Donald Trump came to the nation's attention in the late 1970s as he was an early developer of hotel casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, a time when the only legal place of gambling was in the cities of Nevada. New Jersey hoped that authorizing gambling would rejuvenate a tired beachside resort whose glory days had faded long before.
At first, he was perceived to have a Midas touch, that the Trump name was a guarantee of lucrative success, but alas, his third casino was up the boardwalk and had trouble drawing clientele. It folded into bankruptcy and the allure of the Trump name faded.
But D.J. was not to be easily foiled. He found bankruptcy a useful policy for shedding unwanted losses in his developments and expanded his brand across an incredible product line in the years to come. His talent for self-promotion created a new brand of Trump: the Tiffany of ties, suits, steaks, whatever he could think of.
The Donald was not one to let his fate rest in the hands of others. In one of the more hilarious moments of his career, he created an alter ego as his PR agent so that he could talk directly to the media and promote himself without the crassness that comes when a person blatantly engages in self-promotion.
This, then, is the background of the man who decided he had to be president. When he entered the primaries, I thought him a demagogue, full of ego, running to show that it would be his next triumph, that he was a better politician than the politicians. I thought him then as exploiting the resentments of poor whites for votes, the resentments of white labor for lost jobs, the resentments of many who thought the establishment party politicians had betrayed them.
Stark honesty is needed in these times. What Trump exploited was a latent racism, the people he was attracting blamed black people among others for their woes. Trump made it okay to openly display racist attitudes.
Not only did he exploit it, but the first year of his presidency has shockingly revealed that he shares it. His moral equivalency between fascists and those who oppose them, his encouragement of violence at his campaign rallies, his embrace of the alt-right and the white supremacists that populate it, and his relentless attacks on immigrants shows he also has a latent racism that is now showing through the veneer of his character.
Make America Great Again means, in Trump talk, restore the days of discrimination and segregation when the power of the federal government stood idly by while states violated the rights, property, and lives of nonwhite citizens.
Donald John Trump, the ultimate narcissist. He makes everything about him. Today's latest lie about Time Magazine approaching him to ask his permission to repeat as Person of the Year no longer surprises us. His demand that everyone give him sole credit for the release of the UCLA basketball players in China shows he is incapable of recognizing the contribution of anyone else. The false historical plaques he erects at his golf courses, the phony magazine covers, the ridiculous fawning at cabinet meetings that is recorded and shared that reminds me of Roman senator complaints about what they had to do to remain in Caligula's favor ...
Maybe that would be tolerable if it weren't for the fact that Donald J. Trump is a cyber bully. Lavar Ball is but the latest Twitter target. You don't go against Trump without suffering his twaddling thumbed response. Trump can't let it go. He can't let anything go. It's not merely an insistence on having the last word; it's a psychological need to beat down anyone who won't worship him and his self-characterized benevolence of his majesty.
He can't abide criticism. He is legitimately confused that people might disagree with him. The reports are believable of how hard he has found it to realize that there are people who genuinely dislike him. Given his hype of being the ultimate deal-maker, which has fallen woefully short in diplomacy and politics, perhaps he finds everything as a maneuver to improve a negotiating position.
The greatest target of his bullying was Megyn Kelly, then of Fox News. She had the audacity to ask him:
Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular, when it comes to women. You've called women you don't like 'fat pigs,' 'dogs,' 'slobs' and 'disgusting animals.' ...
Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women's looks. You once told a contestant on 'Celebrity Apprentice' it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees.
Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who was likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?"
Trump spent the next year abusing Kelly on Twitter to the point where she was afraid to go out of the house lest she run into his supporters. He doubled down whenever the issue was raised and Kelly did not find relief until she requested a meeting with him at Trump Tower. One can only suppose Trump relented because he then viewed her as a supplicant begging for divine mercy.
Despite his huge ego, the 45th president of the United States has no talent for governing. His first attempt at setting up an administration looked like an attempt to replicate his reality show, "The Apprentice," which featured two competing teams trying to win his favor and a job. Everyone else was fired and, as last spring and summer have shown us, that's about what happened.
He doesn't understand why we have a legislature. He would rather rule by dictate, or as his pals the Russians would say, by decree.
He is right about McConnell, though. McConnell also has no talent for running a tight ship, although dealing with massive senatorial egos is no easy job. But Harry Reid managed it and Chuck Schumer seems to be keeping his caucus together.
As a libertarian-leaning idealist pragmatist (you're going to have a job unpacking that one!), I too want a small government yet I realize we live in big government times. We have to deal with reality and the federal government cannot be torn down into the size it held during George Washington's day.
Trump has yet to complete his staffing of leadership at the cabinet departments in the belief that if he withholds the people, the departments will dwindle in size and impact. But in doing so, he takes away the counterweight of the people against the oligarchs who would rule us.
He holds forth as a populist, but claims to be a billionaire. He wants to turn over all functions of the government to private enterprise, whether appropriate or not. Whether we like it or not, there are jobs that government is best suited for: maintaining military forces, domestic security (police and fire departments), education, and courts, including facilities for housing criminals.
Finally, there is the Don Juan angle, which ironically is Trump's name in Spanish. It has come to light that even as a young man, he was to be avoided as an octopus whose tentacles were always groping toward women's bodies. His many affairs, his ribald comments, among which he lusted after his daughter and bragged of what he can get away with, are disgusting.
I bear great antipathy towards The Donald, now I know why, and I have shared it with you. I will oppose all that he has in mind to do because the one inescapable conclusion is that he does not have the good of this country and its people in mind.
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