For decades, the problem posed by Donald Trump to writers, whether it was a daily tabloid reporter or a more high-minded scribe for what used to be known as “the qualities,” was that he was beyond parody. A man of rampaging ego, sufficient funds, and a neediness greater than that of an infant, Trump bestrode New York City, littering the press with one fantastical quotation after another. He was the reliable La Rochefoucauld of our city. But instead of “Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue,” we got “I have so many fabulous friends who happen to be gay, but I am a traditionalist.”
In the pages of the satirical magazine
Spy
or in the
New York
Post,
Trump was, in the ’80s and ’90s and later, a constant. He would not have wanted it any other way. He was a real-estate marketer and he sold himself wherever he could: there he was in the corner for a World Wide Wrestling match, or humiliating wannabe Trumps on
The Apprentice,
or demeaning half the human race on
The Howard Stern Show.
This was a gentleman who went on the radio to say of his former wife, “Nice tits, no brains.” His vulgarity was unstoppable and without limit. He didn’t much care if he came off as a little crude. He knew you couldn’t resist listening. “You know,” he said, “it doesn’t really matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”
Not only was Trump beyond insult or parody, he seemed a distinctly local product, like the smell of a Times Square subway platform in mid-August. In 1960, A. J. Liebling,
The New Yorker
’s polymathic reporter of midcentury, set out for Louisiana to write about Governor Earl Long, Huey’s more erratic brother, with a similar conviction that his subject was not for export. “Southern political personalities, like sweet corn, travel badly,” he wrote. “By the time they reach New York, they are like Golden Bantam that has been trucked up from Texas—stale and unprofitable.” This was the problem with Trump in reverse.
I suspect that these factors were at the root of my friend and colleague Mark Singer’s initial reluctance to write about Donald Trump when, in 1996, his editor, Tina Brown, more or less commanded him to do so. I can vouch for the genuineness of Mark’s initial reluctance. I have seen him when he is captivated by a subject—a bank collapse in his home state of Oklahoma, the wonders of the magician and scholar Ricky Jay—but he took a long time to warm to this one. But I am glad he felt the lash of editorial compulsion and moved ahead, if grudgingly, because, as it turned out, he provided us with the best, most insightful, and funniest portrait of Trump. Just as Liebling managed to make an export literary product out of half-mad Earl Long, so, too, did Singer find a way to write with freshness and wit about Trump. His profile is a classic of the form.
We just did not know that it would be of such value at this late date, for, as I write, Donald Trump is no longer interested merely in accruing another gold-plated tower in Manhattan; he intends to take occupancy of the White House. He intends to command the nation’s armed forces and be in possession of its nuclear codes.
I’ll never be sure, but I think I was in the room when Trump might have made his fateful determination to run for President. He had verbally and publically teased us with the idea for many years, but we always figured it was a publicity vehicle, like Trump Steaks. But I think at least some part of his decision to go forward was rooted in humiliation. At the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a springtime ritual of low moment, the press and the capital’s politicians squeezed their egos into the biggest ballroom at the Hilton to preen, feed, and determine, yet again, who is funnier: the President of the United States or the hired-hand comedian invited to the dance.
That night President Obama, with the help of his speechwriters, decided the time was right
In the pages of the satirical magazine
Spy
or in the
New York
Post,
Trump was, in the ’80s and ’90s and later, a constant. He would not have wanted it any other way. He was a real-estate marketer and he sold himself wherever he could: there he was in the corner for a World Wide Wrestling match, or humiliating wannabe Trumps on
The Apprentice,
or demeaning half the human race on
The Howard Stern Show.
This was a gentleman who went on the radio to say of his former wife, “Nice tits, no brains.” His vulgarity was unstoppable and without limit. He didn’t much care if he came off as a little crude. He knew you couldn’t resist listening. “You know,” he said, “it doesn’t really matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”
Not only was Trump beyond insult or parody, he seemed a distinctly local product, like the smell of a Times Square subway platform in mid-August. In 1960, A. J. Liebling,
The New Yorker
’s polymathic reporter of midcentury, set out for Louisiana to write about Governor Earl Long, Huey’s more erratic brother, with a similar conviction that his subject was not for export. “Southern political personalities, like sweet corn, travel badly,” he wrote. “By the time they reach New York, they are like Golden Bantam that has been trucked up from Texas—stale and unprofitable.” This was the problem with Trump in reverse.
I suspect that these factors were at the root of my friend and colleague Mark Singer’s initial reluctance to write about Donald Trump when, in 1996, his editor, Tina Brown, more or less commanded him to do so. I can vouch for the genuineness of Mark’s initial reluctance. I have seen him when he is captivated by a subject—a bank collapse in his home state of Oklahoma, the wonders of the magician and scholar Ricky Jay—but he took a long time to warm to this one. But I am glad he felt the lash of editorial compulsion and moved ahead, if grudgingly, because, as it turned out, he provided us with the best, most insightful, and funniest portrait of Trump. Just as Liebling managed to make an export literary product out of half-mad Earl Long, so, too, did Singer find a way to write with freshness and wit about Trump. His profile is a classic of the form.
We just did not know that it would be of such value at this late date, for, as I write, Donald Trump is no longer interested merely in accruing another gold-plated tower in Manhattan; he intends to take occupancy of the White House. He intends to command the nation’s armed forces and be in possession of its nuclear codes.
I’ll never be sure, but I think I was in the room when Trump might have made his fateful determination to run for President. He had verbally and publically teased us with the idea for many years, but we always figured it was a publicity vehicle, like Trump Steaks. But I think at least some part of his decision to go forward was rooted in humiliation. At the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a springtime ritual of low moment, the press and the capital’s politicians squeezed their egos into the biggest ballroom at the Hilton to preen, feed, and determine, yet again, who is funnier: the President of the United States or the hired-hand comedian invited to the dance.
That night President Obama, with the help of his speechwriters, decided the time was right
Similar Books
