David Cay Johnston (1) (1948–)

This is a profoundly sobering history of an American president. Johnston has followed Trump for decades, long before he became a candidate for U.S. president. The trail begins with Trump's grandfather, goes through his father and up to present day. It was finished in a first edition long before Trump's candidacy and updated in the present version.

What is disturbing is that Trump is shown as a con-artist. Whether this is true or not, it is strongly supported by exhaustive documentation and show more sources. Most disturbing is the portrait that emerges as the author follows Trump's abortive and questionable educational history, his frequent failures and bailouts by his father, his thousands of law suits linked to his treatment of contractors and sub-contractors, and his obvious pathological lying to further his own ends.

This should be a must read for anyone even remotely interested in this man and the future of the United States. show less

Johnston packs a lot of eye-opening data into this book, taking on major league sports, eminent domain abuse, health care, the laws touted to taxpayers as “deregulation”, and more. He calls upon both Adam Smith and the Bible to damn both Democrats and Republicans that have forsaken their duty to the people. There are many surprises— for instance, I had no idea that baseball was exempt from antitrust law and that big-league sports were not, overall, profitable without subsidies and tax show more breaks.

I had thought that I had accumulated enough cynicism in the past 8 years that I was pretty much tapped out on moral outrage, but this book managed to blow oxygen on the few embers I have left. This book makes it abundantly clear that for all the talk in Washington of the glories of the free market, we have nothing resembling one here in the United States. show less

As I write, Donald J. Trump is one of two major-party nominees for President of the United States and, therefore, has a non-negligible chance of winning the election. This, despite his being perhaps the most unsuitable candidate in American history for the office. The major theme of David Cay Johnston's book is demonstrating just how unsuitable Trump is, by exploring the man's career and character.

Johnston is a Pulitzer-winning reporter, whose beat is how the rich and powerful employ the show more fine details of law and regulation to maintain their positions and to exploit the poor, weak, and unsophisticated. He has covered Trump for decades, and has benefited from the coverage of others; the sources are in the book's extensive end notes. He supplies a long list of problems with Trump and how the man does business. He writes about sweetheart relationships with gangsters, broken obligations to business partners and customers, deception, and apparently-sociopathic dealings in every part of Trump's life, both in business and personally.

If many of these issues were already known to people who follow Trump's candidacy, it's often because Johnston broke those stories. That Trump won the nomination anyway illustrates Johnston's secondary theme, the irresponsibility of the institutions of society that allowed the man's career to proceed, despite his flaws. Trump was a major player in the Atlantic City, New Jersey gambling industry despite underworld associations that should have cost him his casino license; the feckless New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement is certainly one of the institutions that did not do its job. More generally the news media have been vulnerable to Trump's ability to influence what is written about him. Johnston notes that Trump is skilled at "...exploiting the fact that most reporters accurately quote what people say without understanding legal rules or regulatory practice." Easily fooled, ignorant of important issues - of bankruptcy, among other matters. Decades of failure along these lines, not only in Trump's case but with respect to the US right wing generally, have brought us to this point.

Of the numerous episodes that I was not previously aware of, the most shocking concerned Trump's great-nephew Wiliam Trump. Born in 1999 to Fred Trump III, who was the son of Donald's deceased older brother Fred Trump Jr., William had severe neurological problems from birth. These conditions were expensive to treat, but were covered by the Trump family medical plan. The Trump paterfamilias, Fred Senior, died in 1999, and William's branch of the family was left out of Fred's will. They sued - and Donald tried to cancel William's medical benefits.

If you would be unable possibly to condemn an infant to death to retaliate against his parents, I'm afraid you're just not in Donald's league. And good for you.

Much of what we've learned about Trump is not covered here: the Russian connections, the appeals to the most racist groups in the electorate. Johnston concentrates on the parts of the story he can tell best. But what Johnston tells, tells us enough. show less

This is brilliantly conveyed research on the many layers of corruption that Trump has brazenly wrapped himself in, revealing a narcissistic character that, on the one hand, is rather fascinating (in a tragic Shakespearean kind of way) and wildly frightening (in a President-elect kind of way). I understand the urge to "investigate" Trump, but Johnston reminds us that there are more than enough conviction-worthy facts already known.