Fourth Estate Donald Trump: Honesty Is for Chumps

Jack Shafer is POLITICO's senior media writer. Previously, Jack wrote a column about the press and politics for Reuters and before that worked at Slate as a columnist and as the site's deputy editor. He also edited two alternative weeklies, SF Weekly and Washington City Paper. His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, BookForum and the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal.

Donald Trump may have hired a staff and commenced the building of a political organization, but Trump 2016 is best viewed not as a political campaign but as an evolving real-estate deal, with Trump playing the shifty developer and the voters representing the buyers to be wooed.

Both developers and candidates are frequently derided as used-car salesmen. But that is unfair to used-car salesmen, who at least have in their possession—and for your inspection—the wheeled thing they’re selling. Developers and candidates, on the other hand, have only words and a few sketches to represent their product, which is a better future. These better futures are almost always illusionary, and the promises backing them can be easily revoked. And often are.


Developers think of themselves as the sellers of ideas or dreams, not of mere pieces of real estate, as Peter Hendee Brown writes in his book, How Real Estate Developers Think: Design, Profits and Community. Replaying Trump’s presidential announcement, you can hear the real-estate developer’s pitch, in which he posits America as a rundown property that, swept clean of Mexican immigrants and given a Trump paint job, can be made “great again.” If Trump’s words don’t land convincingly on your ears, you’re probably not his sort of customer. But his place in the polls indicates that vague pledges to build a Mexican wall, defeat ISIL (“I would find the Patton or MacArthur I would hit them so hard your head would spin”), rebuild infrastructure, improve education and save Social Security resonate with some political customers.

Trump has made the developer-candidate comparison himself, as the New York Times noted Wednesday morning. “I’m no different from a politician running for office,” Trump once said in a legal deposition. “You always want to put the best foot forward.” And, “I didn’t confirm or deny…as a politician would say.”

Real estate developers always sell an illusion—the dream, the grandeur. In Trump’s America, everything is a property that can be rehabilitated and flipped to everybody’s profit. On Wednesday, he released his highly detailed health care plan on CNN, explaining he’d get rid of Obamacare: “Repeal and replace with something terrific.” Who could possibly oppose a plan like that? Sign us up for what the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza quickly dubbed, “ Terrificare.”

In his 1987 book, Trump: The Art of the Deal, Trump volunteered in the finest tradition of corrupt politicians that honesty isn’t a good policy—it’s for chumps. He writes of how he convinced the city he held an exclusive option on a Manhattan property he wanted to develop by sending a copy of his option agreement to a city official who asked for it. But the option was not valid as it was signed only by Trump, not by the property owner: Trump had yet to pay for the option. Trump’s deception wasn’t discovered until two years later when a reporter asked the city for a copy of the original agreement.

Not to be unfair to Vladimir Putin—who has never dealt directly in real estate—but this is the sort of stunt you can imagine the Russian leader pulling off, only with a peace treaty or an arms agreement instead of an option agreement. Now that I’ve ventured the rude comparison, doesn’t Trump resemble an American Putin? The two share nativist views, both seem to be head-over-heels narcissists, believe in a strong executive branch and think a day wasted if they haven’t bullied somebody. If Putin isn’t as germophobic as Trump, I’d be astonished. In a recent interview with Bill O’Reilly, Trump expressed his kinship for the Russian leader: “I would be willing to bet I would have a great relationship with Putin.” Maybe the best way to counter a madman in the Kremlin would be to put one in the White House?

Both Trump and Putin fancy themselves showmen, but subscribe to different schools of entertainment. Putin goes the manly route, riding his horse while shirtless, shooting a Siberian tiger with a tranquilizer gun, flying with migratory birds and other assorted animal tricks. Trump prefers the role of impresario, the TV reality show host, the business genius, the bragging collector of all that is shiny and gaudy. For him, a presidential candidacy is just another form of exhibitionism.

The Trump bubble resembles other political bubbles, such as Herman Cain’s in 2012. Cain’s bubble exploded after we learned unsavory things about his private life. The chances that we’ll learn something equally shocking about the over-exposed Trump persona are slim, and even if we did, how would we react? We’ve already internalized his shamelessness and tastelessness. The campaign will go on as long has Trump can reap psychological and potential financial gain from his bubble. But at first sign of trouble, he’ll do what the best real-estate sharpies do when a soaring asset they bought on the cheap starts to fracture: Declare a profit and sell to the highest bidder. I’m sure he has Ted Cruz’s phone number.

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