You are not a business person, but I believe you'd have done a better job of preserving and building upon a $500 million legacy, which is the estimated amount in today’s money Donald Trump got from his parents via means legal and otherwise.
Of course, you wouldn’t cut it as a reality-TV star nor as a bare-faced robber (as opposed to a robber baron of the old school), the reasons we use the term “billionaire” in the same sentence as the Queens-born draft-dodger’s name.
“You” here is an amalgam of a few intelligent, accomplished and moral Republicans I know personally who have voted for Trump in the past, and, well, who I suppose might well do so again on Nov. 5 as loyal Republicans. (I’ll call you “Joe” for the purposes of this article.)
After all, the National Review, which in early 2016 devoted an entire issue to attack the very idea of Trump as GOP national candidate, has spent the last eight years running interference for him. It was still on board on Monday morning following the Madison Square Garden rally. The alternative would be to go out of business.
I ask only that you humor me, Joe, and repeat aloud those words in bold before you vote.
Donald Trump was never a successful businessman. He was for some years a very successful reality TV star and is a spectacularly adroit con-artist
Economic historian Brad DeLong said in a September book review, “My rough calculations say that, had he [Trump] simply taken the money [$500m from his parents], leveraged it not imprudently, and passively invested it in Manhattan real estate – gone to parties, womanized, played golf, collected his rent checks and reinvested them – his fortune could have amounted to more than $80bn by the time he ascended to the presidency in 2017.
“And yet Trump was not worth $80bn in 2017. Instead, Forbes pegged him at $2.5bn – which, given the difficulties of valuing and accounting for real estate, is really anything between $5bn (£4bn) and zero (or less).”
By way of comparison, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who grew up in modest circumstances, is reportedly worth $109 billion.
“By trying to run a business,” DeLong wrote, “rather than just kicking back and letting the rising tide of his chosen sector lift his wealth beyond the moon, he managed to destroy the vast majority of his potential net worth.”
DeLong was reviewing in the Guardian the Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig book “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.”
DeLong continued, “Buettner and Craig paint a picture of Trump’s businesses as a chimera. As a New York real estate developer who wished to remain anonymous told me, they are ‘mirage[s], built on inherited wealth, shady deals, and a relentless pursuit of appearances over substance.’
“He is indeed one of the world’s biggest losers. By trying to run a business, rather than just kicking back and letting the rising tide of his chosen sector lift his wealth beyond the moon, he managed to destroy the vast majority of his potential net worth.”
But he’s not a loser in the sense that he always walks away, and pins the blame on others, the reviewer said. And another Pulitzer winner, the financial journalist David Cay Johnston, a biographer who has been following Trump since the beginning, calls him “the greatest conman in history” – “greatest” because he managed to make it to the White House.
If a man has been declared bankrupt six times – or indeed has had a fake university and a fake charity shut down on him – he’s not likely to be the ideal person to make clear-headed decisions in the national interest broadly or in a national crisis more specifically – a pandemic, let’s say.
In a piece in recent days, a contributor to the New Republic recalled that he wrote a tweet in 2018 that said that if by some ill fortune a pandemic occurred during the life of the Trump Administration, it would be sure to botch it. The context was the departure of Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, at the same time the “global health security team he oversaw” was “disbanded under a reorganization by national security adviser John Bolton.”
Former Vice President Biden was on the case of the sitting president early in 2020 because he’d remembered his bizarre performance during the Ebola crisis in 2014, which included attacks on then President Obama. The same long New Republic piece has a subhead “A Pandemic of MAGA Stupidity” and another about Jan. 6 entitled “A Day That Lives in Infamy, or So We Hope.” But there’s no accountability because we’re not allowed to discuss these events in our “divided society” – a nice way of saying we have to contend with a hysterical right-wing media. The right-wing media does some things quietly, however. You might have heard, Joe, about Fox News’ $787 million out-of-court payout to Dominion Voting Systems for its election lies, but not from them.
E. Jean Carroll has prevailed twice in the courts against Donald J. Trump.
I know, because it’s prominently displayed daily in the 7 Eleven near work, that the New York Post has a particular obsession with crime – crime waves, for instance, both real and imagined, and criminals caught in the act. Maybe it stands to reason, then, that the paper should endorse a felon in the presidential race. In Murdoch world a felon (34 counts in the hush money trial in May) is better than a prosecutor, if the latter is a Democrat.
What if a Democrat running for New York City Council, or a competitive congressional seat, had been found liable by a jury of his peers in a civil case jury liable for defamation and sexual abuse, and again for defamation in a follow-up case? The Post would have it all over the front page – and they’d certainly point it out if the jury was too shy to use the word “rape” even if the judge was not.
The Republican Party owes those who played by the rules an apology.
When I committed to this country I did so on the basis that it was a society that believed in rule by consent. That’s a concept that goes back at least 300 years, before the era of mass democracy. These days, it’s crucial to the normal functioning of Western and other societies worldwide. An easy way to undermine it – if you’ve got lots of followers – is to cast doubt on the validity of election results. It’s potentially, too, a way of advocating violence without using violent rhetoric.
Are you in a cult, Joe?
If a young person joins a cult, they screen out the negative vibes coming from their mother, father, sisters, brothers, close friends, teachers and clergy. Likewise, once upon a time, you might have listened with respect and interest to the views of General John Kelly, Trump’s longest serving chief of staff and previously his secretary of homeland security, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff General Mark Milley, former Secretary of State Reg Tillerson, former aide Cassidy Hutchinson, and the long list of people who’ve worked closely day in day out with Trump who say he's unfit to serve.
Then there’s the view of the more than 200 former staffers of three Republican presidential candidates – Bush, McCain and Romney – who’ve collectively pleaded with you in an open letter, as well as the perspectives of the man’s niece Mary and nephew Fred. Don’t forget poor old Tony Schwartz, the actual author of “The Art of the Deal,” who stepped up thinking he was doing the nation a big favor by recalling what he saw and heard back in the late 1980s and that folks would actually listen to him (ha!). There was a time, Joe, when you would have taken seriously the real views about Trump held by Mitch McConnell, as reported by a reliable journalist. However, I’m guessing you’ve decided to fall in behind the official line – “four legs good, two legs bad” – as issued by Senator McConnell, who tends to put party ahead of country. But to be fair to him, Joe, he’s doesn’t believe and so won’t ever need to be deprogrammed.
I’m finished already, my friend, and I didn’t even mention Trump’s favorite fellow geniuses, Putin and Xi.
