Donald Trump: People Will Eventually Catch On

As anyone who follows American politics has been made aware, billionaire Donald Trump claims to be running for the Republican nomination for President. As a Libertarian.

He says he is actually running. He holds rallies with significant turnout. He leads the fifteen other Republicans who are vying for the nomination in the polls. His private jet takes him all over the country to meet his public. He promises to release his financial statements including income tax returns (just as soon as Jeb Bush does the same), claiming a net worth of $10 billion, perhaps less than half what he really owns. He appears at a variety of press conferences. He is a guest on news programs. He gets invited to some talk shows.

There is even a Twitter hashtag #TrumpYourCat that features photos of cats wearing Trump hairpieces made with their own combed-out fur—such as Grumpy Cat a/k/a the scowling Trumpy Cat.

Just what and who is this strange-looking pontificating windbag with the flying locks that threaten to ascend like a helicopter in a stiff wind?

He is a 69-year-old native New Yorker born in the Borough of Queens, of German and Scottish ancestry, a billionaire who was given his financial start by his successful father, a New York City real estate developer. As a teenager, the young Donald had been dismissed from a private Queens secondary academy for behavioral problems, and thereafter transferred to the New York Military Academy, where he played numerous sports, including football. He attended Fordham University and the Wharton School to concentrate on real estate studies, graduating with a B.S. in economics and anthropology—as well as a war chest of $200,000 courtesy of his father. Some years later Donald John Trump was even awarded an honorary doctorate by the evangelical Liberty University of Lynchburg, Virginia, founded by that avatar of the Moral Majority, the late Reverend Jerry Falwell.

This was some years after Trump’s Bavarian paternal grandfather changed the paterfamilias surname of Drumph to the more dazzling Trump.

And like Howard Hughes before him, The Donald has a “morbid fear of shaking hands.”

Trump began his real estate empire in middle-class real estate in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, and then turned around a forlorn Cincinnati apartment complex belonging to his father, selling it for a tidy profit. Focusing again on New York City and a variety of larger building projects, Trump ultimately used a $40 million city tax abatement to turn a bankrupt Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt, and created The Trump Organization. By 1988 he had acquired his first gambling casino, and then another, nearly losing all in a corporate bankruptcy shortly thereafter. The year 2001 saw the completion of the 72-tower Trump World Tower across from the United Nations (which Trump insists is 90 stories high), perhaps the tallest residential building in New York, glass walls gleaming with dark bronze tint in the sun. Trump claims to have considered a career as a film producer or studio executive, but chose to concentrate on more lucrative opportunities in real estate development.

The Donald has built a number of other residential and commercial towers, including the luxurious 52-story Trump International Hotel and Tower completed in 2003 and located at Columbus Circle, characterized by a golden world globe at the intersection of Central Park West and Central Park South. A recent kerfuffle over the disappearance of marble benches in the lobby for the use of the public at another Trump tower located at 725 Fifth Avenue—replaced by stores selling luxury goods marketing the Trump name—has received almost no attention by the New York Department of Buildings.

The Trump Entertainments Resorts, Inc. owns the Trump Taj Mahal, and formerly owned other gaming properties, most in Atlantic City. Four business bankruptcies, including one filed in 2014, have kept these properties afloat and protected Trump’s personal assets.

Other Trump businesses over the years have included:

— A television show that Trump hosted, “The Celebrity Apprentice,” which immortalized Donald’s favorite punchline, “You’re fired!”

— The Miss USA pageant, although it has suffered from adverse publicity generated by Candidate Trump

— Trump bottled water Trump Ice, which was short-lived and is hard to find

— The search engine GoTrump.com for luxury travel deals, which lasted about a year before it was shut down

— Trump Magazine, a glitzy annual magazine now known as the Jewel of Palm Beach, which is distributed at Trump properties and through a resort media group

— The New Jersey Generals football team, which lasted only a season or two

— Trump Airlines (formerly, Eastern Air Shuttle), which was a Trump property for about four years before being sold

— Trump University, which has been described as being an “extended infomercial” preying on student fears, is no longer in business, and has been sued by the New York State Attorney General for defrauding students

Real estate businesses are still the most lucrative enterprises in Donald Trump’s portfolio, but other less well-known ventures have met differing fates, i.e., there have been Trump Mortgage, which vanished shortly after the 2007 real estate crash, Trump Steaks, high-priced and still served in Trump properties around the world, Trump Vodka which may or may not still be marketed under the Trump name, and Trump: The Game, a Monopoly-like board game that has survived, barely.

The reader will note the preponderance of Trump’s name on nearly all of his businesses.

His personal life reflects his views on women: They must be young, gorgeous, and compliant. To date he has married a young Czech skier Ivana Zelníčková, who remained a celebrity in her own right, by whom he fathered two sons and a daughter. After their divorce in 1992, The Donald married the pretty young Marla Maples, fathered a fourth child, and was divorced within six years. He is currently married to the former Melania Knauss, by whom he has fathered a fifth child, now nine years old. His children have so far produced seven grandchildren.

No one seems to question his overt hostility toward women who may criticize or disagree with him. That is, as Jezebel noted only three years ago:

“The trouble with Trump is the hostility he reserves for the women he doesn't like, basing his insults and jabs largely on their looks, weight, and sex lives. The most notorious of these was his 2006 battle with Rosie O'Donnell—a fight that was such a media shitstorm that . . . years later, he continues to dredge up when he needs some attention. Responding to her comments on The View about his defense of Miss USA Tara Conner, Trump called O'Donnell a ‘fat pig’ and an ‘animal’ to basically anyone who would listen, from reporters to late night talk show hosts. The worst of it was probably a two-minute rant he filmed for Entertainment Tonight that was so vile, the show decided not to air it on television.”

Donald Trump has pretended to enter the race for the presidency at least twice in recent presidential election lead-ups, and then dropped out quickly. But in 2015 he is actually proceeding with his “campaign,” having achieved significant notoriety in recent years with his endless shrill demands that President Obama produce his birth certificate, claiming that Barack Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen (causing the President to actually produce the birth certificate). A remarkable display of crazy, playing right into the hands of similar constituents.

Trump has in recent weeks before huge, boisterous crowds:

— Described immigrants who yearn for a path to legal citizenship or even residency as being violent offenders, including rapists, purposefully sent to the U.S. to harm Americans, and adding that U.S. officials were being "dumb" in dealing with immigrants in the country illegally: "These people wreak havoc on our population.”

— Characterized Senator John McCain, who endured more than five years of captivity and torture by the North Vietnamese, as no war hero, suggesting that McCain might have been a war hero if he hadn’t been caught. (Trump sought and received four Vietnam War student deferments and then was reclassified 4-F for purportedly having bone spurs in one or both feet; draft records are incomplete and neither support nor contradict this claim.)

— Been described by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham as a “jackass,” and in response, Trump yelled out Graham’s private office telephone number at a public rally and urged his audience to let Graham know how they feel about him

— Criticized candidate Texas Governor Rick Perry for wearing glasses as a foil to make voters think he looks intelligent

— Become a bombastic hero to crowds of ignorant conservative Republican voters who are thriving on Trump’s outrageous rhetoric and finding an outlet for their anger at feeling helpless under an onslaught of circumstances that they do not understand and cannot accept (and which the Republican party has largely created)

Republicans worry whether any of the other hopefuls in their party can keep up with Trump’s fast (and profane) mouth on a primary debate stage: possibly the quick but mean-tempered Chris Christie, maybe another contender with courage and a thick skin.

In the final analysis, let us look at Trump’s own prediction from one of his ghost-written books, Trump: The Art of the Deal: “You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”