Trump Revealed

Trump Revealed by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher

The authors are Washington Post reporters, but I read the book anyway.  Their coverage was almost objective and probably not entirely inaccurate in its “reveal” of Trump. 

 The title is just glitter.  Trump is not revealed in this book any more than anyone is revealed in what the authors call a journalistic biography.  The purpose of the book is to highlight presidential nominees which, according to the authors, is part of a series that the newspaper regularly does.    

Despite not being a full-scale biography, the book does a handy job of hitting the highlights of Trump’s life.  There are several chapters on his parents, his childhood, his education and his start in the real estate business with his father.  Born in 1946, the 70s were the building-up years for Trump and his career as well as the beginning of married life to Ivana.  The 80s marked him hitting his career stride.  The 90s were his tabloid, playboy years, divorce, marriage to Marla Maples and his close call with bankruptcy.  By the 2000s he was back with The Apprentice, had mellowed somewhat as a person, was beginning to exhibit more of the “likeability factor” and was married to Melania in 2005. 

The book was a good read though a bit tedious in the majority of the chapters.  The authors examined in a fair amount of detail Trump’s business dealings, perhaps because they are inherently interesting, perhaps as points of information or perhaps for the purpose of casting aspersions.  I can't say.  I’m not interested in big real estate deals or the gambling industry and I'm an incompetent judge of the authors’ coverage of these topics.  There was reasonable attention given to his family life and relatively little coverage of Trump’s decision to run for president.

For the New Yorkers amongst us, what we may remember most about Trump are the playboy years.  Look familiar?

During those years, I assumed that Trump was little more than a rich and shallow gigolo who didn’t deserve the time it took to read the splashy headlines describing his latest exploit.  Over time I began to see it a little differently.  This book, perhaps unwittingly, confirms that Trump continually and successfully manipulated the media for his own purposes.  From the beginning, journalists took the bit and ran with whatever he gave them and he usually gave them only fluff.  Of the two, it’s the reporters who emerge as shallow.  While they sat in overheated cubicles pounding on their typewriters and wearing scruffy shoes, “The Donald,” as they so ridiculously christened him, was out re-configuring the landscape and building an empire!

Overall, the book gives a fair overview of who Trump was and is in the world of business and entertainment.  He comes across as a talented and ambitious optimist, a person with a very secure ego who believes in himself one hundred percent.  His ambition is backed up with intelligence and he seems to believe that, once in the door, he will find the right people, the right deals to make, the right problems to solve and the right solutions for those problems.  For a Donald Trump, there’s always another pot of gold at the end of the next rainbow.  In this sense, he is something of an inspiration. 

This book was refreshingly free of any psychoanalyzing or partisan political analysis.  Donald Trump emerges as an uncomplicated man who suffers no illusions about who he is and what his talents are.  As for his religion and other core, moral beliefs, the uncomplicated person with ambition and drive might not always dwell upon such matters.  Trump is not the man to go to for spiritual or philosophical reflection.  He is not quite a man for all seasons, although as President, he……well….  let’s just leave it at that.  Enough psychoanalysis and no politics.  

I would recommend this book for some light yet informative reading.