Isn’t America wonderful? Anyone can run for president. Anyone.
Once again, Donald Trump has wormed his way into the national conversation even though three-fourths of Americans say they would not consider him for a son-in-law, their boss or a next-door-neighbor, let alone as president.
Insisting he has a net worth of $8.7 billion, which experts say is trumped up by half, the real estate developer whose casinos once claimed bankruptcy told us that he is “really rich” and has all kinds of ideas for restoring America’s greatness. Such as: slamming immigrants, alienating the Chinese, insulting Mexico, poking Vladimir Putin in the eye, taking away health insurance from millions of Americans, ordering U.S. corporations such as Ford to stop building overseas factories, and beefing up America’s nuclear arsenals, presumably to start another arms race.
“I don’t have to brag,” he said after bragging for an hour. “I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” He did not say how. Presumably, new job holders would be watering his golf greens, parking cars at his casinos and cleaning cigarette butts from his hotel lobbies. He boasted that he hires techs to create websites for him for $3.
Trump, he of the neon orange halo of hair and the obliviousness of a sleeping vineyard tender during an eruption on Mount Etna, is good at making money, bloviating nonsense that a fringe of non-thinking people want to believe and ridiculing everyone else. He has been publicly toying with running for president since 1988. He is most recently famous for falsely insisting President Obama is not a legal citizen.
Trump does not say how he, miracle of miracles, would get Washington to work. He disparages the other Republicans in the race for, he said mockingly, coming to him, hat in hand, begging for his support.
In his embarrassingly inarticulate ad-libbed announcement speech, Trump said Mexico and other Latin American countries purposefully send us drug dealers, rapists and murderers and should be forced to build and pay for a huge wall on the southern U.S. border.
The good news is that Trump is not asking for donations for his impossible dream of being the boss of the nation. He will fund his own campaign and doesn’t need your measly $2,500, thank you very much, you pathetic would-be donors.
Trump will never and should never be president. But he is good for media people combatting summer doldrums. And the first debate? Hey, it will occur in the dog days of August!
It will mean nothing. Somebody figured out that in a 90-minute debate with 10 people on stage, each candidate gets 4 1/2 minutes to speak.
Ann McFeatters is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service.