The Staggering Truth About Donald Trump

I’ve kept quiet about Donald Trump for a long time, because I’m not huge on mixing politics with business. Or politics with family. Or politics with anything, really. Because politics kind of sucks.

But I have a friend who recently posted about their support for D. Trump on facebook, and I couldn’t help responding.

The friend said basically, “I didn’t start out liking Trump, but that’s how it is now. Unfriend me like you threatened, or debate me, but please, let’s leave the memes out of this.”

A couple of comments later, when someone asked, “Because?”, the friend responded, “Trump is bold and has balls, I agree with his stances, and he can work a deal. He has failed businesses, but he has big wins that far outmeasure the failures.”

And then the friend listed a couple core issues (about three) he believes in, and believes Donald Trump will support. But I won’t list those, both because they’re irrelevant to what I’m about to say, and to ensure my friend’s privacy.

Before I say anything else though, I want this friend to know I think it takes stones to acknowledge and stand up for what you believe in, especially in a climate that can react so badly to your particular stance.

People are threatened by Trump, and they will say a lot of really nasty things to his supporters. Personally, I think they’re threatened with good reason, because (spoiler alert) I think he would be a horrible president. But it doesn’t mean anyone should be trying to change anyone’s stance through social intimidation.

So, I will not unfriend you. I will not condemn you. But I will take you up on your second option, to debate you. Because I think a respectful debate is a very powerful and transformative thing.

But it’s hard to debate you if I continue to remain silent. So here we go.

Apologies if some memes work their way in somehow.

“He’s bold and has balls”

Trump’s actions do tend to be bold, but a country is not a small ship, or even a small business. It’s huge and slow and takes a lot of thinking ahead to make a good presidency.

Boldness helps a candidate get people’s attention, but we all know what really matters is what you do with it once you have people’s attention. Otherwise you’re just one of those glitzy, annoying, off-topic Superbowl commercials.

So boldness should be a second or third-rate concern when backing a candidate.

We’ll get back to DTrump’s substance — or lack of it — in a minute.

“He has failed businesses, but big wins that far outmeasure the failures.”

As a businessman, Donald Trump is kind of a joke. True, he has more money than you or I. But his bankruptcies were far from “speed bump” trivial.

He’s been bankrupt so badly, so many times, it’s actually a well known fact that large banks don’t really want to work with him.

He’ll say that he doesn’t work with them because he’s so rich he doesn’t need to borrow money, but that’s actually pretty bad and foolish business.

Why would you heavily risk your own money when you could have outside investment bear that burden?

It takes a lot of really bad, stupid calls to end up in a position where even greedy, free-wheeling banks think you’re too nutty to get a piece of the risky and enormous sums they’re throwing around constantly.

A note about branding

From a brand perspective, Trump’s business — and many of his subsequent failings — are crazy unfocused.

Setting aside whether each was successful or not for a moment (and a lot of these were unsuccessful), Trump thought it was a good idea to stretch his brand to sell hotels, casinos, mortgages, steaks, television shows, an airline, a line of shirts, energy drinks, cologne, vodka, and furniture.

Wow, that is like, insanely bad business.

Imagine if In-N-Out also sold abortion pharmaceuticals, cheap plastic Days of Our Lives replicas, and napalm, and you can begin to see how an unfocused brand really screws up everything.

“…missing from Trump’s retelling is that all four bankruptcies were high-profile embarrassments for his name-brand American empire. Amid some of the proceedings, the mogul poured in millions of dollars from his personal fortune to keep the restructurings alive.” — Wallstreet Journal

For contrast, whatever you think of Apple, they’re the most profitable company in the history of the world. They have many times more cash on hand than the United States government (and, I have to imagine, probably any government).

They have enough money to buy companies like General Motors — twice — and still have 40 billion dollars leftover.

And do you know how many different types of products Apple currently sells?

Basically, three different types of laptops, three different types of desktops, a few different types of iPads, a couple different types of iPhones, a cut of digital music and media sales, and now a watch and a TV media box. That’s about it.

Is Donald trending up?

All of the above is probably a reason why Donald Trump’s wealth has stagnated for quite some time. His companies are private, so there are no hard public records, but estimates of his wealth haven’t varied much from between 2–4 billion dollars. (Donald Trump says he’s worth 10 billion dollars. No one actually believes this. Not Forbes, not Fool.com. No one.)
 
For kickers, Trump actually inherited as much as $100 million back in 1978. If he’d just invested that money in a typical retirement fund, he’d have $6 billion dollars today, instead of perhaps less than half that amount.

You might say, “But hey — isn’t that all pretty standard for business?” I would say no, it’s actually extremely subpar, but at the very least, it’s definitely’s far from exceptional.

For a jarring comparison to a true business tycoon, look at Warren Buffet.

While Donald Trump’s dad was a real estate mogul, Warren Buffet’s dad ran a grocery store and later a stock brokerage.

While Warren Buffet inherited much less, even if Donald Trump did make it to his magical 10 billion dollars (which again, absolutely no one except for Trump seems to believe), Warren Buffet is worth substantially more, at an estimated net worth of roughly $60 billion!

That means Warren Buffet is actually 6x richer than Donald Trump’s fake trumped up value!

Few people know it, because Warren Buffet isn’t stupid enough to plaster his name all over them, but the investment company he runs owns significant parts of GEICO, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, Helzberg Diamonds, Heinz, Mars candy, American Express, Coca-Cola Company, Wells Fargo, IBM, and General Motors. But unlike Donald Trump’s schizophrenic business dabblings, Buffet is actually very clear about what and who he is: An other-worldly savvy investor.

And let’s take a moment and recognize that Warren Buffet has all that money even after giving away vast sums of it.

In July of last year alone, he gave away $2.8 billion. The year before that he gave away another $2.8 billion, and the year before that he gave $2.6 billion.

You didn’t read that wrong: Warren Buffet has multiple times given away more money than Donald Trump probably actually has or has ever had.

What’s more, people actually respect Warren Buffet. When he speaks, they almost always listen with bated breath — he’s so famous for his foresight that his nicknames are actually “Wizard”, “Oracle”, and “Sage.” Compare that to the sad, small banal egotism of Donald Trump’s “the Donald”.

In the world of impressive businessmen, Donald Trump is doofier and more inept than a broken pencil sharpener.

(Oh, and on a shallow, personal note — I would’ve liked to have a second football network to watch, and to compete with the NFL, in the spring. So go to hell, Donald Trump.)

So what then is Mr. Drumpf?

Well, that kind of brings us back to the beginning.

Donald Trump’s only real outstanding asset is just his ability to get attention, which puts him in company with a category of performative divas like Madonna, Katy Perry, or Lady Gaga. By this point he also has a hint of being famous for being famous, like Paris Hilton (used to be?) and Kim Kardashian.

That’s perfectly fine for a performance art, but putting them on a list together is kind of an insult to true performance celebrities. There’s even less substance behind what Donald Trump does, and even Donald Trump knows it.

Take this actual, real, honest to God quote from his own book, The Art of the Deal:

“I play to people’s fantasies. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.” — Donald Trump

Hmmm, innocent you say…

What Trump is basically saying is that he purposefully stretches the truth, playing on people’s emotions to promote things — and by now we all know that the thing he promotes most often is himself.

But we’re still not done yet, because surprisingly, that’s still being a little too generous to Donny Trump.

Believe it or not, there’s actually an even worse side to Donald Trump.

I taught karate for ten years. I saw lots of kids that got bullied, and also had to fix a few kids that were bullies, and so it’s easy for me to recognize what Trump actually is: a bully.

A bully is someone who has an ego so fragile that they have to constantly validate it by getting attention and by putting other people down.

The two go together. If you’re only attention-seeking, you’re just a drama queen. It’s when you also belittle others that you become the truly sad thing we call a bully.

Even though it’s an unhealthy obsession that often harms your social relationships, a bully has a hard time breaking the habit because one often feeds the other: You can get a lot of attention by being loud and obnoxious and hurtful to others in a public way.

This is also why Don Trump’s lashes out in ways that seem to continually get broader and broader. It’s hard to get people’s attention these days, so you have to constantly change it up. And since Donald is a bully, it’s all about the attention and there is nothing deeper there to back it up.

The crazy thing is, the fact that Donald is an insecure bully isn’t even that hard to spot.

People with real power don’t have to huff and puff, or threaten to blow your house down. Assuming a threatening posture is something you do only when you feel threatened. Nobody raises a clenched fist while they’re reclining on a hammock in their back yard.

So what does it tell you when Donald Trump is constantly huffing and puffing about, well, everything?