Where Opinion Stands

Just how many millions of Americans will react, congratulate, cope, transition or move forward now that the caricature dousey of an election is over, shall continue to be seen. I’m not certain how many of the demographic members that I'm pie graphed amongst as a mid-aged, urban, college-educated member of the millennia generation feel about the outcome of this election.

Many among my peers surely feel disappointed and nervous. Others within the social group of 20-45 year, financially aware, career oriented, creative, pleasure seeking, and adventuresome types likely feel optimistic. Many also are likely split upon their feeling about last night’s surprise outcome.

For those of us who held true to a discerning basis of rationale for having favored one candidate over the other, more power to you. For those who simply cast a vote with a short-sighted judgment expecting that their vote wouldn’t count, hopefully won’t come to regret that decision in the future.

For many Americans, the election campaign was an unconvincing display of ridicule from both sides that left the voters with vapid insight from which to base their ballot decision. Certainly mudslinging allegations between the two candidates were part of the spectacle.

But one specific remark that I saw in days leading up to election night amongst people in my facebook circle was the hash-tag #draintheswamp. I found this to be a little crass and clearly one-sided. Obviously the tag was meant as an attack on Hillary’s scrutinized financial endorsements, congressional investigations and all other things that the Trump camp felt compelled to launch against her. To take a literal assessment of #draintheswamp verbiage though is to say that Hillary had been squabbling in an infested marsh of past chronic infectious behavior as a public servant which is in my opinion a complete over embellishment.

How easily the argument can be turned against Donald Trump when one brings into question the subject of financial misdealings. The man made a career history of treading under and above a mega million-dollar flamboyant lifestyle via the conduct of his highly questionable business practices. His acumen as an enterprising real estate developer has long been premised on little more than self regulating, unprincipled, bigger than reality visions for what his lagging Trump brand could capitalize for itself.

With his commercial development business that included mostly a gimmicky multibillion-dollar portfolio of floundering properties such as casinos, hotels and condos emblazoned with his name, Donald Trump was a blight for decades to many of those whom he dealt with including lenders.

According to an article from 1997 which I read today, in that year when the DJ had just turned 50 years old, a rather resurgent public portrayal of the man had began to gain a more positive outlook for the New York based reality star. While their had earlier been an eviscerating perception of tainted glamour held against the previously bankrupt playboy in the early to mid 90’s, by around 1996 some of those grudges seemed to have faded.

By that year, he’d managed to crawl out from a ruinous financial state through the sale of his casino property in Atlantic City. That allowed him to alleviate significant debt and walk home with well over a $100mm in stock and cash. This casino sale was essentially a saving grace as most all of his other big deals had been steadily losing money.

He had for years bumbled his empire along by using negotiating prowess while also keeping a close arsenal of heavy hitting professional types like lawyers, business executives, accountants and many others to do his entangled dirty work.

The 1996 article that I reference was published in a men’s leisure magazine that describes several incidents involving Trump’s questionable financial shenanigans back then. One scheme in particular involved Trump’s inability to make loan and other payments to a lending bank after having purchased a brand new 270-foot yacht.

While having agreed to pay the enormous note, he also faced a steep $800,000 quarterly premiums payment to an insurance company for his yacht. How did he handle his inability to afford such an expense? He coerced the bank into paying the bills for him.

Already in default to the bank for the boat asset, Donald reasoned that by simply not paying the insurance premium of several million dollars, that the bank would have little other option but to repossess the ‘uninsured’ collateral. But of course Donald didn’t want to actually seize possession of his status toy to the bank. Rather he knew likely that the bank lacked any real desire to be left holding a seized, ancillary asset.

So rather than paying the insurance bill, Donald left the bank to be pinched into making the insurance payment for him. His schisty gamble was that the bank would rather continue collecting future interest and principal installments on the loan in hope that it might eventually get paid back. The bank relented and coughed up the premium payments to the insurance company that Donald couldn’t afford.

Another story in the 1997 publication read of a flight that Donald and several other people were to make from La Guardia to Atlantic City aboard his private helicopter as the group intended to visit one of his casino properties. But before departure, the ground crew received instructions to not fuel the aircraft because of irreconciled accounts that Trump owed to the city. Faced with cancelling the trip or proceeding, one of the other travelers in Trump’s entourage allegedly went ahead and made a $2200 credit card payment to permit the aircraft’s refueling on the launch pad.

Furthermore, lets not even get into the subject of tax evasion. Has their ever been an American citizen having dodged paying his or her fair share of money back to the government as Trump? Probably not since the era of the Carnegies or Vanderbilt’s.

Thus to the point of this weblog's argument against Trump’s questionable character is that all of the anti-Hillary rhetoric concerning her cronyism with such slogans as #draintheswamp should be considered while also looking towards the financial injustice repeatedly practiced by Donald Trump for many decades.

Holding Hillary in scrupulous regard while neglecting to do the same of Trump’s countless transgressions is to put it nicely, ‘calling to kettle black’. Or to put it more strongly, not holding the same standard of judgment against the financial dealings of Trump vs. Hillary is simply being hypocritical or naive.

When I heard Trump himself mention the expression #draintheswamp during his acceptance talk last night, I again felt that the whimsical experimental candidate was off base.

In closing, one final example culled from the published ’97 article exploring a closer look into the ambivalence of Trump’s destructiveness is when the reporter is being led upon a tour of his mega beach resort/residence called Mar a Lago located in Palm Beach, FL. Trump has a penchant for touting what he considers a keen eye in the aesthetic design for his many development projects.

While giving a tour to the journalist who was covering the story, he elaborated on his own fanciful tastes in relation to the overhaul and redesign of the south Florida property which was once owned by the Merriweather Post family.

While describing his attention to detail and care for the luxurious splendor of the places that he and his name inhabits, he walked out into the backyard where the accessorizing of tennis courts was being completed.

In describing to the journalist, a disdain for sacrificing the image of perfection among his properties, the two men came upon a box of unconnected wires and pump assemblies sprouting out of the ground. In an act of childish disregard for the work in progress for completing the electrical installation, Trump proceeded to kick at the jumble of components so as to show his disapproval of an uncompleted project that he perceived as an eyesore to his high standard of tastes.

According to the reporter, after kicking at the installment, some ground connections broke causing a water main to rupture, which soon flooded the tennis courts.

This impermissible temperament regardless of who the person is but especially for one who prides himself as a steward of the construction industry, shows why people should remain cautious.

Not to mention that also in the article when asked if he'd seriously felt a real poltical inclination to become president when he had half heartedly announced the idea back in 1996, he demurred 'not even for a second.'