Donald Trump's secret sauce for not paying his debts

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/28/politics/donald-trump-loans-debt-new-york-times/index.html

How do you get a bank to forgive almost $300 million in loans for a failed real estate project? You act like Donald Trump.

This, from The New York Times about a Chicago skyscraper built by Trump that led to him to incur $287 million in unpaid debt by 2010, is remarkable:

"When the project encountered problems, he tried to walk away from his huge debts. For most individuals or businesses, that would have been a recipe for ruin. But tax-return data, other records and interviews show that rather than warring with a notoriously litigious and headline-seeking client, lenders cut Mr. Trump slack — exactly what he seemed to have been counting on."

 Which means this: Donald Trump was such a public bully that the lenders preferred to work to eat the debt (or a large portion of it) rather than risk a fight with him because, well, they had made the calculation it simply wasn't worth it.