Donald Trump has never been anything close to a good manager, with a few limited exceptions having to do with how he purports to have become a billionaire — but most of that saga is best characterized by his being the biggest, baddest bully ever in the annals of New York real estate.
And we once again commend our readers to Michael D’Antonio’s biography of Trump, published in 2015, Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success. There, D’Antonio details how, through chicanery, manipulation, deception, and outright corruption, he amassed his fortune — which was all he was interested in — what Washington Irving famously referred to in 1837 as “The Almighty Dollar."
And, by the way, just exactly how did our Narcissist-in-Chief transform himself into a bizarre version of a politician running, in 2016, what some commentators refer to as a populist campaign — since we always thought that populism refers to an ideology which presents “the people” as a morally good force and contrasts them against “the elite” in the “establishment” — with the “establishment” often portrayed as corrupt.
Especially when, as Bernie Sanders said during this presidential election season, Trump is not only the most dangerous man to sit in the Oval Office, but also the most corrupt.
But back to Trump’s managerial disabilities: seems like there are more Acting Secretaries of Cabinet-level Departments than Secretaries who have been confirmed by Mitch McConnell’s Senate. Ditto with people working at high-level positions in his White House.
In other words, Trump is totally toxic.
Only a few days ago, Trump, at the instance of Son-in-Law-in-Chief Jared Kushner, dumped his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, in favor of Bill Stepien, who has just suspended all televised advertising while Trump flounders around, paying no discernable attention to The CoronaVirus, and instead proclaiming himself as the LawnOrder Candidate, and showing up for rallies and briefings where there is no social distancing and no wearing of masks — as CNN’s Jim Sciuto cogently showed us this evening.
The suspension of Trump’s ads, which were designed to scare anyone who was thinking of voting for Joe Biden, gave us here at AP pause to reflect, on a moral and theological level, on what’s going on with Trump’s so-called campaign, so we convened a Zoom meeting with our rapidly growing corps of plucky, well-informed, and well-connected associate solitary reporters.
To a person, everybody on our staff said that Trump’s very best option under the circumstances would be to stop campaigning altogether, and let Mike Pence do his talking for him.
And associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones, who is with Trump 24/7, told us to watch closely for further developments in TrumpLand.