Book: Trump's "Tower of Lies"

[lpetrich]

New book by former Trump aide alleges early racist comments - Los Angeles Times

Former Trump organization executive Barbara A. Res has written a book, "Tower of Lies: What My 18 Years of Working With Him Reveals About Him". She joins Michael Cohen, John Bolton, Mary Trump, and Bob Woodward in writing about him. It will be out on Oct 20, two days from now as I write this.

The book recounts racist, anti-Semitic and sexist behavior, along with Trump’s ability to lie “so naturally” that “if you didn’t know the actual facts, he could slip something past you.

“The seeds of who he is today were planted back when I worked with him,” Res wrote. “He was able to control others, through lies and exaggeration, with promises of money or jobs, through threats of lawsuits or exposure. He surrounded himself with yes-men, blamed others for his own failures, never took responsibility, and always stole credit. These tactics are still at work, just deployed at the highest levels of the U.S. government, with all the corruption and chaos that necessarily ensue.”

Like this:

In her account, Res wrote that “bigotry and bias control Donald’s view of the world, even the so-called positive stereotypes, which are just as damaging, like saying the Japanese (whom he seems to despise) are smarter than Americans.”

She recalled Trump berating her when he spotted a Black worker on a construction site.

“Get him off there right now,” he said, “and don’t ever let that happen again. I don’t want people to think that Trump Tower is being built by Black people.”

Trump turned red-faced when she brought a young Black job applicant into the lobby of another building, she wrote.

“Barbara, I don’t want Black kids sitting in the lobby where people come to buy million-dollar apartments!”

Res wrote that Trump hired a German residential manager, believing his heritage made him “especially clean and orderly,” and then joked in front of Jewish executives that “this guy still reminisces about the ovens, so you guys better watch out for him.”

Trump has been willing to work with black people like Ben Carson and Omarosa Manigault Newman, but that doesn't seem to have made him reassess his race-related beliefs.

 

[lpetrich]

Trump has used Barbara Res as evidence of how feminist he is. But having high-level female employees does not seem to have affected his views of the female sex.

Trump and his campaign often pointed to Res during the 2016 election as an example of his progressive history of hiring and promoting women. But during her 18-year tenure, she wrote, Trump talked frequently and graphically about women’s looks and his own sexual exploits — and forced Res to fire a woman because she was pregnant and bar her own secretary from important meetings because she did not look like a model.

Like saying that women in Marina del Ray have “tighter asses” than women in Beverly Hills and Bel Air.

He is not also racist and sexist, but also classist.

Trump “can’t stand” the working people who make up his political base, she wrote, but “was well aware of the public relations benefit of being liked by ‘the common man,’ and he exploited it, a behavior he continues to this day.”

He had a lavish “topping out” party to celebrate the completion of Trump Tower in 1982, but he didn't want any of the construction workers involved in the construction.

When BR criticized him in 2016, Trump called her an ingrate, saying that he gave her “the break of a lifetime” -- working on the construction of Trump Tower.

“What Barbara Res does not say is that she would call my company endlessly, and for years, trying to come back. I said no,” he said in a May 2016 tweet that has since been deleted.

If Trump has changed, she wrote, “He’s only become more himself. He is Trump raised to the nth degree, but Trump nonetheless. Donald Squared, I call him.”

When he planned that new skyscraper on Fifth Avenue,

“It’s gonna be the most talked about building in the world,” he said. Then he added, “I want you to build it.”

This was back in the late 1970's. Was he a megalomaniac all the way back then?

 

[lpetrich]

Trump Tower | Height & Description | Britannica

Trump Tower, mixed-use skyscraper in Manhattan, New York, located on Fifth Avenue at East 56th Street. It opened in 1983, although work was not completed until the following year. Trump Tower is 664 feet (202 metres) high and has 58 stories. It was the principal residence of its developer and namesake, Donald Trump, at the time of his election as U.S. president in 2016. It may be noted that Trump Tower is not the only New York City skyscraper to have carried the Trump name and that the names Trump Tower or Trump Towers have been affixed to buildings in other cities.

Back to that book review. During the construction of it, "Trump turned out to be a difficult boss, blaming others for his mistakes, taking undue credit and withholding promised bonuses on a whim."

So that's not new either.

During the construction, he screamed about how the marble wrapped around the columns. He proposed covering them with bronze, and BR agreed. But she didn't follow through.

She called such acts a form of “civil disobedience,” in which staffers would agree to Trump’s “harebrained ideas or outrageous demands” but not carry them out. She also recalled regularly telling subcontractors to give Trump higher prices than they had agreed upon with his subordinates so that Trump could get the satisfaction of bargaining them down.

“Donald had to feel like he had won something,” she wrote.

Those tactics would sound familiar to White House officials, who have tried to manipulate Trump’s ego to soothe him and sometimes hope he forgets his most outlandish directives.

So he was a big baby back then also.

It is very disappointing that nobody has tried to use the 25th Amendment on him -- and that the Senate Republicans let him off the hook early this year by refusing to put him on trial.

 

[lpetrich]

Then on his business strategies.

She recounts numerous examples of Trump squeezing business partners, the media or the people he worked with, just to get an edge, comparing his recipe for success to a player in the game of Monopoly who has no regard for the rules.

“Imagine if you cheated,” she wrote. “You took money from the bank, skipped spaces, put houses on your properties when no one was looking, and took everyone else’s houses. Would you win?”

With an attitude like that to doing business, it is not surprising that he has the bankruptcies that he has. Also that he is now rather grossly in debt, as his tax returns reveal. Being a responsible manager seems very difficult for him.

Over the years, he became more and more dependent on being surrounded by yes-people and on getting the attention he craves.

“His regard for himself had increased exponentially, as had his contempt for women,” Res wrote. “His sexism never extended to me, but it did to many others—including his wife Ivana, whom he would publicly belittle — and I came to see that I was the exception rather than the rule.”

He has gotten worse and worse as a person.

“It’s not hard to look at the trajectory of his entire life and spot an unmistakable pattern: The bigger he got as a name, the smaller he got as a person,” she wrote.

 

[Angry Floof]

Holy shit, what a vapid fucking pig he is.

 

[Worldtraveller]

The shitbag in chief is a piece of shit, for sure.

But how does "he's racist, sexist, an asshole, and all this other bad stuff.

...but I worked for him for 18 years."

Jibe with anything other than gross opportunism? Fuck all these people. She's not telling us anything new, and she's just another grifter.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Trump is right, he is almost a cottage industry for the foul pigs that worked for him. And now those foul pigs are working on making more off the top.

 

[southernhybrid]

It doesn't matter how many of these books are written. Those of us who aren't easily manipulated by a cult leader, already know that he's a sick puppy who lies and exploits people and institutions all the time. Sadly, his so called base wouldn't care if he shot someone on 5th Ave. That was one of the few things that Trump was right about. His supporters don't care or don't recognize how despicable he is and has been his entire life.

 

[Gun Nut]

The shitbag in chief is a piece of shit, for sure.

But how does "he's racist, sexist, an asshole, and all this other bad stuff.

...but I worked for him for 18 years."

Jibe with anything other than gross opportunism? Fuck all these people. She's not telling us anything new, and she's just another grifter.

Well if Heir Trump harms people that are not Jesus Christ incarnate, then fuck them... because that is what it will take to give a flying fuck about anything negative about him... SOMEONE, somewhere, might have done something bad to someone at some point in time... So Trump is just a great guy compared to Satan.. or some other pedifile bugfucker that can be invented.
If there is blame one can imagine, then give it to the victim... poor Trumpy Dumpy can't be given any blame for anything ever.. he wouldn't even know what to do with it

 

[ZiprHead]

Yet another former Trump admin official steps up, denounces Trump

By any fair measure, Josh Venable has a credible background in Republican politics. He helped lead the Michigan Republican Party; he worked for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R); and in the first two years of Donald Trump's presidency, he served as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' chief of staff.

But last month, Venable took on a new role, joining a group of former Trump administration officials -- the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform -- who stand in opposition to the Republican incumbent.

In today's Detroit News, Venable has an op-ed explaining that he's not leaving the party he's been a part of his entire life, but he is "exhausted" by the president's failures.

Nearly all my career, I have worked for Republican candidates and conservative causes, managing campaigns, organizing coalitions and raising money.... But this is 2020, so of course this year is different. I cannot vote for the Republican nominee for president. For the good of the party I have supported my entire life, but more importantly, for the sake of the country I love, I implore all patriotic Republicans to join me.

Venable added that Donald Trump "thrives on purposely sowing strife and discord," something the former administration official says he's seen "up close and in person."

And it's those five words -- "up close and in person" -- that help make perspectives like these so interesting. Indeed, I continue to think one of the most under-appreciated elements of the 2020 race is the staggering number of people who've worked for and/or with Trump and who now want to see him lose.