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.”
What lie?
Tell me what isn't true?
ROVE was on fox and friends this am doing the same song then went over to Fox Business.
He and Maria Bartelomo were reaching into the Trump will not last and Trump is eeeeevil screed.
They went all the way back to pushing the “McCain is a hero” BS.
They BOTH said this was about protecting hitlary. Maria Came across as a “any woman for office” nutjob feminist.
A MAJOR credibility killer for her future and I hope stuart varney takes over more of her pre-9am time.
Jeb and the GOPe have had a plan to stop everyone but Trump for a few years now. Like you, they are down to, “when Trump blows up.”. I’m not holding my breath.
You know damn well that wasn’t true.
You seriously posted a response intended to make it look like my question addressed an issue that didn’t exit.
That was deceitful, essentially a lie, and what’s more, you knew it going in.
We had the Leftist Media silent on him.
We had the GOPe essentially silent on him.
We had the supposed Conservative punditry in no way providing the vocal objection they are now to Trump.
You were oblivious to this? Not buying it...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3335614/posts?page=64#64
Kind of like the French with the Maginot Line, didn’t think the Germans would have just come through Belgium.
You’ve made quite a nasty strawman argument.
I never realized how well you twist the truth.
Take a break.
I was commenting that there were in fact, many, many articles against Obama during his campaign; there have been more non-stop in the 8 years since he was elected [and a sharp spike in 2010 during his 2nd campaign].
Then you add the qualifier “GOP-e” in another comment while calling me a liar.
Curious. Very, very, curious.
I did use the word “conversion”. Reagan’s battles with the Communists trying to take over the Screen Actors Guild, while he was president of that union, was his “Road to Damascus” epiphany. About thirty years of Pauline like proselytizing and service followed. If Trump is sincere, a word that until this year few would associate with the man, his is a recent conversion lacking in any proofs of its depth. Please understand that I can enjoy as much as you watching him kick the GOPe in the teeth. But it will take a lot more than that to persuade me to vote for him.
I see people here trying to compare Trump to Obama.
Trump is 69 Years Old and he has been in the Public Eye for Decades, warts and all. Like him or hate him, he is what he is and if there are Skeletons in his Closet, the door is wide open. I do know he was never part of the Choom Gang.
Obama is a mystery man. We know as much about him seven Years into his Presidency than we did than when he popped up on the National Stage making a Speech at the DNC Convention in 2004. In other words, we know as much about him as we did then, absolutely nothing. Well, we do know he hates America as founded, just like his Party does.
All we know about Obama has come from his Ghost Written Fairy Tale Books and what the Media has decided we should know, even of they have to make it up. It’s a Dear Leader thing, and they are very adept at it.
Smartest President ever, based on what? Great Student at Harvard, based on what? Tough upbringing (because he is African American - actually Mulatto), hardly. Constitutional Lawyer and Professor, not even close, a guest Lecturer at best, and he preached to the empty headed Students that the Constitution got it wrong.
At least we know where Trump came from, same as most of the Republican Field. Perhaps we know more about Trump than most of his Competitors. How many Voters know that Perry used to be Democrat or that Huckabee Pardoned Murderers who Murdered again? His own little Willie Horton moment.
What will be will be in this crazy Election season.
This was my first post. It’s the one you seemed to think you had a cogent reply to.
Read anything in there about a collective against Trump?
What might that have been made up of? You have no idea, right? Not buying you’re little dog n pony show...
The nation’s media
The GOPe
The Nation’s supposed Conservative punditry
The nation’s “conservative” internet outlets
You’re here hawking Walker in part because you sold someone on the idea you were politically savvy enough to handle the job.
Now you’re claiming not to grasp the dynamics of what my words implied?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3335614/posts?page=61#61
Aww, and how Alinsky of you too.
Walker would be my 3rd choice behind Trump & Cruz. He DID do some great things in Wisconsin regarding the unions. After that he’s still a politician & I don’t want our next President to be from the political class.
Go Trump!
Then, there’s this....
....according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today......
Today, Walker is at 3 percent, way behind in the pack. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has 6 percent of Iowa likely Republican Caucus participants, with 5 percent each for Carly Fiorina, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. No other candidate tops 4 percent, with 4 percent undecided.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3335685/posts?page=2
“......you’re absolutely stark raving nuts.”
That is my bet.
Walker is done....tied with Hukabeeee at 5%..... Or is it 3%? LOL
I agree with your take on it.
We know more about Trump right now, than we will about Obama twenty years from now.
This is your post I responded to:
To: All
Does anyone remember reading 1/10,000th as much negative reactions to Barack Obama running for president?
Trump isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but seriously folks, this is an eye-opening moment.
Look at the collective against Trump.
That alone should scare the —— out of anyone not thinking of voting for him.
Be on their side, that side...
If I hadn’t planned on voting for him prior to this, I would be after this.
61 posted on 9/11/2015, 10:20:45 AM by DoughtyOne (It’s beginning to look like “Morning in America” again. Comment on YouTube under Trump Free Ride.)
And I replied:
DoughtyOne: “Does anyone remember reading 1/10,000th as much negative reactions to Barack Obama running for president?”
CW: I remember reading TONS and TONS of opposition rants and articles about Obama. I posted many of them.
What are you referring to here?
Hahaaa LoL.
Since there weren’t TONS and TONS of articles out there, I don’t mind if you wish to continue to stand behind that marked idiocy.
The spewing and insane invective has set the new world record against Trump that the world has ever seen, and in the shortest time span. Still moving up in the polls. ;-)
I agree with your comment.
Yes he is still moving up. They can’t understand why either, and so it has to be that we are flawed rather than that they simply don’t have the tools to grasp it.
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