At CNN’s Republican debate, and ever since, Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina have been attacking each other’s business records—which is sort of like a fight between asbestos and thalidomide, i.e., sad and pointless. But anyway, a scorecard:
Nickname
“The Donald”
“Carly Fiorina? More like Carly Fired-Her-Own-Nana”
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Notable physical characteristics
Hairstyle often described as large, pumpkin-spice-flavored dust bunny; short fingers.
Facial features locked into perpetual “Who farted?” frown.
Primary business credentials
Chairman, C.E.O., and president of the Trump Organization, a New York City–based licensing, marketing, and branding firm; formerly owner of or partner of some sort in: the Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza, and Trump Marina Hotels and Casinos; Trump Airlines; Trump University; Trump magazine; the New Jersey Generals (actual mid-1980s off-brand professional football franchise, not the fake team from bad sports movie).
Former C.E.O. of Hewlett-Packard, a Palo Alto–based manufacturer of computers and software for the cast of Friends.
Early display of business acumen
Converting the decrepit Commodore Hotel on 42nd Street into the Grand Hyatt (New York’s prototypical steel-and-glass echt-1980s hotel) with rarely acknowledged assistance of massive $400 million tax abatement as well as loans from his father, Fred Trump, which helped cover upwards of $50 million in cost overruns.
Parlaying success as an executive at Lucent Technologies into a C.E.O. offer from Hewlett-Packard in 1999, two years before Lucent’s value collapsed amid a $1.1 billion accounting-fraud scandal.
Signature accomplishments
Building Trump Tower with what some cite was the aid of non-union, illegal-immigrant laborers; manufacturing “Donald J. Trump Signature Collection” menswear in Mexico and China; somehow getting 14 seasons out of The Apprentice.
Merging H-P with Compaq, maker of equally bad computers, in 2001; overseeing layoffs of 30,000 employees; watching the company’s stock plunge by some 50 percent; leaving with a severance package estimated at $21 million.
Current business activity
Building Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. (five blocks from the White House), with non-union, undocumented-immigrant laborers, according to The Washington Post.
N/A. (Hasn’t led a company since being fired by H-P board in 2005; has “served” on boards and “written” books.)
The power of “4”
Number of times his companies have filed for bankruptcy.
Number of pages average H-P printer ink cartridge prints before prompting “low ink” warning.
Net worth
$10 billion (he says, based in part on his valuation of the Trump “brand”).
$59 million (she says, backed up two tax returns she‘s voluntarily released).
Biggest boosters
Late father Fred, who not only staked Donald on his early deals but, in 1991, reportedly bought $3.5 million worth of Trump casino chips, which he didn’t cash right away, in order to help Donald avoid defaulting on a payment to bondholders.
Venture capitalist Tom Perkins, a former H-P board member, who has praised Fiorina’s tenure at the company and who has also said that wealthy people should get more votes in elections than poor people, and that they should stop being persecuted the way Jews were in Nazi Germany.
Most persistent detractors
Taste mavens, fact checkers, state attorneys general.
Members of the Hewlett and Packard families; Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dean of leadership programs at the Yale School of Management, who has said of Fiorina, “You couldn’t pick a worse, non-imprisoned C.E.O. to be your standard-bearer.”
Previous political experience
Threatened presidential campaigns in 1988, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012.
Ran for Senate in California in 2010; attacked primary rival with notorious “demon sheep” ad; dissed incumbent Barbara Boxer’s hair as “so yesterday”; lost.
Campaign slogan
“Make America Great Again” (borrowed from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign).
“New Possibilities, Real Leadership” (possibly stolen from poster depicting bald eagle in flight, as posted in H-P break rooms all over the world, circa 2002).
Assessment of rival’s business acumen
“[H-P] is a disaster. . . . When Carly says the revenues went up, that’s because she bought Compaq. It was a terrible deal, and it really led to the destruction of the company.”
“You [Trump] ran up mountains of debt, as well as losses, using other people’s money, and you were forced to file for bankruptcy not once, not twice, four times.”
CORRECTION (October, 2 2015): This article initially overstated Fiorina’s net worth. That entry has been updated to reflect the tax returns released by her campaign.
