Day 854

Day 854 Friday May 10, 2019

542 Days to the 2020 election and 620 Days to Inauguration Day

Last night I saw an interview with the man who wrote Trump’s second book, “Trump, Surviving at The Top”.

What was interesting about the interview was how it clarified some things for me about Trump that I kind of already knew, but this really focused them. There’s something about saying something out loud, something you were thinking about, that makes it clearer, more real. That’s what this interview with the ghostwriter of the book did for me about Trump and his personality.

Here’s the gist of it. 

Many thought after Trump’s first book, “Art of The Deal” came out that he was a great businessman. He wasn’t. In fact, he wasn’t interested in the things you have to know to run a business. He liked the openings, the buying of a business, that kind of stuff, but actually running it? No. He was uninterested. He wasn’t good with math, which explains why he overpaid for things. He liked the buying, not the running. 

He sat around in his office and let stuff come to him and he’d react. When this author, the ghostwriter, saw when visiting Donald was him looking at fabric swatches. He seemed obsessed with them. There were these business Trump had bought, and they needed attention, but he was looking at fabric swatches. Why? Because that was something he could handle. The businesses, he couldn’t handle, so he ignored them.

Bang, there it is.

Now that we’ve had a glimpse at Trump’s taxes we know he lost a lot of money, his money, his dad’s money, the bank’s money – lost it all. Why? He wasn’t interested. He didn’t really know, or care, to run a business.

But he managed to promote an image of himself as this business mogul, this big deal maker, and as the real author of “Trump, Surviving at the Top” says, banks ignored what they saw on paper (or the papers were false???) and bought the image, that is until they were in too deep, then they figured out a way to survive and with it Trump managed to survive as well.

Here’s where it gets scary for us. Ask yourself why was it that Trump was so pro Russia during his campaign? Why did he say disparaging things about our allies, about NATO, and so many things that were exactly what Putin and the Russians wanted to hear? 

We now know that during the campaign Michael Cohen was negotiating a deal with the Russians to build a huge building in Moscow. Cohen said that he’d be at a rally where Trump would say he had no dealings with Russians and as Trump exited the rally he’d ask Cohen how things were going with Moscow, meaning building the building in Russia, in Moscow. Trump was saying positive things about Russia in order to make a deal to have a building in Moscow. 

In other words, he was willing to sell us: the American people, our friends and allies, and all of western democracy out. For what? A tower in Moscow. 

Spin it any way you want. For a building in Moscow, Trump was willing to stab us and everyone else in the back. He lied to his supporters, to their faces, at his rallies. He lied on twitter. He lied to the press. He lied. To build a building in Russia. 

The art of the deal. Surviving at the top. 

PS Do what you gotta do.