venture, the Grand Hyatt New York, on the site of the old Commodore Hotel, the then-mayor, Abe Beame, was a Brooklyn Democratic-machine-bred career civil servant—i.e., a malleable hack—susceptible to the blandishments of Trump’s Brooklyn-clubhouse-wired father and loan guarantor. Donald the dauphin presumed the license to write his own rules, and it worked. He squeezed unprecedented tax abatements from a functionally bankrupt municipal government. The monster rose from the laboratory table and walked.
During the demolition to clear the Fifth Avenue site for Trump Tower, five years later, he approved the destruction of a pair of massive limestone art-deco bas-relief panels above the entrance to the erstwhile Bonwit Teller department store. Trump had promised to donate the panels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art but later decided that properly removing them was too expensive and time-consuming. He wanted his building built. Shrewdly, he had covered his ass with a made-to-order fall guy—an in-over-his-head demolition contractor who, as it happened, employed a wrecking crew of grossly underpaid, mistreated, distinctly undocumented Polish laborers. (So much for securing the borders.)
Wollman Rink, a public ice rink in Central Park, had closed for repairs that same year. Six years and more than twelve million dollars later, it still hadn’t reopened. Trump Tower’s first tenants had long since settled in. Thus was launched Trump’s first great public-relations coup: completing the rink renovation in three and a half months, for two million two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The following year, at the invitation of a Republican activist in southern New Hampshire, he emerged from a sporty black helicopter to deliver a Rotary Club speech. Among the locals who greeted him, some held signs that said TRUMP IN ’ 88 and VOTE FOR AN EN- TRUMP -ENEUR . A few months later, after a television appearance, he received a Dear Donald note from Richard Nixon: “I did not see the program, but Mrs. Nixon told me that you were great…As you can imagine, she is an expert on politics and she predicts that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!”
Thanks, Dick.
Next came a Kabuki theater press tour of the underbelly of the temporarily out-of-commission Williamsburg Bridge. Trump had enlisted a senior transportation official in the Reagan administration as a prop, under the pretext that Trump was just the fellow to overhaul the entire city’s crumbling infrastructure.
Because bankruptcy tribulations and domestic disarray soon got in the way, 1988 would be the last presidential year for a while in which he would contrive a Trump for Emperor charade. He was back at it in 2000 and 2004, and in 2012 he performed an especially ostentatious Prince of Denmark routine before bowing out. That he possessed no core beliefs, no describable political philosophy, and not an iota of curiosity about the practicalities of policy and governance was irrelevant—to Trump, anyway—and seemed not to factor in the decision. He had been variously a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, and a possible candidate for the Reform Party. His intrinsic loyalty? In business, politics, and life he had remained faithful to only one constituent. And a single theme:
Trump. Me. Look.
Until June 16, 2015, when he descended the escalator in the Trump Tower atrium and, with paid actors wearing MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN ! T-shirts cheering him on, inaugurated his courageous effort to make
Mexican
synonymous with
rapist
and
drug smuggler
, I never thought he’d take the leap.
• • •
Sensible individuals of sterling repute—Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher—judged Trump’s campaign launch an occasion for celebration. Not a particularly patriotic verdict, but who could blame them. The world’s richest lode of potential satire had just been discovered! For once, I demurred. I have never disapproved of the public ridicule of
During the demolition to clear the Fifth Avenue site for Trump Tower, five years later, he approved the destruction of a pair of massive limestone art-deco bas-relief panels above the entrance to the erstwhile Bonwit Teller department store. Trump had promised to donate the panels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art but later decided that properly removing them was too expensive and time-consuming. He wanted his building built. Shrewdly, he had covered his ass with a made-to-order fall guy—an in-over-his-head demolition contractor who, as it happened, employed a wrecking crew of grossly underpaid, mistreated, distinctly undocumented Polish laborers. (So much for securing the borders.)
Wollman Rink, a public ice rink in Central Park, had closed for repairs that same year. Six years and more than twelve million dollars later, it still hadn’t reopened. Trump Tower’s first tenants had long since settled in. Thus was launched Trump’s first great public-relations coup: completing the rink renovation in three and a half months, for two million two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The following year, at the invitation of a Republican activist in southern New Hampshire, he emerged from a sporty black helicopter to deliver a Rotary Club speech. Among the locals who greeted him, some held signs that said TRUMP IN ’ 88 and VOTE FOR AN EN- TRUMP -ENEUR . A few months later, after a television appearance, he received a Dear Donald note from Richard Nixon: “I did not see the program, but Mrs. Nixon told me that you were great…As you can imagine, she is an expert on politics and she predicts that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!”
Thanks, Dick.
Next came a Kabuki theater press tour of the underbelly of the temporarily out-of-commission Williamsburg Bridge. Trump had enlisted a senior transportation official in the Reagan administration as a prop, under the pretext that Trump was just the fellow to overhaul the entire city’s crumbling infrastructure.
Because bankruptcy tribulations and domestic disarray soon got in the way, 1988 would be the last presidential year for a while in which he would contrive a Trump for Emperor charade. He was back at it in 2000 and 2004, and in 2012 he performed an especially ostentatious Prince of Denmark routine before bowing out. That he possessed no core beliefs, no describable political philosophy, and not an iota of curiosity about the practicalities of policy and governance was irrelevant—to Trump, anyway—and seemed not to factor in the decision. He had been variously a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, and a possible candidate for the Reform Party. His intrinsic loyalty? In business, politics, and life he had remained faithful to only one constituent. And a single theme:
Trump. Me. Look.
Until June 16, 2015, when he descended the escalator in the Trump Tower atrium and, with paid actors wearing MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN ! T-shirts cheering him on, inaugurated his courageous effort to make
Mexican
synonymous with
rapist
and
drug smuggler
, I never thought he’d take the leap.
• • •
Sensible individuals of sterling repute—Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher—judged Trump’s campaign launch an occasion for celebration. Not a particularly patriotic verdict, but who could blame them. The world’s richest lode of potential satire had just been discovered! For once, I demurred. I have never disapproved of the public ridicule of
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