Wall Street Journal Article on Donald Trump

As the writer of Donald Trump’s first “campaign book,” the slightly revered and lightly-quoted “The America We Deserve” (published in 2000), I have been asked by “many, many people” (to deploy a Trumpism) to offer my recollections of the man who would be king. Some wonder what he’s like to work with. Others ask if he’s terminally bombastic or what the chances are he’ll get crossways with Vladimir Putin and incinerate the world. The third question will have to be taken up by soothsayers and bookies. As for the first, we made a pretty good team. He needed words, I needed money, and together we explored what Trump would do if he became president. I have long considered it my first published work of fiction. Yet the world has gotten very strange since then. In an ongoing shock to Main Street, Wall Street, Sesame Street and probably lots of people who believe in a benevolent deity, Trump has leveraged fear of Islamist mass murderers, concerns over a slack economy, and widespread disdain for the forces of cultural bullying into a forceful lunge for the presidency. He’s serious about the job, and lots of people are serious about him. This is a vast change from 2000, when Trump (by my estimation) was simply another rich guy out on a lark. He was bombastic but out to make headlines, not history. He talked about toughness much in the same way candidate Barack Obama would later constantly jabber about hope. It was a short-lived dance through the spotlight, and plenty of fun. Trump was in his early 50s when we teamed up to make, if not literature, at least a little noise and a few bucks. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Among other things he liked to brag about never drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, or even sipping coffee -- credentials that almost suggested a closeted Mormon. But of course he also liked some of the other the finer things in life, especially if they wore high heels. A visitor to his Trump Tower office found himself surrounded by women who looked as if they’d been created in a laboratory. Trump, by contrast, was something of a manatee with a funny coif, but also living proof that while money might not buy you love or even ripped abs – so what? He had a decent sense of humor and didn’t bore anyone by droning on about policy specifics. He had Roger Stone, the famed political trickster and fashion plate, to fill in those blanks. Trump could also be surprisingly humble, especially when discussing his parents and their longstanding marriage. He judged himself harshly for his own failed nuptials and was self-effacing when explaining that he wasn’t nearly as germaphobic as fellow plutocrat (RIP) Howard Hughes. But he also had his passions. One was inspired by his uncle, John Trump, an MIT professor and “great man” who warned his nephew that terrorists with a suitcase bomb could turn Manhattan into “Hiroshima II.” Terrorist attacks on the homeland were approaching, DT predicted. This was prior to 911, so give him some points for prescience. He was also a serious fan of diversity, inclusiveness and civility. Soon after sending in the first draft I was summoned to New York by Trump’s longtime assistance, Norma Foerderer (now deceased), who to this rustic hack was the epitome of the sophisticated New Yorker: bright, attractive, and possessed with a set of penetrating eyes that would have made a firearm redundant. She had one message: the draft was too “strident” and would have to be toned down. So crucial was this demand that it could not be given over the phone. It was a long trip (from Virginia and back) for a meeting that lasted just a couple of minutes. Such was the importance making sure the boss wagged a civil literary tongue. The book set that tone in the first pages. Trump denounced the murder of Matthew Shepherd, the harassment of Jews and all other “hate crimes.” He praised friends who had taught him about the “diversity of American culture” and “left me with little appetite for those who hate or preach intolerance.” Among those friends were Sammy Sosa, Puffy Combs, and Muhammad Ali – then as now perhaps the world’s best-known Muslim. Fast forward to the present, where Ali recently found it necessary to send his old pal a remonstrance in the form of a press release entitled “Presidential Candidates Proposing to Ban Muslim Immigration to the United States” in which he denounced “those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda.” Ali didn’t mention Trump by name, and it appears Trump chose to ignore the Champ’s message. Instead he rolls merrily along, like fortune’s child, bolstered by terrorist fear and political competitors variously seen as pathological liars, empty suits, the butt-ends of political dynasties and/or possible genetic collusions between a human, a weasel, and a snake. He’s also the default candidate for all who grown weary of culture cops and bureaucratic bullies. For a real estate guy, he seems to have the political game figured out pretty well. But there’s also something of a tragic element to the rise of candidate Trump. In what should be his finest hour, he acts as if he had been raised in a barn (as we rustics like to say). One wonders what Norma Foerderer would make of Trump’s barking-dog stridency. One hopes it would be majestically unprintable. What would his parents think of his habit of calling respectable, hard-working people “losers?” For someone who has been given so much in life, it’s an especially vile line of attack. His remarks about Senator John McCain’s war record were almost supernaturally revolting. Here is a man who never wore the uniform (though he argues that going to military school was pretty much the same as being in the service, which is like me saying that going to a toga party is commensurate with membership in one of Caesar’s Roman Legions) sneering at McCain’s service. My youngest son did two tours in the Middle East and several of his friends also served; some were hurt and will never be the same. To hear Trump sneer at military sacrifice ripped it with me, as I’m sure it did with many military families. Supporters might argue Trump’s bluster is the result of living in a world that is increasingly hysterical, whether about the climate, the proper nomenclature, or the threat of blood-drunk medievalists getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction. Detractors, meantime, sense deep insecurity, not a trait one hopes for in a leader, especially one with a nuclear capability. Or it could be that despite all the advantages he’s enjoyed, the man prefers being a political shock jock to being a statesman. Whatever the explanation, it’s working, as Trump might put it, “very, very big time.”

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