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Remember this infamous NYT piece on then-Senator Barack Obama in September of 2008?
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Now fast forward to the current election cycle:
…let me start the discussion by showing you this video:
“Nobody knows banking better than I do.” “Nobody has more respect for women than I do.” “Nobody knows health care better than Donald Trump.” “I think I know more about foreign policy than anybody running.” Etc. etc. etc.
In fact, as John Fund observes, Mr. Trump is far from a self-made success story. He's a rich kid who inherited a massive amount of money and managed it about as well as a passive stock fund.
Trump became president of his father’s real-estate organization in 1974. His share of his father’s empire as one of five siblings was $40 million. As the National Journal has pointed out, If someone were to invest $40 million in a S&P 500 index in 1974, reinvest all dividends, and have to pay capital gains he’d wind up with about $3.4 billion in 2015. Trump claims to be worth over $10 billion but has admitted in a 2007 deposition he frequently exaggerates his wealth. Bloomberg currently puts it at $2.9 billion, while Forbes puts it at $4 billion. So Trump’s actual wealth probably is about as much as he would have accumulated if he had taken his dad’s money and put it into an index fund.Trump isn’t a successful businessman. He’s a rich kid who got a bunch of money from Daddy. He could have done nothing at all — no “deals,” no bankruptcies, no nothing — and gotten as much money or more as he has today.
That's not what Trump thinks, however:
“Nobody knows banking better than I do.”“Nobody has more respect for women than I do.”
“Nobody knows health care better than Donald Trump.”
“I think I know more about foreign policy than anybody running.”
Haven't we had enough narcissistic chameleons living in the White House?
Isn't it about time we had an adult who actually reveres the Constitution and has since he was a youth?
Hat tip: BadBlue Real-Time News.