Donald Trump did not think he was going to win the election against Hillary Clinton back in 2016. Many around him acknowledged his candidacy was a brand-building marketing ploy, further moving up the stock value of his celebrity status, helping him to build another level on to his debt-laced real estate house of cards. Trump had gone bankrupt a number of times but had always worked out deals that largely kept him whole, giving him lavish spending allowances, as long as he continued to be the flamboyant, attention-drawing, playboy mogul that is Donald Trump. He had become the human punctuation point of “too big to fail”. To his financiers, the real estate became peripheral – they were backstopping a brand, and that brand – his family name – is what Trump thought he was elevating even if he lost to what he characterised as the corrupt and cheating Clinton political machine.