A well-made account of Trump’s unusual ascent
Some students of Donald Trump’s rhetoric say he used to have far greater lexical range. The proof was there in Trump: An American
Dream (Channel 4). Back in the Eighties, he may not have had the best words but his articulacy was bigger than it is now.
However, what issued from his mouth was still a familiar stew of simmering toxins. “Is there anything you can’t have?” he was asked in an early interview. “I believe if you think you can’t have it,” he replied, “you probably can’t have it.”
Among the things Trump believed he could have – and eventually did get – was a multimillion-dollar tax break for building Trump Tower, a residential skyscraper exclusively populated by the super-rich. He called New York mayor Ed Koch a moron for refusing it. On television, he talked right over the woman from the New York City council who tried to present him with legal facts.
Her name was Ruth Messinger, and more than 30 years on she rewatched the footage. Her incredulous smile said it all: leopards don’t change their spots. Then as now, Trump sat with dangling hands clasped as if in lowly prayer.
This first episode of this series about Trump’s ascent through first the entrepreneurial world, then the political one, was an insightful, well-made account. As well as the business, from his rackety father Fred he inherited a taste for pumped-up sales patter. Fred was asked how sales were going in Trump Tower. “Excellent! Fantastic! Unbelievable!”
Of the several interviewees who witnessed this carnival as it unfolded, the liveliest was Barbara Res, a teak-tough engineer whom Trump – to his credit – hired to construct his tower. She wasn’t a fan of the décor and had the courage to say so. “A lot of c--p. Absolutely the cheapest floor you could get. The kitchens were garbage. Can you imagine Formica countertops?”
Meanwhile, someone asked him who would play him in the movie of his life. “Maybe myself,” he said, without a glimmer of a blush.
Trump: An American Dream