Donald Trump visited On The Record last night where he pimped yet another phony run for president. Even Greta Van Susteren, possibly the world’s most credulous news host, didn’t buy it. But that didn’t stop her from goading Trump into criticizing President Obama’s golf vacation and egging him on to present himself as more of a man of the people. Not only did Trump take the hint, he insisted, “I have a tremendous base” of poor and blue collar people.
Van Susteren let viewers know early on she’s not envisioning a Trump candidacy. Her take, she told him, was, “Every day, Donald Trump wakes up and thinks, ‘I can do bigger and better deals than anybody else’ and so that you’re tempted but I think there’s also a little part where you think, like, you like to mess with our heads in the media and you like to play us.”
Trump denied it. “I don’t like to mess with anyone’s heads,” Birther Boy said. “I do think I can make fabulous deals for the country. I think I could make the country great again. I think I could make the country rich again.” Saying he would not cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, he added, “I think what I’d do is make the country so rich that you wouldn’t have to bother.”
At about 7:22, Vacation Policewoman Van Susteren showed a photo of Obama golfing that, she said, “The White House probably would have preferred not to have out there.” When Trump admired Obama’s golf chops, she continued, “With people unemployed, the president talking about taking a bus tour to talk about middle class in New York, Pennsylvania last week, and the fact that Congress is on a five-week vacation and the continuing resolution’s still not resolved, we’re approaching the debt ceiling… Although we don’t begrudge people vacations, but we see this picture of the president, I think that to many Americans who don’t have the ability to go play golf a lot that they might not be so impressed as you are.”
Van Susteren definitely picked the wrong guy as the anti-golfer poster child. As the Los Angeles Times reported earlier that day:
The real estate mogul took to Twitter to blast Time Warner Cable for not having reached an agreement to carry media properties owned by CBS including WCBS-TV New York, which was carrying PGA golf.
“Time Warner, I am going to be switching many of my buildings to another service—this is ridiculous!” Trump tweeted Monday.
Yes, doesn’t everyone threaten to switch cable companies “in my buildings” when they don’t carry PGA golf?
Nonetheless, Trump responded, “It’s a tough kind of thing to be doing right now when you’re having a problem like we’re having in the country… A lot of people are taking vacations right now that should be out there working for the country. So it’s not that easy a situation. And I don’t think it looks great for the president to be taking this extended a vacation.”
Trump quickly noted that he wouldn’t take a vacation if he were in the White House or Congress. “I’ve never been a big vacation person. When I take vacations, I go to my places. …I’ve never been one to take three-week extended vacations,” he assured the viewers.
So Van Susteren asked if there’s a “disconnect” between the very rich and the very poor. And she just happened to wonder if a very rich person “can ever understand a very poor person’s problems in order to be an effective president for him or her?”
Trump replied, “I absolutely think so. In fact, actually, the people I resonate best with are poor people and people that are really blue collar. That seems to be a base that I have. I have a tremendous base. Those are the people that like me. …I think the people that like me the least are the rich people.”
And then, although he said it’s “far too early to think of 2016,” he said, “If there’s an opportunity, if I think that there’s a good shot of actually winning, and actually doing something great for the country, I would certainly consider it.”
Yeah, he could run on the Working Man’s Birther Party.
From what I’ve been able to glean, most of his companies’ debt is actually owned by other Trump-owned companies, so Trump can basically erase the debt owed by the filing company—and likely write it off as a business loss on the owed company’s taxes—while having to repay only a small fraction of the remaining debt, which likely comes from yet another Trump venture. For a bit more info, so you can try to figure out what’s really going on, LegalZoom.com has an article that was originally posted in 2005 (I’m not sure if the article was originally posted to LegalZoom or to another site; all the comments I read below the article are from 2010 and later). The article describes what was going on with Trump’s SECOND bankruptcy (there’s also a link for an article recounting Trump’s third bankruptcy). The article is at legalzoom.com/legal-headlines/celebrity-lawsuits/how-does-trump-repeatedly-file (your browser will probably issue a “Security warning” prompt—the full link has an https lead but I’m not really sure what couldn’t have been "securely delivered).
Here’s a numerical look at vacation time taken by Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, according to CBS News White House reporter Mark Knoller, who tracks presidential travel. The numbers do not include visits to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.
14: Number of vacation trips taken by Obama since he took office in January 2009.
92: Number of days, all or in part, Obama has spent on vacation.
57: Number of vacation trips taken by Bush at this same point in his presidency.
50: Number of visits Bush made to his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
323: Number of days, all or in part, Bush spent at the ranch.
7: Number of trips Bush made to his family’s compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
26: Number of days, all or in part, Bush spent in Maine.