Paid Members BomberPat Posted March 20, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted March 20, 2019 The smartest thing Donald Trump ever did was recognise that he didn't need to be a successful businessman so much as he needed the brand of being a successful businessman, and that's been his approach since the 1980s, and doubly so since The Apprentice. As long as his name was synonymous with big business, wealth, and the associated lifestyle, and plastered over as many products as possible, it gave the impression of success without requiring any of the actual business or financial acumen. This is a man who managed to see a casino go bankrupt in Atlantic City, after all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Sergio Mendacious Posted March 20, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted March 20, 2019 Yeah, that's totally on point — he could just be some rich anonymous bloke, but he's (unwittingly, I think) bought his way into the presidency with 40+ years of building a brand. Hats off to him in that sense, he's got the job done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rey_Piste Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 1 hour ago, BomberPat said: The smartest thing Donald Trump ever did was recognise that he didn't need to be a successful businessman so much as he needed the brand of being a successful businessman, and that's been his approach since the 1980s, and doubly so since The Apprentice. I don't see Trump spreading his name about as a brand as something he had planned to improve his business. I see it as the machinations of an egotistical mad man. I think that it was all an accidental thing where someone came to him about using his name as a brand on buildings. Of course he would go ahead with it, that's something the directly strokes his ego. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 2 minutes ago, Rey_Piste said: I don't see Trump spreading his name about as a brand as something he had planned to improve his business. I see it as the machinations of an egotistical mad man. I think that it was all an accidental thing where someone came to him about using his name as a brand on buildings. Of course he would go ahead with it, that's something the directly strokes his ego. The truth is, none of us know for certain. I don't buy into this idea of him being some sort of evil genius who had all of this planned out to the point where he's sitting in the White House, but by the same token I don't believe for a second that he's an absolute fool who just stumbled into the position he's in. The truth, as in many situations, probably lies somewhere in the middle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rey_Piste Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 1 minute ago, David said: The truth is, none of us know for certain. I don't buy into this idea of him being some sort of evil genius who had all of this planned out to the point where he's sitting in the White House, but by the same token I don't believe for a second that he's an absolute fool who just stumbled into the position he's in. The truth, as in many situations, probably lies somewhere in the middle. I'm not saying he's a completely incompetent fool. I am just saying that he grew up extremely well off and is extremely driven. Unfortunately he is driven by his ego and he that running for president was a publicity stunt. I honestly believe that he never thought he would win and because of being an egotist, he can't back down. So now America has a president whose so used to getting his own way that being held culpable is incredibly galling to him. He thought that he could just waltz into office and do whatever he wanted. Which history has shown that it's not going to end well for any company he has owned. So imagine if he didn't have the cabinet and advisors stopping him from doing whatever he wanted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted March 20, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted March 20, 2019 4 minutes ago, Rey_Piste said: So now America has a president whose so used to getting his own way that being held culpable is incredibly galling to him. He thought that he could just waltz into office and do whatever he wanted. I'm not really keen on the kind of psychoanalysis-from-a-distance that gets done on Trump to try and medicalise and rationalise his behaviour, but I will say that this is the part that rings most true to me. Everything about Trump's behaviour as president, about his constant lying and contradiction, about his attitude towards women and those who work under him, is indicative of someone who is used to getting what they want and not having anyone say "no". It's probably the first time in his life that he can't either get what he wants, or pass the buck on to someone else to deal with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rey_Piste Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 6 minutes ago, BomberPat said: Everything about Trump's behaviour as president, about his constant lying and contradiction, about his attitude towards women and those who work under him, is indicative of someone who is used to getting what they want and not having anyone say "no". It's probably the first time in his life that he can't either get what he wants, or pass the buck on to someone else to deal with it. I think that this little comic really does sum Trump up. He campaigned as being an everyman who lived the American dream and brought himself up from his boot straps. Then 99 percent of everything that comes out of his mouth has been disproved as a lie, or shown to be completely impractical. Then he just dismisses it as "fake news" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Factotum Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 Trump is all about his brand. The one thing he knows is how to promote himself. The Presidency bid seems to have started as a PR move in order to launch a Trump news channel or something. The Apprentice was starting to fall off a cliff and he needed something to boost the Trump name. Unfortunately for the world (and I suspect, him) the Republicans had absolutely nobody of any charisma challenging him and he won the nomination. He probably learned a lot from his time in Wrestling with how to work a crowd as well. He knows when to drop a nuts insult whenever they start to drop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted March 20, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted March 20, 2019 15 minutes ago, Factotum said: He probably learned a lot from his time in Wrestling with how to work a crowd as well. He knows when to drop a nuts insult whenever they start to drop. He's a grifter and a conman - he never needed wrestling to teach him that. I do think wrestling has a strange part to play in Trump's success, though. For someone who seemingly spends every waking moment on Twitter, he's only ever "liked" seven Tweets - almost all seemingly by mistake, as they're mostly critical of him - and only follows 45 people, despite being followed by nearly 60 million. Of the people he follows, if you remove members of his campaign team or staff, his own brands, and members of his own family, you're reduced - unsurprisingly - to mostly Fox News hosts, the Drudge Report (a right wing, pro-Trump news aggregator website), Mark Burnett (the producer of The Apprentice), and Piers Morgan...a pattern emerges, basically. The only two accounts he follows without either overt business, familial or political links to Donald Trump, or responsibility for Trump-friendly media are the golfer Gary Player, and Vince McMahon. Obviously Linda McMahon is a member of Trump's administration, but Trump doesn't follow her on Twitter, just Vince. I don't think it's a coincidence that Vince started floating the idea of restarting the XFL right around the time Donald Trump started publicly criticising the NFL, and I don't think it happened because Vince has his ear to the ground on current events. Nor do I think it was Trump taking the lead in that arrangement. And isn't that insane, that I can talk in all seriousness about how Vince McMahon has the ear of the President of the USA, and it not seem completely deranged? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Sergio Mendacious Posted March 20, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted March 20, 2019 He has the ear of the POTUS, and they'll fight over it AT WRESTLEMANIA!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Chest Rockwell Posted March 20, 2019 Moderators Share Posted March 20, 2019 2 hours ago, David said: but by the same token I don't believe for a second that he's an absolute fool who just stumbled into the position he's in. I think he's definitely a complete fucking dummy and there's a decent amount of evidence to support that. I believe the school of thought that he's in the position he's in because he's a useful idiot and other people wanted him in that position. But I also think that the people who have been trying to take advantage of the situation have found that he's harder to control than they thought - not because he's not an idiot, but because he's very erratic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Ronnie Posted March 20, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted March 20, 2019 8 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said: His net worth was the only topic that was off limits for his roast. He even green-lighted comments about lusting after his daughter! But the idea that he wasn't as rich as he wanted people to believe was a step too far. I think the following is an anecdote from the same roast. Somebody had written a comment about Trump's penthouse on his golden space station or something like that. He allowed it to stay but only on condition that the size of the penthouse be doubled in the recorded version! Try getting your head around that; it's fine to suggest that his daughter isn't safe from his wandering eye but not to give him a large enough penthouse on his imaginary space station! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WyattSheepMask Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 Robert Mueller has concluded his Russia Probe and delivered his report to the Department of Justice. It’s now over to Attorney General William Barr to decide how much to share with Congress - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47671715 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Chest Rockwell Posted March 22, 2019 Moderators Share Posted March 22, 2019 You have a habit of just posting news without an opinion to go along with it. I think we can assume that people don't come to this thread for their news if this is a topic they're interested in. There's really nothing to discuss about the report at this stage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted March 22, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted March 22, 2019 Yeah, the last thing we need is for this forum to have TildeGuys~! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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