Mark Bowden spent a long, awkward weekend with Donald Trump in November 1996:
He was like one of those characters in an 18th-century comedy meant to embody a particular flavor of human folly. Trump struck me as adolescent, hilariously ostentatious, arbitrary, unkind, profane, dishonest, loudly opinionated, and consistently wrong. He remains the most vain man I have ever met. And he was trying to make a good impression. Who could have predicted that those very traits, now on prominent daily display, would turn him into the leading G.O.P. candidate for president of the United States?
His latest outrageous edict on banning all Muslims from entering the country comes as no surprise to me based on the man I met nearly 20 years ago. He has no coherent political philosophy, so comparisons with Fascist leaders miss the mark. He just reacts. Trump lives in a fantasy of perfection, with himself as its animating force.
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I was prepared to like him as I boarded his black 727 at La Guardia for the flight to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home — prepared to discover that his over-the-top public persona was a clever pose. That underneath was an ironic wit, an ordinary but clever guy. But no. With Trump, what you see is what you get. His behavior was cringe-worthy. He showed off the gilded interior of his plane — calling me over to inspect a Renoir on its walls, beckoning me to lean in closely to see… what? The luminosity of the brush strokes? The masterly use of color? No. The signature. “Worth $10 million,” he told me. Time after time the stories he told me didn’t check out, from Michael Jackson’s romantic weekend at Mar-a-Lago with his then wife Lisa Marie Presley (they stayed at opposite ends of the estate) to the rug in one bedroom he said was designed by Walt Disney when he was 18 (it wasn’t) to the strength of his marriage to Maples (they would split months later).
I like it how he calls out “What you get from Trump are commonplace ideas pronounced as received wisdom.” as something negative.
Because common sense is of course beneath us!
What’s next, drinking peach only flavor Ice-T?
Or how he and everyone else conveniently leave the TEMPORARILY deny entry to muslims part out.
When there’s a gas leak, step one is to first turn the main off, that’s step one, not looking for the leak, especially not with a lighter.
All that matters is the DEED. All of the TALK, TALK is meaningless and that is all that the conservatives ever seem to get from the politicians they elect. The Liberals, on the other hand, when elected deliver the goods to their voters: booty in droves for the vote.
Trump is probably as gauche as Bowden alleges, but SO WHAT? Trump is also known for following through with doing what he says he will do. Why do you think he has been so successful in his deals. He has proved over and over again that he means what he says and proves it with an honest Follow Through–I am not talking about Golf here. And why do you think the Republican establishment hates him so? He looks to be an honest politician. Can’t have that. No the Republicans want to continue their charade of being the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters. Trump would likely blow forever that shtick.
I think what is on display here is the somewhat autistic nature of Trump’s personality. He acquired status symbols like the Renoir and the gilded jet because he knew those status objects would make him more admired and thus more powerful.
He is fully aware of the arbitrariness of the status power of said objects and the fact that he was motivated to obtain them merely for the status boost, not for some alleged artistic value.
But is autistic in not realizing (or not caring about) the gauche-ness of pointing out this truth to his guest. He flaunts the idiocy of the Renoir’s value being based on the signature (rather than artistic merit).
As Dan Kurt said, he is deeply and strikingly honest, to the point that he creates uncomfortable situations for people who would prefer the socio-cultural undercurrents of our species would remain unstated.
Adam Carolla on his experience:
Paraphrased from this YouTube clip.
When I saw this headline I thought it was going to be Jonathan Bowden. That would have been something. It’s interesting anyway but not especially suprising.
Well they said something similar about FDR: Said he was a lightweight and not a good thinker.
There is a time and place in which this is not a bad thing. In ’33 everyone was telling FDR he needed to stick with the gold standard. But he just started messing around with it. Every time he devalued it, the stock market went up. He figured out by trial and error that loosening money was the key to getting out of the Depression (which it was).
Trump is doing something similar: Feeling his way toward a logical way out of our current PC policy logjam. It doesn’t take an intellectual do this kind of thing … it takes an experimenter who is able to roll with the breeze, try things and see what works.
Not stamping the visas of people who want to kill us sounds pretty damned coherent to me, although Mark Bowden deems it “outrageous.”