Trump’s moral and ethical baggage makes for a heavy loaD

As I noted in two recent installments of The Big Picture, I have a sibling who supported Donald J. Trump in 2016 and who appears to be doing so again this year. In a family chat, she listed a clutch of issues that she suggested disqualify Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Feel free to find discussions of the key issues here and here.

Today, let’s take up another tidbit my sister mentioned. She contended that my two brothers and I don’t “like” Trump.

I don’t entirely dispute this, though the word is an odd one. How can one like a fellow one sees only on TV or in images in news accounts? Indeed, with someone such as Trump, can one be sure we’re not seeing a made-up persona, a manufactured cutout created on a bad TV reality show? That’s the way many American voters of a certain age probably got to “know” and “like” him to begin with.

Who is the real Trump? There is reason to believe, I suggest, that the angry man who vents at length when he goes off-piste, ignoring his Teleprompter, is the real one.

This is the one, you’ll recall, who mocked disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, the one who questioned Harris’s racial identity, the one who extolled “good genes” in much the same way some Germans did before WWII, the one who said he would be a dictator for a day, and the one who referred to his supporters as “basement dwellers.” This Trump was also the one who famously called insurrectionists “great patriots,” said he would pardon them, and said “for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

I suggest that this is the Trump who seems most animated when indulging his odd sense of grievance, vengeance and anger. But how can such things make one likable? In what world is that so? In what realm, one might ask, do Trumpies exist then? What does that say of their character, as well as of Trump’s?

Lately, some Republicans have sought to move Trump away from such things as his personal attacks on Harris and Walz. Many have advised him to drop the puerile name-calling that, maybe, worked for him in 2016; it now seems only to remind independent voters of what they dislike about him. Some folks, such as Wall Street Journal columnist and former GOP presidential speech-writer Peggy Noonan, keep pushing him to focus on policy differences.

That’s a shift that may be essential for Trump. If the race is about character, how could he possibly win?

Let’s recall that Trump is a thrice-married philandering 34-count felon with a costly history of sexual abuse, defamation, business fraud and business failure. Does that sort of personal character stand up against that of a former state attorney general and San Francisco district attorney who put criminals in jail? Does his being a criminal make him “likable,” and what does that say about a person who then “likes” him?

Let me share some personal history, a tidbit not dissimilar to the experiences of other reporters who followed Trump’s career. In the spring of 1992, I spent some time with him for a story for BusinessWeek. First, an editor and I visited him in his New York office. Then I toured one of his then-bankrupt Atlantic City casinos with him.

In the first visit, my editor, the late Chris Welles, and I told Trump we planned to write about his businesses, intending to give readers an update on where things stood, given the bankruptcies of his three gaming houses. He was prominent in New York then and had an emerging national name and we wanted to assess how his diminished business empire was faring. The meeting was a preliminary one, designed to let him know we were setting out to do this piece, and to see if he would talk with us for it.

Recall that Trump then, and now, was a deal maker. His main question was: would this be a cover story? If we could commit to that, it seemed, he might decide one way; if not, another. (As we told him, we had no idea how the piece would be played, as that sort of decision wouldn’t be made in advance and would depend on whatever else was happening that week.) He wanted to know what we would say in the piece. (Of course, we didn’t know that because we had not done the reporting yet.) Would this be favorable? (See the prior question).

The vibe, however, was clear. It was as if we could see the wheels spinning in his head. Trump wanted to manipulate us, to box us into a corner in which he could trade access for good press and a big spread, a cover he could tack on his wall to feed his needy ego. His approach was so calculating, so slippery, and so unlike that of other business folks I had written about that I recall feeling like I needed a bath afterward.

Despite our refusals to play along with his game, he agreed, nonetheless, to give us access. Then, sometime soon after, he and I visited one of his casinos, a trip that was bizarre. First, he brought along his then-paramour, Marla Maples, with whom he had infamously cheated on his first wife, Ivana. Was she there to impress me somehow? Was she a trophy he enjoyed showcasing? No other CEO of my acquaintance trotted out mistresses like show ponies when I did stories on them.

As we walked through the place, gamblers came up to him, oohing and ahhing, and complimenting Marla, who was a lovely ex-model. One dazzled gamer touched Trump with her slots-playing hand for luck. The experience gave me my first hard realization about Trump – the gulf between the financially ruined businessman and his public image even then was as vast as the Grand Canyon. To anyone familiar with his dealings, he was a failure, but to much of the public, he was nearly god-like, very much like the character Hollywood later created in “The Apprentice.”

Indeed, the character many Americans came to know in that most unreal reality TV show may be the one they support. That decisive, hard-nosed figure bears little resemblance, however, to the real man, as many who know him can attest.

In researching the piece, I visited a couple high-priced New York attorneys representing his creditors. One, a strait-laced button-down guy, told me flat out “Donald Trump is a lying sack of s—.” His partner, a striking woman, told me Trump was constantly trying to get her onto his plane, but she said she’d rather fly coach than be anywhere close to him. His lechery was unmistakable, she suggested, and he repulsed her.

My colleague, Larry Light, and I, of course, followed the facts as we wrote the piece, (which was not a cover story); his prospects, at least in the short run, seemed good, and we wrote that. Largely thanks to Trump’s talented chief financial officer at the time, Stephen F. Bollenbach, the casinos would emerge with a reasonable bet on the future (though only for a few years, as it turned out. Trump later mismanaged his casino company anew and it fell into bankruptcy again eight years later, in 2004). Other Trump businesses also failed at various times, netting him six major failures in all. As such businesses failed, he stuck plenty of subcontractors with unpaid bills.

Quite the smudge on his escutcheon, one might say.

Trump later distinguished afresh himself with my colleague. Light got hold of his financial information and learned that Trump had a negative net worth. As recounted by another colleague, some of Light’s work drove Trump to march into the top editor’s office at BusinessWeek. There, Trump launched into a three-hour tirade that included an anti-Semitic gibe about Light (who informed Trump he was, in fact, Episcopalian). Trump also threatened to sue, but backed off after our lawyer told him his finances would then be opened to public disclosure in court.

Does this all add up to a man of character, a man of integrity, a man of honesty, a man of proven success, a man who should lead our country?

What of the Trump seen by many of those who worked closely with him in his term as president? Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper called him a “threat to democracy.” Former national security adviser John Bolton declared him “unfit to be president.” John Kelly, a former Marine Corps general and Trump’s former chief of staff, called him “a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators” and “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” His own former vice president, Mike Pence, could not endorse him.

Back in 2016, a minority of American voters – less than 46% — elected Trump. That suggests most Americans were onto him even then, though not enough in the states that tilted the Electoral College his way. What will happen this time? Will enough voters feel like this 78-year-old’s shtick has grown tired, as Noonan suggested?

Studies show that many voters are stubborn. Especially in our polarized times, they tend to stick by their choices, no matter how much negative information they are presented with. Some voters also tend to be irrational, sometimes motivated even unconsciously by such factors as racism and fear. (Of course, Trump plays into both those factors, and likely is seen by some voters as the strong white man at a time when some whites can’t handle changing American demographics).

Will voters ignore Trump’s many flaws again, as so many did in 2016? Even more than before, this campaign keeps bringing those shortcomings into sharp relief. Will enough sensible voters see him this time for what he is? Will they have the good sense and the spine to act on that? Perhaps we can hope that enough will not be like that sadly uninformed slots player foolishly touching her false idol so many years ago.