The Kids Are All Right
Trump’s children shine for dad
‘YOU can’t fake good kids,” vice presidential nominee Mike Pence said the other night. And after each of Donald Trump’s four adult children had addressed the convention, it was obvious that Pence had a point.
Donald Jr., Eric, Tiffany and Ivanka Trump each gave polished, personal and well-reasoned speeches, telling cute anecdotes about what it’s like to grow up as the child of a billionaire real-estate developer, unveiling the warmer side of the “You’re fired!” guy and adroitly making the case that Trump’s business experience is what America needs right now.
Creating jobs, building durable and lasting things, making decisions with the input of everyone from carpenters and forklift operators on up — it need not be said that Hillary Clinton has never come close to acquiring this kind of roll-up-your-sleeves, straightfrom-the-site knowledge of the real economy.
Tiffany Trump, a 22-year-old recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, noted in her sweet, brief speech that she had saved all of her report cards growing up because Dad had written such lovely, encouraging notes on them. Donald Jr. painted a colorful picture of a Bob the Builder childhood, saying, “I was there with him by his side on job sites ... from the time I could walk.”
He added, in a line that pleasingly encapsulated two American ideals — practical knowledge and classlessness — “We didn’t learn from MBAs, we learned from people who had doctorates in common sense. Guys like Vinnie Stellio, who taught us how to drive heavy equipment, operate tractors and chainsaws, who worked his way through the ranks to become a trusted adviser of my father. It’s why we’re the only children of billionaires as comfortable in a D10 Caterpillar as we are in our own cars.”
Ivanka Trump, echoing those images of the Kennedy children playing by President Kennedy’s desk, said that she grew up constructing Lego skyscrapers at the feet of the man while he was doing the real thing.
She said when Trump read heartbreaking stories about people down on their luck in the papers, he would tear out the stories, write a note to an assistant with “his signature black felt-tip pen” and arrange a meeting with the person that would “draw on his extensive network to find them a job or get them a break.”
Trump’s children made a more detailed case for why his business success qualifies him for the presidency than their dad ever has. Eric Trump reminded us all how Trump first became a celebrity — he saved Central Park’s famously derelict Wollman Rink, site of the ice skating scenes in “Love Story,” because he couldn’t stand looking at the eyesore from his nearby office.
A government plan to spruce up the park was, naturally, bungled, delayed and over-budget. Trump finished the project and left us all another jewel in the landscape of the city.
At a moment when there’s nearunanimous agreement that the government is incompetent, Eric offered Trump as a remedy: “Throughout my father’s career, he has been repeatedly called on by government to step in, save delayed, shuttered and grossly overbudget public projects, everything from the exterior of Grand Central Terminal in New York to the iconic old post office in Washington, DC,” he said.
“Maybe it’s the developer in him,” Ivanka said Thursday night, “but Donald Trump cannot stand to see empty main streets and boarded-up factories,” conjuring a gratifying image of a largerthan-life dealmaker firing up the cement mixers and laying steel.
As she noted, in the Trump companies, “Real people are hired to do real work.” In Eric’s words, “It’s time for the president who has always been the one to sign the front of a check, not the back.”
Hillary Clinton has never been anything but a lawyer and a politician. Which sounds more like what we need right now — the master builder or the master bureaucrat?
If the Trump children are to be believed — and they were so disarmingly natural that they earned themselves a puff piece in The New York Times this week — their father is a committed small-d democrat, a real man of the people. That isn’t so hard to believe given the way he talks, but they fleshed out the image.
“He listens to everyone,” Ivanka said. “On every one of his projects, you’ll see him talking to the super, the painter, the engineers and the electricians. He’ll ask for their feedback; if they think something should be done differently.”
Trump may be a billionaire, but there’s something working-class striver about him, and he has always had the common touch. For Her Majesty Hillary Rodham Clinton, the contrast could be a problem.