Donald Trump: "It has not been easy for me…"
...my father gave me a million-dollar loan." That he had to pay back! With interest!
If there's one thing sadder than a bully attacking marginalized people, it's when bullies invite you to their own pity party.
Which brings us to the latest ramblings of Donald Trump, eminent-domain-abuse eminence and one of the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination (most polls now show Ben Carson leading The Donald in Iowa).
Tired: Equating Mexican immigrants with criminals. "They're bringing drugs," he said at the event announcing his presidential run in June. "They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
Wired: Bragging about overcoming his privileged upbringing. At a New Hampshire town hall meeting televised on the Today show, Trump said, "It has not been easy for me. You know, I started off in Brooklyn and my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars."
There is something peculiarly odd about American successes that they are almost incapable of acknowledging that when they come from money and privilege, as if that somehow takes away from whatever they accomplish.
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IIRC, he made a good bit of money on his TV programs. So he knows how to communicate.
He's probably deliberately trolling.
"my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars."
Yeah, he knew what he was doing - do you think he literally believes that all fathers are in a position to give "small" million dollar loans to their sons?
He's acknowledging his advantages, he's in fact boasting of them - and he's doing it in the postmodernist snarky way Reason admires in other contexts.
Exactly.
In trolling people to attack him for his privilege, it gives him an excuse to talk about everything he's accomplished, without being the one to bring it up himself. The comment's fallout is part of the plan.
Yes except that I have no doubt he'd bring it up himself if nobody else did.
Unlike the rest of us gullible maroons who have simply swallowed the lamestream media narrative, you see beyond Trump's content-free, thin-skinned bluster to the true genius within. He plays a casual game of 11-dimensional chess with the world, and you are his willing pawn.
Oh, for pity's sake, he just knows a bit about public relations. What's with the 11 dimensions?
He knows that with some obvious exceptions it helps him to get media exposure. He knows the media hates his guts, and that this is part of his appeal.
This doesn't take genius.
*subscribes to Hugh's newsletter*
exactly. he's not ashamed of his parents accomplishments! and in respect to what he does now, one million is small. he never pretends to be from poverty and isn't ashamed of what his parents could provide for him. testament to America I say.
Aaron Arnwine|10.26.15 @ 2:33PM|#
"...testament to America I say."
Sarc, right?
The interest on that loan - was it 'UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE?
When's the last time you paid back a million bucks with no interest?
i hear he gets triggered every time he sees a percent sign.
Ben Carson is leading in Iowa?
Who's that?
Just some traitor to his race that has no chance of winning.
traitor to his race
This would require that Ben Carson were actually black, which we know he isn't because he's conservative. /progderp
WHERE MY SMALL LOAN OF A MILLION DOLLARS GONE?
It went to your school, good plebe.
This is Donald Trumps 1% version of "I had to get a loan to go to college."
It's an explanabrag!
Reminds me of the Steve Martin bit:
How to Be a Millionaire and not pay any taxes...
Step 1. Get a million dollars.............
OK, he says the loan was very little compared to how much money he was able to make.
Well, sucks to be him.
Phht! Who needs context?
He didn't build that.
If there's one thing sadder than a bully attacking marginalized people, it's when bullies invite you to their own pity party.
Sort of like a Teachers' union screaming at you because you won't support their 21% pay raise in addition to regular cost of living raises?
that's different. The teachers are noble public servants while Trump is a capitalist monster.
IT'S FOR TEH CHILDRUNZ!11!!!!!!
Say what you want about the guy he had to keep pretty busy to amass what he's amassed. Maybe busy cheating widows and orphans, pulling shady deals, rent seeking and buying influence but busy nonetheless.
It's not fair that Trump gets elderly widows to evict!
Where's my elderly widows?
Tax him! I want a piece of evicting the elderly action.
Marry off some of your female orphans, send the husbands to work in the most dangerous shafts of your monocle mines. Some of them will get killed and viola! widows.
Lots of shysters stay busy.
I think most of us are looking for a new kind of President: One who will be as not busy as possible.
I certainly am, that's why I'm writing in Calvin Coolidge.
He's dead, you say?
That's what I like best about him.
I don't know. Obama managed to do almost no work but fuck up everything he touched.
Cue the usual suspects to accuse Gillespie of being a Democrat in Cosmotarian's clothing.
GILLESPIE IS A DEMOCRAT IN COSMOTARIAN'S CLOTHING!
What do I win?
You rang?
Nah. Trump is an odious person. Kick him all you want. I doubt he cares. I certainly don't.
If you're Trump, and trying to create a cult of personality, then the important thing is to get talked about for being outrageous. This is particularly important because, like I said, the media hates his guts and only covers him because they know their audience likes it.
^This. If you ignore Trump, it will go away.
Soooo - Trump is Botox with billions and billions of dollars. I seeeee....
The first rule of Trump club: Don't stop talking about Trump club.
I'm no Trump fan, but that doesn't mean I have to look at everything he does in the jaundiced way Reason does.
He wasn't saying "pity me". He was saying that even with his rare opportunity it still took hard work and intelligence. I think that's pretty obvious if you aren't stuck in hating him.
The average person if given a million dollar loan at that age, would be broke or worse in short order. A lot would be in rehab or dead from an overdose within months.
Forbes: "Donald Trump has filed for corporate bankruptcy four times, in 1991, 1992, 2004 and 2009"
I guessing that makes Trump an average person: "The average person if given a million dollar loan at that age, would be broke"
Corporate bankruptcy is not personal bankruptcy. The Donald knows how to lawyer up and insulate himself from risks.
You're right. Corporate bankruptcy is more irresponsible. But it's not as easy as you state. Lawyering up doesn't stop his money from disappearing if any of it was his money invested.
Is he broke? Is he dead from an overdose? No, but he turned that million and even those failed ventures into a pretty uncommon success. That is not easy, which was exactly his and my point. Anybody here think they could do that? What are you waiting for? I suspect that the Donald just didn't feel that poverty or even mediocrity was his calling.
bagoh20|10.26.15 @ 4:21PM|#
"...even those failed ventures..."
The ventures just 'failed'? Is this like the kid, who when looking at the toy he stepped on, says 'it broke'?
I neither absolve him nor blame him, because I don't know the details nor do they matter. He still succeeded using legal means - playing the game and winning in a free market against competitors. Like he said: not easy. That's all he said, and it's true. Gillespie tries to make hay of nothing.
I'm starting to think a Trump presidency is just what this country needs, if only to see what *real* political dysfunction looks like.
Don't we already know what real political dysfunction looks like? Sure, it can always get worse, but come on . . . .
Because it does take away from their accomplishments as they are popularly perceived. For the simple-minded, poverty is virtue while anything resembling wealth is a deep dark sin.
At least where I went to school, coming from a family with some money doesn't exactly make you popular. People have no shame in their naked envy and even less shame in declaring their superiority over you because their dad is an abusive alcoholic or because mom is single with 5 kids by different men and wallet full of food stamps. So to this day as an adult, I go through a great deal of effort to hide my wealth just to keep the target off my back.
I come from "money"; albeit "Midwest money" which is one or two steps above a trailer park.
I've used it to my advantage whenever possible. Who wouldn't?
Which is exactly why it's so frustrating to get lectured at by the army of the envious, who would not exactly be lighting their money on fire if they had some to burn.
Actually, they probably would be lighting their money on fire. People from the Envy-American Community are not known for their money management skills, after all.
I always ask my uber-liberal rich-people-hating friends what they would do if one of their kids became self made millionaires. Their answers are beyond ridiculous. I'm thinking they are going to do everything possible as good parents to make sure that doesn't happen.
seriously Nick? yeah so what, his parents owned a real estate company and gave him a million dollar loan. you can get a government backed loan of the same amount at the sba. and he turned the million into a huge empire.
it's not about what you're dealt, it's about what you do with it and he certainly didn't live a trust fund life.
why do you sound like a leftist telling trump to check his privilege? why is this on Reason?
"...why is this on Reason?"
So it wasn't sarc.
It's here since that pathetic blow-hard seems to be representing one of the two lower parties we have to put up with, and now, on top of being a general shit, he wants sympathy for starting out with only a mil.
*****Donald: Eres un Pendejo*****
As per Donald: .my father gave me a million-dollar loan." That he had to pay back! With interest!
I'm sure that's true. Equally as true as Donald Trump Never Ever declaring Bankruptcy. Just his corporations that he hides behind have, five times.
If I were to take a guess, and I don't know this for a fact, but I would bet both of my feet that Donny's father himself took out a loan, to loan sonny boy. And, if Donny's idea didn't work out, there's always bankruptcy.
I've been a lot of nice/cruel, mean/friendly rich people. Mostly smart people. That ones that made it, not inherited it. The dumb ones are the ones that win the lottery and by the local KFC.
And even among those, they are usually represented by someone with financial brains to use all of the capitalists tricks to keep your money, and use other people's money.
Alice Bowie|10.26.15 @ 3:24PM|#
"And even among those, they are usually represented by someone with financial brains to use all of the capitalists tricks to keep your money, and use other people's money."
Alice, you claim to have been in business, but it's obvious you're a liar, or so stupid you had to have inherited the business.
Note above: Yes, people use other peoples' money in business all the time. It's called 'loans' or 'selling equity'. Did you think Steve Jobs started the most valuable company in the world by looking for change under the sofa cushions?
Lefties, OTOH, don't bother borrowing or selling equity; they simply take money at the point of a gun, and you're just fine with that, right, you pathetic excuse for a human?
Oh, and they also outright steal it, as commie-kid has done with his mortgage. Are you happy to be paying for him?
Fuck off, slaver.
Difficult to know who had a more difficult life -- the Donald, who could only get a $1 million loan from his pops, or the Clintons, who were "dead broke" when they left the White House...
Well, at least Trump has sold something other than his influence, so I'll go with the blowhard.
For a million bucks, why didn't he invest in better hair plugs?
It's not a hair plug. It's truly his hair. It's a comb-over. I've met him and shook his hand on his birthday in the Taj Mahal Casino back in the late 90s.
What I found interesting was Suderman's comment that many Republican voters are attracted to "politicians who promise what is obviously impossible". This used to be the sole domain of Democratic candidates, especially candidates like Bernie Sanders who promise free college and 90% income tax rates. The real issue is: can the Republican nominee do a better job of pointing out impossible promises of Democrats than Democrats can of Republicans'?
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