No research needed: stories about Trump, his father abound

by Marcy Rothenberg

First posted to Let's Talk Nation, June 23, 2016

When writers research stories, we usually have to go hunting for sources whose life experience is relevant to the subject. Their first-person narratives help inform our stories by providing factual background to support a particular observation – but they’re often hard to obtain and verify.

Not so, it seems, when you’re writing about what drives one Donald J. Trump. No hunting for sources seems necessary: the stories just fall into your lap, even for a life-long Californian whose social circle has never included Trump or any member of his family…and never will.

Twice in the past few weeks, personal friends have shared their own stories about the Trump family -- one who told of his grandfather’s frustrating business dealings with Fred Trump, Donald’s father; and the other who shared memories of his own weekly encounters with a teenaged Donald.

Story number one tells us why Donald Trump thinks it’s OK to renege on business agreements and force his vendors to accept 30 cents on the dollar…or sue. He thinks that’s the way business is done because it’s exactly how his own father ran things.

Our friend’s grandfather was a concrete contractor in New York City when he landed a contract with Fred Trump to pour the foundations for some of Trump’s apartment buildings. When the project wrapped up, Fred still owed him $30,000 for the work – a princely sum at the time for a small business owner. But Fred Trump refused to pay. He decided that our friend’s grandfather had gotten as much as he was going to get for the work he’d done – contract be damned.

Story number two tells us why Donald Trump’s own children think they’re entitled to the riches they’ve gained simply through the good fortune of their birth to a wealthy man.

This friend was a teenager living in one of Fred Trump’s New York apartment properties in the early 1960s. Every Saturday morning, when he and his buddies would head outside to play basketball, they’d watch as a limousine pulled up to the property and a teenage Donald stepped out, accompanied by his mother. They would watch, muttering to one another, ‘Trumpasshole.” Why? Because Donald was there to collect the coins from all of the washing machines in the apartment complex – the precious coins that those kids’ moms had scrimped together to do the weekly wash. Their laundry money was Donald’s allowance.

No wonder, then, that Donald Trump’s children seem to view their father’s campaign for the presidency, not as an opportunity for public service to a nation that has treated him and his family incredibly well, but instead as a “yuuuge” marketing opportunity for the Trump business empire.

It was only slightly surprising to read through the Trump campaign’s late June filing to the Federal Election Commission this week and see where a full 20 percent of the campaign’s expenditures are going: straight into the Trump empire. Millions of dollars paid to Trump Tower, Trump Plaza, Trump Restaurants, Trump Café, Trump Ice, Trump Grill, Trump Wines, Trump Corporation, Trump Payroll Corp., Trump hotels, Trump golf clubs, the Old Trump Post Office, Trump Soho…

…not to mention the campaign’s “rental” payments to Trump’s own Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, or his own private Trump jet fleet.

After all, the entire campaign seems to have begun as a grandiose effort to promote one of Donald Trump’s books – which as his opponent, Hillary Clinton, now suggests, “all seem to end at Chapter 11.”

And it will be even less surprising to this writer, when the Trump campaign finally comes to a (hopefully futile) end, that whatever money might be left in the campaign coffers will go first to pay back Donald Trump’s own loans to the cause (which he said he would forgive but has yet to do), leaving his remaining creditors empty-handed.

As Donald himself proclaims, he’s “very good” at business.

At least when it means doing good for himself.