Skip to main content

Bully for Trump!




It now seems like months or even years ago that Bob Woodward's Fear came out.  At the time, many persons thought this was it -- someone has finally taken down the president.  There was even an op-ed from a mysterious senior level official in his administration supporting Woodward's allegations, but that too seems relegated to history.  Trump survived yet another blow from the lamestream media, and it is safe to say he will survive the latest allegations by the New York Times that he duped authorities out of more than $400 million in taxes over a 20-year period.

It's a lengthy article.  I haven't gone through it yet.  The lead photo shows a smiling Donald in the back of his limo salivating over his rise to power on Wall Street, not much unlike Gordon Gekko.  This is the same guy who gamed Fortune magazine into believing he was one of the richest men in the world by claiming his father's assets as his own.  Trump wanted everyone to know he was a player.

1984 was Trump's breakout year.  He made it onto the Fortune 400 by creating an alias John Barron to relay to the magazine that Donald had taken control of his father's business and was now a billionaire.  Trump saw the value in projecting himself as one of the richest men in the world, whereas most real estate developers tried to keep a low profile, so as not to attract attention to their shady deals.  For Donald, it didn't matter.  He had spent years making phony claims on behalf of his father so that Dear Old Dad wouldn't have to pay so much in taxes.  He had developed the con to an art form and figured he could get away with anything.

He would spend the next 30 years promoting one or another of his real estate and business ventures, selling his name to other ventures and starring in his own reality game show where he was judge, jury and executioner.  Trump was king of the entertainment world, or so he liked to proclaim on twitter.  Nothing escaped his eye, especially celebrity relationships, a habit that has carried over into his presidential days.

These creepy tweets continue to pop up.  He can't resist the entertainment section of the news because he still sees himself principally as an entertainer.  Trump loves a crowd, especially an adoring crowd, going off on riffs that leave his press handlers scrambling to bring the damage under control the next day.  Case in point, he no sooner said that Christine Ford was a very credible witness than two days later he called her a fraud at a Mississippi rally and now thinks the FBI should press charges against her for libel.  This plays well among his rabid conservative base, but it isn't what mainstream Americans want to hear, so Sarah Huckabee Sanders is left with the thankless task of downplaying his incendiary comments.

We have become so inured to it that we simply don't care anymore.  Wall Street certainly doesn't care.  The market has finally regained most of its losses from the first half of the year, largely thanks to an economy that seems to be doing fine on its own.  Of course, the Trump administration will have you believe it's entirely his doing.  That's pretty amazing for a guy who mostly follows Fox & Friends and the latest entertainment gossip.

Trump has also been gloating over the new NAFTA deal, or USMCA as he calls the trade agreement.  It has yet to be ratified but no matter, he personally strong-armed Mexico and Canada into a deal that he has been promising for almost two years.  He had very little role in it, leaving it up to Jared to oversee matters.  Depending on what you read, it is either NAFTA light or MAGA 2.0.  Trump is demanding Congress ratify it as is, but no doubt will have its say on the matter, much to the Donald's chagrin.  At the moment, Congressional Republicans are busy trying to cram another tax cut bill through both chambers before the midterm elections.

This along with the Kavanaugh confirmation has pushed Woodward and Omarosa and all the other nay-sayers to the sidelines.  As of yesterday, Trump enjoyed a 51% approval rating in his favorite poll, with strongly approve and strongly disapprove cancelling each other for the first time in months, resulting in an approval rating index of zero.  He even had Fareed Zakaria praising his UN Speech as one of his most articulate statements yet on his America First policy, while others tried to assess whether the world was laughing at him or with him.  All in all, a great two weeks for the Trumpster.

CNN and other news networks gauge what this sudden upsurge in his approval will have on the midterms.  Only problem is that we are still four weeks away and Trump has made political stumping his chief priority, which means just about anything could come out of his mouth to send his approval ratings into another nosedive.

Trump's fortunes seem to roughly coincide with the stock market, which is currently hovering around 26,500, only a 100 points lower than it was when it hit its peak in January.  The Dow had spent most of the summer around 24,500, so this is a big improvement.  However, uneasiness remains, and all it takes is some incident like say a weaker than expected third quarter economic report to bring it tumbling down again.  It will be pretty hard to match that 4.1% GDP growth Trump crowed about in July, but then Trump has gamed the system before.  He has his own guy in the Fed just as he does the Supreme Court, so anything is possible, especially hearing some of the things Jerome Powell has said recently, although in this case Jerome fumbled the ball.  He'll need Steven Mnuchin to pick it up for him again.

Meantime, Donald Trump does what he does best, entertain, in his own bully way.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!