Before he ran for President of the United States, Donald Trump loved the media. He courted reporters through manipulation, compliments and endless access. In return, the “reporters” who chronicled Trump, seemingly regurgitated his false narrative about being a self-made man who rose from humble beginnings to become a real estate titan with gold plated buildings spanning from coast to coast.
A 1976 New York Times profile of Trump chronicled his rise from a modest “family home” in Queens to riding “around town in a chauffeured silver Cadillac with his initials, DJT, on the plates,” at the ripe old age of 30. How was Trump able to amass such success in New York’s cutthroat real estate market at such a young age? The fawning NYT report credits Trump’s “great vision,” “energy” and “intelligence,” while describing him as “tall, lean and blond with dazzling white teeth.”
By 1987, Trump became a Newsweek cover boy with the headline, “Trump: A Billion-Dollar Empire and an Ego to Match.” The corresponding article described Trump as a “businessman sitting atop an empire worth $3 billion” and outlined the opulent lifestyle he created for himself thanks to his, “smart,” “tough,” and “tenacious” tactics. The reader learns about Trump’s Boeing 727, “huge” French-made military chopper and three palatial homes ranging from Palm Beach to Greenwich. Newsweek concludes that Trump has “created one of the most profitable empires” and as a result, is “hounded” by autograph seekers whenever in public.
In reality, the financial biography of Trump was greatly at odds with the narrative he painted of a young savant who made it big through hard work and perseverance. Trump leveraged his father’s real estate success and banking connections to enter the world of Manhattan real estate.
Before the age of 21, Trump’s father, Fred Trump, the son of German immigrants, started the construction company E. Trump & Sons. Fred eventually became one of the richest men in America by building apartment complexes that catered to the middle class in Queen and the Bronx. Fred was able to help secure the financial future of his five children and three grandchildren by setting up trusts in their names. At just three years of age, Donald Trump was already earning $200,000 a year, adjusted for inflation, from his father’s business. By age eight, Donald Trump was officially a millionaire.
Donald Trump would go on to receive the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s business empire. Much of the money Trump received from his father came as the result of him helping his parents dodge taxes. Trump and his siblings set up fake corporations to hide millions in gifts from their parents and Trump assisted his father in receiving millions in illegal tax deductions. Furthermore, Trump undervalued his fathers’ real estate holdings, by hundreds of millions of dollars, to reduce their tax obligation. According to the New York Times, Fred Trump should have paid gift and inheritance taxes of at least $550 million, but instead, paid around $50 million.
The glowing and inaccurate coverage Donald Trump received regarding his business success corresponded with his repeated flirtation with running for president. In October of 1987, Trump made a visit to the first presidential primary state of New Hampshire and met with supporters of a Draft Trump for President group.
While on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1988, Trump said he probably would not run for president, but explained, “I do get tired of seeing what's happening with this country, and if it got so bad, I would never want to rule it out totally, because I really am tired of seeing what's happening with this country.”
In 1999, Trump left the Republican Party and told the New York Times there was a “very great possibility” he would run for president on the Reform Party ticket. That presidential run never materialized.
By 2011, Trump switched his registration back to Republican and began to explore seeking the Republican nomination for president. Addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2011, Trump said, “this country is in serious trouble,” and the United States has become, “the laughingstock of the world.” Trump reassured Republican activists that if he were to win the nominations and face President Obama, they would not need to fear because he was "well acquainted with winning.”
Following his well received speech at CPAC, Trump began appearing around the clock on television news and talk radio questioning whether President Obama was born in the United States and calling on him to release his birth certificate. On April 7, 2011, in an interview on NBC's Today Show, Trump ratcheted up his attack on President Obama and announced he had sent investigators to Hawaii to examine President Obama's citizenship, "and they cannot believe what they’re finding."
While Trump did not invent the birther conspiracy about President Obama, his relentless stoking of the false narrative that the president was secretly born in Kenya, gave the movement significant momentum and caused the White House to respond.
On April 27, in a move that shocked many Washington insiders, the White House caved to the Trump backed mob and released President Obama’s long-form birth certificate. Explaining the decision to cater to the mob, President Obama said, “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” a thinly veiled reference to Trump. Of course, Trump and birther conspirators on the dark web were quick to reject the authenticity of the new disclosure.
Only three days after Trump forced the Obama White House to release his long-form birth certificate, the annual White House Correspondents Dinner was being held in Washington. For years, the dinner, attended by journalists and D-list celebrities, has featured a comedic performance and a humorous speech by the President of the United States. With Trump in attendance as a guest of The Washington Post, President Obama used his speech to eviscerate Trump for his presidential ambitions and conspiratorial ways.
“Donald Trump is here tonight!” the president began. “I know that he’s taken some flak lately. But no one is happier, no one is prouder, to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter—like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”
“All kidding aside,” Obama went on, “obviously we know about your credentials and breadth of experience. For example—seriously—in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice, at the steak house, the men’s cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks,” the president continued. “And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately you didn’t blame Little John or Meatloaf. You fired Gary Busey. And these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night.”
The crowd erupted with cheers as Trump sat still, silent and stone faced, as he realized that the most powerful man in the world had destroyed him and his petty reality television career. President Obama’s takedown of Trump was followed by an even more brutal, silver-tongued assault from comedian Seth Meyers.
“Donald Trump has been saying that he’ll run for president as a Republican—which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke,” Meyers began. “Donald Trump often appears on Fox, which is ironic—because a fox often appears on Donald Trump’s head,” Meyers continued. “If you’re at The Washington Post table with Trump and you can’t finish your entrée, don’t worry, the fox will eat it,” Meyers said to seemingly everlasting applause and cheers.
As soon as he could, Trump bolted for the exit and left the Capitol on his private jet. Rather than sending Trump running from D.C. for the rest of his life, Trump’s evening of humiliation only accelerated his effort to gain status in the world of politics. As longtime Trump advisor Roger Stone has said about that fateful night, “I think that is the night that he resolves to run for president. I think that he is kind of motivated by it. ‘Maybe I’ll just run. Maybe I’ll show them all.” And while Trump has rejected the notion that the dinner played a role in his decision to run for president in 2016, he finally announced an official campaign for the Oval Office on June 17, 2015, after decades of flirtation. Of course, this is the campaign that would take Trump from New York City to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Despite Trump baselessly telling a number of close contacts recently that he will get reinstated as president by August, I believe we will soon witness the spark that motivates Trump to declare his run for president again in 2024. Late last month, it was widely reported that Manhattan's district attorney convened a grand jury that is expected to decide whether to indict the former president. The panel is expected to sit for three days a week for six months and hear potential criminal cases against Trump, his company and its executives.
Immediately following reports that a Trump grand jury had been convened, Democrats and anit-Trump Republicans celebrated the news under the assumption that if Trump is indicted, he will become toxic to Republican voters and will not have support to run for reelection. MSNBC host Chris Hayes, expressed support for this theory.
“Republicans can't turn on Trump because he would take a huge chunk of the party with him and what they value more than anything are winning elections and retaining power. If something were to come along...like a helicopter, like whoop, and then just deposit him off the scene of American politics, and still also fuel all of the people in the MAGA base with resentment and anger at the no- good liberals who are prosecuting him, that would be essentially, I think, a kind of weird win-win for Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell,” Hayes said on his show hours after the news of a Trump grand jury being convened.
Essentially, Hayes is saying that by investigating Trump for his potentially criminal behavior, the Manhattan DA is doing the dirty work for Republican Party leaders that they are not willing to do themselves. Republicans have been unwilling to hold Trump accountable because they fear political blowback from the MAGA base. If Trump can be removed from the political stage, or permanently sidelined by prosecutors, Republicans will be able to move past Trump while not alienating Trump voters.
Despite this optimistic take on how a Trump indictment might bring about a more sane, rational, Trump-free Republican Party, there is significant evidence suggesting the exact opposite could be true. It is no secret that Republican voters still think very highly of Trump.
Despite being twice impeached, calling U.S. service members “losers” and “suckers,” overseeing a deficit exceeding $3 trillion, using the presidency to enrich himself and losing reelection, 66% of Republicans still want Trump to run for president again. Republicans have become impervious to the truth. Any bad news they hear about Trump is discredited as a “hoax” and is believed to be part of a larger “witchhunt” set to take out their Dear Leader.
If Republicans do not already believe that Trump is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, surely an indictment by the radical liberals running the Manhattan DA’s office or Biden’s Justice Department, will make that clear. When Trump is inevitably indicted, he will undoubtedly become a martyr in the eyes of the majority of the 74 million people who voted for him in 2020.
Trump has conditioned his supporters to believe that any attack on him, or an attempt to hold him accountable, is an attack on them. Following the convening of the Trump grand jury, Trump said, “This is purely political, and an affront to the almost 75 million voters who supported me in the Presidential Election.” Needless to say, there is no evidence that the Trump grand jury has anything to do with the people who peacefully cast their ballot for the former president but, Trump wants his supporters to believe that they are being attacked because he is a martyr for their cause.
While it is unclear when, or even if, the Trump grand jury will be asked to consider returning any indictments, should this happen, Trump’s folk hero status will only grow amongst his supporters. Like following the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner, Trump will immediately begin to chart his 2024 run for the White House and energizing his base. Other potential 2024 Republican candidates for president will be left in the dust as Trump reminds Republicans he got more votes than any other Republican nominee in history. And while it is true that only one former president ever lost reelection and came back to reclaim the White House (Grover Cleveland), Trump will remind voters that only he has nearly died on the sword for them in defense of their sacred way of life.
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