Months before the housing market began to collapse, Donald Trump wrote a blog post for his now-defunct Trump University website dismissing claims of “doom and gloom” and painting a much rosier picture of the real estate market.
Trump’s opponents have attacked him in recent days for his controversial and now-defunct Trump University, a for-profit real estate education program that promised to teach its “students” the secrets and methods behind Trump’s success.
As part of the program, Trump maintained a blog as “chairman of Trump University,” where he offered advice and thoughts on business and current events. While most of his posts were innocuous, one from September 2005, in which Trump dismissed “doom and gloom” real estate market predictions, proved to be particularly fraught in hindsight. While real estate prices soared throughout 2005, the market began to collapse in 2006 and reached full crisis mode by 2007.
Trump now claims he presciently spotted the housing bubble, telling National Geographic last year in a documentary he told people not to buy houses at the time because they were too expensive.