This from The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof. I no longer post much about politics -- mostly because it usually upsets me more than any possible good (or bad) it can do. This is just too important. Trump is NOT a populist, just an opportunist who thinks he can steal an election, try to ruin the USA and be the REALLY "big man on campus". God help us all.
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Once upon a time, in New York City
in the 1950s, a little boy didn’t like his second-grade music teacher, Charles
Walker. So, the boy later boasted, he slugged Mr. Walker, giving him a black
eye.
“When that kid was 10,” Walker
recalled on his death bed, “even then, he was a ——” Oops, gentle reader, time
to move on hurriedly with the life story of Donald J. Trump.
Young Donald took on a newspaper
route to learn the value of money, but this was not “Leave It to Beaver”: On
rainy days, Donald avoided getting wet by delivering papers while being squired
around in the family Cadillac.
There are now more than 20 books out
about Trump, and while I can’t claim to have read them all — I am not a
masochist! — I have waded through his life story so that you don’t have to. You’re
welcome! As a reader service, here are highlights.
Donald attended the New York
Military Academy, where he thrived despite a regrettable attempt to throw a
smaller student out a second-floor window (this comes from one of the best of
the biographies, the brand-new “Trump Revealed,” by a team from The Washington Post).
Enough of Trump’s youth; now let’s
hurtle through his business career. After graduating from Wharton, Trump joined
his dad’s real estate business and, er, worked his way up: At about the age of
25, he was named president of Trump Management.
Unfortunately, the Trumps seemed to
have a policy in some properties of not renting to blacks. “I’m not allowed to rent”
to black families, a Trump building superintendent reportedly explained at the
time, adding that he was just doing “what my boss told me to do.”
If a black person did make it as far
as filling out an application, it was coded — in some cases, “C” for “colored”
— to make sure it was not accidentally approved. The Nixon administration sued
the Trumps in 1973 for breaking anti-discrimination laws.
Something similar happened with
Donald Trump’s pageants. He began with the American Dream Calendar Girl Model
Search, but that led to a lawsuit from a woman who said that Trump had groped
her and restrained her in his daughter’s bedroom. The lawsuit also alleged that
Trump had directed that “any black female contestants be excluded” from his
parties. Trump denied the claims.
Back in the world of real estate,
Trump had moved into Manhattan. In 1980, preparing to build Trump Tower, he
demolished a department store using hundreds of undocumented Polish workers who
were paid less than $5 an hour, sometimes in vodka. Some weren’t paid at all
and were threatened with deportation if they complained.
In subsequent litigation, Trump
blamed the subcontractor. The judge said that Trump’s aide was on site and that
Trump himself should have known.
Ultimately, Trump Tower was a
financial success, but the same was not true of Trump’s venture into casinos.
Anyone who had invested in his only public company, Trump Hotels and Casino
Resorts, when it listed in 1995 would have lost about 90 cents on the dollar by
2005.
Trump as a candidate has, of course,
refused to release his tax returns. But many years ago he was obliged to release them for casino regulatory filings — and
at that time he paid no federal income tax at all. Because of tax loopholes, he
managed to report zero income (actually losses!) for both 1978 and 1979.
Do I risk losing you with finances?
Time to throw in some sex, with a look now at Trump’s family life.
Melania Trump says that her husband
“is intensely loyal … he will never let you down.” Then again, she’s his third
wife.
His first was Ivana Trump, and he
then began a dalliance with Marla Maples, culminating in a dramatic
made-for-the-tabloids confrontation between the two women while they were all
skiing in Aspen. The resulting divorce negotiations were bitter, with Ivana
alleging in a deposition that Trump had raped her; she later backed off that.
Trump then married Maples. She in
turn gave way to Melania, who may well have arrived in the States illegally
(Melania Trump denies this but hasn’t furnished a convincing explanation for
her immigration).
So what does all this add up to?
Whether in his youth, in his
business career or in his personal life, Trump’s story is that of a shallow
egoist who uses those around him.
Even as a child, he personified
privilege and entitlement. In business, he proved a genius at marketing himself
but grew his fortune more slowly than if he had put his wealth in a stock index
fund. He made a mess of his personal life and has been repeatedly accused of
racism, of cheating people, of lying, of stiffing charities.
His life is a vacuum of principle,
and he never seems to have stood up for anything larger than himself.
Over seven decades, there’s one continuous
theme to his life story: This is a narcissist who has no core. The lights are
on, but no one’s home.
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