Posts published in September 2016

If Donald Trump promotes any positive attribute of his as most central to both himself and to his affirmative conception of the presidency, it is as a deal-maker.

It is central to his identity. His first book was called "The Art of the Deal." (An aside: Did you know there was a movie based on that book . . . sort of? The 50-minute production, released in February, starred Johnny Depp as Trump, and included such "chapters" as "The Art of Intimidating Rent Controlled Tenants," "The Art of Defeating Totally Bogus Discrimination Lawsuits," and "The Art of Marrying a Gorgeous Immigrant." You can watch it on YouTube via the link.)

The truth is that there's much more hype than reality to Trump's deal-making acumen.

Since his early days, when he had his father to advise him or bail him out, Trump hasn't made a lot of big, highly successful deals. There have been a string of failures and bankruptcies, and a number of cases in which he managed to get others to take the fall for him.

Newsweek in August summed up in a long article of case studies: "Lost contracts, bankruptcies, defaults, deceptions and indifference to investors—Trump’s business career is a long, long list of such troubles, according to regulatory, corporate and court records, as well as sworn testimony and government investigative reports. Call it the art of the bad deal, one created by the arrogance and recklessness of a businessman whose main talent is self-promotion."

One specific case from the general election campaign, in which he tried to put together a campaign finance agreement with the Republican mega-funding Koch brothers, as reported July 29 in Politico:

"Top Donald Trump donors tried to set up a meeting between the GOP presidential nominee and Charles Koch in Colorado Springs on Friday, but Koch aides rejected the entreaties, according to two Republicans with knowledge of the outreach. Koch and his brother David Koch, who helm an influential network of advocacy groups and major conservative donors, have been sharply critical of Trump’s rhetoric and policy stances and have indicated they do not intend to support his campaign. Trump in turn has blasted the Kochs and other major conservative donors as puppeteers to whom his GOP primary rivals were beholden, while he touted the independence from Big Money he said he achieved by largely self-financing his campaign."

Meet the Republican who can't even get campaign money out of the Kochs. Now that's some kind of an artistic deal. - rs

A little off the heavyweight track this time, close in some ways to a minor anecdote, but for what it says about what sort of personality is rattling around in the skull of Donald Trump it feels likes a disqualifier alongside the bigger deals.

This comes from a May 13 Washington Post article saying that, back in the 1990s, Trump had periodically placed phone calls pretending to be his own spokesman (though there were people who would speak for him, even then), and went by the names of "John Baron" or "John Miller." (Barron is the name of one of his sons.)

On those calls to media people, "Baron" or "Miller" would play the role of the huckster's huckster, talking up the wonders of Trump, both business and personal. The basic idea was to pitch stories, glitzy or salacious, about the personal brand. What he said wasn't, in that context, especially unusual; what was, was that Trump was impersonating someone else.

Trump has denied doing it. “You’re telling me about it for the first time and it doesn’t sound like my voice at all,” Trump responded earlier this year on the Today Show. “I have many, many people that are trying to imitate my voice and then you can imagine that, and this sounds like one of the scams, one of the many scams — doesn’t sound like me.”

But that was one problem: It did sound exactly like him. And no PR people who might plausibly have been associated with Trump in that time, going by those Miller or Barron names, ever have turned up.

On the scale of harmful or hurtful things to do, this one ranks pretty low. But there's a context, as the writer Michael d'Antonio (a Trump biographer) wrote in Fortune:

He used Baron, and later, Miller, to avoid trouble, float ideas, and even spread gossip about himself. In all these cases he sought to protect and polish the Trump image, or brag in ways that would be unseemly, even for a man who is synonymous with self promotion.

. . . The first known case I could find was in 1980, when Trump used “Baron” to fend off reporters who called about the destruction of important art work that was supposed to be preserved as he tore down the Bonwit Teller department store to make way for his Trump Tower. In 1984, Baron appeared again as the spinmeister who put the best face on a Trump setback in Atlantic City. And he was the one who spoke about the rumor that Trump was buying the famous 21 Club. In 1985, it was Baron who suggested that other owners in the upstart United States Football league help pay the salary for the quarterback Doug Flutie who had signed with Trump’s team, the New Jersey Generals. During a legal dispute in 1990 Trump admitted, under oath, that he had used the name, saying, “I believe on occasion I used that name.”

What does all this suggest about Trump? Certainly it's another indication of a man playing outside the rules and with scant regard for honesty.

D'Antonio concluded, "The important questions that should arise as we stand on the political sidewalk and watch Trump at work, though, have nothing to do with what he’s saying — but his inclination to use such trickery and deceptiveness when dealing with the public." - rs

The other day I spoke with a man who had been a Bernie Sanders supporter during the primary season and, disappointed now that he would not be in the general election, was considering voting for a third party candidate: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump weren't all that different, he said. I challenged him on that, pointing out of some of the things Trump had said and proposed. His response to this was airy: Congress, and the Supreme Court, will keep him in line, he said.

My response was that in the case of a candidate who knew and cared so little about the restraints the constitution places on the presidency, that might matter little.

Or, more concisely, I might have quoted Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

In one version of the story, Stalin and Winston Churchill were discussing forces at work across Europe amid World War II. Churchill talked about not upsetting the moral clout of the Vatican, when Stalin interrupted to ask, “How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?”

In that telling of the story, "Stalin reaffirmed that he only respected force, and brought Churchill back down to earth from the nebulous heavens."

Remind you of anyone? Someone who might well ask how many divisions the Supreme Court or Congress has? After all, their practical "power" is based on our mutual willingness to accept the terms of the Constitution.

The perception that Trump has little regard for the founding document has been widespread, pointed out perhaps most forcefully by Khizr Khan, the Gold Star parent who offered to lend Trump his personal pocket copy if he needed some review.

On July 7 Trump spoke with members of the House Republican caucus and was asked if he would stand up for the constitution. “Not only will I stand up for Article One,” Trump replied (in remarks quoted later). “I'll stand up for Article Two, Article 12, you name it, of the Constitution.” The punch line being, of course, that is there is no Article 12 (there are only seven).

Pundit Andrew Sullivan suggested that “This is what is at stake – the core values of this country under threat from a man who has no understanding of the Constitution he would swear to uphold.” - rs

Given the other available pieces of the puzzle, there shouldn't be much difficult in figuring out where Donald Trump would stand on civil liberties and civil dissent.

He would be what the novel 1984 indicated: A boot stomping on the face of liberty. As long as he held power.

So much of a piece with the rest of his world view is this, that I'll mention here just one statement from Trump, from 26 years ago.

It came in a 1990 interview in Playboy magazine, when the conversation turned to Mikhail Gorbachev, as he was presiding over the end of the Soviet Union.

“Russia is out of control and the leadership knows it. That’s my problem with Gorbachev. Not a firm enough hand,” Trump said.

The interviewer suggested comparing to China, where protests in Beijjing centered at Tiananmen Square were violently put down by the Chinese government, which roared tanks through the square, and killed hundreds to possibly thousands of peaceful protesters. The attack has been criticized worldwide ever since, most notably in the United States.

But not by Trump. In the Playboy interview, he continued, “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world –”

Trump's conception of governmental strength - the kind of strength pursued by dictators, not leaders of a free society - is completely, totally at odds with the kinds of freedom long cherished in the United States. To elect him as president would be to endanger that heritage, possibly permanently. - rs

This disqualifier was of such large significance that it was slated for later in this series. But an article in Newsweek out this week delivered the subject with such breadth and strength that it might as well be addressed now: The vast global financial entanglements of Donald Trump, his company and his family.

We live in a small world when it comes to business activities, and large American businesses do not tend to stay locked within our national borders. Some of those international connections are relatively modest (my small publishing company has sold a handful of books to customers in Europe). Others are large, to the point that big portions of a business are intimately tied to their international partners. So it is with the Trumps. There's nothing illegal or immoral in that, and many businesses have foreign connections as broad or broader.

But when the principal in such a company is a candidate for president, the whole thing becomes a lot more problematic.

The Newsweek piece, by Kurt Eichenwald, starts, "If Donald Trump is elected president, will he and his family permanently sever all connections to the Trump Organization, a sprawling business empire that has spread a secretive financial web across the world? Or will Trump instead choose to be the most conflicted president in American history, one whose business interests will constantly jeopardize the security of the United States?"

Trump's active and prospective business relationships - many of which these days have to do not with construction (which he's done little of since 2007) but with branding with his name - are global, in countries we consider close allies, countries which are often adversarial, and others that are in between. These include the Middle East, where his relationships with people of influence can be reasonably called . . . complicated, and sometimes difficult.

Trump has said that if he becomes president, he would turn over the running of the Trump organization to his children. That would not be remotely adequate. He would be well aware of what effect the nation's foreign policy would have on his business, and vice versa. Which would win out? What about gray areas? What about rationalizing?

Moreover, we have seriously incomplete information about what Trump and his business - and he is linked to 500 or more business entities - are doing around the world. His income tax reports would help along those lines, but he has refused to release them. Nor has he released - or provided on federal disclosure forms - the extent of his interests, obligations or transactions in or with other countries. We simply don't know who he's financially involved with. (We do know that the list of shady characters is extensive, to include former Libya strongman Muammar Gadafi. When he complains about Hillary Clinton's role in the toppling of Gadafi, remember that Trump spent year trying to get the dictator to approve a seaside resort at Tripoli.)

When I posted the Newsweek piece on Facebook, one commenter remarked, "but of course hillary has no such connections." As a matter of fact, she doesn't. The Clintons have a great deal of money but it was made through speeches, book sales and the like; they have no large international business. The Clinton Global Foundation has been a non-profit, quite transparent in its recordkeeping (an example Hillary Clinton could benefit from), and the Clintons draw no salary from it. They have no personal gain from any of its operations.

In fact no previous candidate for president - including 2012 candidate Mitt Romney, who led a large and sprawling business - has had anything like the kind of foreign business ties Trump has.

The Newsweek piece concludes, "Never before has an American candidate for president had so many financial ties with American allies and enemies, and never before has a business posed such a threat to the United States. If Donald Trump wins this election and his company is not immediately shut down or forever severed from the Trump family, the foreign policy of the United States of America could well be for sale."

Among the 100 disqualifers of Donald Trump for the presidency, this has to rank as one of the most serious. - rs