Donald Trump is nothing more than the P.T. Barnum of business: a huckster who thrives on the maxim that “there’s a sucker born every minute.”
Now he seems to believe that being rich is the only qualification he needs to be president of the United States:
Part of the beauty of me is that I am very rich.
(New York Post, March 17, 2011)
You’ve probably seen him on TV waxing heroic about turning the millions he inherited from his daddy into a garish real-estate empire that would make an Egyptian Pharaoh blush. Never mind that he had to rely repeatedly on bankruptcy protection (three times in six years in the case of Trump Hotels) to save his corporate hide. Or, more to the point, that by his own standard there are at least 152 people, including Oprah Winfrey, who are more qualified to be president. After all, he only ranks 153 on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans.
Sadly, far too many people think Trump would make a good president. They are the suckers to whom he could sell swampland in the Florida Everglades as beachfront property, or a discredited degree from his Trump University as even better than an accredited one from Harvard.
Mind you, it’s not as if he’s pulling the wool over their eyes. After all, he makes clear that his foray into presidential politics is just for personal ego and financial enrichment. He does this by continually talking about his campaign platform as if he were a cross between a right-wing shock jock and a snake-oil salesman.
Specifically, this is nothing more than an opportunistic way for Trump to generate interest in his reality-TV show and increase value for the Trump brand. And no gimmick – even running for president of the United States – is beyond him in this respect. However, that he is fashioning himself as a born-again conservative – after supporting mostly liberal causes for much of his life – indicates that he’s only doing what is good for him, not what is good for his country. To be fair, though, he is only following a trail that was blazed by political hustlers like Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
But it’s one thing for Trump to be huffing and puffing all over the media about how he would demonstrate that he has far bigger balls than Obama (i.e., by acting on the world stage like a bull in a China shop). It’s quite another for this preternaturally self-obsessed shyster to be propagating racially divisive claims. And none is more so than his claim that Barack Obama is an African who perpetrated the biggest scam in history by getting elected president of the United States:
Three weeks ago when I started, I thought he was probably born in this country. Right now, I have some real doubts. I have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they’re finding…
His grandmother in Kenya said he was born in Kenya, and she was there and witnessed the birth. He doesn’t have a birth certificate or he hasn’t shown it.
(NBC TODAY Show, April 7, 2011)
Suffice it to know that, if there were any truth to any of this “birther” nonsense, Obama would never have even won the Democratic nomination. Recall, after all, that it was Hillary’s campaign that planted this suspicion in 2008 about him being born in Kenya as part of a cynical and desperate ploy to derail Obama’s campaign. But as soon as Obama released the official, “short-form” version of his birth certificate, which clearly states that he was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961, team Hillary was sensible enough to move on to another ploy.
Therefore, I see no point in dignifying these hackneyed claims with any further comment; except to note that – on this and almost every other issue on which he blithely spouts complete falsehoods – “The Donald” seems to think that a lie becomes the truth if he says it with absolute confidence and conviction.
We all knew that Trump was a self-aggrandizing buffoon. But he has now exposed himself as a self-deluding, racist demagogue as well.
This is why I urge all of the rich folks he depends on to patronize his eponymous resorts and buy up his eponymous condominiums to begin shunning him – just as they would a two-bit racist like KKK leader David Duke. I urge this especially of the black Hollywood and sports stars he likes to feature as extras in his one-man freak show.
Trump is entitled to say whatever he likes. But, at the very least, he should suffer truth and consequences for accusing this country’s first black president of being a Kenyan Muslim who has perpetrated ‘the biggest scam in U.S. history’.
CBS fired Charlie Sheen from One and a Half Men for hurling anti-Semitic remarks at a TV producer; NBC should feel even more compelled to fire Trump from The Apprentice for hurling racist remarks at the president of the United States.
So, here’s to this fiendishly thin-skinned huckster having his trademark words thrown back in his face: Trump, you’re fired!