{UAH} Donald Trump Hired Me As An Attorney. Please Don’t Support Him For President.
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THE BLOG
Bullies will always exist somewhere, but the White House should not be that somewhere.
1 day ago | Updated 4 hours ago
CARLO ALLEGRI / REUTERS
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 27, 2016.
I like authenticity, especially as compared to survey-tested or heavily spun. I am prepared to let a candidate say something that I don't completely agree with and still support him or her. I think the need to be politically correct has gone too far. I also think the media often hypes and slants stories to the point of being untruthful.
I think a prosperous middle class is the key to the American success story, both economically and politically, and that lobbyists have way too much sway. I am very much a pragmatist, so much so that I like compromise more than I like ideology. I like deals, especially those that are win-win.
So Donald Trump is my candidate, right? He is NOT!
In 1987, when I was 35 years old and he was 41, Donald Trump hired me to be his attorney on a major northern New Jersey project, a shopping center, which like everything else, was to bear his name, Trump Centre. It was a big deal that he picked me and a high honor for me just a couple of years after I started my law firm, which is now over 30 years old. This was at a time when Trump still built things, having recently finished Trump Tower.
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[I'll never forget when] my married client sought to regale me with the number and quality of eligible young women who in his words "want me."
He seemed to me smart, business savvy, decisive. He had a very impressive office, a fancy and very big boat, an airline, a helicopter shuttle and several casinos. Within a few years, virtually all of this would be lost because of bad business decisions. Lots of lawyers have worked for Donald Trump; lots and lots. I am no Roy Cohn ― neither as aggressive nor (hopefully) nearly as ethically-challenged ― but I did know well how to get very tough land use matters through an always challenging application process in New Jersey. I was thrilled when he hired me.
After the initial interview, my client contact with Donald was actually not very much. One low point I do remember (actually will never forget) is a limousine ride to a meeting with the editorial board of a New Jersey newspaper in which my married client sought to regale me with the number and quality of eligible young women who in his words "want me." I was just plain shocked and embarrassed, but I kept smiling. I wanted and needed this client happy.
While I was working for Donald, various press reports had Trump and his then-wife Ivanna living in a personal apartment in the Trump Tower of 8, 16 and even 20 or 30 rooms. Genuinely curious, I once asked him how many rooms the apartment actually had. I will never forget his response to me: "However many they will print."
Donald Trump was then, as he is now, larger than life, particularly in his own eyes, and at the same time frighteningly small, with very little moral grounding. He was then, and still is, all ego and show.
I once asked him how many rooms [his] apartment actually had. I will never forget his response to me: "However many they will print."
I have thought about this a lot, and I want to share my humble insights of why we cannot elect Donald Trump as president of the United States. To me, it is more about character than politics. Because of lack of the former, the latter ― the actual politics of Donald Trump ― are not that easy to discern.
Once I got going with my reasons why Donald would not be good for our country, it was hard to stop. I did stop, however, when I hit 20, about 4,000 words from here. Read on if you are interested.
1. The man lies all the time.
Like the skilled liar he is, he does it with impunity. "I watched in Jersey City, NJ when thousands and thousands of people were cheering as the World Trade Center collapsed." "The last quarter the gross domestic product was less than zero." "The number of illegal immigrants in the United States is 30 million, it could be 34 million." " The Mexican government forces bad people into our country." "The unemployment rate may be as high as 42 percent."
All these things have been said by Donald, actually often yelled by him, and many times over and over in front of large crowds. How about the whopper, "Crime statistics show blacks kill 81 percent of white homicide victims"? One has to wonder why this lie would be conceived, much less told. Donald Trump says all of these things forcefully, so they must be true. But they are not!
Unambiguously, they are what is described as "pants on fire" untruthful, as in, not a shred of truth. In passing, you have to ponder whether yet another of Donald Trump's oft made statements about the fervor of his Christianity and the Bible being his favorite book are also not grounded in truth. Clearly, "thou shall not lie" is not his favorite of the Ten Commandments.
2. It is actually not all about the candidate.
"It's amazing how often I am right?" "I alone can fix this." "I have a big brain." "I advise myself." "I am very, very rich."
Donald really said all these things. His ego seems to know no bounds. When Donald feels insulted by someone, he obsesses without control. He fusses, he fumes, and he says unbelievably inappropriate things. He is in his glory when he can bully his way to a result he covets.
His ego seems to know no bounds. When Donald feels insulted by someone, he obsesses without control.
Did you ever notice that those real people stories other candidates are always telling about someone they just met, struggling with a difficult problem, are just not in the Trump lexicon? He keeps telling us he is all about winners. I guess these folks don't qualify. Said another way, Donald Trump doesn't play well in the sandbox with others.
First, he has his own ideas as to who can be in the sandbox with him. He also wants to run the sandbox. He is the kid who gets his way or stomps off in a huff. What happens when he figures out, even our nation's highest office is not all about him? Do we want him with the codes to nuclear weapons?
3. U.S. presidents are by design not kings.
The Constitution makes them share power. Donald Trump who uses the "I" word more than anyone who has ever aspired to the job, has a brazenly authoritarian bent. He wants to be a "strongman," not a president.
One has to wonder what would happen if he actually had to govern or make one of his deals in a zero sum world of politics where the other side just says no. What then of his notoriously short attention span, temper or non-stop need to tweet his every frustration?
4. The devil IS in the details.
JONATHAN DRAKE / REUTERS
Donald Trump holds a sign supporting his plan to build a wall between the United States and Mexico that he borrowed from a member of the audience at his campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina March 9, 2016.
"Winning so much we will get tired of winning," "Make good deals with China," or even "Make America great again" are slogans that don't actually say anything. We are not stupid; share some details with us, so we can figure out whether you know what you are talking about. For Donald, however, in the few instances when specifics do follow, like perhaps the 1,000-mile, 35-55 foot wall or the deportation of 11 million immigrants, the details never come.
Never are we told that to build the wall, even to the lower 35 feet, (by actual construction estimates) would cost $25 billion dollars, even if you could get the land to build it (most of the border Trump wants to wall is in the middle of a river and land in many cases could not even be secured for a fence).
His magic to make Mexico pay for it? The only suggestion I have heard is take it out of remittances from folks mailing money back home or one of his "45 percent tariffs." How is that going to work for the Americans sending the money to relatives or all of us paying 45 percent more for Mexican-made merchandise or the American company doing the manufacturing? How about the fact that the wall would do little to stop illegal immigration, more of which is "overstays" of visitors than "over the border" and likely will generate few, if any, jobs for the folks Trump has whipped up into a xenophobic frenzy.
Then let's take the deportation and just focus on the big stuff. How exactly do you round up and deport 11 million people? Is he going to use stadiums and nationalize cruise ship lines? Who will be doing the rounding up, certainly not the police, the army perhaps? The children left behind? How about the fact that American farms, restaurants, not to mention landscaping and construction labor jobs will go unattended? Vital jobs for sure, but are these the jobs that Trump plans to provide for his "real Americans" to make America great again?
5. Words matter.
Everything is not a "disaster," "stupid" or a "disgrace." Neither is it "tremendous," "huge," "fantastic" or "amazing." Everyone is not a "loser," "low energy" or a "bimbo." Talk of former presidents being liars ― or his favorite, "a disaster" ― and foreign dictators being great leaders does not advance the discourse.
Americans are mostly not prudes, but vulgarity from the dais, penis size allusions, reveling in sexual conquests, menstruation-based criticism and crass insults of every shape and form just does not cut it from a president. We have children.
6. Reading is good. So is studying.
Donald Trump recently told us that he does not read much. We know from the recent revelations by Tony Schwartz, his ghost writer on The Art of the Deal (yes, I do have my copy from when it first came out, autographed with Donald telling me to "keep up the great work"), which Donald says is second only to the Bible as the must-read book, that he certainly has not written a book ― at least not that one.
It is a special and unique form of arrogance to think you could even consider being literally the leader of the free world without doing the work to deeply understand the job.
Even though for many years I owned a bookstore and would not let my kids watch TV on weekdays to help them become readers,
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