Isn’t it time for the media to stop giving a second’s worth of time or an inch of space to Donald Trump as a candidate for president? Is there no idiocy that our so-called journalists will not pursue for a headline?
Trump has no intention of actually running for president and is simply using the media to further his never-ending public relations campaign on behalf of himself. (Duh!) As stupid as his social, political and economic comments invariably are, neither he nor the media can possibly be so clueless as to think that even the dysfunctional Republicans will nominate him, nor so dumb as not to realize that his obvious egomaniacal inability to deal with criticism (witness his scowling anger at the predictable jokes about him made at the recent White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, an event where roasted personalities are the main dish) would end his run before the first caucus has caucused. His personal life, especially his finances, cannot withstand even the most cursory examination.
He is an inveterate liar about the one thing he trumpets the loudest — his business success. He doesn’t make money “the old fashioned way.” He inherited it — a multimillion dollar real estate fortune left to him by his father, which he has built into far larger holdings using other people’s money, most if not all of which he would be hard pressed to repay. He hates The New York Timesbecause they periodically run articles that deny his claim of being “a billionaire many times over.” As even the smallest of businessmen knows, your net worth is the sum of what you own minus what you owe. The Times often reminds us that while Trump may indeed have billions in assets, he also has billions in debt. His net worth is nothing near what he claims. And the only reason the banks bailed him out of bankruptcy some years ago is that he owed them so much money which in fact he couldn’t repay, they in turn couldn’t afford to write off their bad loans to him. That’s probably still true today, which explains why he will never release any independent accountant’s analysis of his personal balance sheet.
Personally, he is so crass and lacking in class that he makes the bourgeoisie seem like royalty. He would look better if he shaved off that imbecilic hair-do and wore one of those flat, hard-edged toupees you often see lying on the heads of guys who can’t afford a good one. Not even his tailor-made suits and shirts nor his silk ties can hide the fact that he is simply a slob. A friend of mine who sat at a dinner table with Trump at an event a few years ago listened to him speculating whether he should bother to marry the woman to whom he was very publicly engaged since, as he pointed out to all within earshot, he was already getting plenty of sex from her and marriage would only make it harder for him to see all the other women who want him. (It reminded me of the joke about some bimbo offering Trump oral sex and him responding, “That’s great for you but what’s in it for me?”)
Politically, his flip-flopping makes Mitt Romney look intractably consistent. Trump was a Democrat before he was a Republican, pro-choice before he became anti-abortion, and a big fan of President Obama before he declared him among the worst presidents ever. And these are just among the most obvious of his Tea Party pandering changes of mind. I’m sure a little research would reveal many more changes but certainly no mind.
Contrary to David Brooks’ ridiculous comments about Trump, claiming that he taps into people’s very real and understandable concerns and concluding that he wouldn’t want to live in a country that didn’t have someone like Trump, I believe Trump represents much of what has become wrong with America — a society that more and more worships wealth and notoriety regardless of whether or not it creates anything of value and celebrates pure selfishness and greed regardless of their immoral consequences, with a media that endorses it in this case by giving credence to the moronic ranting of a hypocrite.
I know of no self-respecting Republican who takes Trump seriously. Republicans have proven themselves willing endorsers of ignorant, loud-mouthed, demagogic candidates, but most of them seem to wish Trump, and the media coverage of him, would just go away. On this, if little else, I agree with them completely. Although the one good thing about giving Trump the publicity he so desperately seeks is that every time he opens his mouth, at least a few more people realize what an asshole he is.
Finally, I am not unaware of the irony that at the end of the day, Trump has suckered me. Having begun with the premise that nobody should give him any time of any day, I have wasted the better part of a morning on him. As my mother would say, “Feh!”