BOOK REVIEW: The Making of Donald Trump, by David Cay Johnston... a treasure trove of facts uncovered over more than a quarter century about the racism, lies, sexism, narcissism, and cowardice of the Republican candidate for President of the United States in 2016...
By the time the October 10 issue of The New Yorkers reaches subscribers (including the reviewer writing here) more and more Americans will know more and more of the truth about the ugly career of the Republican candidate for President of the United States.With a little over one month to go before the November 8 voting, those who plan to vote in the Presidential Election have a wealth of materials if they are interested in learning more about what a racist, sexist, greedy pig Donald Trump has been all of his life -- literally since childhood. The challenge is to pick the pre-election book or books most worth reading and not obsessing over gleaning every fact from the Trump life and career or waiting until the final two debates to learn more as moderators and Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, expose more and more of Trump's mendacious and nasty life story while he continues to claim he is the man of the common man (and women) to restore America's white American "glory."
David Cay Johnston's "The Making of Donald Trump" is boringly factual, which is just what is needed in many instances. And it is also a heroic book by an investigative reporter who was exposing the inequities of contemporary American capitalism long before the "Occupy" and Bernie Sanders realities brought much more home.
Trump's ludicrous self-promotions included anonymously claiming that his mistress Marla Maples (who became his second wife after playing around with Trump while The Donald was still married to Ivanka's mother Ivana) told "friends" he was great in bed. Turned out that Maples had never said it, but Trumps anonymous and pseudononymous self promotion machine had gotten the New York Post to make it on its front tabloid page. Johnston's book notes many examples of this kind of nonsense during the years when Trump was trumpeting Trump as loudly as he could, despite the lies, bankruptcies, and other sillinesses...Part of the story about "The Making of Donald Trump" is the story of the making of "The Making of Donald Trump." David Cay Johnston has won the Pulitzer Prize for his investigative reporting, yet mainstream houses didn't want to publish a book which would pull together his more than a quarter century of reporting on Trump and Trump's lies and crookedness. When Johnston first suggested the book to his main publishers after Trump announced in July 2015, they told him that Trump would never get the Republican nomination, so there was no need for the book. By the time Trump was barreling towards his takeover of the Republican Party, it was too late for the mainstream houses, but not too late for a small upstart publisher in New York, Melville House. And so Johnston, working with members of his family and editors, pulled together the material for the book in less than three months and it's now all available between two covers (instead of in dozens of well-reported stories found possible via a Google search).
The book itself is filled with materials like those that HIllary Clinton launched against a befuddled and increasingly unhinged Trump during the first debate. Here are a couple:
Trump used aliases to pump his own brand and name to some reporters, and then got caught posing by phone as "John Barron" (the name he later bestowed on his son by Malania, his third wife). But “John Barron” didn’t just puff Trump’s sexual boasting in the press. “Barron” was also menacing, as revealed in news clips about his abuse of Polish immigrant construction workers – and the attorney who tried to help them (the infamous Roy Cohn, who made his mark earlier working for Joe McCarthy during the Red Scares). Cohn taught Trump how to use litigation and threats of litigation, especially against reporters, to slant the news Trumpward.
One of the many sordid periods in Trump's history covered in Johnston's book is how Trump dodged the draft with a doctor's letter claiming he had "bone spurs." Trump's high school years were spent in a military school because he was so much in need of discipline, according to his father. Yet when it came time to face the Vietnam War, Trump, like many rich kids in those days, dodged the draft with one of those infamous "doctor letters" that enabled the kids to get medical deferments (after he had gotten student deferments earlier). But that was in 1968. By 2016, Trump was trumpeting his health, without releasing any serious medical records (instead choosing to go on Dr Oz's TV show and clear up questions about his obese healthiness).
Johnston also reports in depth on a series of stories he covered while reporting on Atlantic City for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Trump was finally forced to relinquish his stakes in a host of enterprises — and by 1991 the Trump Taj Mahal was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the first of what would become four business bankruptcies. He later sold stock in his casinos, where investors not only lost their shirts, but during the fourth bankruptcy case creditors successfully demanded that Trump get lost.
But instead of going away, these days Trump licenses his name for much of his revenue. And the greedy for revenue media awarded the crook "Celebrity Apprentice," the "reality" show (parodied best by Gary Troudeau in Doonseberry) where Trump's signature snarl was followed by the bellow: "You're fired!"
Johnston isn't just another pundit...
As the publisher's promotional material for the book notes: "David Cay Johnston won a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of taxes in The New York Times. The Washington Monthly calls him “one of America’s most important journalists” and the Portland Oregonian says is work is the equal of the great muckrakers Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens and Upton Sinclair.
"At 19 he became a staff writer at the San Jose Mercury and then reported for the Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and from 1995 to 2008 The New York Times.
"Johnston is in his eighth year teaching the tax, property and regulatory law at Syracuse University College of Law and Whitman School of Management.
"He also writes for USA Today, Newsweek and Tax Analysts.
"Johnston is the immediate past president of the 5,700-member Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) and is board president of the nonprofit Investigative Post in Buffalo.
"His latest book Divided: The Perils of Our Growing Inequality an anthology he edited. He also wrote a trilogy on hidden aspects of the American economy -- Perfectly Legal, Free Lunch, and The Fine Print – and a casino industry exposé, Temples of Chance."
