Nagpur: It’s 100% pucca now. The unthinkable has happened. Black, Muslim, Women, immigrants and labour hater Donald J. Trump is going to be contesting the coming US Presidential elections as the Republican party official candidate. He became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on Tuesday with a landslide win in Indiana that drove his principal opponent, Senator Ted Cruz, from the race and cleared the way for the polarizing, populist outsider to take control of the party.
And the fact is – Donald isn’t even a Republican! As all the sneering dismissals from that party’s veterans showed when he first entered the Republican primaries. (USA has this unique system where the whole country goes through a long arduous process of selecting ‘official Democratic and Republican’ party nominees state by state. It’s much more complicated than the Presidential elections themselves!) And yet, at the end of it all, Trump has triumphed! How did he do it? WHO is Donald Trump??
Mr. Trump, a real estate tycoon turned reality television celebrity, married thrice and was not a registered Republican until April 2012. He has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrats, including his likely general election opponent, Mrs. Clinton. And, at various points in his life, he has held positions antithetical to Republican orthodoxy on almost every major issue in the conservative canon, including abortion, taxes, trade, and gun control.
With Mr. Trump’s success, “I’m watching a 160-year-old political party commit suicide,” said Henry Olsen, an elections analyst with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank.
So what has fueled the Trump juggernaut taking him to this high vaulted position, which he had also never hoped to reach?
Celebrity value; power of money; or just a very, very powerful Brand? America is a hard core Capitalist country, remember? What’s good may not necessarily sell, but what sells HAS TO BE GOOD!!
And there is probably NOTHING not sold in the US by the name of Trump:
Things in his name: Trump Financial (a mortgage firm), Trump Sales and Leasing (residential sales), Trump International Realty (a residential and commercial real estate brokerage firm), The Trump Entrepreneur Initiative (a for profit business education company, formerly called the Trump University), Trump Restaurants (located in Trump Tower and consisting of Trump Buffet, Trump Catering, Trump Ice Cream Parlor, and Trump Bar), gotrump (an online travel search engine, Select By Trump (a line of coffee drinks),[91] Trump Drinks (an energy drink for the Israeli and Palestinian markets)Donald J. Trump Signature Collection (a line of menswear, men’s accessories, and watches), Donald Trump The Fragrance (2004), SUCCESS by Donald Trump (a second fragrance launched by The Trump Organization and the Five Star Fragrance Company released in March 2012), Trump Ice bottled water, the former Trump Magazine,Trump Golf, Trump Chocolate, Trump Home (home furnishings), Trump Productions (a television production company), Trump Institute, Trump: The Game (1989 board game with a 2005 re-release version tied to The Apprentice), Donald Trump’s Real Estate Tycoon (a business simulation game), Trump Books, Trump Model Management, Trump Shuttle, Trump Mortgage, Trump Network (a multi-level vitamin, cosmetic, and urinalysis marketing company), Trump Vodka, Trump Steakhouse, and Trump Steaks. He even had a Trump ‘Tajmahal’ a casino which declared bankruptcy and was sold.
A Tax evader – No one knows what he is really worth. In 2011, Forbes’ financial experts estimated the value of the Trump brand at $200 million. Trump disputes this valuation, saying that his brand is worth about $3 billion. Yet he hates paying taxes and is being investigated by the IRS for several years of possible tax evasion.
The run up to 2016 elections has been resonating with the oddest and most politically incorrect things Donald has been saying. Instances of kind of things he says – ““Rosie O’Donnell’s ( his Republican opponent) is disgusting both inside and out. You take a look at her, she’s a slob. She talks like a truck driver, she doesn’t have her facts, she’ll say anything that comes to her mind. Her show failed when it was a talk show, the ratings went very, very, very low and very bad, and she got essentially thrown off television. I mean she’s basically a disaster.”
His most famous quote to Barbara Walters -“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
About his own daughter -“I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”
— Trump said of opponent Carly Fiorina in a September 2015 interview with Rolling Stone which he later tried to retrack.
Pretty soon the world is going to be asking – look at that face! Is that the face of the new US President?
By Sunita Mudaliar (Associate Editor)
