Posted on 02/01/2011 8:36:08 AM PST by dennisw
[Why do you say he has no chance?]
1) While he is a business survivor, everyone in real estate knows he has skeletons in his closet. These will come out.
2) He has zero experience in running for office, it takes a while to change from businessman to candidate.
3) His foreign policy is completely unknown.
4) Ivana. And other women. Not a social conservative.
There are other reasons. It’s not like I hate the guy, just that he won’t fly far as a candidate. The same with Cain.
I saw an interview with The Donald about 2 years ago and he was saying that we need to send private businessmen over to negotiate the oil deals with the Arabs. I thought he was right then and I think he’s right now. I hope he runs for President as he will bring some good things to the conversation.
unless the ross perot guy wins. that might be what we need.
What's a Trump CIC gonna tell the ME extremists?...you guys need to tone it down before we get all your chicks? LOL.
I don’t know what bothers me more about Trump between his campaign contributions to Rahm Emanuel’s mayoral candidacy, or the fact that he has his Trump-branded retail line of clothing and accessories manufactured in China. The man is a joke...a bad one.
So why is Donald allowing his trophy wife to sell Chinese overpriced crap jewelry on QVC?
Seru, you sound suspiciously like an old professor of mine at Georgetown (non-Ivy League, mind you), who hated the State Dept with a passion. Edward Luttwak often fantasized in class about becoming President and ordering the Army Corps of Engineers to dig a tunnel with its terminus directly under Foggy Bottom, where he'd order a large chamber dug and filled with explosives. Then he'd have the tunnel sealed and the fuze lit (while being rather far away from the site himself). He said that it'd do more good for our national interest than anything else he could think of, and his was/is a brilliant mind.
In all seriousness, TPTB, many of whom are Ivy-League educated, have not been on the side of the American public or our national interest for at least the last 40 years.
Trump is a huge exception to this. OK, the guy is so full of himself that he needs doorways to be widened just to fit his head through them, but in this case he's hit the nail on the head - especially the part about not using diplomats. You see, I had roommates who were in the GU Foreign Service School, and to a person they understood the job of a diplomat as "getting treaties agreed to and signed." HORSECRAP!!! The job of a diplomat is to represent his country's interest against those of any and all other nations. Sometimes that calls for a treaty, and sometimes it calls for no treaty and a lot of diplomatic, military and economic pressure. That's what these assclowns don't understand - their very jobs. They are loyal to the idea of diplomacy and getting along with others as ends unto themselves, whereas they are mere tools (diplomacy and getting along, not the people involved - though sometimes they are also tools). Loyalty to their own country is, at best, far down the list of priorities for most of them; for some, its an active evil to be combatted without mercy. Frankly, it is for people like this that masonry walls and hemp ropes were created.
What I wouldn't give to see someone with similar viewpoints sitting in the Oval Office and running our government's machinery.
This also allows them the learn our technology advancements in drilling.
Ha! I’m just an average EE who has watched these State apparatchiks sell us out and appease enemies since I started voting in 1970. But it’s nice to know that there is at least one professor who’s head isn’t straight up his clymer.
He has some good ideas. He has a no nonsense approach to how to get things done—I think we need this candor at this time. He clearly has leadership skills Obama lacks. We need him in government or at least people like him. I wanted to see him put in charge of new Orleans reconstruction by Bush—he would have gotten the job done. Still, I can see he would have problems with arch conservatives and the far left—I could see him as Sarah Palin’s VP.
Interesting about Luttwack and the culture of “sell out” in the State Department. Our US Office of Trade Representative has been selling out the US for years no matter who was president. A good example is Robert Zoellick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zoellick who was rewarded with presidency of the World Bank.
I get what you are saying, however isn't it possible for that to be so obvious that the effect, rather than being magnified, is actually reduced? Come on ...it is The Donald we are talking about. Who doesn't know about his divorces, penchant for beautiful women, spending habits, etc. If, to use an example, I said that Billy Graham loves to spend money on fast sports cars, people would raise an eyebrow. If I said, however, that Kobe Bryant likes to spend money on fast sports cars, the question would be 'how fast?' Donald would not be running on the same platform as some of the other candidates who need to claim how they did not inhale or they tried wicca but are not the devil's handmaided. Trump is known as an aggressive, risk-it-all, business person who has forged a name for himself for being hard-nosed and fast-talking, and living the big life. Basically the business world's version of Don King to put it bluntly, but just like Don King in boxing promotion, having the track record to back up the overtness. I can see a lot that opposition research may want to target (e.g. the love of women, the fact that he has been bankrupt twice and almost a third time, the fact that he is uber aggressive, etc), but I do not see anything that they can actually use. There is nothing sticky, nothing that people do not already know, and even if it came out he did drugs in the 80s (and with the culture then I would not be surprised) or 'hired' female services (or any similar demerit), most of the populace would more or less expect it of him and give him a pass. Actually some of those 'problems' would actually be key advantages ...for instance his bankruptcies would show that he knows how to make it back from the brink (obviously it is more complex than that, but in the world of soundbytes that would be sufficient).
In my opinion, and I could be wrong, Donald Trump is almost walking teflon. Sure, there is a lot of material out there on The Donald (and I am sure a lot that is not public knowledge and would be quite damning for most people), but for something to stick on Trump he would have to be photographed eating the entrails of a nun sprinkled with pre-teen livers. On a serious note, he would be a very hard target. Not because there is not a lot of material on him, but because of making it stick. His brand, unlike many politicians who (act) like they are lily-white and 'have never told a lie,' Trump doesn't have that. His brand is based on results, and when there is failure the appearance of coming from failure into even bigger results (and that is quite a strong appearance for Trump). In a time when the economy is still the number one issue, a tough businessman who seems to know what he is talking about can easily be elected to be CEO of a country.
And to be honest, I totally believe that Trump could do a better job than Obama+WBush+Clinton+PapaBush combined. Certain of that.
Furthermore, unlike most politicians, he is an absolute pragmatist. What he is saying about diplomacy and diplomats is true, and while there is a time for diplomacy it is not when one is against the ropes. The US is still the strongest most innovative nation in the world, but it has been ceeding some of that lead (unnecessarily) to China in particular. Since Deng Xiaoping rise in China in 1978/79, that country has moved from a place that was known for rice, bicycles all over, and really bad KungFu films to the second largest economy in the world. Add to that a weak domestic economy, and I doubt most voters would worry much about Trump's many experiences with women as compared to his ability to do something about the economy. He is obviously no social conservative, but I would bet good money at fair odds that come 2012 many many many people will be concerned about someone with good and effective business sense that can actually do something about the economy (not Obama's pixie dust hope and dreams, and not G.W.Bush needing to 'kill capitalism to save it'), rather than someone with the appropriate social conservative credentials. Sadly, bad economic policy by both parties has led to the need for a business minded leader rather than someone who 'says the right things' but knows next to nothing about how the economy works.
Maybe America does need a CEO.
Here in Vegas there is something called Trump Tower. The failures from that project alone would be enough to take him out. I’m sure other Freepers have many many more tales, especially in New York and Atlantic city.
IIRC, there was a Trump Tower project in the Tampa area that left buyers high and dry.
Yep....A group of at least 20 disgruntled former Trump Tower Tampa buyers plans to sue Donald Trump, accusing the New York tycoon of falsifying his role in the $300-million project that went bankrupt last year.
Trump misrepresented himself as a tower investor when he was only lending his name to the project in a licensing deal with Tampa Bay developer SimDag Robel LLC, said Kenneth Turkel, a Tampa attorney hired by some of the condo buyers.
Scores of buyers plunked down 20 percent deposits on units that ranged in price from $700,000 to $6 million. Developers didn’t refund half the deposit money, and buyers aim to recoup losses from Trump though the courts.
I think for his social or personal "behavior" problems, that's probably true. I was speaking more to the skeletons that must be in his closet with respect to his gambling and real estate business. NO ONE becomes as successful as he has become in those industries without either tangential, or even direct ties to some pretty unsavory characters.
I suspect an opponent wouldn't have to dig too far to find connections between Trump, and a litany of people who have criminal records, or worse.
Think about what the media has done to Sarah Palin, a woman who hasn't been "linked" to anyone with so much as a parking ticket, nor has there been even the slightest hint of corruption in her past political endeavors or her personal business ventures. Imagine what they could have done to Palin if any of that existed in her background. Now, imagine what they could to any candidate with Trump's background. The media's narrative, and the opposition campaign commercial would write themselves.
Exactly unlike a court of law, it has NOTHING to do with what you can prove and everything to do with the picture you can paint. You could paint a pretty damaging picture for Trump, without much effort I imagine.
Well said and I agree.
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