U.S. Rep. Donald S. Beyer Jr., a Democrat representing the 8th District of Virginia that includes the City of Falls Church, today assailed the bankruptcy and lawsuit-driven business practices of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, citing his own Falls Church-based automotive business as being in sharp contrast to Trump. Beyer, in a telephone conference call to Virginia reporters today, followed on the remarks made by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in Atlantic City, New Jersey, yesterday where Clinton hammered Trump for what she claimed has been his practice of taking out large loans, drawing in investors, developing real estate and then declaring bankruptcy, walking away with enormous sums for himself while leaving other investors and construction contractors, and their workers, holding the bag.
Beyer echoed the same claims about Trump’s business practice model, which he said has been about “not what he could build, but about what he could take,” acquiring “intentional debt” and then using bankruptcy to avoid financial obligations. His practices have resulted in four bankruptcies and 3,500 lawsuits being filed against him, most by small contractors trying to get the money they’re owed to be able to pay their workers. Trump “endangers economies, he must not be allowed to endanger the economy of Virginia or the U.S.,” Beyer said.
Beyer contrasted the Trump model to his own family’s successful business of 42 years, originated and still headquartered in Falls Church, Beyer Automotive. “Our business practice has always been to pay the little guy first,” he said, and added that Clinton is proposing new Small Business Administration policy that would leverage hundreds of billions to assist small business’ ability to fight back against unscrupulous developers like Trump and to enable them to get paid faster, for example. This would help 145,000 small businesses in Virginia, he noted, with 1.4 million employees.
He said he’s hopeful Virginia voters will see past the “persona that Trump has projected” to see his “true character and lack of integrity.” Of the three major industries in Virginia, the military, coal and tobacco, he said Clinton represents the best choice, favoring heavy investment in new coal technologies and advocating a foreign policy “more hawkish than Obama.” In the case of tobacco, he noted that its use in the U.S. has dropped back to only 15 percent of the adult population, the second lowest level of any nation in the world (except for Australia) and that while he personally abhors its health risks, he said he could not speak for Clinton on that.
