Donald Trump: An American Tale (original) (raw)

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Donald Trump: An American Tale

By Lawrence Downes

June 30, 2015 3:57 pm June 30, 2015 3:57 pm

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Donald Trump.Credit Tannen Maury/European Pressphoto Agency

I don’t have a lot to add to the story of Donald Trump, his slander against Mexican immigrants and the ensuing self-induced immolation of his media empire, except to note that what we have here is a classic American immigrant story.

It is a tale of first- and second-generation strivers using their gumption and grit to give their descendants the opportunity to dream big and become whatever they choose in America — even candidates for president, maybe, or embarrassing publicity-hungry blowhards, an affront to everything their ancestors stood for.

Or, in Donald Trump’s case, all those things at once.

His father, Fred Trump, was a developer who built tens of thousands of affordable apartments in the 1950s and 60s for the working-class residents of Brooklyn and Queens. He was known for sober management, thriftiness and humble dedication to his work. When he died in 1999, age 93, his obituary in The Times noted that he mixed his own floor-cleaning chemicals. Fred’s father was a German immigrant — Friedrich Drumpf — who was an innkeeper in the Yukon gold rush.

Somehow their seed sprouted into Donald Trump, crash-and-burn casino mogul, perennial bankruptcy-emerger, media monstrosity and now Republican candidate for president, running for president to protect America from a Mexican-border flood of drug smugglers and rapists.

Those words are his.

Some Mexicans are returning the insult, buying Donald Trump piñatas.

While Mr. Trump has doubled down on his racist slanders against hypothetical rapists, some readers may remember his strange defense of an actual rapist, his old friend Mike Tyson. In 1992 Mr. Trump urged prosecutors in Indiana, where Mr. Tyson had been charged with raping a beauty-pageant contestant, to let him buy his way out of prison for a few million dollars. The offer was declined; Mr. Tyson was convicted and sentenced to six years.

It seems fair at this point – even essential – to note that Mr. Trump is far from alone as an immigrant-hostile Republican running for president. The dominating message from the ever-widening field of G.O.P. candidates is that what the country needs most, now, is to lock down the border and overturn President Obama’s executive actions on immigration reform. Listening to Republicans talk on this subject is like being stuck in a bar with the same cruddy cover band that never, ever learns a new song. I wonder how long they will let Mr. Trump remain out front, screaming his head off.