Posted on 04/20/2011 1:33:10 PM PDT by Notary Sojac
If one were drawing up a list of Donald Trump’s first principles of business, “Fake it ’Til You Make It” would probably be at the top.
One of the young Trump’s more clever business tactics involved hiring workers and machines to push dirt around his frequently stalled or underfunded real-estate developments to present visiting potential investors with the illusion of industry. And he has developed a long-running reflex to offer unsolicited — and largely unverifiable — assessments of the strength and virility of his portfolio to anybody who will listen, perhaps in an effort to erase memories of the four (and counting) bankruptcies to which he was a party.
This habit of projecting the appearance of success is on full display in the Donald’s sideshow flirtation with a Republican presidential bid. Just as he did with his ultimately doomed 2000 Reform Party bid, Trump appears to have shrewdly taken stock of the political moment, identifying the most passionate cross-section of voters in the American electorate and undertaking a media blitzkrieg to convince them that he’s one of them. Most cynically he has taken on the Birther mantle, going further than any contender in questioning the circumstances of the president’s birth, and making the (again unverified) claim that he has dispatched gumshoes to Hawaii to investigate. With an underwhelming, wide-open GOP field and a starting advantage in name-recognition, Trump has even been able to catch some early polling momentum, and has assured us that he knows “many people at the White House” who say he is “the last person [President Obama] wants to run against.”
In other words, Fake It ’Til You Make It. But make no mistake, conservatives, Donald Trump is not one of you. Don’t believe it? Listen to the man.
Abortion
Trump says he has found the light on abortion, and now describes himself as ardently pro-life. But it wasn’t always so. He told Fox News in 1999 “I’m totally pro-choice,” And later that year told the Associated Press he believed abortion was a “personal decision that should be left to the women and their doctors.” And even his newfound respect for life is undermined by a naïve view of the Constitution: When NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked Trump on April 19 whether he thought there was a right to privacy in the Constitution, Trump replied: “I guess there is, I guess there is. And why, just out of curiosity, why do you ask that question?”
Health Care
Though he now advocates repeal of Obamacare, the Trump of yesteryear was, by his own admission, “very liberal when it comes to health care.” “I believe in universal health care,” he told Larry King in October of 1999. In The America We Deserve Trump advocated government-administered exchanges that would be the “equivalent of single-payer.” He said that while “working out detailed plans will take time . . . the goal should be clear: Our people are our greatest asset. We must take care of our own. We must have universal health care.”
Taxes
The last time he considered a presidential run, Trump advocated a one-time, 14.25 percent tax on the net worth of all individuals and estates worth over $10 million. The levy, he said at the time, would have raised $5.7 trillion which he would have used to eliminate (!) the national debt and shore up the Social Security trust fund. Trump rejected the notion that the soak would hurt the economy, predicting a 35 percent boost in economic activity as a result of eliminating the debt. “It would not be a shock to the system,” he said. Trump stands by his plan as the right solution for the times, telling a reporter in Florida “It would have been a beautiful thing to do. But the world is different.”
Bailouts
Think Trump is a champion of laissez-faire? Think again. In 2008 he told Neil Cavuto that we couldn’t let any of the “Big Three” auto companies fail. “I think the government should stand behind them 100 percent,” he said. “You cannot lose the auto companies.”
Missile Defense
In The America We Deserve, Trump advocated “diverting money” from nascent missile-defense technology. “The question isn’t whether or not such a defense can be built,” he wrote. “The question is whether it is the right defense for our times. And I believe the answer is, largely, no.”
Gun Rights
Though Trump writes that he is “generally” opposed to gun control, he also says he supports a ban on assault weapons and lengthening the waiting period required before purchasing a handgun.
Eminent Domain
The Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo decision construes the Fifth Amendment to allow governments to force property owners off their land if a new tenant would mean increased tax revenue. Trump has more than once teamed up with municipalities in an attempt to gut property rights, most egregiously to push an elderly widow off the Atlantic City property she’d owned for 30 years, and which Trump wanted to turn into a limousine parking lot. It should be no surprise, then, that Trump told Neil Cavuto that he agrees with Kelo “100 percent.”
Bush and Obama
In a TV interview shortly after the 2008 presidential election, at the height of Obama euphoria, Trump lavished praise on the president-elect and slammed outgoing President Bush as “evil.” “I think he has a chance to go down as a great president,” Trump said of Obama. “I think he’s going to lead through consensus.” Bush, by contrast, he described as “maybe the worst president in the history of this country,” who was “so incompetent, so bad, [and] so evil.”
Family
The twice-divorced Trump reflects on his marriage to first wife Ivana in Surviving at the Top, published in 1990, expressing regret that he didn’t divorce sooner. “Why had I hung in there so long when things were just not what they should have been?” he asked. “It’s very uncharacteristic of me to act that way; I’m not one to let problems fester.” Trump also admitted to briefly considering an “open marriage” arrangement, before deciding it was too “tawdry.”
Economic Protectionism
In 1999, with free trade enjoying the support of a vast coalition of mainstream liberals and conservatives, Trump sided with the Buchanans and Naders of the world in continued opposition to NAFTA. “The reason NAFTA looks okay now,” Trump told Larry King, “is because the economy is strong, but when the economy is not strong, which, unfortunately, will at some point happen, NAFTA is going to look like a disaster.”
To this day Trump supports economic protectionism vis-à-vis China. In a Fox News interview from April of this year, Trump repeated his advocacy of a 25 percent tariff on Chinese imports, and said he’d “love to have a trade war with China.”
Make that 2
Because Trump is mentioning an issue that causes some of us to salivate like Pavlov’s dogs. If Charlie Sheen were to ask “Hey, what about this Obama birth certificate thing” there are some Freepers who’d be sending $$ to the Sheen-for-Prez campaign inside of sixty seconds.
None of the Bush women were pro life, mama Bush being pretty vocal until they wanted to be President.
There’s plenty of time to work for the person we would like as a candidate after they declare they are running. Give him free reign at this point.
Mitt Romney does.
Trump is Romney lite.
Hey Notary; seems your dreaded Trump is known better than anyone else, which you would NEVER vote for, selling out your vote to the p-RESIDENT in the Whit hut, regardless of your devoted and beloved National Review!!!
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20055756-503544.html
Hey Notary; seems your dreaded Trump is known better than anyone else, which you would NEVER vote for, selling out your vote to the p-RESIDENT in the Whit hut, regardless of your devoted and beloved National Review!!!
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20055756-503544.html
Sorry, I can’t explain why this was posted twice???
Had two glasses of Red wine to dinner, maybe hit the button twice, sorry again, hick-hick!!!
I'd certainly hope so.
Maybe you need to re-read this if you have never read it before, what FREE Republic is all about!!!
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Can you explain where he has violated this???
I'd certainly hope so.
Maybe you need to re-read this if you have never read it before, what FREE Republic is all about!!!
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Can you explain where he has violated this???
See post 68, sorry!!!
Exactly my sentiments. It is pointless to micro-analyze Trump’s past. I’m not the least bit surprised that he doesn’t know that the “right to privacy” has some connection with abortion. He hasn’t given fifteen seconds’ thought to abortion or Roe v. Wade.
He is breaking the Democrat/Republican conspiracy of silence regarding Soetoro’s manifest ineligibility. That’s all his “candidacy” is about.
To the extent that the Republicans are determined to maintain the conspiracy of silence, they will pour their energies into trashing Trump.
LOL! I was hoping someone would point that out.
Although, I say Trump will not announce unless he’s very sure he can win. And once he announces I say he’s going to put up a primary fight the likes of which we’ve never seen. Tooth and nail, no holds barred, all out race with but one objective, win the nomination. I predict IF he runs, he’s the nominee.
From there he will train his energy on Obama, and will decimate him.
So, maybe the naysayers here are right to be raising cain, ‘cuz come June it will be too late.
Sheen DID as about the birth certificate, as a matter of fact. Don’t see a lot of donations going in his direction. Don’t know a soul who’s sent a dime to Trump, either.
So far we have 2 or 3 potential candidates who’ve opened “exploratory committees.” We don’t have one announced candidate. We haven’t had the first debate. So why do we have to spend time trashing anyone who might decide to run?
I don't pretend to have the answers, but as our country falls apart we need to look for true leadership and strength from our Commander in Cheif. Trump has both of these virtues, and has them in spades when compared to the various other Republican entities. He also has a set of ba!!s like no other candidate has, and while Sarah Palin, whose conservative virtues I love, screetches in her whiney voice, "we need some one to fight like a girl", (hell, she didn't even say 'woman'), it makes me know all the deeper that we need some one who fights like a MAN, --- a man who does not like to lose, and a man who has a deep love for America. Is Trump for real? Time will tell. But why join the Republican establishment in trying to destroy him before he even gets a chance?
Lastly, many of us have witnessed in amazement at the site of beltway "conservatives" like Charles Krauthammer lashing out at Tea Party type candidates such as Sharon Angle. Washington D.C. is dominted by elitists, Democrat and Republican, that is why I will give Trump the benefit of the doubt until/unless he is revealed as insincere. Many of the Republicans detest Tea Party types who would like to self-govern. We're just not up to the job, you see, in their superior, elitist minds. I am staunchly pro-life, but I could care less if Trump was once pro-choice and has flip-flopped, just as long as his flip has flopped in the right place. We really need to at least give him a chance, and don't join the Republican elitists in their chorus of anti-Trump diatribes. I, in fact, take this to be elitist, anti-Tea Party attacks.
That's not really the core of what I'm trying to say, though I do agree with it. Obama is not merely a poor leader, like Jimmy Carter, he's willfully trying to destroy America as we know it, redistribute the wealth to those who don't earn it, and essentially get even with "those rich white people", (Rev. Wright), who once enslaved Africans. The mixed race Obama, seeing himself as black, should prefer to detest those Africans who hunted down, captured and imprisoned their fellow Africans at various bay area holding sites, so that white men could just sail in, purchase them, and sail off to Europe. Anyway, it appears to me that Obama literally hates wealthy whites, and is enjoying his amazing opportunity to exact his pound of flesh. He even admits to this fleshy idea when he says: "Everyone must have some skin in the game". Which of course means that middle class and wealthy whites must shed their money and spread it around to Obama's people, and his base of power. He's killing our country in the process and could care less.
I'd prefer a rattle snake in the Oval Office over Obama, at least the snake might be a greatful snake who loves the part of the earth, called America, that he slithers around on.
Having said that, I don't want a RINO in office either, I want a man who can, and will, do the job that we are asking of him. To wit, turn the country around economically, re-establish America's authority in the world and use that authority to the greater good of the American people. The American people need to come first, always. Also, to see and understand Islam as a danger to all humankind, and stop playing political games with them and allowing them citzenship in our country, because given the opportunity they will eventually take it over from within. That is the islamic modus operandi, they are bullies who have 14 centuries of experience in bullying and terrorizing people into 'conversion' to allah. And in this God-awful generation of weak, polically correct Americans who have shed their Christian faith they see the time is right for them to begin their 'conquest'. What fools we are to allow this process to take place without even a whimper. Even the Pope has stated that Islam and democracy can never coexist peacefully, (paraphrase, but accurate account of his sentiments).
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