I wasn’t born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. But since my parents moved there when I was six months old, it’s the place I call home. My Atlantic City was BC – before casinos. Even more importantly, it was BT – before Trump. However, since Mr. Trump chose to build his first Atlantic City casino down the block from our family home, I feel an odd sense of repulsive kinship. I’m hoping there is medication that will help me overcome that.
Soon after Trump put Trump Plaza up, he also planted a bunch of trees going down Mississippi Avenue as part of some city scheme to make the areas around casinos more inviting. Thanks to that scheme, my mother got to see a tree out her living room window for the last years of her life. This would have made us feel charitable towards Mr. Trump had he not rejected our offer to sell him the family home. Mom kept that rejection notice taped to her front door for the rest of her life. We’re not sure why, but I’m guessing that the “Mal Occhio” or “Evil Eye” curse had something to do with it. I mean, do you really think his hair ended up looking the way it does for no reason at all?
Trump has never been publicity shy, so it didn’t take long for the rest of America to discover what those of us who lived in the northeast already knew. This man gives new meaning to the words, “completely, thoroughly, stop-up-my-ears-oh-lord annoying”. I know a lot of New Yorkers with outsized egos and even they shake their heads at the buffoon this man seems determined to be.
The scariest thing is that he might actually believe his own hype, in which case there is not enough Thorazine in the world to bring him back to reality.
I understand that our presidential election cycles have become the greatest source of American amusement and divertissement this side of Dancing with the Stars. And I also understand that in every cycle we will have the full slate of candidates from long shots to complete jokes and that occasionally, against all odds, the complete joke might even end up as a candidate. Which is what scares me about Trump. What if Donald Trump, currently the biggest clown of our 2012 campaign season, ends up as the Republican candidate?
Of course, the simple answer to that question is that it guarantees Barack Obama another four years in office. But is it really that simple? Many polls show Trump leading the field of possible Republican nominees. Given that this thrice married man, who seems to be working his way down the age brackets with each new wife, is now claiming to somehow be a traditional Christian, one has to wonder what else the American public is willing to believe no matter how absurd. Oh wait, that’s right, New Gingrich is floating the idea that he cheated on his wife and announced he wanted to divorce her as she lay in bed recovering from cancer surgery because he was just so invested in America’s fate that he forgot about his moral values. He is, sadly, selling this idea to Republicans whom, the latest polls indicate, still overwhelmingly believe that Barack Obama was not born in America. And no amount of hard facts or evidence is apparently going to change their minds. So Gingrich has every reason to think they’ll buy what he’s selling.
Meanwhile, a recent poll in New York City, shows 75% of the population against a Trump presidency. Why do you think that is?
Well, there’s the fact that in a city that prides itself on its abruptness and drive, Donald Trump is so over the top that even New Yorkers find him difficult to swallow. There’s his marriages, his bankruptcies, his sudden discovery of morality and religion, and his insatiable longing for a respectability that even the greatness of America cannot really bestow on him.
The sad fact is that Donald Trump is a graceless blowhard whose businesses have routinely ended up badly. The sadder fact is that a substantial number of Americans claim they would vote for him in a presidential election. Let’s hope they are just pulling his leg for the amusement of watching him run. Let’s hope.