A friend, a lifelong Vermonter, asked if I could “be persuaded to support Donald Trump.” I listened to what he had to say, then it was my turn. All I know about Trump is what I read in the newspapers, heard from friends, and saw on television, but as such, he’s been a minor public figure in my life.
I grew up in a suburb of New York, went to New York University, lived in the city for ten years, and worked there for thirty. Donald Trump’s mug has been in the New York newspapers since the 1980s, but the first time I had an emotional reaction to him was when he publicly flaunted his affair with Marla Maples while married to Ivana. I thought he was a cruel cad.
Years later, I was on crutches and needed a ride in a passenger cart to catch a flight in Newark Airport. The chatty driver told me that Ivana Trump had once been a passenger. “She was the nicest woman. But she told me Donald didn’t do right by her. She was left struggling.” A “struggle” for Ivana Trump was different from a struggle for me, but I had been primed to believe the Donald was a mean-spirited dunce and took the story as true.
When he bought the Plaza Hotel, a bastion of New York style and class, I and the people I knew dreaded the outcome, and our fears came true. Within a few years it was no longer a hotel, Trump had arranged one of his bankruptcies, and it was ultimately sold to a Saudi prince. A piece of New York’s soul was in smithereens.
He announced the Trump Shuttle. What a great idea! What a genius! Passengers could go to the airport and buy tickets for hourly flights to Boston and some other cities, too, I think, as if it were a bus. I started thinking about when I’d go to Boston. A couple of years later, Trump defaulted on his debt and the shuttle went out of business.
Then he tried to muscle in on the good times in the Atlantic City casino business, resulting in the failure of three casinos and more bankruptcies, not to mention the disruption all this brought to the people of Atlantic City.
My sister-in-law “will never forgive him for razing Bonwit Teller to build his stupid tower.”
I remember reading about the narrow escape from prosecution of the Trump organization for refusing to rent to Black people. It’s just a tidbit from my past, but it made an impression on me.
I remember Trump’s lawyer Roy Cohn, the spectral figure at Joseph McCarthy’s side. I watched those hearings and heard live the comment by the attorney Joseph Welsh that took McCarthy down, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness… You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?” The presence of Roy Cohn at the sides of both McCarthy and Trump spoke volumes to me.
For a couple of decades, I lived far from New York and could gratefully forget all about Donald Trump, but he remained busy making himself toxic to New York banks.
My son was impressed by The Art of the Deal, written by a ghost writer who grew to disrespect his client. I told my son the deals Trump made were not just shaky, but scandalous, destructive failures, but he didn’t believe me. Maybe the lawsuits over Trump University have changed his mind, or the vapor that was Trump Steaks. I don’t claim to be an expert on all of Trump’s failures. I was an ordinary citizen involved in my own life and only knew what I read in the papers.
It’s no wonder Trump gets such a small percentage of the vote in New York City. We’ve known him for many, many years as a big talker and a big loser, with bankruptcy, disgrace, and desecration following him around like a bad smell.
After telling my Vermont friend why I would never want a man like Trump to be president, he remained a supporter. We parted friends. Donald Trump is not worth losing a friend over.