Trumps letter as published:
Even before Gail Collins was with the New York Times, she has written nasty and derogatory articles about me. Actually, I have great respect for Ms. Collins in that she has survived so long with so little talent. Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level. More importantly, her facts are wrong!
As far as her comments on the so-called “birther” issue, I don’t need Ms. Collins’s advice. There is a very large segment of our society who believe that Barack Obama, indeed, was not born in the United States. His grandmother from Kenya stated, on tape, that he was born in Kenya and she was there to watch the birth. His family in Honolulu is fighting over which hospital in Hawaii he was born in-they just don’t know.
He has not been able to produce a “birth certificate” but merely a totally unsigned “certificate of live birth”-which is totally different and of very little significance. Unlike a birth certificate, a certificate of live birth is very easy to obtain. Equally of importance, there are no records in Hawaii that a Barack Hussein Obama was born there-no bills, no doctors names, no nurses names, no registrations, no payments, etc. As far as the two notices placed in newspapers, many things could have happened, but some feel the grandparents put an ad in order to show that he was a citizen of the U.S. with all of the benefits thereto. Everybody, after all, and especially then, wanted to be a United States citizen.
The term used by Ms. Collins-“birther”-is very derogatory and is meant in a derogatory way. Had this been George Bush or almost any other President or Presidential aspirant, they would never have been allowed to attain office, or would have been thrown out of office very quickly.
For some reason, the press protects President Obama beyond anything or anyone I have ever seen. What they don’t realize is that if he was not born in the United States, they would have uncovered the greatest “scam” in the history of our country. In other words, they would become the hottest writer since Watergate, or beyond.
Open your eyes, Gail, there’s at least a good chance that Barack Hussein Obama has made mincemeat out of our great and cherished Constitution!
DONALD J. TRUMP
New York, April 7, 2011
Trump wrote it perfectly, what person cant read that and understand what he’s saying, he wrote it in plain speak, not using fancy words or terms.
Thank you. I wouldn’t go to the NYT to read it, alhtough I certainly go the gist of it. Go Mr. Trump. Someone finally has the balls to take it to them, ask the questions we’ve been asking and do so without fear of repercussions. He’ earned my respect. I’m sick and tired of the pussy-footing around on this. The media sold a bill of goods called Barack Obama on a dumbed downed public. If we can’t get a real person to run..and get elected, it will mean that the Republic is lost. Not saying its Trump but he sure has changed the game. Finally.
OK, I’m going to put this whole ‘horrible letter’ business to rest right now. What others have said is true, and (with the exception of Andy Jackson) none have supported their ‘horrible letter’ assertion with any examples of evidence from the actual letter of such judgment. I grade college essays and standardized test writing submissions (such as state assessments and the ACT) for a living. It is my job to assess the writing of others, so I feel fairly confident that I am highly qualified to make a legitimate judgement call on this, although I do not profess to be an expert grammarian. (And no disrespect intended to those who have passed judgement on the letter because of their college journalism class or because they, too, are writers.)
To the person who stated the verb tense was wrong in the first sentence: On the contrary, Trump’s context is that she has written nasty articles about him, and that action (writing articles) is an ongoing action. The introductory dependent clause does not change that. If he had used the ‘had written’ verb form, it would have been an incorrect implication that the action was something that no longer occurred.
Trump’s opening paragraph is weakly developed, lacking a clear topic sentence, but clearly the intent is to slam Collins, which he effectively does in his second sentence. His third sentence is poorly constructed, particularly the parenthetical which is really adding nothing to the sentence (except tooting his own horn). His closing sentence in paragraph one is his thesis, which is clear and concise.
In paragraph two, his opening sentence could be more succinct, particularly in the introductory clause. He gets a bit overzealous with comma usage in the next two sentences, but all are appropriately placed. Using the word ‘who’ rather than the word ‘that’ when referring to the ‘large segment’ is a bit perplexing, since who is used for persons and that is used for objects. What to do when an object is used to describe a group of persons? (I think even the wisest grammarian would struggle with that one. I’m sure there’s a rule, but I don’t have time to go look it up.) The dash usage in the final sentence is not problematic. Actually, ellipses are not allowed in academic writing except to indicate edits in citations, so the person who stated an ellipsis should have been used here was incorrect.
Moving on, I do not believe the quotations are required in the first sentence of the third paragraph. Capitalizing the names of the documents might have been more effective. Adding the adjective ‘official’ before Birth Certificate would have added more clarity. His punctuation in the opening sentence is flawed in several places. He begins his next two sentences with effective transitional phrases, demonstrating variety in sentence structure (an advanced writing quality). He then uses the ‘as far as’ again, which stylistically could be considered overused, but this is the least of his worries in this sentence, which is poorly constructed. The use of ‘thereto’ indicates his familiarity with legal documents. It is not a commonly used word, but is used often in the legal profession, particularly in real estate contracts. (I used to work in a commercial real estate office, and typed many contracts with sentences ending in ‘thereto’ all the time.) The last sentence in this paragraph is poorly punctuated, but the meaning is clear.
His next two paragraphs lack focus and unity. Combining those two paragraphs into one would have been more effective, using his topic sentence in the fifth paragraph (about the press) and moving the sentence about the derogatory (a term he used twice in one sentence, which is a poor style choice) nature of the word ‘birther’ to be the topic sentence for perhaps the second or third paragraphs. He uses a fairly sophisticated word (aspirant) in this paragraph, indicating specific word choice. I do not believe the quotation marks around “scam” are required.
The closing sentence is a comma splice and should be two sentences or should have a semicolon after Gail instead of the comma.
In terms of content and message, overall I believe he was effective in staying on point, although structurally there were areas that could use some fine tuning. He did support many of his statements with strong assertions, but to be more effective in his content, some reference to his sources should have also been included.
So, there you have it. After reviewing it carefully, I wouldn’t call it ‘horrible’(believe me, I have seen ‘horrible!’), but it was also not as effective as it could have been. It indicates to me that he spent very little time on it and probably just wrote it like many of us do when composing an ‘angry email’ response.
Now, back to my grading...