There’s a common sort of idea out there that Trump is a toddler, he’s a child
Acting like a toddler, having a major meltdown...acting as a child...the mind of a toddler...he’s
a giant toddler, and there’s nothing going around inside his head
And what people mean by that, I think,
is that he has poor impulse control.
Something the way he’s wired, where he can’t help himself...can’t seem to help himself...he
can’t control himself...he just can’t seem to help himself, Howie!
And it’s a way, it seems to me, of trivializing some of the wrongdoing that you see from Donald
Trump.
When he said to Billy Bush,
He’s not saying he doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions,
he’s saying that based on his experience
in life, there will not be consequences.
And that’s actually really different from a child’s perspective on the world.
A real toddler misbehaves all the time.
I mean, José, earlier this week, he stuck his foot in a serving bowl.
He sometimes likes to try to attack small birds at the park.
But if you explain the rules to him, he normally follows them.
It’s a constructive process.
And Trump is...old.
He’s been around. He's not learning.
Donald Trump is a man who has had a lot of different brushes with the law.
The very first time he appeared in the New York Times, it was because there was a federal
investigation into illegal racial discrimination in houses that he was running.
Soon after the election he paid a $25 million settlement for defrauding students at a fake
university.
The first time he tried to move beyond the real estate business, he had a casino in Atlantic
City, the Trump Taj Mahal.
He build the casino with a lot of loans, a lot of debts,
And in December of 1990, he comes to this moment of crisis where he doesn’t have the
funds to make the payment,
if he can't cover the interest.
So what happens is his father sends one of the family attorneys down in a car to Atlantic
City with over 3 million dollars.
And he has him go buy chips from the casino, giving cash to the Taj Mahal
So in effect, that’s a loan
And eventually, the New Jersey Gaming Authorities
ruled, and he had to pay a fine for it.
But if you look at the balance of considerations, right
If he hadn’t taken the illegal loan, he would have lost the whole casino.
With the illegal loan, he pays a fine, but it’s not that big of a fine, and he keeps
the casino.
And that’s basically the impunity lifestyle of Donald Trump: this calculated decision
was made that to break the rules would be better for Donald Trump, even if he got caught.
Looking for loopholes, and working with smart lawyers to find them is what you’re supposed
to do.
We have very much normalized a culture of rule breaking in American business,
And Trump is an extreme example of that, but extremes tell you something about what’s
going on beneath the surface.