The opposition’s assault on Mr. Trump is a defining characteristic of his presidency from which many consequences follow. One of the clearest is that there is little effort to analyze the president that goes beyond a narrow, shallow, one-dimensional view of him as either a pathological narcissist, a threat to the nation and the world, or a blundering buffoon whose every acted out policy impulse disrupts long established and preferable bi-partisan precedents. Lost in those battles are analyses of important parts of Mr. Trump himself—his psychology and leadership strategies.
Trump critics don’t mind these omissions. They would argue that there is not much more to analyze once you have settled on one or more of the standard critiques noted above. The relatively few supportive Trump books don’t add much depth to our overall psychological understanding of the president and his leadership beyond a defense of Trump policies, since that is not their primary purpose.1 These few books do help provide some balance to the assessment of Trump’s presidency. However they do not get us very deeply into the psychology that shapes his outlook and his actions. The same is true for the authentic, fair-minded behind the scenes narratives2 that help to dispel the inaccurate, almost always anonymously sourced3 narratives in which the most damaging, disparaging portrayals of that presidency are presented as authentic.4
Trump is a complex man and president. He does contain multitudes. Yet a fuller picture of him is largely terra incognita. In this chapter, as we have done to this point, we hope to continue widening the lens of our analysis to provide some evidence of Trump’s psychological and leadership elements that have been neglected, overlooked, or that otherwise remain opaque. Here, as elsewhere in the book’s analysis, there is the danger that some will confuse filling in a picture of Trump’s psychology and leadership with efforts to “normalize” or support Trump. And again the answer to that concern is the same. The analysis is presented along with the supporting evidence for it in order to build a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of this unique president. As always, the chips are allowed to fall where they may.
The adjective, “unexpected” in the title of this chapter raises the question of why it was used. Its use reflects the fact that the analysis herein enters into new territory. That means not only territory that has not previously been part of the analysis of Trump, but territory that is seen as antithetical to analysis of Trump by critics and perhaps supporters as well. The “unexpected” Trump is part of the Real Psychology of the Trump Presidency.
Donald Trump’s Compassion
Trump is a man and president who can be, and often is, difficult, demanding, tough, and sometimes hard. He is, on occasion, intentionally insulting, and those insults can sometimes be cruel. Yet, there is ample evidence that he also does have feelings of concern, caring, and contrary to conventional wisdom,5 empathy.
The (retrospectively assembled, reconstructed account of a portion of one Trump day) story that follows appeared in a 1989 Chicago Tribune profile, and is worth quoting in full6:
Now, silencing his intercom, he [Trump] slips out of his bullish boardroom skin. Something different. The blue eyes, typically hooded in skepticism, are tender. He is listening to Adam Orman, a 12-year-old whiz-kid visitor from Harrisburg, Pa., who suffers from a devastating muscle disorder called postviral neuromyasthenia. Adam has spent the last year in bed, managing a small stock portfolio and gobbling up every word he can find on his hero, Donald John Trump, businessman.
His dream was to meet Trump. A single phone call did the job.
“Your figures on the square footage of the Taj deal aren’t quite accurate,” Adam is challenging, the two of them squared off in Trump’s glass-walled Trump Tower office overlooking New York’s Central Park South. The boy is dazzled by toy models of Trump’s personal helicopter, proposed new high-rises and inscribed silver hard hats from past digs.
Trump tells Adam in an emotional farewell at the end of their hour-long visit that he has a very personal dream, too, and that is to see the boy next September, without walker, at the christening of the $750 million Taj Mahal casino. “I’ll be there,” Adam vows.
Another deal made.
It’s possible to argue that Trump spent all that time with the sick boy because the boy idealized him. Yet there are many people who idealize Trump and would give anything to have the opportunity to say so in a personal meeting. Trump chose to spend his time with a very sick child with little time left to live to help him realize the dream of his life while he was alive.
There is a parallel involved in Mr. Trump taking time from a busy schedule to help a stricken child realize his dream and the bombing of Syria for crossing the red line against the use of chemical weapons that Trump had laid down. The bombing was certainly strategically meant to enforce American credibility (and Trump’s), but there was another part to his decision. As noted in Chapter 4 the awful pictures of the effect of the gas attacks, especially on children, had a profound impact on Trump.7
Trump’s Public and Private Charitable Giving: Empathy, Deductions, and Accusations
Charity reflects a measure of a person outside of their ambitions and careers. Being there for others financially, if you can afford that, or personally giving of yourself when others need comfort can be measures of essential humanness. Wealthy people like Mr. Trump are expected to give to charity and Trump does. Yet, like every other aspect of Trump’s life, this one too is complex, and because it is about Trump it is also politically charged and controversial. Allegations, often ugly and frequently just accusatory, abound. The real facts are also sometimes difficult to establish because so much data is missing. As will become clear, this has not stopped the speculations, innuendo, and factually unanchored accusations.
Much has been said about the Trump family’s charitable giving both by Mr. Trump and his critics. Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that, “I’ve given millions away … I’ve given millions of dollars away to the vets and I’m very honored by it.”8 Trump critics say that Trump has contributed very little of his personal money to the family charity that bears his name, especially given his wealth. That is true. Critics feel he should contribute more. Trump responds that this charitable trust is not his only charitable effort and is a rather minor one in his overall stream of giving. Critics want to see the evidence. Trump declines to provide it.
Critics also say that Trump has used his family charity to buy himself personal items, and that he has overcharged charities that use his facilities as a way to make money from his charity. Finally, they say that Trump pledges money but never follows through until asked by the media at which time he rushes to fulfill his pledge. The implication here is that if the media didn’t ask, he would quietly renege.
Like many other aspects of Trump commentary there is much in this area that is inadequately reported. As a result, Trump’s charitable giving, which could offer some real insights into his complex and often contradictory psychology are lost in the quest to raise ethical questions and come to conclusions about his character flaws and “illegal behavior.” The analysis that follows is not Trump blemish-free, because Trump has acted inappropriately in at least one documented circumstance with his personal charity that involved using money from the charity to buy a picture of himself that he kept. That single documented transgression does not however, support the many narrow, harsh, unproven, and frequently disproved accusations that are publicly made about Trump’s charity giving.
Trump Charitable Giving: The Question of Expectations and Reality
Trump’s charitable giving represents an expected behavior on the part of the very wealthy. Any person worth many millions or even a billion that did not use some of his money to help others in some way would legitimately be considered selfish. Additionally, if such a man were to publicly tout his generosity, but in fact gave little or nothing, he would legitimately be considered a hypocrite. For all those reasons, a clearer more accurate accounting of Trump’s charitable contributions is important.
Recalling growing up in the Trump household, his daughter Ivanka said9:
“Over the years, on too many occasions to count, I saw my father tear stories out of the newspaper about people whom he had never met, who were facing some injustice or hardship,” she said. “He’d write a note to his assistant, in a signature black felt tip pen, and request that the person be found and invited to Trump Tower to meet with him. He would talk to them and then draw upon his extensive network to find them a job or get them a break.”
Her remembrances can be discounted on the basis of a daughter’s parental love. Yet, other independent observations add credibility to her memories. As noted in Chapter 1, there is substantial evidence that Mr. Trump can be very generous anonymously. We noted he once gave a dying child a check for $50,000.00 so that he could enjoy the last years of his life.10 He also gave thousands of dollars to a family whose hardships he read about in the papers.11 In another instance, he agreed to a dying child’s wish to be “fired” from The Apprentice, but when it came time to say those words, Trump couldn’t bring himself to say them to a dying child and gave him a check for several thousand dollars and told him “to go have the time of his life.”12
He donated $10,000 to pay for chemotherapy for the father of one of his thousands of campaign volunteers.13 The father of the volunteer was a member of the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission, Trump tapped his web of wealthy friends, and the then president himself to attend a fundraiser to help fund the NY State Vietnam memorial.14
There is as well this report among numerous other instances15:
ANNABEL HILL has coped with the suicide of her husband and a debt-laden farm that twice was put up on the auction block for nonpayment of loans. The insurance netted $175,000; the debts exceeded $300,000. Parts of the farm were sold, but even that wasn’t enough. Last Sept. 2, the remaining 715 acres were up for auction again. This time Donald J. Trump, the New York real-estate developer, halted the sale. He phoned the auction block and assured the creditors that he would help Mrs. Hill.
“It’s worked out real, real well,” she says. “All 715 acres were saved.”
Trump’s documented charitable giving is less often noted than questioned about its reality and level. David Fahrenthold’s examination of Trump’s charitable giving established that his namesake charity was a relatively small foundation primarily but not exclusively funded by contributions to it that Mr. Trump solicited. The essence of Fahrenthold’s report is that16:
For as long as he has been rich and famous, Donald Trump has also wanted people to believe he is generous. He spent years constructing an image as a philanthropist by appearing at charity events and by making very public—even nationally televised—promises to give his own money away. It was, in large part, a facade. A months-long investigation by The Washington Post has not been able to verify many of Trump’s boasts about his philanthropy.
The two key phrases in that quote are the harsh conclusion that Trump’s charitable work was a “façade” and that Fahrenthold has “not been able to verify many contributions.” Notice that what is presented as a fact (Trump’s charitable contributions are a “façade,” is based on non-existent data). Why wasn’t Fahrenthold able to verify his accusation? Fahrenthold writes, “It is impossible to know for certain what Trump has given to charity, because he has declined to release his tax returns.” As a result, Fahrenthold’s inability to document Trump’s charitable giving because Trump would not make his detailed records available to him does not support Farhenthold’s characterization that Trump’s image as philanthropist is, “in large part, a facade.” It simply means that Fahrenthold made the accusation without having real evidence to support it.
Trump has been very clear about why he has not provided this information. For critics, the suspicion is that he has something to hide. The reality is more prosaic. In the exchange below with the Washington Post, Trump was asked why he won’t release a list of his charitable giving. He gives several reasons but the most honest answer is that he thought the Washington Post would search for and find a way to use it against him as they did with several other accusations about his charitable giving, also analyzed below.
In all, the Post was able to identify $7.8 million in charitable giving from Trump’s own pocket since the early 1980s. The Washington Post asked Trump to provide detailed listings of the amounts of money he had contributed and to whom, and he declined to do so. Why? Consider the following exchanges:
Drew Harwell:
… you said you’re an ardent philanthropist. You said you’ve given more than $100 million to charity over the last five years. But when you look into the money that was given to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, you haven’t donated any actual money. It’s all been the golf course and I’m sure—
Donald Trump:
Well, you don’t know that because I don’t give most of the money to the foundation.
Drew Harwell:
Where do you give it?
Donald Trump:
Some people use the foundation. The foundation is a very small part of what I give.
Drew Harwell:
How much of your personal money have you given to charity in the last five years?
Donald Trump:
I think you wrote a story. I’ve given a lot.
Drew Harwell:
How much of your personal money?
Donald Trump:
If I give money through the foundation, then every charity looks at me and says, could you do this? Could you do that? Could you give me this? Because it’s essentially public. I don’t consider the foundation to be a major part of my giving.
The relationship of the somewhat small Trump Foundation to his overall charitable giving, then, and what would happen after he died, came up in a 2004 interview17;
Q:
Now that you’ve achieved so much, why not give it all away, as Bill Gates and David Geffen have done?
DT:
I do give millions of dollars a year, but I do it personally. I just write checks and give it away.
Q:
But the Donald J. Trump Foundation contributed only $287,000, according to its most recent report.
DT:
I’m surprised it’s even that high, because it’s not what you’d call a living foundation. It’s set up for after I … when it’s no longer my time. The foundation will become very active at that point.
Mr. Trump has not yet been asked to provide a copy of his will to verify this statement, but he has been asked to provide lists and details of the millions he says he gives away every year outside of his small foundation. He has declined to do so and said why in his Washington Post interview.
Drew Harwell:
You won’t give one charity that you’ve given it to.
Donald Trump:
No. Why should I tell you? Why would I want to do that?
Drew Harwell:
Well, because we want to share the word of your good giving.
Donald Trump:
Oh, you’re not going to share it because you’re going to put—anything I do, you’ll put a negative spin. I’ve given millions of dollars away and you make it sound like it’s a negative thing and not a positive thing.
To summarize: Mr. Trump has been verified to have donated millions of dollars to individual and charitable causes and says he has donated millions more. Those additional millions cannot be verified because Mr. Trump has not released his tax returns which would presumably list his charitable contributions. He also wishes to keep his contributions less public so that he is not further inundated with contribution requests. He also very clearly views the Washington Post’s expressed motivation for extensive details of his charitable giving as an excuse to make further unproven accusations like the football helmet and family contributions to St. Jude’s discussed below, provide print space for other’s disappointments in the amount of Mr. Trump’s contributions, devote space to Trump critics’ evaluations of Mr. Trump’s presumed nefarious motives, and uncover more possible instances of “self-dealing” (the Trump painted portrait) noted below.
Trump has ample experience along these lines with his illegally leaked tax returns.
Trump’s tax returns are as, or more complicated than, Bloomberg’s, Gates’ or any other billionaire. Some of Trumps’ tax returns were leaked to the New York Times,18 and they had a group of accountants who raised questions. Some of them talked about Trump’s tax return “bordering on fraud.”19 It’s now two years later and nothing further has been heard from the New York State Attorney General’s Office that sued Trump’s charity foundation about this purported “fraud.”
Trump most likely did what his accountant said he could and should do. Yet if the analysis of his leaked tax returns by the New York Times are any indication, it is certain that a detailed examination of very complex tax and charity calculations would likely result in “experts” who see some transaction that might break the law or skirt it, and say they needed more data, and perhaps suggest testimony in front of a Congressional oversight committee.
Trump’s Personal Foundation: Portraits, Flag Fines, and Football Helmets
Mr. Trump did use his personally named, relatively small foundation, funded with donations from others, to inappropriately buy one item (a painting of himself found in one of his hotels).
David Fahrenthold was able to locate this portrait which was hanging in one of Trump’s properties by crowdsourcing a request to his readers to help him check on Trump’s charitable giving. Fahrenthold raised another possible instance of self-dealing, but was unable to provide or point to evidence that Trump violated any law or charitable disbursement requirement.
Mr. Fahrenthold asserted that, “Donald Trump used money donated for charity to buy himself a Tim Tebow-signed football helmet.”20 If true, that would have been a second documented instance of inappropriate self-dealing. However what Fahrenthold presented as proven fact turned out on closer inspection to be presumption. His article begins by asking “Did Donald Trump violate IRS rules, by using a charity’s money to buy himself a signed football helmet?” The text of the article answers: “The answer may depend on what became of the helmet and jersey. If they are still in Trump’s possession—perhaps on display at one of his homes or properties—that might be deemed improper, if the IRS ever looks.”
That’s a lot of “mays” and “ifs” for which no evidentiary answers are provided. Eric Trump said he wasn’t sure what had become of the helmet, but he doubted his father kept it. He said “Knowing him, he probably gave that helmet to a child. Sometimes the only way to support [a cause] is by buying an item at this event. You don’t want that item!” Mr. Fahrenthold never provided any further evidence on this matter.
Another Trump charity story long on the public record concerns Mr. Trump using proceeds from the foundation to pay a fine after having been found guilty for having flown a too large American flag from his South Florida property. In fact, the city levied fines of $1250.00 a day and Mr. Trump sued the town for Palm Beach in Federal Court for 25 million dollars. An agreement, reached through an initiative suggested and supervised by the court, settled the matter. The settlement agreement was that the fine would be $100,000 and that Trump would satisfy this fine by donating that amount to a veteran’s group, which he did. The payment of that fine came from Mr. Trump’s named charity. As part of the agreement Mr. Trump was allowed to fly a larger sized flag from his property.
The Washington Post reports of this incident did not report that the settlement arrangement was a result of the court’s initiative, or that the court reviewed and supervised that settlement, including the payment from Trump’s charity. Instead, the Post article used that unsubstantiated claim as an example for Trump using his foundation as his own piggy bank.21 That was misleading, at best.
The New York State Attorney General took the view that the Florida court’s sanctioned Trump veterans’ contribution violated NY State charity laws. Trump signed a consent order to settle that NY State suit alleging improprieties while not admitting or denying any violations of law.22 The most significant breach mentioned in the stipulation of the New York lawsuit concerned the donation of a million dollars to a veteran’s organization. That donation was made, but announced at a campaign rally which violated the state’s administrative distribution rules for charities.
St. Jude’s Foundation Charitable Bequests: Accusations of Criminality and Their Reality
Fahrenthold also raised the possibility of clearly criminal violations regarding the Trump family’s charitable giving. This example concerns Eric Trump’s substantial support for the St. Jude’s Foundation that helps young cancer victims. In an interview with the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold, Eric Trump said that his foundation paid “zero” for the use of his father’s golf course, where the fundraisers were held. The direct implication was all the money taken in was given to St. Jude’s, a major beneficiary of the charity.
A supposed “exposé” raised questions about this after examining records and finding a line item ($87,655) for payment to Trump’s property for the use of the golf facility. The article not too subtly hinted that both Trumps were profiting from money that should have gone to help the children.23 The title of the article—“How Donald Trump Shifted Kids-Cancer Charity Money Into His Business”24 implied unethical and possibly criminal behavior.
Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, who had published a series of stories on Trump family charity donations and called Trump’s charity giving a “façade” without documenting evidence, then “asked Eric Trump if he lied to him in an interview about whether Trump used his father’s golf course for free as the location of a fundraiser for the Eric Trump Foundation.”25 After expressing outrage at the accusation, Eric Trump responded as follows26:
the payment was actually to cover the cost of outside vendors: to rent a stage, to rent extra golf carts and to hire extra golf caddies. In the past, his foundation had cut separate checks to all these outside parties. In 2014, he said, they decided to have the golf course handle the administrative burden of paying all the outside vendors. Then his foundation wrote one check to reimburse the golf course.
This is a reasonable and legitimate explanation, which presumably satisfied Mr. Trump’s accusers since no more was heard of this set of accusations. What of the exposé of the Trumps’ using their donations to make money on renting out their properties? After raising a long string of questions premised on the assumption of wrongdoing, that piece concluded (bold in original, emphasis added):
THE ULTIMATE TRAGEDY HERE is that the Eric Trump Foundation has done so much good. Yes, Eric has indulged in the family trait of vainglory, from Eric Trump bobblehead dolls at the tournament to statements that leave the impression he’s giving the money personally, even though tax records suggest he’s donated six figures total, at most. (Trump wouldn’t tell Forbes how much he’s given to his own foundation. “I think it’s totally irrelevant,” he says, citing the fact that ‘“he never charge” for use of the courses.) But in 2015, a new intensive-care unit at St. Jude opened with Eric Trump’s name on it, and the foundation’s money has funded research into a rare form of cancer. It’s hard to imagine how the early incarnation of the golf tournament—big hauls, understandable costs—would have any problem continuing to spew out millions for years to come. Last year, the Eric Trump Foundation donated $2.9 million, according to St. Jude.
It is unclear given the content of the above paragraph, what the “ultimate tragedy” is, but it certainly seems unrelated to the “understandable costs” that the article mentions or the substantial amount of money the charity received. The accusation that the Trumps “Shifted Kids-Cancer Charity Money Into His Business,” proved both ugly and baseless.
For detailing the limited nature of Mr. Trump’s personal foundation, for finding out that other people beside Trump had contributed to his foundation, for being unable to gain from Mr. Trump information about his other charitable giving, for locating a painted portrait for Mr. Trump in one of his hotels through crowdsourcing, for raising allegations of self-dealing with a football helmet for which he was unable to provide any evidence that it violated tax law, for raising allegations of self-dealing with respect to Trump’s veteran’s contribution to settle a Florida court case without noting that this settlement was supervised and vetted by a competent court, for implying that Mr. Trump did not follow through fast enough in vetting the recipients of promised donations—implying that if the point had not been publicly raised, Mr. Trump would have reneged on his commitment, and for documenting that Mr. Trump and his staff sometimes gave differing figures on the amounts of Trump’ charitable contributions, Mr. Fahrenthold received a Pulitzer Prize.27
Charity and President Trump
Is Mr. Trump personally and anonymously generous with individuals who have fallen on hard times? Yes. Has the Trump foundation contributed many verified millions to major charities? Yes. Has Mr. Trump contributed millions more outside of his own small family foundation? He and his children say yes, however there is no direct evidence on that question one way or another for the reasons noted above.
Does Mr. Trump embellish his charity contributions? No doubt. Does Mr. Trump seek to get substantial tax benefits from his contributions from his land donations to the state? Yes. Has the Trump foundation made administrative errors in how it has dispensed money to charities? Yes. Did Mr. Trump inappropriately have his foundation buy a picture of himself that he then used in one of his properties without making the necessary adjustments to his tax filings? Yes. Does the Trump foundation operate to fraudulently mislead charities and funnel money into Trump family pockets. No. There is no evidence of this whatsoever.
In short, Mr. Trump’s charitable giving reflects the same complicated mix that characterizes his presidential leadership. It is a complex amalgam of genuine caring encased in protective shell and leavened by an unknown amount of hyperbole. Here again, in his and his family’s substantial charitable giving as elsewhere, there is more to Mr. Trump than the accusations of his critics allow.
Being There for Others
True narcissists expect others to be there for them as needed, but care little about being there for others. Their concerns start and end with themselves. That is why these two examples, among others, hold some interest and importance.
The first example reaches far back into Trump’s developmental history and was related by a childhood acquaintance with a family connection to the Trumps for a PBS Frontline Program entitled The Choice 2016.28 The interview is with Sandy McIntosh, now a progressive Hillary partisan. He got to know Donald Trump more than half a century ago, when the two were schoolmates at the New York Military Academy. In his interview he says:
Mr. McIntosh decided to send his son to New York Military Academy and he knew Donald’s father Fred. So, “Fred Trump asked Donald, or told Donald, to take care of me.” I think his father said: “Look, just take care of this kid. Show him the ropes, and keep him out of trouble.” I went up there, and during that first year—and Donald, I did see him. He was up in the, I think, the middle school or already in the upper school. I was in the lower school building. But we would meet occasionally. He would always ask how I was doing. Sometimes he’d give me good advice. I think throughout the whole time that we knew each other at military school, he was kind to me and attentive when I needed it, got me out of some jams. …
What were those jams? In the interview he reports several, the most dire of which was disobeying a direct public order from his commander Major Dobias to box and not use judo in a sparring exercise. As a punishment:
Dobias put on the gloves, and he got in the ring and said [to me]: “I’m going to teach you how to do it. I’m going to teach you how to take it and how to give it.” And he got in there, and he punched me around, not hard, but more like the humiliating kind of taps and so on. This went on for several days, I think. I can’t remember how long—to me, it seems like it went on for years, but I know it didn’t.
Then:
one day I met Donald as I was walking across the campus, and he asked me how I was doing. I told him what had been going on, and he said, “Well, you’d like this to stop, right?” And I said, “Yes, I would very much like this to stop.” And he said, “Well, I’ll have a word with Dobias.” Then several days later, the boxing stopped, and I was actually transferred from that building to the upper school main barracks.
Summing up, Sandy McIntosh said:
To me, I saw him as a considerate, fairly soft-spoken person when he was with me. I have to say that I think he followed that promise that he made to his father. Even [though] I wasn’t such a little kid when he was graduating, but still he followed that promise to sort of take care of me like that, or make sure that I was OK.
Much later in Trump’s life there is also the case of Robert Kraft, a lifelong Democrat, Obama supporter, and owner of the New England Patriots.29 He recalled30:
“In the toughest time in my life, he [Trump] was there for me,” Kraft told “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade. “He came to the funeral with Melania. He’d visit me at my home. … He called me once a week for a year. ‘How are you doing?’ I was really depressed, and he invited me to things, and he looked out after me.” Few other people were as devoted as Trump during that period, Kraft added.
There is a real, softer, caring, empathetic side to Donald Trump. It is obviously at variance with his brash tough persona, which are also real. Therein lies one of the many real paradoxes of the real psychology of Donald Trump. Neither the narrow anti-Trump narratives or Trump’s frequently combative or brash expressions of his psychology capture the real and complex human being at their core.
President Trump’s Vision and Creativity
It is an obvious and well-documented fact that Mr. Trump is very ambitious. Yet, along with his outsized ambitions, Trump is also very creative. It’s worth pausing a moment to consider the nature of creativity and its relationship to vision. Creativity is not usefully thought of as a set of insights that revolutionizes how we see the world or ourselves, like Einstein’s theory of relativity or Freud’s charting of our emotional lives. Creativity can and often does come in smaller doses.
One thing that creativity does require is the ability to see things from a different, unconventional angle, and that is where vision enters the equation. Adding a caveat here or a slight refinement there to a long existing paradigm is ordinary incrementalism, not creativity. Creativity consists in part of having the vision to see the potential for a new departure, and being able to act on that vision and bring it to fruition. Both are necessary. Vision devoid of result is just a dream.
During his Manhattan building career, Trump proved to be not only creative, but for a very practical man, a visionary. How else can you look at the New York skyline in 1975 and imagine its Trump-shaped version decades later? As one profile noted31:
Trump used his early seed money to buy up Manhattan real estate that, at the time, was thought to be worthless. He then hired ground-breaking architects to construct palaces of glass and steel that transformed the New York skyline.
Trump’s business (and political career) contain both elements—vision and creativity—combined with a one step at a time mentality, a necessity in both building and politics. In his building projects, he pursued the plodding, step by step process of accumulating land parcels, financing, government agency permissions, weathering economic downturns and civic opposition to complete projects that others had wanted but failed to gain development rights. As noted, Trump can be impatient for results, but he also knows how to bide his time.
In one of his earliest major interviews in the New York Times, he was asked what attracts him to the real estate business and he replied32: “I love the architectural creativeness … for example the Commodore Hotel is one of the most important locations in the city and its reconstruction will lead to a rebirth in that area.” Trump’s creative vision for the neighborhood proved correct.
Certainly, there were elements of self-promotion and self-interest in gaining access to that land parcel to redevelop. It was, however, Trump’s vision of a major and luxurious redesign of the old hotel’s “old structure with 2000 tiny cubicles that felt more like closets than rooms,”33 with a dramatic and sweeping redesign that included four exterior walls of mirrors as its façade that won him the rights to develop that site. Trump’s determined and contagious commitment to the creatively redesigned hotel to help lift that area out of its descent also helped win Trump the opportunity to put his plan into action. That vision was just not hype, but a real set of innovative ideas. In biographer Gwenda Blair’s words, “Donald’s first opportunity to display his glittering vision was a grand slam,”34 a “resounding success,” and a “remarkable triumph.”
Negotiating with the Penn Central Railroad for the property, finding a partner with experience in hotel management (Jay Pritzker of Hyatt Hotels), gaining the needed financing, and overcoming the opposition of his father (Trump quotes him as saying “buying the Commodore at a time when even the Chrysler Building is in bankruptcy is like fighting for a seat on the Titanic”) were only a few of the roadblocks Trump needed to overcome. He did so over the course of several years.35
Not every Trump vision was successful. His grand plans for “Television City” on the site of the old Penn Central Railroad yards on New York’s upper west side that he obtained an option to build on with the same combination of vision and can-do spirit never reached fruition. Over decades of controversy, civic and government opposition, economic upturns and downturns, Trump City, as it came to be called, was a vastly different project when it was built than the grand one Trump had envisioned. In those decades, Trump was forced to sell his interests in return for a management fee and the use of his name.36
On the other hand, his signature building, Trump Towers, is fairly considered a triumph of sweeping vision, meticulously carried through. As Trump biographer and critic Timothy O’Brien writes, “Trump Tower was Donald’s deal in almost every aspect, and he set it in motion independently from his father.”37 Indeed, Trump Tower was another Trump project built over the initial objections of his father and others. Trump resisted “Efforts by his architects and others to get him to incorporate more traditional forms in his structures …”38 Trump recalls that he attempted to explain
my vision to my father. I described the bold beautiful innovative glass and bronze exterior that would distinguish Trump Tower … he couldn’t understand. Brick had always worked for him, why not for me?39
Trump deeply loved, respected and admired his father. Yet he was determined to be, and did become, his own man. He learned to stand apart from his father’s wishes for him, good practice for his go-it-alone, if necessary, stance as president. To this core trait he added his ambition, vision, creativity, and determination, all of which became vehicles for building his own unique adult identity.
Trump once told Wayne Barnett, a strong Trump critic who interviewed him for fifteen hours and went on to write a muckraking exposé of his business dealings that, “I won’t make a deal just to make a profit. It has to have flair.”40 Trump Towers reflected that flair, its vision, and esthetic. Nothing like it had ever been built before in New York City and nothing like has been able to be built since.
There were many Trump innovations in the design and construction of that building. There were the usual complex issues of assembling parcels, getting city approvals, seeking and getting air-rights and financing. Yet there was also innovation. Trump cast the building using concrete rather than the traditional steel framing. That allowed Trump to alter the design of the building as it was being built. It also allowed a new floor to be built every two days, warp speed for building construction.41
All of these completed elements and the voluminous decisions that accompanied them were the preliminaries to the main event which was the nature and style of the building itself. Trump did not want just another forty-floor boxy skyscraper,42 “I wanted the most magnificent, dazzling, and admired showplace in the world. Since this building was going to bear my name, it would represent me, so I wanted it to be exceptional …”
In that same interview Trump said, “For me, a major joy of my business is being able to exercise my own vision and creativity to express myself. I do it by developing bigger, bolder, more beautiful projects; ventures that have imagination, style, scope, depth and scale …”
Narcissistic? One could say that, but only in the most ordinary understanding of that term’s meaning (see Chapter 6). The capacity to have a vision, to envision a possible reality, and being able to successfully act on it is, for many who have that experience, deeply satisfying. Doing so takes courage; life never guarantees success. To borrow a favorite Trump word, his ambitions are “huge.” Were they “Grandiose”? It certainly was a large vision. Yet it was one that Trump carried through to completion, just as he did in redesigning the Commodore and helping rescue that decaying neighborhood. Grandiose carries with it the implication that the person has taken on much more than they can possible accomplish. That would not seem to be the case here.
The design of the Trump Tower was highly unusual and dramatic, a twenty-eight sided saw-tooth fifty-eight story design.43 New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable called it “a dramatically handsome structure.”44 If anything the building’s interior dazzled as much if not more than its exterior. Of that decision Trump notes:
My advisors suggested beautiful paintings in the lobby of Trump tower … the idea seemed old fashion and unoriginal to me. So I decided to install a waterfall instead. The waterfall is over eighty feet high and cost 2 million to build. It’s absolutely spectacular and mesmerizing to watch.
One New York builder is quoted on the spectacular waterfall as follows: “He deserves full credit for his success. He spent $1 million on the waterfall in Trump Tower. No one else would have done that. If the building fails everyone will say: ‘Well sure, what jackass spends a million bucks on a waterfall’?”
The multi-floor atrium for commercial space was also Trump’s idea.45 So was the breccia pernice pink marble stone personally selected from Italian quarries.46 Paul Goldberger, then a New York Times critic called the Trump Tower interior “warm, luxurious and even exhilarating.”47 Taken as a whole, the glass and bronze saw-tooth exterior and multi-floor atrium for high-end shopping, complete with cascading eighty-foot waterfall were both unique and esthetically striking. It was, and remains, a unique accomplishment.
Trump had arrived at the fulfillment of his dream that he could hardly believe he had accomplished. He confided in one interview48:
Even to this day If you ask me what’s my favorite deal, it’s always going to be Trump Tower. Because it was sort of like: What am I doing here. I have an office in Brooklyn. I am from Queens.
The reason for noting this is that the actual nature of Trump’s accomplishments are not given much attention. They are worth noting because those accomplishments, and what it took to achieve them, are the template for the ambitions of his presidency. Lastly, they are worth noting on the matter for good taste. Those are words not ordinarily associated with Trump especially given the nature of some of his Twitter comments and his opulent, often over the top branding style. There is a Trump esthetic and it is not only to be found in opulently framed Trump branding.
Financial Creativeness in Times of Economic Success and Collapse
Ordinary creativeness poses its own set of challenges to most people. Creativity in times of dire duress poses an even larger set. In one interview Trump notes that49:
And I like the financial creativeness too. There’s a beauty in putting together a financial package that really works whether it be through tax credits, or a mortgage financing arrangement, or a leaseback arrangement.
Individuals coming from academic or policy backgrounds may find this statement puzzling. Isn’t obtaining financing a rather cut and dried matter of assembling bank loans? No, that is not the case, especially at Trump’s level of building and financing. That much might be acknowledged, but creative?
Consider these few examples. In order to make the Commodore project work, Trump needed a major hotel partner to help him build and run it because he had no “track record” at that time. Hyatt was interested, but dissuaded by the costs of building in New York. Trump’s solution was a tax abatement program for the project. However, the city had never before given one for the development of commercial property. Was pushing the new abatement self-interest on Trump’s part? Yes, of course.
However, no one had ever thought to propose one to the city for the purpose of revitalizing an area and Trump was the one who argued it through over several years. Faced with the prospect of seeing this vital anchoring New York neighborhood continue to decline or invest in a major effort with Trump’s plan to revitalize it,50 the city provided the first ever tax abatement for commercial property to this Trump project—The Business Investment Incentive Policy. That innovation is now used routinely to help the city foster development, jobs, and income for the city. Then only Trump thought of doing it and brought it to fruition.
A second example comes from the period of Trump’s severe financial difficulties in the 1990s. He had taken on a great deal of debt, some of which he had uncharacteristically personally guaranteed. Unable to make some payments due on his debts and a severe economic downturn, Trump was forced to scramble to remain economically afloat. As Trump put it51:
The problems at the [Trump] Castle [one of his Atlantic City Casinos] could have triggered a series of defaults, forcing me into personal bankruptcy. There was no way Donald Trump was going personally bankrupt! I would talk about bankruptcy and I would use that possibility as a tool to negotiate, but I would never do it. That would end the game.
What “game”? The long-running ever evolving mostly successful, to date, Trump Show. Trump did leverage his indebtedness to survive. He accomplished that in dozens of meetings with his creditors by convincing them that he was worth more to them semi-solvent than personally bankrupt. One Citibank Trump creditor, Harvey Miller, noted:
it was discovered that he had all of these different projects with different banks, and that each bank syndicate had different collateral. And basically that’s what saved Donald. It was spread out.52
Trump’s grave economic circumstances became the creative key to saving both his business and his reputation. Trump made a huge bet, arguing to his creditors, “I can tie you guys up for years—in court proceedings, bankruptcy filings and other legal maneuvers … but I’m willing to do something else,” and laid out his deal.53 O’Brien, a Trump critic, writes of this period that, “As negotiations progressed bankers looked for every alternative they could find to [Trump’s personal] bankruptcy because none of the banks wanted to contend with the mess that would ensue if the talks collapsed.”54
It seems paradoxical to credit creativity in the context of a business disaster brought on in part by Trump’s own decisions. Yet the fact remains, that many were in Trump’s dire circumstances and were in a position to make the same “worth more solvent than bankrupt” pitch to their creditors, but didn’t. One of the major players during that period, Chase Manhattan’s Sanford Morhouse who worked with a lot of real estate developers who had similar problems said, “almost all of them at one point or another, filed for bankruptcy protection. And Donald, to his credit did not.”55
Trump suffered more potential missed debt payments and banks extended his loans for several more years. He was forced to give up some of his trophies and toys, and he lost control of several properties including the prized West Side Railroad yards that he had obtained options to develop years before, and the Plaza Hotel. A limit was placed on his personal spending.
Trump wrote that he hated having to go to his bankers “hat in hand” as he put it.56 He further wrote that “I took tremendous punishment as I watched my empire collapse around me.” That much certainly rings true. Fighting for your economic life while you watch the accomplishments you proudly built begin to slip away was profoundly sobering. President Trump has, in the last few months of his first presidential term has become reacquainted with catastrophic loss as the economic effect of the response to the Coronavirus pandemic has devastated the economic record that he had so assiduously built.
Recall that when Trump was thirty-eight he thought, “it was all going to last forever.” Nothing does of course. Yet it was for Trump an unexpected and brutal lesson. He is now confronted with it again.
Trump was able to absorb and weather a tremendous amount of punishment. While doing so, he was able to persevere, fight back, and even rebuild what had been lost in a new and creative way (branding). In so doing, he was forced to both develop and rely on capacities that had not been evident in his prior more successful period. Those experiences and traits doubtless proved helpful in weathering the onslaughts of the Mueller investigation, the House impeachment inquiry, the opposition’s offensive against his presidency, and monumental task of leading the country and his presidency back from the effects of the pandemic, the convulsive national demonstrations that followed the death of George Floyd, and the national demonstrations that followed that spilled into violence in a number of circumstances.
Writing before his fall, Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal57:
I don’t kid myself. Life is very fragile, and success doesn’t change that. If anything success makes it more fragile. Anything can change without warning …
Trump had no idea when he wrote those words how right he was.
Trump also wrote, looking back on that period58:
I consider the early part of the 1990s to be my most brilliant period. This is the time when my abilities showed the greatest in that I was under tremendous pressure to perform in an economy that had totally collapsed.
Much of that statement is pure Trump. Yet before dismissing its obvious hyperbole, it’s useful to more closely examine the elements of truth it contains. Trump was in the process of going from “can do no wrong” to “can’t do anything right.” He was on his way to becoming a “has been” at the age of forty-four, right in the middle of his “mid-life.” Had he gone personally bankrupt, he would have lost almost everything and never been able to create the circumstances that allowed him to rebuild his empire.
Trump’s decision to place a bankruptcy bet with his creditors was an innovative foreshadowing insight. To step forward and do so quickly was also a decisive “look facts in the eye and do something about them” act. It was an act in the service of endurance and resilience, pain now and pain later, for the chance to emerge to build again. Again, creativity would not have been successful without the ability to carry it through. The ability to doggedly carry on without much of a plan would have brought final failure. Trump’s creative, painful strategy allowed him to accurately claim that he had fought back from dire economic circumstances, a story of grit and determination. That too became part of the Trump’s oeuvre and persona.
Trump’s successful strategy required him to continue “hat in hand” for many years. His determined effort to rebuild what he had lost in many small unheralded steps was a substantial economic accomplishment, but also a substantial personal and psychological one. Finding a way to successfully rebuild using the innovation of Trump branding was another creative accomplishment worth carefully considering when assessing Trump’s approach to the presidency and his chances for success.
President Trump’s Operating Metric in Life, Business, and Politics: Think Big
Trump’s operative mantra for his ambition, whether a building project or a political initiative, is “think big.” In an interview with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, there was the following exchange:
Q:
But what is the secret. What was the common denominator? What principle did he apply to all these ventures? To building, to television entertainment, to politics?
Ivanka Trump Kushner:
There is one principle going back to my childhood, something that he would always tell us … it’s no secret really. He would say, “if you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.” It was his approach in business, entertainment, and finally politics. He would swing for the fences. He wouldn’t try for a single, He would try for a home run.
One might usefully add here not just any kind of home run. Trump was an excellent baseball player in high school and the Washington Post noted that, “By sixth grade, Donald’s power as a right-handed hitter was enough that fielders shifted to left field when he batted. ‘If he had hit the ball to right, he could’ve had a home run because no one was there,’ said Nicholas Kass, a schoolmate. ‘But he always wanted to hit the ball through people. He wanted to overpower them.’”
Translation: Trump could have notched up many more home runs and a better record if he had done the easier thing. Isn’t that what a budding adolescent “malignant narcissist” would do to gain more bragging rights? Perhaps, but that’s not what Trump did. He swung, directly, for the fences, a style much in evidence in his business and political life.
The evidence of the importance of these Trump statements and taking them seriously is not that Trump made them, that his daughter confirmed them, or that there is evidence of their existence early in his developmental history. The reality of all three certainly adds to our confidence in the observation. However, the clear fact is that Trump acted on those views in all his business efforts (the Commodore Hotel, Trump Tower, “Television City”), and in seeking the presidency as his first office, politics as well.
He is also acting on this presidential leadership premise in his presidency: revising trade deals, trying to renegotiate a new Iran agreement, bringing North Korea to the real negotiating table, trying to reach a real settlement of America’s longest running war in Afghanistan,59 and trying to forge a new Arab-Israeli agreement among other things. It is unlikely that all, or perhaps even most of these efforts will be successful. Yet, all are truly consistent with the go-big foundations of his ambitions, personal and presidential.
How Trump Approaches the Presidency: Innovation, Determination, and Ambition
It is now clear in retrospect that Trump won the Republican nomination and the general election by being both unconventional and creative. Yet, he also won both not only by thinking differently but also by being different. He has governed, much as he campaigned, by again doing both.
It is important therefore to clarify the differences between being unconventional and creative, being able to and acting differently as a president, and the implications of both for the Politics of American Restoration, Trump’s policy ambitions.
The conventional understanding of Trump’s victory was that he leveraged millions of dollars of free publicity to win. He was also credited with running a shoestring but nimble campaign. He is now also credited with successfully targeting key electoral college states.
The Real Nature of Trump’s Political Creativity
Everything above is true. However, the nature of Trump’s real innovations in his nomination campaign, general election victory, and chances for presidential success lie elsewhere. Among the most obvious non-traditional and creative parts of Trump’s nomination strategy was to focus on the large gap between the establishment and ordinary Americans. He did this by leveraging the debates to highlight his policy differences with establishment narratives, a stance that also underlies the unconventional and creative dimensions of his presidential leadership.
Trump was also unconventional and creative in taking the fight directly to his opponents in a personal way, a stance that he also carried into his presidential leadership. In doing so, he underscored the fact through repeated demonstrations that he was and would be a different kind of Republican and president. He would not mince words. He would not allow attacks to go unanswered. He would not give voice to the usual policy platitudes. In doing all this he presented himself as a breath of fresh political air as well as a cleansing whirlwind. One by one his competitors faltered. However, his real audience was not the establishment but ordinary people, and they could not help but notice what was so entirely evident.
What was unconventional and creative about Trump’s stance and leadership style? Certainly the fact that it was unprecedented made it unconventional. Yet, there was more to it than that. The creativity of Trump’s candidacy was reflected in his recognition that a new kind of Republican and presidential leadership was not only needed but possible. Indeed it was longed for by substantial segments of the American public. They were amenable and responded to a candidacy that was more authentic, confrontational, and uninhibited, that was focused on getting things done, even if the style of doing so strayed very far from conventions of presidential propriety. In short, they were amenable to a man very much like Trump himself.
What was so creative about Trump’s stances in his eight policy pillars? Others had criticized operating policies in one area or another, say the Iranian nuclear deal or immigration policy. What was unique about Trump was that he challenged the whole array of establishment policies, and did so not by offering incremental tweaks, but by challenging their basic premises. Trump did so by asking basic questions about the foundations of establishment assumptions.
Was it really possible to have a sovereign country without effective border and immigration controls? Was “free trade” mostly a “win-win” situation without substantial downside? Had the world, including the United States, substantially changed since the end of the Cold War, requiring a new look at old strategic assumptions and relationships with allies and competitors alike? Was low economic growth really the “new normal,” and what if anything could be done about it? In these and every other area of the “eight policy pillars,” Trump promised and provided fresh, if not always fully informed thinking.
Trump’s Leadership Style: Meaning It
Trump said he would act on his campaign promises as president, and did. Recognize that Israel’s capital was Jerusalem? Check. Focus on jobs (starting before he assumed office)? Check. Withdraw from the international climate accords? Check. Withdraw from the Iranian nuclear agreement? Check. Reduce regulations? Check? Enforce American immigration laws? Check. And so on.
No representation is being made here that all of these Trump initiatives (an additional list of items is found in Chapter 9), and his others will be successful or are preferable. Most Trump policies are not fully in place. Many of them are in transition from what they were pre-Trump to what they might become if Trump is successful in his presidential efforts and ambitions.
To note three examples among many: Acting Commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan gave a lengthy press conference on the virtual end of catch and release at the Southern border, a success many months in the making.60 It is still a large distance from that to the comprehensive skill based immigration program that Trump would like to put in place. So too, Trump has made substantial progress in getting NATO allies to shoulder more of their financial responsibility for the alliance, a success many years in the making.61 Yet, the reorientation of NATO’s core purposes in a post-Soviet Union world is still a work in progress. Finally, the long arduous road to a trade agreement and new economic relationship with China has successfully concluded Phase 1. Yet there is still substantial and hard bargaining ahead for both powers to further build on that accomplishment, which has been affected by questions regarding China’s role in the Coronavirus pandemic.
The point of listing these efforts is to underscore both their range and uniqueness. Trump asks big, basic and long-unasked questions about a range of American policies. That is obviously “unconventional,” but it is also creative. Why creative? Because in order to be authentically unconventional you have to be able to stand outside of and apart from conventional thinking. In Trump’s particular case, this not only means doing so in one area but in the “eight policy pillars” we have noted.
It is central to his presidency is that Trump’s creative rethinking of policy premises is accompanied by a determination to act on these understandings. That brings us back to Trump’s leadership style. He has governed as he campaigned, giving substantial, but not absolute, free reign to his signature psychological and stylistic elements. Those include authenticity, being who he is and not being afraid to be seen that way. It also means being at ease with confrontation and standing apart, and a focus on “getting things done.”
His supporters love this style. It is exactly what they had hoped for in giving Trump their votes. Those less fully in Trump’s corner appreciate much of what he has done. They also recognize, if reluctantly, that Trump’s unusual leadership style has something to do with that. They are torn between the wish that Trump would act more “normally” presidential, and the recognition that he would not be able to get as far as he’s gotten had he done so.
A Washington Post reporter examining why Trump won wrote: “Trump, to his immense credit, understood that a) flouting the rules actually endeared him to a big swath of voters and b) there just might not be any real rules at all.”62 Matt Taibbi, no fan of Trump, notes, “Trump had said things that were true and that no other Republican would dare to say.”63 The opposition of course abhors all things Trump, including but certainly not limited to his presidential demeanor.
All three of these groups—supporters, latent supporters, and the opposition, make an understandable error. They do not err in taking Trump as he has repeatedly demonstrated himself to be as a candidate and president. That much is evident and true. Rather they err in assuming that what they see, as powerful as its impact is, is all there is to Trump’s psychology. Trump is, surprisingly, given his well-deserved reputation for brashness, confrontation, and bull in the China shop presidential temperament, occasionally a thoughtful reflective man.
Trump Reflective?
Reflective is not a word typically associated with Trump. Quite the opposite. As noted, he is more often presumed to be impulsive, reflection’s negation. Trump has said he was “not a believer” in therapy, whose purpose is (guided) reflection because in part he “Doesn’t have time for it.”64 Elsewhere Trump is reported to have said he would be afraid of what he might find,65 although as the examples below suggest he can be reflective.
The conventional wisdom is that Mr. Trump’s capacity for thoughtful reflection is minimal. He is, among other ascribed failures, criticized for “having a achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumblings of a soul.”66 He is also routinely said to be thoughtless, cruel, and impulsive among many other traits that are antithetical to self-reflections on the meaning of (his) experience and life.
Even when Trump is clearly being reflective, that fact does not resister. One biographer and anti-Trump pundit67 reports that Trump asked reflectively in an interview of his own life: “What does it mean?”68 However, then according to the biographer “The reflection lasted but a moment and then Trump was on to another topic.” The point was written to convey that Trump had a momentary flash of self-reflection, which he couldn’t sustain because he’s really uninterested or incapable.
The trouble with D’Angelo’s characterization is evident when the article from which it is drawn is actually examined.69 After Trump asked the question about his life’s meaning, the article goes on to quote him for 260 more words and his concerns about a possible nuclear holocaust—an issue that his uncle, a MIT professor impressed upon him. That discussion clearly lasted more than “but a moment.”
Ironically, this biographer exhibits the exact same behavior that he erroneously accuses Mr. Trump of exhibiting. He writes that Mr. Trump responds to questions about his life and what he has done by “invariably, he looks for ways to turn the conversation to the theme of his triumphs.” D’Angelo then adds in a momentary flash of his own self-insight: “In fairness our conversation is about him.”70 However, the biographer then inserts a comma and continues on with his meme, “but it’s hard to escape noticing that even as he notes a genuine success, he [Trump] can’t resist exaggerating.”
A closer examination of Trump’s interviews over the years presents a decidedly different picture. Trump is not by nature introspective, but he has reflected on the meaning of his life, his accomplishments, and the inevitability of death. Asked about his death in a 1990 interview when he was forty-four, Trump responded: “No I’m fatalistic and I protect myself as well as anybody can prepare for things. But ultimately we all end up going to hopefully greener pastures.”71 In a 2004 interview at age fifty-eight, he reflected that, “I know life is fragile.”72 Recall that, as noted above, at thirty-eight Trump reflected that “I though it would last forever.”
In another, 2010 interview at age sixty-four, he was asked whether he was still “driven.” He replied, “I am highly driven and, at the same time, I sometimes wonder why. What’s the purpose? You kick the bucket, your kids take over … who knows what happens.” Later in that interview he was asked whether he was afraid of anything and replied, “I guess you can always say yes but I like to think no. We are here, get a short period of time, a spec, and then we go.”
Does Trump spend hours ruminating about the meaning of his life and its purpose? No, but it is on his mind, and he’s clearly thought about it. Moreover, he’s had close up experiences with death. There was his brother’s death due to alcohol induced heart failure after a long decline (when Donald was thirty-five), the sudden death of his three closest business executives in a helicopter crash (when Trump was forty-three), and later in life his father (at age fifty-three) and mother (at age fifty-four).
There is as well his long experience with economic death—his own in the 1990s. In a 2004 interview he reflected back on his brush with bankruptcy and said,73 “The hardest I’ve ever worked in my life was the period from 1990 to 1994 … I wouldn’t want to do it again, but I learned that the world can change on the head of a dime, and that keeps things in perspective.”
In that same interview when he was asked about his wealth and its effect on his then young kids, he replied:
My kids are extremely well adjusted. But I wonder what they think when they walk into Mar-a-Lago and see ceilings that rise to heights that nobody’s ever seen before. And when my daughter’s date picks her up at Trump Tower in a few years and sees the living room, how will he feel when he takes her out and tries to impress her with a studio apartment?
Asked in an interview that was part of a 2005 book (when Trump was fifty-nine) if, “Trump didn’t exist, would we have to invent him,” he replied, “No. The world would get along just fine … you see people that are very important—they go and the world continues to get along.”74
When asked whether he thought his buildings would still be there in a hundred years, he replied, “No, I don’t think so.”75 He was right about his building not lasting a hundred years. The Grand Hyatt, one of Trump’s original hotel creations when he first arrived in New York is scheduled to be torn down for a new mixed-use tower.76
These are hardly the thoughts of a supposed “malignant narcissist.” There is clearly much more depth to Mr. Trump than the caricature his opponents present. Trump’s temperament is geared toward accomplishment in the world. Yet, as the above quotes from many different periods of his life make clear, he does reflect on life’s deeper meanings including that of his own life—and the circumstances he observes as he goes through it.
One of Trump’s most interesting, nuanced, and reflective responses came when he was asked about the killing of a seventeen-year-old male gorilla that grabbed and dragged a three-year-old boy who fell into the moat in the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. The gorilla, named Harambe, at times seemed to be protecting the boy and at other times dragged him around the enclosure. The zoo ultimately decided to shoot the gorilla to save the boy, a decision that has spurred a backlash from animal rights activists. Trump was asked whether the gorilla should have been killed, and replied77:
I think it’s a very tough call. It was amazing because there were moments with the gorilla—-the way he held that child—it was almost like a mother holding a baby—looked so beautiful and calm. And there were moments where it looked pretty dangerous. I don’t think they had a choice. I mean, probably they didn’t have a choice. You have a child—a young child who is at stake—and, you know—it’s too bad there wasn’t another way. I thought it was so beautiful to watch that you know powerful, almost 500-pound gorilla, the way he dealt with that little boy. But it just takes one second—one second.. It just takes one little flick of his finger. And I will tell you they probably had no choice.
There is clearly much more depth to Mr. Trump than the caricature his opponents present.
And finally there is the rather ordinary fluff interview of Mr. Trump showcased by TMZ and Fox News. Mr. Trump is being asked about his lavish style of living and how it was to grow up in Queens. He replies, speaking of his Queens childhood (emphasis added):
Trump:
I view it so differently. … And now, when I go there it seems very quaint. ….
Harvey Levin, Interviewer:
You don’t seem like a quaint guy.
Trump:
Well, you know, maybe I’m more quaint than you would think. Sometimes when I’m on my way out to wherever I may be going, I’ll stop because it’s an exit, right?—Utopia Parkway. I’ll get off the exit, and I’ll stop and take a look at my house where I grew up with my parents and brothers and sisters. And you know, I had a good early life.
This is a rosebud moment of reflective reverie. It seems that this world-famous, brash, rich, powerful business titan takes the time to physically return to his childhood home and no doubt allow the memories that are housed there to wash over him and be remembered. These are no doubt poignant moments for Mr. Trump as they would be for anyone who undertakes such an emotional and historical journey.
These are surprising and emotionally laden trips for a man who is said to be so “malignantly narcissistic” that he lacks the psychological depth to reflect.
Notes
1.
Cf., Newt Gingrich. 2020. Trump and the American Future: Solving the Great Problems of Our Time. New York: Center Street.
2.
Doug Weed. 2019. Inside the Trump White House: The Real Story of His Presidency. New York: Center Street.
3.
Anonymous. 2019. A Warning. New York: Twelve Books.
4.
Michael Wolf. 2018. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. New York: Henry Holt.
5.
Jerrold M. Post and Stephanie Doucette. 2019. Dangerous Charisma: The Political Psychology of Trump and His Followers. New York: Pegasus, pp. 3–7.
6.
Glenn Plaskin. 1988. “Trump: ‘The people’s Billionaire’,” Chicago Tribune, March 12.
7.
The White House: Office of the Press Secretary. 2017. “Remarks by President Trump and His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan in Joint Press Conference,” Rose Garden, April 5.
8.
Washington Post. 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-stat/graphics/politics/trump-archive/docs/donald-trump-interview-may-13-2016-with-oharrow-harwell-boburg.pdf.
9.
Ivanka Trump quoted in Callum Borchers. 2017. “Patriots Owner on Trump: ‘In the Toughest Time in My Life, He Was There for Me’,” Washington Post, February 3.
10.
Michael D’Antonio. 2015. “Donald Trump’s Long Publicity Con,” Daily Beast, November 28.
11.
William E. Geist 1984. “The Expanding Empire of Donald Trump,” New York Times Magazine, April 8.
12.
Trump quoted in D’Antonio 2015, p. 264.
13.
James Holcomb. 2017. “President Trump Gives $10,000 to Campaign Volunteer for His Father’s Chemo,” Washington Post, January 24; see also Justin Jouvenal. 2017. “In Donated Shoes and Suit, a Trump Supporter Comes to Washington,” Washington Post, January 18.
14.
William E. Geist 1984. “The Expanding Empire of Donald Trump,” New York Times Magazine, April 8.
15.
FOLLOW-UP ON THE NEWS 1987. “Surviving Tragedy on the Farm,” New York Times, August 2.
16.
David A. Fahrenthold. 2016. “Trump Boasts About His Philanthropy. But His Giving Falls Short of His Words,” Washington Post, October 29.
17.
David Hochman. 2015. “Playboy Interview: Donald Trump (2004),” Playboy, July 19, emphasis added.
18.
David Barstow and Susanne Craig. 2019. “Decade in the Red: Trump Tax Figures Show Over $1 Billion in Business Losses,” New York Times, May 8.
19.
David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner. 2018. “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches from His Father,” New York Times, October 2.
20.
David A. Fahrenhold. 2016. “Donald Trump Used Money Donated for Charity to Buy Himself a Tim Tebow-signed Football Helmet,” Washington Post, July 1.
21.
Frank Cerabino. 2015. “Trump’s War with Palm Beach,” Politico, September 5; see also Sally Apgar. 2007. “Trump Reaches Truce Over Flag at Huge Florida Home,” South Florida Sun-Sentinel, April 27.
22.
Supreme Court of the State of New York. 2018. “So Ordered Stipulation of Final Settlement.” Index 451130/2018.
23.
Dona Alexander. 2017. “How Donald Trump Shifted Kids-Cancer Charity Money Into His Business,” Forbes, June 29.
24.
The actual story opens a window into a complex number of issues including separating out the costs of different events held in the same venue, the actual legitimate costs associated with a venue’s use, various quoted estimates of what they should cost, and the fact that Eric Trump’s philanthropy branched out and contributed money to other legitimate charitable institutions. As seems obligatory in such stories a great deal of time is spent with various criticisms of Donald Trump’s charitable giving.
25.
Leagh DePiero. 2017. “Washington Post Journalist Asks Eric Trump If He Lied to Him in 2016 Interview,” Washington Examiner, June 6.
26.
Eric Trump quoted in David A. Fahrenthold. 2016. “Eric Trump: My Father Gives Millions to Charity But I won’t Say More,” Washington Post, July 6.
27.
Paul Farhi. 2017. “Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold Wins Pulitzer Prize for Dogged Reporting of Trump’s Philanthropy,” Washington Post, April 10.
28.
Jason M. Breslow. 2016. “The FRONTLINE Interview: Sandy McIntosh,” PBS, September 27.
29.
I am indebted to one of the three anonymous reviewers of this manuscript for bringing this example to my attention.
30.
Robert Kraft quoted in Borchers 2017, emphasis added; see also Cork Gains. 2018. “After Robert Kraft’s Wife Died, Trump Called Every Week for a Year to Console Him,” AOL, February 1.
31.
Tim Stanley. 2016. “Introducing the Real Donald Trump: A Careful Plotter and Media Master Who Is Far More Intelligent Than He Seems,” The Telegraph, July 18, emphasis added.
32.
Judy Klemesrud. 1996. “Donald Trump, Real Estate Promoter, Builds Image as He Builds Buildings,” New York Times, November 1.
33.
Gwenda Blair. 2000. The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire. New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 63.
34.
Blair 2000, pp. 74, 85.
35.
Donald Trump [with Meredith McIver]. 2008. Trump: The Art of the Comeback. New York: Times Books, pp. 62–67.
36.
Michael Kruse 2018. “The Lost City of Trump,” Politico, July/August.
37.
Timothy L. O’Brien. 2005. TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald. New York: Business Plus, p. 68.
38.
Jerome Tuccille. 1985. Trump: The Saga of America’s Most Powerful Real Estate Baron. New York: Donald I. Fine, p. 175.
39.
Donald J. Trump [with Meredith McIver]. 2007. Trump 101: The Way to Success. New York: Wiley, p. 6.
40.
Wayne Barnett. 1979. “Like Father, Like Son: Anatomy of a Young Power Broker,” Village Voice, January 15.
41.
O’Brien 2005, pp. 68–71.
42.
Trump (with Meredith McIver) 2007. Trump 101: The Way to Success. New York: Wiley, p. 7.
43.
Donald J. Trump (with Tony Schwartz). 1987. Trump: The Art of the Deal. New York: Random House, pp. 166–167.
44.
Huxtable quoted in William E. Geist 1984. “The Expanding Empire of Donald Trump,” New York Times Magazine, April 8.
45.
Trump (with Schwartz) 2005, p. 165.
46.
Jerome Tuccille 1985, p. 181.
47.
Goldberger quoted in William E. Geist 1984. “The Expanding Empire of Donald Trump,” New York Times Magazine, April 8.
48.
Trump quoted in O’Brien 2005, pp. 73–74.
49.
Judy Klemesrud. 1976. “Donald Trump, Real Estate Promoter, Builds Image as He Builds Buildings,” New York Times, November 1.
50.
A good overview of the deal Trump was able to achieve is found in Tuccille 1985, pp. 106–108.
51.
Donald J. Trump [with Kate Bohner]. 1977. The Art of the Comeback. New York: Times Books, p. 12.
52.
Miller quoted in O’Brien 2005, p. 162.
53.
What Trump offered his creditors is detailed in Trump (with Bohner) 1977, pp. 16–17.
54.
O’Brien 2005, p. 162.
55.
O’Brien 2005, p. 164.
56.
Trump (with Kate Bohner) 1997, The Art of the Comeback. New York: Times Books, p. 13.
57.
Trump (with Schwartz) 2005, p. 63.
58.
Trump [with Bohner] 1997, p. 198.
59.
Jessica Donati and Catherine Lucey. 2020. “Trump Says ‘Good Chance’ of Deal with Taliban,” Wall Street Journal, February 13.
60.
Press Briefing. 2019. “Press Briefing by Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan,” The White House, November 14; see also Camilo Montoya-Galvez. 2019. “‘Remain Home:’ Trump Officials Say Policies Responsible for Sharp Drop in Border Apprehensions,” CBS News, September 9.
61.
Lorne Cook. 2019. “NATO Seeks to Head off Budget Dispute, Saying Spending Is Rising,” Associated Press, November 29.
62.
Chris Cillizza. 2016. “Trump Has Completely Upended the Political Game. We Need to Adjust Accordingly,” Washington Post, December 11.
63.
Matt Taibbi. 2016. “How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable,” Rolling Stone, February 24.
64.
Trump quoted in O’Brien 2005, p. 191.
65.
Trump quoted in Mark Singer. 2016. Trump & Me. New York: Penguin, p. 107.
66.
Singer 2016, p. 86.
67.
“I really think that he is this horrible creature, and he has no regard for anything but himself, and he’s willing to go to lengths we’ve never seen before in order to satisfy his ego.” D’Antonio quoted in Susan B. Glasser and Michael Kruse. 2016. “‘I Think He’s a Very Dangerous Man for the Next Three or Four Weeks’,” Politico, October 12.
68.
Michael D’Antonio 2019. Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success. New York: Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press, pp. 151–152.
69.
William E. Geist 1984. “The Expanding Empire of Donald Trump,” New York Times Magazine, April 8.
70.
D’Antonio 2019, p. 341, emphasis in original.
71.
Trump quoted in Plaskin 1988.
72.
David Hochman. 2015. “Playboy Interview: Donald Trump (2004),” Playboy, July 19.
73.
Ibid., emphasis added.
74.
Trump quoted in O’Brien 2005, p. 209.
75.
Trump quoted in Hochman 2015.
76.
Josh Barbanel. 2019. “New York’s Grand Hyatt Hotel to Be Torn Down,” Wall Street Journal, February 7.
77.
Trump quoted in CBS. 2016. “Donald Trump Weighs in on Killing of Gorilla at Cincinnati Zoo,” CBS News, June.