What can you buy for $44 million? Well, it’s enough for a quite nice Dassault Falcon 900EX business jet. It’s a few million short of what it would take to buy the Lady Lynda, a spiffy yacht complete with helipad.
But if you’re Donald Trump, it’s also enough to grab yourself a political party. The only problem is, you have to evict the former owners.
Donald J. Trump’s behavior in recent days — the political threats to the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan; the name-calling on Twitter; the attacks on Hillary Clinton’s marriage — has deeply puzzled Republicans who expected him to move to unite the party, start acting presidential and begin courting the female voters he will need in the general election.
Oh, Trump will have unity. Didn’t he say he was a uniter? He just didn’t explain how he would get it. Unity doesn’t have to mean compromise.
But Mr. Trump’s choices reflect an unusual conviction: He said he had a “mandate” from his supporters to run as a fiery populist outsider and to rely on his raucous rallies to build support through “word of mouth,” rather than to embrace a traditional, mellower and more inclusive approach that congressional Republicans will advocate in meetings with him on Thursday.
You know that joke sign that says “beatings will continue until morale improves”? Trump is a believer. And Trump is not wrong, he’s never wrong, everyone says he’s never wrong. He has thousands of … Well, you get the idea. Trump is not about to let a bunch of people he sees as losers, people who have had the gall to give him less than full-throated praise, have any say in the future of the Republican Party.
And about that elephant. Isn’t that out of date? Maybe a big, shiny, gold ‘T’. Yeah, that would be classy.
“You win the pennant and now you’re in the World Series — you gonna change?” Mr. Trump said. “People like the way I’m doing.”
Of course they do. You just keep right on doing, Donald. Sorry, you people who thought you were running the Republican Party. You’re fired! Trump has a long history of making sure his properties go his way.
It began in 1981. Trump bought a 14-story building on prime real estate facing New York City's Central Park.
His plan was to tear down the building and replace it with luxury condos. But first he needed a small band of rent-stabilized tenants out of there.
To succeed, Trump played rough ... he cut heat and hot water, and he imposed tough building rules. Trump even proposed sheltering homeless people in the building.
Oh, the games he played. Letting the service elevator fill with garbage, then cutting off the normal elevators. Turning off the heat in midwinter. Filing suit after suit to harass tenants. Simply allowing (and encouraging) the building to disintegrate.
But here’s the funny thing. Donald didn’t win. The building is still there. The tenants are still in their rent-stabilized apartments. All he did was spend several million dollars making everyone miserable, to no good end.
C’mon—let’s watch him do it again.