Posted on 09/11/2015 6:24:09 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
“I don’t like to analyze myself because I might not like what I see.”
— Donald Trump, in an interview for Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, by business journalist Michael D’Antonio.
“Trump was willing to say and do almost anything to satisfy his craving for attention. But he also possessed a sixth sense that kept him from going too far.”
— D’Antonio’s conclusion to the book.
One often-underappreciated virtue of U.S. presidential campaigns is that their extreme length makes it very difficult to conceal what makes a candidate tick. (Barack Obama in 2008 was an exception, and he had help from an actively complicit media.)
This reality is finally catching up to Donald Trump.
As good as his “sixth sense” may be, Trump seems unlikely to avoid “going too far” in the long four-month stretch between now and the Iowa caucuses in February.
On Wednesday night, it came to light that Trump had made fun of rival candidate Carly Fiorina’s looks to a Rolling Stone reporter. “Look at that face,” he was overheard to say. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” Trump now claims he wasn’t talking about Fiorina’s appearance, but her “persona.”
Before the news of his Fiorina remark broke, Trump spoke at an afternoon rally protesting President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, and blasted Obama for failing to secure the release of four Americans jailed in the Islamic Republic. Then he misapplied a lesson from history: “If I win the presidency, I guarantee you that those four prisoners are back in our country before I ever take office. I guarantee that. They will be back before I ever take office, because [the Iranians] know what has to happen, okay?”
Trump no doubt remembers that Iran released the hostages it had held for 444 days at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in for his first term as president. But foreign policy experts I’ve spoken to say that for Trump to “guarantee” a similar outcome for the four Americans imprisoned there today will likely lead to one of two disappointing outcomes: a) the Iranians stubbornly refuse to lose face by appearing to knuckle under to Trump; or b) Trump will feel pressure to use military force against Iran after he is sworn in so he won’t lose face.
“Reagan was careful not to comment on the hostages before he became president,” Martin Anderson, his late policy advisor, once told me. “That allowed him to exploit a vacuum and helped bring them home.”
In addition to the nationalistic fervor he can’t help whipping up, much of Trump’s support is predicated on his self-proclaimed genius in business deals. But National Journal reported this week that his business instincts are greatly exaggerated:
>>>If he’d invested the $200 million that Forbes magazine determined he was worth in 1982 into (a mutual fund of S&P 500 stocks), it would have grown to more than $8 billion today. . . . That a purely unmanaged index fund’s return could outperform Trump’s hands-on wheeling and dealing call into question one of Trump’s chief selling points on the campaign trail: his business acumen.<<<
Then there is the matter of Trump’s net worth itself. In June, Trump announced his presidential bid brandishing a document that claimed he was worth more than $8.7 billion. By August, when he filed reports with the Federal Election Commission, the number had ballooned to $10 billion.
The game of hide-and-seek Trump plays with his “billions” was described by Tim O’Brien, a former New York Times reporter, in his 2005 book TrumpNation. The book quoted sources close to Trump as claiming he “was not remotely close to being a billionaire.” Trump promptly sued O’Brien for $5 billion in damages.
During the resultant litigation, O’Brien’s lawyers deposed Trump for two days in 2007. “Among the documents discussed was a Deutsche Bank assessment that pegged Donald’s net worth at $788 million in 2005,” O’Brien recalled in a Bloomberg View article this past July. “At the time, Donald was telling his bankers and casino regulators that he was worth $3.6 billion; he was telling me he was worth $5 billion to $6 billion.”
When Trump was asked about the wide discrepancy between his claimed net worth and the various independent estimates of his wealth, he revealed how his mind works. As D’Antonio reports in the excellent new Never Enough, “[Trump] explained the wide swings as a function of market conditions, and his own sense of the value of his name. This brand valuation — [Trump] estimated it was worth $6 billion.” Trump said in the deposition that the value of his brand “goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings.” He then added some thoughts about his net worth:
>>>[Wealth] can change when somebody writes a vicious article like O’Brien. I mean, I didn’t feel so great about myself when I read that article. I would have said that — after reading that article I would have said that this psychologically hurt me.<<<
Trump is perfectly suited for the current media age. He provides enough outrageous quotes and distractions to remain such a source of endless fascination that the press has trouble catching up with his contradictions. D’Antonio says Trump “understood that in the media age, the frontier that might challenge a man or woman was found, not in the wilderness, but in the media. The boundary of this wilderness was marked by propriety, which was an elastic concept.”
Donald Trump has tested the media’s limits of propriety for three decades, and he’s usually succeeded in expanding them.
We will learn in the next four months just how far Trump can expand the equivalent political limits. As much as he may have mastered many of the lessons of the Robert Ringer classic Winning Through Intimidation, he might have forgotten a key one. “The secret to bluffing is knowing when not to bluff,” Ringer told me. “Some people don’t know when to stop, and they always regret it.”
Top Fundraiser for Scott Walker Meets With Trump - True to form Trump spins the facts
".......Monday’s meeting came less than three hours after Mr. Scaramucci criticized Mr. Trump on the Fox Business Network. Mr. Scaramucci accused Mr. Trump of being “a Democratic plant” for Hillary Clinton and said he is wealthy only because of his father.
“The politicians don’t want to go at Trump because he’s got a big mouth and they’re afraid he’s going to light them up on Fox News and all these places, but I’m not a politician,” he said. “Bring it. You’re an inherited-money dude from Queens County. Bring it, Donald.”
Mr. Trump said Mr. Scaramucci requested the meeting last week after he began the hedge-fund attacks. Mr. Scaramucci said Mr. Trump’s office asked to meet with him Monday morning after he went on Fox Business.
“I watch this guy talking badly about me in the morning, and two hours later he’s in my office telling me I’m the smartest guy he knows,” Mr. Trump said........."
No red flags then?
You don’t hold your breath waiting for the next shoe to drop, for the time bomb to go off?
Regan had the presence to make the same threat clear without enunciating it; that doesn't mean he didn't get the same message across. Note use of the word "likely" above: there's an option c) the Iranians will release the hostages, knowing that Trump is crazy & patriotic enough to follow thru on his threat. The problem is that all other candidates (R and D) will op for option d) leave the hostages to rot.
There’s never been a bigger “showboat” than Barack Obama. I haven’t seenTrump using any styrofoam Greek columns or rent-a-mobs in his appearances, not to mention a TelePrompTer.
Imagine the debate between Hillary and The Donald - they can compare their Democratic Party membership, their mutual political friends, run down the long list of democrats (inc her) who he’s supported, inc the Democratic Party leadership, their mutual support for gun control, partial birth abortion, property seizure, universal health care...
I see that comment as arefreshing bit of open honesty and realization that he, like everyone has faults. Shows a maturity and healthy self-awareness.
Rather than attack Trump and/or others, it might be more useful to exhort Walker to roll up his sleeves, put on the brass knuckles and wage a war to show he really wants to fight for the position. He started out as my second choice behind Cruz and is now in third place on my slate behind Cruz, then Trump - neither of whom are afraid to get down in the dirt where the enemy lives.
GO CRUZ!!! Keep it up Trump!! Start to fight Walker!
“Humble” like your Trump I see.
No “likely” in your assessment that “all the other candidates will leave the hostages to rot.”
Unfortunately, we’re looking at a slate of candidates which - wonderful as most of the Rs are - will most likely be “same old same old”. The Right base (and a good chunk of the Left base as well) is getting really sick of the same cycle of glorious promises, good track record, and no meaningful results as POTUS.
Trump sucks in a host of ways.
But sometimes an inelegant jerk who gets $#!^ done is better than the doctrinally perfect who can’t.
I’d far rather have Cruz...but I’m nowhere near convinced he, nor any other R candidate, can play & win the high-stakes game of balancing budget and other “do it Right or shut it down” goals like Trump can.
I use to be a Democrat.
I changed.
Ronald Reagen use to be a Democrat.
He changed.
The man says he doesn’t like introspection because he might not like what he sees, and you find it “refreshing.”
This lines up with his statement that he has never asked God’s forgiveness because he’s never done anything that needs forgiving.
Have any of them even addressed the Iranian hostage situation at all?
Especially those actually in Congress now?
I’m increasingly looking for a candidate willing to say “a government [un]willing to do X _deserves_ to be shut down” and can make it happen.
The ad-hominem cheap shots are unnecessary. $#!^ has got to get done, and while I see a lot of candidates holding the right views I only see one who can do it (even if his doctrine is admittedly problematic).
This lines up with his statement that he has never asked God’s forgiveness because he’s never done anything that needs forgiving.
Yep - even Paul lamented (after walking and talking with the risen Jesus) that he kept doing thing he knew were wrong and not doing much of what he thought was right.
Like him or not, it is a mature attitude to know that you have faults you wish weren't there. Show me someone who, being honest, couldn't say the same thing and I'll show you someone who is deluded - perhaps and Obama or a Hillary for instance.
Do you believe that, asked a similar question, Walker couldn't honestly say the same thing?
Donald Trump said yesterday, "I was a Democrat years and years ago.."
Donald Trump - Democratic Party member 2001 - 2009
Ronald Reagan left the Democratic Party almost 20 years before he became president.
That is an 180 degree misrepresentation of what he said. The gist of it was that rather than ask forgiveness, he considered it his responsibility to correct his mistake or failure. That is a morally superior position than simply begging to be forgiven, rather than correcting one's failing.
Why the vendetta against a man rapidly moving in our direction? No one says you have to like him, but why not save your fire for those actively moving America ever further to the Left--Congress & the Administration are both full to the brim with the latter.
July 25, 2015: When Gov. Scott Walker delivered his presidential campaign kickoff speech, he gave a friendly shout-out to Kevin Hermening, crediting the financial planner from Wausau with helping him form his policies on Iran.
“He knows that Iran is not a place we should be doing business with,” Walker said during the July 13 speech. “Iran hasn’t changed much since he and the other hostages were released on President Reagan’s first day in office.”
Hermening, a Marine guard at the time, was among the 52 Americans held hostage in the American embassy in Tehran for 444 days between 1979 and 1981.”
“ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has a reason for aggressively opposing the nuclear deal with Iran — and it’s personal.
Neither his foreign policy adviser nor a member of his inner circle has shaped the Republican presidential candidate’s position. Walker’s deep distrust for Iran instead comes from his long friendship with one of the Americans held hostage for 444 days more than three decades ago.
Kevin Hermening was a 20-year-old Marine sergeant stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 when militant Iran students overran the building and captured him and 51 others. Thirty-five years after his release, Hermening has become the face of Walker’s foreign policy, as the two-term governor works to build credibility on a high-stakes issue heading into the 2016 presidential contest.
Hermening was in the crowd as Walker formally launched his presidential campaign this past week, and the candidate acknowledged him by name with a salute and a nod.
“He knows that Iran is not a place we should be doing business with,” Walker said in his speech. “We need to terminate the bad deal with Iran on day one, put in place crippling economic sanctions and convince our allies to do the same.”......
Is it your assumption that people who ask God for forgiveness don’t try to change, so Trump’s way is superior?
It appears that he leaves God out of the loop.
This showman has too many directions. It suits you to BELIEVE.
You can research Trump, it is all in the open and he is a real person.Nothing to hide.
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