In an earlier piece, I said Donald Trump had buffaloed the press and that it was time for the media to use the L word and call him out for his constant lying. Well, there are signs, at long last, that the press is adjusting its outdated “journalism nice” rules to deal with a person whose lying is unique in modern political history. The clearest example was yesterday’s New York Times front-page story headlined “Trump Institute Offered Get-Rich Schemes With Others’ Ideas.”
I will boldface words I doubt the Times would have used six months ago. “As with Trump University, the Trump Institute promised falsely that its teachers would be hand-picked by Mr. Trump.” And again: “Together the exaggerated claims about his own role, the checkered pasts of the people with whom he went into business and the theft of intellectual property at the venture’s heart all illustrate the fiction underpinning so many of Mr. Trump’s licensing businesses: Putting his name on products and services—and collecting fees—was often where his actual involvement began and ended.”
And finally: “Unbeknownst to customers at the time, though, even the printed materials handed out to seminar attendees were based on a lie.” The Times rarely uses the word “lie,” but now it has, and on the front-page too. This is, truly, front-page news.
In a similar vein, the Washington Post has been relentless in uncovering Trump’s stunning lies about his charitable giving. The headline on David Fahrenthold’s June 28 piece: “Trump promised million to charity. We found less than $10,000 over 7 years.” Trump has routinely said that profits from his side businesses, ranging from books to Trump University to Trump: The Game, would go to charity, but that never seems to happen. He really is a con artist and, often, not a very good one.
Trump enters sleazy licensing deals and stiffs charities for one reason: he doesn’t have nearly as much money as he says. He is not the great businessman he claims to be. Based on his failure to learn that his partners in the Trump Institute were scammers who had run afoul of the law in dozens of states—a Google search would have revealed it—I’m coming around to the belief he is really a dreadful businessman who always tries to grab every nickel he can.
NBC had an important story yesterday about Trump’s promise to forgive over $45 million in personal loans to his campaign. NBC said there is no evidence he has done so. As of yesterday morning, the Federal Election Commission had not received notice that Trump had forgiven the loans.
In virtually every case involving money, Trump’s instinct is to delay or not fork over cash. He waited four months before making good on his $1 million pledge to the vets, and that was only after the Washington Post had reported he was a deadbeat donor.
Deadbeat Donald has less money than you think and he pathologically needs to hold on to every dime he can, no matter how embarrassing the delays might be.
Andrew Feinberg is the author of Four Score and Seven (https://www.amazon.com/Four-Score-Seven-Andrew-Feinberg/dp/0692664009), a novel that imagines that Abe Lincoln comes back to life for two weeks during the 2016 campaign and encounters a candidate who, some say, resembles Donald Trump.
A former money manager and long-time freelance writer, he is the author or co-author of five non-fiction books. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ and Barron’s. He has written over 100 humor pieces for The New York Times, Playboy and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications. He made one unfortunate detour into corporate communications. The feds sent three of his clients—Dennis Kozlowski, Martha Stewart and Jeffrey Skilling—to the slammer. Feinberg wants you to know that it was not his fault.