SPEAKER SERIES REVIEW: DONALD TRUMP (6 OUT OF 10)
What does Donald Trump have to offer me, a college student attending UB, who has no particular interest in his recent TV celebrity? I posed this question a few weeks ago while discussing the university’s Distinguished Speakers Series, and on the night of September 30, I got a pretty concise answer. As arrogant as ever, Trump gave the audience exactly what they paid for - in most students’ cases, ten bucks worth of his time and a whole wealth of advice.
On the list of Trump’s characteristics for a successful individual, you will find determined, relentless, focused, paranoid, passionate, and ruthless. While he excluded the last trait from his lecture, one need only listen to the man speak about himself to know that quality above all others is key to success. Is Trump “the American dream” incarnate? Perhaps in the sense that he fosters a healthy hatred of women, as misogynistic quips peppered his presentation, and he’s one of the most successful captains of industry (or robber barons) of his time. No one can deny his success, and he is certainly an educated man, but he is a working man. Listening to his anecdotal advice for success, one almost forgets that the man speaking uses Manhattan as a playground, who owns some of the most expensive real estate on that island, who incurred millions of dollars worth of debt, and who rose out of that debt into wild success. Oh, and now he’s on TV every week.
Trump interestingly revealed many of his very human flaws, despite the ability to live and portray himself as a god among men. Talking about his reputed womanizing, Trump appeared to have no qualms about announcing his less admirable traits to a gymnasium full of strangers. His message about living an empty life of excess came off as less moralistic and preachy and more the affirmed truth of a person who learned the hard way.
Indeed, Trump spoke with an acquired arrogance that seems justified by the grand scale on which he lives. It pervades his humor, his comments about ex-wives, even the few choice profanities he chose to punctuate the points of his lecture. But therein lies his power; his is an arrogance that no one will question, because no one will question the billions of dollars behind it. So we laugh at the jokes and roll with the punch-lines and simply bow down to this king among men.
But I must question - how valid are the rules given to us by a man who broke them all and made his own? Can we really hope to follow the advice of a man who blazed his own trail of success? Is his wealth unattainable to us; can we hope to be as successful, as rich, as big as Donald? Can we trump the Trump? The short answer is no, with the consolation that he is proof that such virtues of determination and relentless hard work can and will eventually pay off. Not to imply that Trump is or is not a virtuous man. Urging listeners not to envy him, he seems to have forgotten that his life of opulence is the goal of an ever-growing population of fresh, young minds. If we did not envy him, he would not fascinate us so. Trump is not interesting because of his virtue, he is interesting for his business savvy and his enormous success. He is enviable not because he is the nice guy who plays by the rules, but because he is the shark who plays all his cards right. In short, Donald Trump is a phenomenon and the aged poster child of our free-trading capitalistic world.
Oh, and if it’s not a rug, then it’s the best plug that money can buy.
