Merits and virtues of Donald Trump
The tycoon will become the president of the United States most battered by the media in history
Even before being elected president of the United States, some people saw virtues in Donald Trump. “Fred Trump's eyes were incredible. Mr. Trump has traced them, ”said Anthony Senecal, who has been a butler for 30 years in the family and Versailles mansion of Mar-a-Lago, in Florida, called to be the summer White House.
Let's be fair: Donald Trump, 70, also has virtues (and 59.4 million voters of him are not illiterate).
He is a consummate egomaniac but he conceals with Anglo-Saxon self-deprecating –laugh at oneself–, he has maintained through thick and thin, against advisers and experts, political scientists and political scientists, New Yorkers and Angelenos, a campaign with strategy and authenticity - "I am who I am" , he warned in August - and has achieved that the largest collection of gaffes, rudeness and trivialities of a candidate for the US presidency have "humanized", in contrast to the professionalism of Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump can well be considered "a son of papa", of the constructor Fred Trump, raised in the luxury with effort and the success without culture. Butler Senecal reminded The New York Times of how young Donald ran on the delicate parquet floor of the Mar-a-Lago library "filled with valuable first editions of books that no one in the family ever read." Later, it was transformed into an English bar and there hangs a youth oil painting of the heir, Donald, gallant pose, silky hair and tennis player clothes from the fifties, as if he were Vic Seixas's partner at Wimbledon. The builders are a very much their own guild, something Phoenician, always sharp and little recognized in the social scale of money, which does not seem to bother them either. Instead, they have the virtue of knowing human nature very well. Buying land –not always scrupulously with ordinances–, building a large building with the hands of immigrants and selling it as a palace is a very educational form of commerce. Those who master these steps, and especially in a city like New York, where urban legends speak of families - and not only in the carnal sense - become experts in souls and instincts. And, above all, in the weaknesses of human nature.
Trump always had a high opinion of himself. The first television appearances show us a young chop, New Yorker, who pilots his life and watches from above, from the top floor of the first great building that he erected in Manhattan in 1980, the Grand Hyatt hotel next to Central Station.
When journalist Oprah Winfrey flattered his ego in a television interview in 1988 by highlighting the presidential tone of his words - focused mainly on charging against Japan and Saudi Arabia - and asked if he would ever run for the presidency, Trump answered without disheveled :
-Probably not. But I'm sick of seeing my country looted ...
There is self-confidence, immodesty, a redemptive vocation and a binary concept: We - the United States - and them, the foreign governments who abuse our naive hospitality.
Setbacks? Many. The kind of fiascos that could lead to depression for some and men like Donald Trump to write self-help books - “I suffered such a major setback in the early 1990s that I am on the Guinness World Records list for holding the greatest economic disaster in history ”, a passage from Never throw in the towel–, exhibit masculinity -“ without any hesitation ”he would have slept with Diana of Wales– or bless boxing evenings –his sport–, misses competitions or even create universities (after whose failure was turned to reality shows in which he instructed on how to become as great as him).
Without this ego, so televised, no candidate would have destroyed his Republican rivals or endured a presidential campaign in which he has done everything, except the most decisive: stop being himself. The advisers, the campaign teams, the strategists have not been able to with him: "Let Trump be Trump," repeated one of his henchman.
Donald Trump has managed to capture better than anyone - rivals, lobbies, the media, endoscopic experts and tutti quanti - the state of mind of Americans. Outraged at the establishment they accuse of taking their future away. Or his grudge against generations of politicians who volunteer to reform Washington DC and end up in mansions along the Potomac. Trump has spoken to them with the cynicism of old boxing fans:
"Don't hit him on the head he's studying!"
The joke, the anger, the bad mood, or the foolishness. He has apologized to her all because Donald Trump is free from original sin: he has not held public office. How would someone who has already lived eight years in the White House renew politics?
He has insulted voters who have voted for him. He has lost the three presidential debates - or so the journalists said - and yet he was the chouchou of television, hostage to the audience. He turned a macho contempt into suspicions about the personality of his opponent and those who leaked a "locker room conversation."
Donald Trump was Italian and his name was Silvio Berlusconi, another upstart despised by the elites but who knew how to connect with the people (or at least with the majority of voters). He was in charge of Italy for ten years, a country that does not have a nuclear arsenal but does have high concepts about life, religion and public morals.
Yesterday, Clinton said goodbye to the country giving the impression that he has not understood the causes of his defeat. Trump does know why he won and would have understood, exactly the same, otherwise.
