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Just as in 2000, 2004 and 2008, Donald Trump says he’s seriously considering running for president.
Among other things Donald Trump has said he was going to do: buy and revive Tavern on the Green (2010); buy the New York Mets (2011); he claims to be “a billionaire, many times over,” yet lost a libel suit in 2009 against an author who asserted Trump was only worth between $150 million and $200 million. “We proved our case,” Trump insisted.
He has long boasted that he “screwed” Moammar Khadafy out of a substantial amount of money, which he then gave to charity, when the dictator attempted to rent space from Trump in 2009 — a highly dubious assertion he’s never backed up.
In May 2005, Trump announced — at a splashy news conference with gleaming built-to-scale models — his plans to reconstruct the Twin Towers, one foot higher than they were, and, in the process, destroy Daniel Libeskind’s Freedom Tower, now currently under construction.
That same month and year, the indefatigable egoist founded Trump University, which he described as “about knowledge, it’s about a lot of different things,” and said, “at Trump University, we teach success . . . it’s going to happen to you.” In 2010 the Better Business Bureau gave the online school a “D-” and he was forced to change the name to the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative.
In fairness, he did follow through on pronouncements to save Central Park’s Wollman Rink (now the Trump Wollman Skating Rink), and the late Ed McMahon’s home from foreclosure in 2008. He grew up watching McMahon, he said, and it was a sentimental choice. Of the dilapidated Wollman Rink, he wrote in 1987, “I never had a master plan. I just got fed up one day and decided to do something about it.”
For such a self-proclaimed shrewd entrepreneur, one who likes to present himself as a three-dimensional thinker and negotiator nonpareil, Donald Trump seems to be driven by nothing so much as his id. (In response to Spy magazine’s go-to qualifier of Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian,” Trump told Page Six, “My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.”)
Perhaps this is why few people in politics — despite the speech at CPAC, despite his numerous talk-show appearances, despite his booking at Iowa’s Lincoln Day Dinner in June — can agree on the level of Trump’s seriousness about a run for the Republican nomination. Is he really considering the cost he’ll bear, financially, physically and mentally? Or is this just another publicity stunt from the man who’s compared himself to P.T. Barnum?
“He’s made these feints before,” says Pat Choate, the economist who ran with Ross Perot in 1996. “He’s an interesting character. I hope he’s not running.”
“I think he has a good shot at the nomination,” says former Clinton adviser Dick Morris. “Ten or 12 years ago, when he flirted with it, he wasn’t that serious. I’m hearing from people in the business that he’s serious.”
“I think it’s just ego- and fame-driven, which is fine,” says James Joyner, founder and editor-in-chief of the online journal Outside the Beltway. “It wouldn’t make him the first in this town.”
“I know some of the people around him who are drilling down,” says former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, “and I think it’s something he’s genuinely interested in.”
A key GOP player in New York State, who would speak only off the record, says Trump’s recent cawing reminds him of something.
“In 1988, late in the election cycle, I got a call [from his people]: ‘How quickly can you get “Trump for President” signs done?’ We did them overnight. The next day we got a call: ‘Forget about it.’ I’ve been in politics a lot of years, and I’ve always found him to be a pompous ass.”
Aside from the hyper-inflated persona and repeated flirtations with a run, the difficulty in taking this Trump bid seriously can be boiled down to one thing: the birther stuff.
It’s been going on for weeks now, Trump hitting every talk show he can to discuss his serious doubts about where Obama was really born and is he really a Muslim, why can’t anyone remember knowing him as a child. The GOP establishment isn’t happy about it. Even Bill O’Reilly mocked Trump’s assertions, and aside from Morris — who thinks the birther talk “is within the foul lines” — everyone else who spoke with The Post thinks it’s a major tactical mistake.
“Politically, it’s truly dumb to do that,” says Choate, “because Barack Obama was born in the United States.”
“His attempt to appeal to the hard right with this birther nonsense that I can’t imagine he believes — he just comes across as such as clown, such a phony,” says Joyner.
Former RNC chair Steele concedes that the birther stuff “makes me chuckle,” but doesn’t think it undercuts Trump’s seriousness as a candidate, or further damages the brand of a party whose most compelling figures — Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann — are also its most divisive.
“He’s thinking he’s hitting one out of the park,” says Steele. “But look, Donald — you don’t have to prove how conservative you are by making these extreme statements.” (According to a CNN poll released this week, 42% of Republicans do not believe Obama was born here.)
In June 2008, Obama released his birth certificate, which was verified by Hawaiian state officials in October 2008 and June 2009. Yet: “I want Obama to show his birth certificate,” Trump said to the ladies of “The View” a few weeks ago. “Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate?”
This, by the way, from a man who said in 2008 that George Bush was a “terrible” president who “stinks,” and said that candidate Obama “has done an amazing job — he came from nowhere.” Right after Obama’s election, Trump surmised that Obama “has a chance to go down as a great president.”
Curiously, Trump’s never been asked to explain why, in the span of just 2 1/2 years, he’s gone from cheering Obama as America’s next great hope to publicly theorizing that he’s a secret Muslim terrorist just waiting for the go signal. (The Post tried, but Trump didn’t respond to our requests for an interview.)
One insider has an interesting theory: “I think, quite frankly, Trump’s not comfortable talking about all these other issues — foreign affairs, wars, the economy. What he lacks in substance, he makes up for with all these ancillary issues.”
And these ancially issues only contribute to Trump’s down-market approach to a possible run for president. It’s odd, given that Trump’s personal brand is built on outsized luxury, gilded everything. Living as we have with Trump all these years, most New Yorkers find him crass, gauche and self-aggrandizing. But to a large swath of middle America, the Trump name is associated with a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps work ethic: He’s a man who made it, lost it, then made it again. He’s raised three children, none of whom have ever done anything publicly embarrassing. His penchant for obnoxious statements can also be read as refreshingly candid straight-talk — a stark contrast against the professorial Obama.
So while it’s not very presidential to be getting into it with Whoopi Goldberg on daytime TV, or injecting yourself in the melodrama that is Charlie Sheen, or simultaneously pimping the catfights on your reality show, Trump may be playing a longer game. After all, why come out so vehemently against same-sex marriage if not to appeal to voters in the Bible Belt? Is he willing to take a short-term hit in liberal New York to woo the conservative base?
“This is always the case with a celebrity coming into politics,” says Joyner. “They start out as a cipher, but as you run, you transform into an ordinary politician and take stances, alienate people. In terms of business dealings, I don’t know that branding yourself as a right-wing Bible Belt Christian Republican does you that well in New York City.”
Trump’s made some other, less glamorous tactical errors. In early March, Trump sent Michael Cohen, a vice president of the Trump Organization, to Iowa. A political neophyte, Cohen was nonetheless tasked with putting out feelers, seeing what kind of response Trump would generate. Cohen flew in on Trump’s private 727, a potential violation of Federal Election Commission regulations (at an estimated cost to the company of $125,000, the flight would exceed legal contributions).
“To show up in a chartered plane with TRUMP splashed across the side and not expect people to ask how it was funded — that’s just stupid,” Choate says.
Cohen also failed to return repeated messages from the New York Republican County Committee, which wanted Trump to speak at their annual Lincoln Day Dinner. Trump has since chosen to speak at the dinner — in Iowa.
“I was pissed off,” says Dan Isaacs, the committee chairman and issuer of said invites. “That’s not how you do things. He’ll never hear from me again.”
Cohen’s no longer advising Trump on a bid.
The sudden sidelining of Cohen — who’s described by one politico as “brusque, alienating, egocentric — perfect for the Donald” — has led some GOP operatives to believe Trump’s serious. One top GOP consultant told The Post that several possible candidates feel the same way and have begun oppositional research on Trump.
He’s also reportedly in conversation with Roger Stone, the highly controversial GOP strategist who worked for Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes. Former Reagan official Tom Pauken, now chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission, says he regularly gets emails from Stone touting Trump as the next president, which, Pauken says, make him laugh.
“I told Roger that I have a better chance of being president,” Pauken says. “I got no response.”
Trump’s also reached out to Tony Fabrizio, a top Republican strategist who worked on Bob Dole’s ’96 campaign. When asked if he thinks Trump really, truly means it this time, Fabrizio grasps for a politic answer: “Um . . .” He laughs. “Um . . . I get the sense that he’s more serious than he’s been in the past. Though I’m a firm believer in ‘Trust, but verify.’ ”
Ultimately, most everyone who spoke with The Post — Morris being the lone exception — believes Trump won’t run: that he doesn’t possess the self-discipline, isn’t interested in what it would take to acquire foreign policy bona fides, that he’ll never, ever disclose his financials.
“Successful businessmen generally think that because they’ve mastered one field, they can master the other,” says Fabrizio. “That’s not necessarily the case. For Trump to be successful” — even if he loses — “he has to run as though he wants to be successful. More will be expected of him. And Donald raises his own expectations unnecessarily.”