Dan Alexander:

It does.

If you look back at Donald Trump’s history, he is really a master at convincing people to throw piles of money at him, even when they should be wary. And what’s interesting is, if you look at this over the years, the sorts of people throwing those piles of money at him have become less and less likely to scrub the financials of the actual business.

So, if you go back to the 1980s, when he’s building in Atlantic City, he’s borrowing from A-list, names you would know, banks on Wall Street. These are people who are going to scrub financials very carefully. However, they didn’t do it carefully enough in that case. And there were several bankruptcies, and many of those lenders lost money.

Then he went to the public markets, which are known for being — for putting some scrutiny in, but maybe not as much, or they’re not as careful as banks are. And, ultimately, his casino company, as a public — publicly traded entity, went bankrupt twice, and those stockholders got wiped out.

Now, you have the latest iteration of this, where he’s going back to the public markets, now capitalizing on his political supporters who want to be in business with him and also just on people who like trading meme stocks. Some people like going to the casino. Other people like trading meme stocks and just seeing what’s going to happen.

These are not people who are going to be carefully looking at the financials and figuring out, OK, does this valuation make sense? And do I think that this company is going to be profitable enough to justify my investment? By and large, these are people who just say, hey, I want to be in business with Donald Trump and here’s my opportunity to do so.