LINK: How This Iconic Skating Rink Tells the Story of Donald Trump
For your question, this short (under four minutes) video, even if it may be construed as "Trump Propaganda" which has Newt Gingrich explaining in his own words why The Wollman Skating Rink (Central Park) Renovation Story explains a lot about who Donald Trump is and how he operates.
Trump had an office that looked out over Central park where he could see the skating rink which was a dilapidated state and non-functional. The City of New York had seen 6 years and 13 million dollars to fix it, and as is typical with government-led solutions, the time passed, money was spent, and it remained a non-functional, dilapidated eye-sore.
Trump complained publicly about it until, as Newt Gingrich describes it, the current New York mayor (Ed Koch) offered to give Trump a $3 million contract to fix the problem, just to get Trump off his back and shut him up.
One of the key things about it is that when Trump took on the project, he realized he knew nothing about skating rinks. So he did what any intelligent businessman would do, and began asking around about who did know things about skating rinks. And then thought occurred to him that Canadians know all about skating ranks. So he found out who the preeminent company was in Canada that dealt with skating rinks (Toromont-Cimco)and scheduled a meeting with them. It was the company that makes all the skating rinks for the NHL and other important venues. They came down, looked at the skating rink and said "This is so stupid it is embarrassing." Then they proposed a simpler and cheaper approach that was WHOLLY different from the one the City of New York had been fruitlessly pursuing.
The project was completed under time and under budget. Furthermore, Trump set up a trust, required people to pay to skate there, and fed the money back into the trust for maintenance and improvements to the rink and the area around it.
The other key thing was, once he had the project, he took personal ownership of it. He said he went down every day to check on the progress of it and to see what else might be required to make the deadline on time and under budget. Trump was quoted as saying: "You get what you inspect, not what you expect." They doubled the usership of the rink that had peaked around 130,000 a year to about 250,000 a year, and made it profitable (the profits being put back into the trust, not into the pockets of politicians)
I believe those two things (as described by Newt Gingrich) explain a lot about Donald Trump.
There are a lot of politicians (and voters too) who think that a real leader knows all about the issues right down to the most granular detail. This seems to be especially prevalent in leftists, with their love affair with people like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who were considered to be "policy wonks".
Trump approached these kinds of things as a businessman would and as an executive, not as a politician would. And he got results that only private industry can, and government NEVER can.
I suggest you watch the video, as Newt Gingrich simply explains the dynamic of his thought process, and why someone like trump can do things in a political environment that regular politicians simply have not been able to do. It doesn't mean he's perfect in anyway or infallible, but it does mean that his approach is dramatically different.
And that's why many people support him as a candidate for President.
Donald Trump may not be the solution to the governmental problems we face, but with his mindset, he is less likely to be the cause of them.