Dumping the Donald

I hope everybody had a lovely 4th of July and will enjoy some barbeque this weekend.

NASCAR has joined the Donald Trump pile-on and has announced it has changed an awards banquet venue because of his remarks about Mexicans. It appears The Donald is genuinely surprised by this. Yesterday he said he knew campaigning could be rough, but he didn’t think it would be this severe.

“I knew it was going to be bad because I was told this. All my life I have been told this: If you are successful, you don’t run for office,” Trump said in an interview onFox News, addressing the recent spate of businesses that have severed their relationships with his brand. “I didn’t know it was going to be quite this severe, but I really knew it was going to be bad.”

See, all these companies — NBC, Macy’s, Serta, etc. — are turning on The Donald because he is successful. And how did he get successful?

Trump was born in New York City in 1946, the son of real estate tycoon Fred Trump. Fred Trump’s business success not only provided Donald Trump with a posh youth of private schools and economic security but eventually blessed him with an inheritance worth an estimated $40 million to $200 million. It is critical to note, however, that his father’s success, which granted Donald Trump such a great advantage, was enabled and buffered by governmental financing programs. In 1934, while struggling during the Great Depression, financing from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) allowed Fred Trump to revive his business and begin building a multitude of homes in Brooklyn, selling at $6,000 apiece. Furthermore, throughout World War II, Fred Trump constructed FHA-backed housing for US naval personnel near major shipyards along the East Coast.

In 1974 Donald Trump became president of his father’s organization. During the 15 years following his ascension, he expanded and innovated the corporation, buying and branding buildings, golf courses, hotels, casinos, and other recreational facilities. In 1980 he established The Trump Organization to oversee all of his real estate operations.

Trump eventually found himself in serious financial trouble. In 1990, due to excessive leveraging, The Trump Organization revealed that it was $5 billion in debt ($8.8 billion by some estimates), with $1 billion personally guaranteed by Trump himself. The survival of the company was made possible only by a bailout pact agreed upon in August of that same year by some 70 banks, allowing Trump to defer on nearly $1 billion in debt, as well as to take out second and third mortgages on almost all of his properties. If it were not for the collective effort of all banks and parties involved in that 1990 deal, Trump’s business would have gone bankrupt and failed.

In other words, it didn’t take exceptionally hard work or brilliance.

In our culture, to paraphrase a line from Michael Shaara, there’s nothing as close to a god on earth than a billionaire CEO. I’m sure The Donald has gotten away with saying anything he wanted to say and being the biggest asshole he could be, and nobody has dared correct him. And at this point he’s turned into a caricature of himself.

FYI, the Donald is currently at the top of the GOP presidential contender polls, at 13.6 percent. Jeb Bush is second, at 13.3 percent. The next three are Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. Scott Walker has fallen to sixth place, at 8 percent. Republican voters relate to mean and stupid, apparently.

11 thoughts on “Dumping the Donald

  1. At one time, Dumnbald Chump once said (I’m probably paraphrasing), “If you owe the bank $100,000 dollars, the band owns you. But if you owe the bank $100 million, then you own the bank.”

    Look, he made his whole career being a loud, pompous, preening, self-important and self-aggrandizing bully.
    You’ve got it right maha – no one who worked for or with Chump ever contradicted, challenged, or corrected him.
    On his TV show – one that I admittedly never watched a second of – I heard that he was a blow-hard and a bully.
    Right in character for Chump.
    Well, Chump, how’s it feel to be on the other end, when companies tell you, “YOU’RE FIRED!!!”?

    His whole life of ease – thanks to his father and the Federal government – he’s been “The Donald!” “The Boss.”

    Soon, unless he pulls a Mitt, he’ll have to disclose his financial records – and I don’t think he’s anywhere near as rich as he claims. And I don’t think his ego could take people finding that out.

    And sure, he’s high in the polls right now, because the conservative base likes loud, mean, arrogant, ignorant, psychopathic, bigoted, and mean candidates.

    But, soon he’ll either pull-out, or start dropping in the polls (something else his ego won’t be able to take) and be like yesterday’s newspapers – good only to wrap a dead fish, or line a bird’s cage.

    On the plus side, in the meantime, even though some of the other GOP wannabe’s have challenged his wording – but not his message – he’s pulling them so far to the right, that to capture the people who want him to continue to run, if he drops out, they’ll have to out-Chump Chump.
    Once the base tastes some ever redder-meat, everything else starts to taste like tofu.

    I hope he makes it to at least the first debate.
    Let the nation see how much crazier the GOP has gotten – even potentially more crazy than in 2012.
    I don’t think that will help them in the general election.

    Chump couldn’t happen to a “nicer” political party!

  2. Mean and stupid, that pretty much sums up Scott Walker too. He should be at the top of that poll, well, second anyway. No one meaner or stupider (?) than Trump. Walker and his minions in the Reichstag attempted to push through a complete gutting of the state Freedom of Information Act. They were shocked, shocked, at the push back and pulled it out (of the state budget bill, go figure). They claimed it was to protect constituents who contacted their represented. I don’t contact my representative any more because I don’t speak German. Tell me why this guy is even in the conversation for the WH? Oh, that’s right, every other candidate for the repugs is so disparagingly awful that even one who is only second to Sam Brownback in ideological foolishness could be considered ‘Presidential’. FWIW, while the rest of the country is enjoying an economic recovery, WI lost 6K jobs last month.

  3. When he says to people, “You’re fired,” he expects them to suck it up. When Univision fires him, he cries “boo hoo” and threatens to sue them.

  4. All my life I have been told this: If you are successful, you don’t run for office,”
    He just doesn’t get it. His arrogance and his over inflated ego is so great than he can’t even make a simple comment without blowing his own horn and offending somebody. I guess Pastor Mike Huckabee will take that comment in stride and consider the source.

  5. What does it say of the GOP when the popularity of its candidates is determined by how mean and stupid they appear, publicly? And how scary is it to consider that there are
    millions of people who find this behavior attractive?

    For some of these people, “mean and stupid” is more than an act. They’re being themselves.

  6. If ever there was a ‘pass the popcorn’ event it’s Donald running for president. I love that he’s up in the polls. Hopefully, he will think that since his arrogance got him the top spot he’s in, then the answer to any question problem or event is – more arrogance.

    More popcorn?

  7. Please proceed, Mr. Trump. I can just see Hillary and Bernie taking his parts apart after one of his trademark bloviations. It would be like the field-dressing Joe Biden did on Paul Ryan. He got way too little credit for that, because Mittens had stepped so far in it that President Obama just had to wait for the end of the fatal sentence to deliver the master stroke.

  8. I hear that the GOP mega donors are going to convene a conclave to deal with the problem of unruly candidates. The question under consideration is how can the Westminster dog show conduct such an orderly affair without having to muzzle their pets. The Donald seems to be creating aggressive behaviors among the candidates that might require that they all be muzzled.

  9. The question under consideration is how can the Westminster dog show conduct such an orderly affair without having to muzzle their pets.

    I believe the answer is “neutering.”

  10. Joan…That seems to be the consensus among the big money boys in dealing with the Donald. The word has gone forth. They can’t allow his truth telling to matastasize.

Comments are closed.