Presidential Material - The Donald Gets Tough

Donald Trump is a tough guy, and he wants you to know it.

Trump is famous for using the phrase "You're fired!" on his television show The Apprentice.  He even tied to trademark that phrase, which created business problems for people like Susan Brenner.  But that's the nature of the business world.  The sharks gobble up the little fish.  The tough guys win.  Ultimately, the  U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected his attempt.  Oh, well.  I guess he thought that would work better than his attempt to remove a little old lady from her house in Atlantic City so he could build a limo parking facility at his casino, the Taj Mahal (which eventually failed).  That attempt didn't work, either.  The little old lady won.

On to Scotland, where Trump wants to expand his Aberdeenshire golf course and resort by evicting the local residents.  This time, he built a fence around the property of a resident who wouldn't sell, and billed him for it.  Trump fought plans to air a documentary called You've Been Trumped on BBC that exposes his business tactics.  He lost that fight, too.

Taking the battle to ISIS.

In the run-up to his official entry into the fray of presidential candidacy, he announced that he had a foolproof plan to defeat ISIS, but he wouldn't reveal what it is.  He said, “I don’t want to be Obama, where he goes on television to explain exactly when we’re going to attack a certain city, what we’re going to do, what hour we’re going to be using for the attack, how many men are going in. I don’t want to do that.”  We should just trust the Donald, because he's a tough guy, right?

Asked by George Stephanopoulos whether he had a moral duty to say what this foolproof plan is, he responded, “Somebody should call me from the administration.  The problem is you’re going to see it, and so is everybody else, and so is the enemy. But I will tell you, ISIS has taken what I said we should take: the oil.”

Yes, because there's nobody in the National Security Council who understands the situation as well as the Donald does.  And he evidently gets his expertise straight from the book of Donald Rumsfeld.  Let's not think about how the middle east got to where it is today.

On June 17, he told Bill O'Reilly, "I say that you can defeat ISIS by taking their wealth.  Take back the oil. Once you go over and take back that oil, they have nothing. You bomb the hell out of them, and then you encircle it, and then you go in. And you let Mobil go in, and you let our great oil companies go in. Once you take that oil, they have nothing left."  What could possibly go wrong?  But so much for not revealing your strategy to the enemy.  Now the Donald is just like Obama, where he goes on TV to explain what he's doing.  Well, at least he didn't reveal exactly what hour and how many men.  But then, neither did Obama.

The tough guy goes to war.

During his announcement speech, Trump alienated virtually the entire Latino population when he emphasized the need to build a wall at the Mexican border.

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. ...  They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Mexicans, especially, are not happy with Trump.  As it happens, Trump has an ownership interest in the Miss Universe Organization, which had a contract with Univision, the major Spanish-language network, to air the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants.  Univision backed out of the deal.  As Jose Diaz-Balart commented in this revealing interview, they essentially told the Donald, "You're fired!"

The Donald is not happy with Univision.  He is filing a lawsuit against them.  But worse than that, he has banned Univision personnel from his hotel and golf resort, the Trump National Doral, Miami.  Univision officials, in response have instructed their employees not to stay or hold events at any Trump properties.

Now this is war.  I guess ISIS will just have to wait in line.