Donald Trump in The Making of Donald Trump
On Principles & Values:
OpEd: curries favor with journalists who don't cross-check
I knew Trump had spent a lifetime cheating and lying and displaying remarkable success at getting away with it. And he spent vast amounts of time currying favor with journalists, mostly those who never let facts get in the way of a good story. Only a
few journalists checked & cross-checked his claims and didn't buy Trump's nonsense.I sized him up as a modern P.T. Barnum selling tickets to modern variations of mermaids, that people decided were worth a bit of their money. Trump was full of himself.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump intro, by D.C.Johnston, p. X-XI
Aug 2, 2016
On Principles & Values:
Trump made a profit from his 2016 campaign
For the 2016 run, a large share of Trump's campaign money was spent paying himself for the use of his Boeing 757 as well, in addition to his smaller jet, his helicopter, his Trump Tower office space, and other services supplied by Trump businesses.
By law, Trump must pay charter rates for his aircraft and market prices for services from his other businesses.
This anticorruption law was designed to prevent vendors from underpricing services to win political favors--a legacy of a time when no one imagined that a man of Trump's presumed immense wealth would buy campaign services from himself.
In 2016, the law perversely ensured that Trump made a profit from his campaign for the goods and services he bought from the Trump Organization.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump intro, by D.C.Johnston, p. XIII
Aug 2, 2016
On Principles & Values:
OpEd: Trump dealt with Genovese & Gambino crime families
My concern [in the 2016 presidential race] was that coverage would focus on the horses race rather than a serious vetting of the candidate, who had not a scintilla of public experience. I wrote an early piece that posed twenty-one questions
I thought reporters should ask on the campaign trail. Not one of journalists did. Late in the primaries, Senator Marco Rubio brought up my question about Trump University and
Senator Ted Cruz posed my question about Trump's dealings with the Genovese and Gambino crime families. But no JOURNALIST ever asked any of those questions.
I will always wonder what might have happened had journalists (or even some of the sixteen candidates vying with Trump for the Republican nomination) started asking my questions months earlier.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump intro, by D.C.Johnston, p. XIV
Aug 2, 2016
On Principles & Values:
OpEd: Trump never faced tough press questioning
Trump doesn't know anything. His comments on many issues in 2017 show how appallingly ignorant he is. I wish one of the news personalities interviewing candidates in the 2016 "debates" had asked Trump a question I am sure he could not have answered.
Keep this question in mind when you read in this book about other questions he answered with replies indicating complete cluelessness.Alas Trump never faced tough questioning as a candidate in a forum where he could not walk away or give nonsense
answers without repeated follow-up. This is a serious problem for the future of American democracy in the television era, when appearances matter more than reality. Trump will not be the last manifestly unqualified candidate who knows how to manipulate
television to his or her advantage and fool many people. To guard against that we need to have flint-eyed reporters--not just smiling television news readers--asking tough questions in public forums that are aimed at eliciting facts and truths.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump intro, by D.C.Johnston, p. XIV-XV
Aug 2, 2016
On Immigration:
2015 campaign announcement focused on Mexicans and Muslims
It's about those crowds of young people who filled the Trump Tower auditorium in June 2015, interrupting with applause forty-three times as Trump announced his campaign with vicious denunciations of Mexicans, Muslims, and the media.
At the time, I thought that was incongruous for midtown Manhattan, a place not exactly known for xenophobia or supporting racist tirades.
A day later news broke that the crowd was not the voluntary outpouring that television viewers would reasonably have believed they were seeing. Many of those clapping were actors paid fifty bucks apiece.
So, the campaign that ended with Trump's winning the Electoral College vote despite losing the popular vote by a large margin began with fraud and deception.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump intro, by D.C.Johnston, p. XX
Aug 2, 2016
On Principles & Values:
Didn't vote in any Republican primary from 1989 until 2016
[Trump's grandfather] Friedrich was the genesis of many family traditions in America, but voting was not among them. In fact, his grandson Donald would run for president after failing to vote in the 2002 general election, and, as records indicate,
in any Republican primary from 1989 until he voted for himself in 2016.[The next generation] were even less diligent in their civic duties. When Donald Trump's name appeared on the
New York State primary ballot in 2016, his daughter Ivanka and son Eric, both in their thirties, could not cast ballots because they had neglected to register as Republicans.
They blamed the government, saying they should have been allowed to change from independent to Republican at the last minute. But the primary voting rules, however outmoded, had been law in the Empire State for many years.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump, by David Cay Johnston, p. 4-5
Aug 2, 2016
On Principles & Values:
Talked about running for president since 1985
Trump had been talking about the presidency since 1985. In 1988, he proposed himself as the running mate of the first President George Bush, a job that went to Senator Dan Quayle. I also watched Trump run in 2000 on the ticket for the Reform Party.
Trump again declared his candidacy in 2012. Trump's campaign then had a purpose other than moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His real goal, we surmised, was a more lucrative contract with the NBC television network for his aging "Celebrity
Apprentice" show. As such, journalists gave little regard to his announcement for the 2016 election.
But this time things were different. I'd spent decades as an investigative reporter, reporting on him, and I had kept my files.
When Trump announced his bid for the Republican nomination for the 2016 election, I knew it was for real.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump, by David Cay Johnston, p. xi-xii
Aug 2, 2016
On Principles & Values:
Anti-corruption laws ensure that Trump profits from campaign
Trump ran in 2000 on the ticket for the Reform Party. It was during that brief campaign that Trump declared he would become the first person to run for president and make a profit. For the 2016 run as well, a large share of
Trump's campaign money has been spent paying himself for the use of his Boeing 747, his smaller jet, his helicopter, his Trump Tower office space, and other services supplied by Trump businesses.
By law, Trump must pay charter rates for his aircraft and market prices for services from his other businesses. This anticorruption law was designed to prevent vendors from underpricing services to win political favors--a legacy of a time when no
one imagined that a man of Trump's immense wealth would buy campaign services from himself. In 2016, the law ensures that Trump makes a profit from his campaign.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump, by David Cay Johnston, p. xi-xii
Aug 2, 2016
On Principles & Values:
OpEd: Trump was a modern P.T. Barnum
I knew Trump had spent a lifetime cheating and lying and displaying remarkable success at getting away with it.
And he spent vast amounts of time currying favor with journalists, mostly those who never let facts get in the way of a good story. Only a few journalists checked and crosschecked his claims and didn't buy Trump's nonsense.
I sized him up as a modern P.T. Barnum selling tickets to a modern variation of the Feejee mermaid, one of the panoply of
Barnum's famous fakes that people decided were worth a bit of their money. Trump was full of himself.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump, by David Cay Johnston, p. X-XI
Nov 14, 2017
On Government Reform:
Trump made a profit from his 2016 campaign
For the 2016 run, a large share of Trump's campaign money was spent paying himself for the use of his Boeing 757 as well, in addition to his smaller jet, his helicopter, his Trump Tower office space, and other services supplied by Trump businesses.
By law, Trump must pay charter rates for his aircraft and market prices for services from his other businesses. This anticorruption law was designed to prevent vendors from underpricing services to win political favors--
a legacy of a time when no one imagined that a man of Trump's presumed immense wealth would buy campaign services from himself.
In 2016, the law perversely ensured that Trump made a profit from his campaign for the goods and services he bought from the Trump Organization.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump, by David Cay Johnston, p. XIII
Nov 14, 2017
On Principles & Values:
OpEd: Question Trump's dealings with Genovese crime family
My concern was that coverage would focus on the horses race rather than a serious vetting of the candidate, who had not a scintilla of public experience.
I wrote an early piece that posed twenty-one questions I thought reporters should ask on the campaign trail. Not one of journalists did. Late in the primaries, Senator Marco Rubio brought up my question about Trump University and
Senator Ted Cruz posed my question about Trump's dealings with the Genovese and Gambino crime families. But no journalist ever asked any of those questions.
I will always wonder what might have happened had journalists (or even some of the sixteen candidates vying with Trump for the Republican nomination) started asking my questions months earlier.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump, by David Cay Johnston, p. XIV
Nov 14, 2017
On Principles & Values:
OpEd: News media never asked Trump hard questions
Trump doesn't know anything--his comments on many issues in 2017 show how appallingly ignorant he is. I wish one of the news personalities selected to interview candidates in the "debates" had asked Trump a question he could not have answered.
Alas Trump never faced tough questioning as a candidate in a forum where he could not walk away or give nonsense answers without repeated follow-up. This is a serious problem for the future of
American democracy in the television era, when appearances matter more than reality. Trump will not be the last manifestly unqualified candidate who knows how to manipulate television to his or her advantage and fool many people.
To guard against that we need to have flint-eyed reporters--not just smiling television news readers--asking tough questions in public forums that are aimed at eliciting facts and truths.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump, by David Cay Johnston, p. XIV-XV
Nov 14, 2017
On Principles & Values:
OpEd: Trump's winning began with fraud and deception
It's about those crowds of young people who filled the Trump Tower auditorium in June 2015, interrupting with applause forty-three times as Trump announced his campaign with vicious denunciations of Mexicans, Muslims, and the media.
At the time, I thought that was incongruous for midtown Manhattan, a place not exactly known for xenophobia or supporting racist tirades.
A day later news broke that the crowd was not the voluntary outpouring that television viewers would reasonably have believed they were seeing. Many of those clapping were actors paid fifty bucks apiece.
So, the campaign that ended with Trump's winning the Electoral College vote despite losing the popular vote by a large margin began with fraud and deception.
Source: The Making of Donald Trump, by David Cay Johnston, p. XX
Nov 14, 2017
Page last updated: Apr 25, 2021