The Future President, Donald Trump

No, voting for people who we believe are like us makes sense, people who are like us are more likely to do as we would want than those who are not like us.

Those who know the Obama White House’s inner workings wonder why this president, who came into office with next to no experience of foreign policy, has made so little effort to hire strategic expertise. In fairness, Denis McDonough (now White House chief of staff) has some real knowledge of Latin America. While at Oxford, National Security Adviser Susan Rice wrote a doctoral dissertation on Zimbabwe. And Samantha Power, ambassador to the U.N., has published two substantial books (one of which—“A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide”—she will need to update when she returns to academic life)

But other key players are the sort of people Henry Kissinger complained about more than half a century ago: Michael Froman, the trade representative, was one of Mr. Obama’s classmates at Harvard Law School; Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken is a Columbia J.D.; éminence grise Valerie Jarrett got hers from the University of Michigan. What about Secretary of State John Kerry? Boston College Law School, ’76. Not one of the people who advise the president could claim to have made contributions to strategic doctrine comparable with those made by Mr. Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski before they went to Washington.

Some things you can learn on the job, like tending bar or being a community organizer. National-security strategy is different. “High office teaches decision making, not substance,” Mr. Kissinger once wrote. “It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it.” The next president may have cause to regret that Barack Obama didn’t heed those words. In making up his strategy as he has gone along, this president has sown the wind. His successor will reap the whirlwind. He or she had better bring some serious intellectual capital to the White House.

So, what do the others of you think about it? Do you think Donald Trump actually wants to be President?

I'd love for his "king" to be Ted Cruz.

honorable and honest

Hey Frank - those are the same adjectives I'd use for Cruz - honorable and honest. I bet you would, too!

I'm praying that Ted Cruz gets the nomination. It guarantees a Democratic win.

He is a guy on a mission to be disruptive and agitate in a way that can cause emotional eruptions.

“In a way I owe Donald Trump a lot because he forced me into a new career that turned out well,” he mused in a phone interview. “But that doesn’t excuse the hell he subjected me to in 1990, sliming my reputation so much that I got fired and couldn’t find another job as an analyst. He acted viciously towards me because, I guess, he felt that I had personally attacked his brand. His image is all-important to him.”

ROFFMAN’S STORY BEGAN to get national attention on March 21, 1990, when the WSJ ran a story in which he was quoted extensively on the opening of the Taj. His quote in the piece: “When this property opens….he [Trump] will break every record in the book in April, June and July. But once the cold winds blow from October to February, it [the Taj] won’t make it…the market just isn’t there.”

By chance, Roffman didn’t see the article that morning because he was driving from Philadelphia to Atlantic City to take a personal tour of the Taj arranged by Trump. He only found out about the quote when he was met by Robert Trump, Donald Trump’s brother, in the lobby of the Trump Organization office building and, according to a book Roffman wrote four years later called Take Charge of Your Financial Future, was told to leave the property immediately.

Minutes later, when he called the Janney headquarters, he was told to return to the office immediately and was faxed a letter management had received from Donald Trump earlier that morning. In it, Trump expressed “outrage” at Roffman’s disparaging remarks about the Taj and said that he’d long considered Roffman “an unguided missle (sic)” as an analyst. Trump added that he was “planning to institue (sic) a major lawsuit against your firm unless Mr. Roffman makes a major public apology or is dismissed.” Trump has disclaimed any intention of getting Roffman fired and merely wanted him to be more circumspect in communicating his negative views on the Taj.

Upon his return, Roffman was ushered into the office of the firm’s co-chairman Edgar Scott Jr., who, according to Roffman, had shed his usually patrician manner to read Roffman the riot act. Roffman was told that he could no longer talk to the press and was expected to draft and send a letter of apology to Trump the following day.

Afraid of losing his job, the analyst said he complied with the request and the following day dutifully signed the letter to Trump. The tone of the letter was, at once, fawning and groveling. Roffman claimed that “95%” of what he told the WSJ reporter was complimentary of Trump’s casino empire in Atlantic City. In conclusion, Roffman begged Trump, “I do hope that you will let me continue to cover your companies and that you will forgive what has turned out to be a very unfortunate interview on my part.”

Although he claims that he didn’t write the letter, it reflected Roffman’s comments to management. He became especially disturbed when he learned from Trump in a telephone conversation that he planned to publish the letter to make Roffman’s humiliation public. He says Trump even demanded that one sentence in the letter be altered to read “I have every expectation that the Taj will ultimately be very profitable.” In the original Roffman had said he had “every hope.”

Roffman says he bridled at the thought that he would appear to be giving an indirect endorsement of the Taj bonds that by his calculation had a zero chance of avoiding default. Not with a slowing national economy, rampant casino overcapacity in Atlantic City, a seasonal clientele, and looming competition from other East Coast locales. It was a theme he’d been expounding to Janney clients for months, including a report he published in June 1989, entitled “Casino Gaming in Atlantic City: A Crisis Ahead?”

After a sleepless night and a visit to his lawyer, he decided to fax a retraction of his previous day’s letter, directing that the latter missive not be used for any purpose. Trump’s faxed reply to the retraction was direct: “Only a fool, a highly unstable one at that, would send a letter such as your second one negating your original letter. You have proved by these strange and irrational actions to be a great liability to your firm…..I look forward to seeing you and your firm in court.”

The next day Roffman was fired not, Janney officials insisted, as a result of pressure from Trump, but for insubordination in sending out his retraction without the firm’s authorization. (A Janney spokesman said last week that “this news is from over 20 years ago and none of the individuals involved in this issue are at the firm today.”) Roffman, naturally, was crushed by his firing after 30 years of working as a Wall Street analyst. In July 1990, he filed legal actions against Janney and Trump.

"He comes in and plays smash-mouth football, and it fires people up," says Henry Barbour, a Mississippian and influential member of the Republican National Committee. Barbour said Trump would be well-served to add more policy specifics to his personality and style-driven pitch, but he said it's obvious Trump's initial approach has worked, animating a wing of Southern Republicans who look at the establishment and say "not only no, but hell no."

Donald Trump doesn't just defy the laws of political gravity. He rewrites them.

That's according to two recent polls that list the brash, outspoken, surprise candidate as the most electable Republican in the 2016 general election.

A whopping 47 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers in Nevada said Mr. Trump has the best chance of winning the general election next November, according to a new CNN/ORC poll out Wednesday.

Recommended: What do you know about Donald Trump?
By contrast, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has tried to brand himself as "Mr. Electable," is seen as the party's best chance by just 7 percent of Nevada voters.


These findings echo those of a Sept. 15 New York Times/CBS News Poll that found that 39 percent of Republican primary and caucus voters viewed Trump as their best shot at winning the presidency.
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People distrust Washington and are very unhappy with both sides of the aisle," says Harry Wilson, a professor of public affairs at Roanoke College in Salem, Va. "They also respond to politicians who actually say what they think – a novel concept in American politics. Trump’s appeal is much less on the issues than it is on style."

more than half of the entire electorate thinks trump is a big baloney-head who takes credit for the sunrise.