This column may read like a defense of Donald Trump. And maybe it is. But my motive in writing it is not to say something positive about Trump – it’s to say something very critical about the so-called experts who have spent the last eight years explaining Trump to the followers of liberal political media and have gotten it all wrong.
When Trump announced that he was running for President, the first thing he did was to unveil the MAGA logo which he owned and would use as his signature theme throughout the 2016 campaign. Trump couldn’t make a buck off of selling his family name because you can’t copyright a person’s name once it’s in the public domain.
So, the hat pictured above is one of hundreds of products that are developed and sold in the political marketplace for which the so-named person can’t collect one dime’s worth of royalties, although Trump has some of his branded merchandise made for re-sale on his website and he can keep the money which comes in that way.
But the point is that there’s really no difference between Trump hats, Trump steaks, Trump wines and Trump shirts – it’s all about building a brand which happens to be his name.
See the picture above? That’s an office building at 40 Wall Street owned by Trump. He put his name on the building after he bought it in 1995. Trump is the fourth person to own this building since it went up in 1929. He’s also the first person to put his name on the building, which he does on just about every building he owns.
The most famous skyscraper in New York is the Empire State Building. It was built by Harry Helmsley, but his name didn’t go on the façade. For that matter, New York’s other iconic business tower was owned by a real-estate developer named William Zeckendorf, but you won’t find his name on the Chrysler Building or any of the other properties held by his company, which is Webb & Knapp.
Donald Trump didn’t get into politics because he had any desire to be a public servant. He didn’t get into the political game because he thought that he was ready to take his place alongside other men and women who devoted some or all of their lives to serving the needs of everyone else.
These are the kinds of cliches which pop out of the mouths of most, if not nearly all the men and women when asked how come they chose the public life. You won’t hear that nonsense coming from Trump because to him, politics is just another market which can be exploited for the purpose of making a buck.
Think I’m being too sarcastic or too contemptuous just to prove a point? I’m not. I’m comparing what Trump says every day on social media to what other public figures say.
Take a look at what Trump (or someone working for Trump) posted on his Truth Social page the last couple of days. Now compare those posts to what the White House put up on Joe’s Twitter feed.
Of the last six posts by Trump, every, single one of them is about him – his name, his picture, his coverage, and his poll results. Of the last six posts on @POTUS, three don’t even have an image of Joe.
And by the way, when Trump was booted off Twitter back in 2021, he had 86.5 million followers. Right now, Joe’s got 31.7 million.
The only profession which is more risk-averse than politics is real estate. Because what are you going to do with an empty building when the market goes soft, and you can’t rent the space? Tear the building down?
In this respect, Trump is not afraid to fail either in politics or real estate, which gives him a tremendous advantage over his competitors in both fields. So what if Trump steaks didn’t sell? So what if he heads the 2024 GOP ticket and comes up short?
Of course the whole election ‘fraud’ thing was a lie. But it has kept Trump in front of the political media virtually every single day.
And now he’s got a media helpmate in Jack Smith. What’s so bad about that?
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