Thanks to his new book and the impending return of Celebrity Apprentice, Donald Trump is back to schmoozing political reporters, who seem all too eager to lap up the nonsense that he spews out on a regular basis. Today, for example, he held a conference call to mark the book premier, and here’s how Hot Air’s Tina Korbe relates it:
“I would say, Tina, that I get nothing out of it. Who cares if I sell a few more books?” Trump said to me today on a conference call with reporters. “If I can endorse a person who turns out to be a super president, that would be great — and that is what I get out of it. I get nothing else out of it, believe me. It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of time, a lot of effort, and I really get nothing out of it. I don’t care about book sales because the book is going to do very well anyway. All of my books have done very well. What I get out of it is the satisfaction of trying to recommend somebody who’s going to be a great president.”
It truly astounds me that otherwise intelligent people, including seasoned political reporters like Chuck Todd who had his own unfortunate encounter with the massive ego with hair that is Donald John Trump on The Daily Rundown this morning, continue to fall for this nonsense. Perhaps it’s because some of them just haven’t been paying attention. I’ve known of Donald Trump since the mid-80s when he burst onto the New York real estate and media scene, making a name for himself by building casinos in Atlantic City (mostly with other peoples money) and getting in on the ground floor of the United States Football League. He was a media star largely because he had a personality and ego bigger than the entire island of Manhattan, and the New York media ate it up. It wasn’t long after that when the national media started picking up on the fun, and the game was on.
I’ve got to give Trump credit, he has played the news media like a fiddle for almost 30 years now, and they seem none the wiser. All they know is that he gets a lot of attention and big ratings, and that was something that was true even before The Apprentice came along. Much like political reporters in Washington like to be friends with the Congressmen and Senators they report on so that they can continue to get access for stories, the New York media and those that followed the Trump circus liked being friends with Trump. Because of that, they didn’t really report very much on the real estate ventures that went bankrupt — including, most inexplicably, casinos — or the role that Trump’s own massive ego played in the ultimate demise of the USFL. Even Trump’s personal foibles were viewed more as charming than outlandish.
The one thing that’s clear after 30 years, is that Donald Trump only does things like this because they benefit Donald Trump. Korbe’s comment that Trump is doing this because he “loves his country” is just absurd when taken in context with everything that we know about Trump himself. Even if the money doesn’t matter to him, and I have a feeling it matters a lot more than he lets on, the attention clearly matters one heck of a lot. The disgusting spectacle of the Republican candidates for President supplicating themselves to this man over the past several months has been nothing more than one massive Trump ego stroke. And now we’ve got the Trump Debate, the prospect of an endorsement, and the threat that he could run as a third-party candidate. It is a complete and total joke, and everyone with even a modicum of good sense knows it. The fact that the GOP is sitting back and letting this happen says more than anything else that has happened during this election cycle about how screwed up that party actually is. Donald Trump doesn’t belong moderating a debate any more than Herman Cain belongs lecturing on how to run a successful Presidential campaign.
I didn’t really think politics couldn’t get any more absurd, but now that Donald Trump has gotten involved again it’s clear that the absurdity hasn’t even reached its peak yet.
