ‘This is an awesome opportunity with somebody who is a god in the real estate industry.’ People were buying Trump ties. . . . You have to remember this is the peak of his popularity. Everybody wanted to be Donald Trump. Donald was putting his name on buildings all over the country. I thought this was going to be an awesome opportunity,” Scheck told The Independent.
 
Scheck said that he rarely saw or interacted with Trump after the inauguration of the company. Along with several other managers, Scheck left Trump Mortgage a few months after, citing disappointment with the remote and ineffectual leadership.
 
Mortgage seller Jennifer McGovern, who negotiated a commercial property deal for the company and then was promptly fired, said that she never received a $238,000 compensation for the deal.
 
Records showed that she won a New York State Supreme Court judgement in 2008 that awarded her $298,274 in restitution, but the bill has still not been paid as of press time.
 
“The company was set up in a way that we could never recover what we were owed,” McGovern, a mother of three, said.