Donald Trump: The ultimate troll
People simply don’t know how to deal with him
Before Donald Trump trolled his way into the Republican nomination and within a loose bang of the White House, he trolled his way into a country club.
It was the mid-1980s. He wanted to buy Mar-aLago, breakfast cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post’s lavish estate on this improbable island whose 10,500 permanent residents, at last count, included 29 billionaires.
But when you’re rich in Palm Beach, an unidentified heiress once told the local paper, you aim to “get your name in the paper three times — when you’re born, when you’re married and when you die.”
That’s not exactly Trump. He was brash and brassy, and he was rebuffed — temporarily. So he bought abutting waterfront property and threatened to erect a monstrous, view-blocking mansion. The price came down, and Mar-a-Lago was his.
By the 1990s, however, its 17 acres, 55 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms were proving something of a burden. So he decided to reorganize the property financially: he would build 10 homes on it. The town refused planning permission; Trump sued; and eventually they arrived at a compromise: he would open a new country club.
But there would be rules, the town insisted. (Palm Beach is famous for rules.) Trump certainly couldn’t just have as many members and guests as he wanted, or create as much noise and traffic as he wanted, or trim his hedges to non-standard specifications.
Trump responded in a way that will be familiar to 2016 election-watchers. He accused the city fathers of sanctioning segregation and discrimination at the existing country clubs (which were mostly WASP or mostly Jewish).
He sent each town councillor a copy of the films Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (about anti-black racism) and A Gentleman’s Agreement (about antiSemitism).
Some 20 years later, Trump attacked Hillary Clinton as a “bigot” and invited Bill Clinton’s sexual harassment accusers to a presidential debate.
“Her policies (for helping African Americans) are bigoted because she knows they’re not going to work,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Oh she is (a bigot). Of course she is.”
If that’s not textbook trolling, I don’t know what is.
No, wait, I do. Palm Beach’s many persnickety rules include a prohibition on flagpoles higher than 42 feet. In 2006, Trump erected an 80-foot flagpole at Mara-Lago and dared anyone to make a fuss about it.
“No American should have to get a permit to fly the flag,” he said in an interview at the time. He called it “a dream to have someone sue me to take down the American flag.”
That kind of wedge-issue populism has served him well in recent months. Those who didn’t follow former Toronto mayor Rob Ford’s career arc might struggle to think of someone else who so relished and profited from underdog status.
Years after Trump won his country club battle and scandalized the town with disco nights and Elton John concerts, his relationship with Palm Beach remains fraught. Laurel Baker, executive director of the local chamber of commerce, suggests opinion may be split among Mar-a-Lago members, who love him, and non-members, for whom he’s something of a “nonentity.”
Locals like Rod Stewart are seen in public with their families, she said, but “you don’t see The Donald anywhere.”
“I would not say that the old guard of Palm Beach is much enamoured of him,” she suggests.
Opinions outside Fire Station No. 3 were decidedly split Tuesday morning as Palm Beachers lined up to vote.
“He’s very accomplished. Forget all the garbage,” said a very tanned 40-something man wearing what looked like $5,000 in perfectly pressed beachwear and a fancy hat. “He actually knows how to get things done. You can’t accomplish building, let’s say, a 90-storey building, without being organized, hiring the right people, seeing that they do their job correctly.”
“My son, who lives in Washington, D.C., sent a gift for me this week to share with my dog,” drawled another voter. “It was a roll of Donald Trump poop bags. And we use ’em.”
The presidency of the United States of America simply shouldn’t be troll-able; no one man, and certainly not an apparent nihilist like Donald Trump, should be able to knock prominent Republicans so far off the rails of what had supposedly been their guiding ideological and democratic principles.
Baker suggests Trump eventually, mostly got what he wanted out of Palm Beach because the people in charge had never seen anyone like him before and didn’t know how to deal with him.
That there aren’t very many people like Donald Trump around, and even fewer who might consider running for president, seems like cold comfort.
If the presidency is vulnerable to Trump, to whom is it invulnerable?
THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ... SHOULDN’T BE TROLL-ABLE.