8 Less Known Trump Stories That’d Derail Any Other Campaign
During an election cycle in which the Republican nominee has urged voters to check out a nonexistent sex tape, accused Mexico of sending us rapists, slyly hinted that Second Amendment fans should "handle" his opponent (with their guns), and -- oh yeah -- admitted to being a zealous "pussy"-grabber, it's easy to forget that those horrific moments were only the tip of the shit-stained iceberg that's been the Trump campaign. Funny story: Trump's own staff wanted to hire a private investigator to get a heads up on this stuff ahead of time, and Trump was too cheap / arrogant / busy planning his next gaffes to pay for it.
Dig deeper, and there are so, so, so, so many more times when Donald Trump has proven himself to be a festering wart on the genitals of America ...
Trump Discontinued Medical Coverage For His Own Disabled Nephew
When Donald Trump paraded his five children from three different wives in front of America, he was hoping we'd all see a family man underneath the shitshow facade we're used to getting from him. In fact, Trump is so concerned about the well-being of children everywhere that he's made affordable childcare a centerpiece of his campaign. There's one kid you shouldn't ask about how Trump actually feels about children, however -- his nephew with cerebral palsy. Oh wait, you can't, for legal reasons.
Let's back up. Donald Trump had a big brother who died at the young age of 43 in 1981. Freddy Trump wasn't as into real estate as his little brother or dad, and by the time he died, he had a reputation as an alcoholic, which some people think is why Donald himself is a vigorous teetotaler -- he watched his big brother destroy himself with booze. Before Freddy died, he got married and had two kids, Mary and Fred III. Those two kids grew up, got married (not to each other), started their own families, and moved on with life.
Then something weird happened. Somewhere along the way, Donald Trump's father decided to exclude his dead alcoholic son's heirs from his will. So when Fred Trump Sr. died in 1999, the millions of dollars he left behind were divided among Donald and his two living siblings -- everyone in Freddy's family was cut out of the inheritance. Specifically, Donald Trump helped his father draft a will which divided "at least $20 million, among his children and their descendants, 'other than my son Fred C. Trump Jr.'"
Now, we know what people will do for a fiver to buy a pack of smokes. Imagine what people will do for their cut of a multi-million-dollar windfall. Now imagine what those people would do if they had a newborn child who had just been diagnosed with cerebral palsy -- which is exactly what had happened to Fred III. Fred and his sister sued the family for their share of the estate, because who wouldn't? Their grandfather was a 93-year-old man who suffered from Alzheimer's, and the whole will seemed fishy. When Donald Trump found out his nephew was suing over the will, he did something amazing. He cut off his nephew's baby son's medical benefits, claiming he "was angry because they sued."
At this point, it's hard to not imagine Uncle Donald as Donald Duck having a temper tantrum, but the kind of temper tantrum that could maybe kill a living, breathing child. Eventually, Uncle Donald and Freddy's kids settled up, and it looks like Donald's nephew is well-provided-for and doing fine. Still, who cuts off medical care for a disabled baby out of anger?
Trump Chronically Used Tragedy As An Opportunity To Brag About Himself
Not only did Trump use his father's death to further his children's finances, but he also used that very funeral to further his brand, because of course he did. Rather than speaking about his fond memories of his father, or even finally letting loose all his pent-up childhood angst, Trump told a room full of grieving friends and family all about how his father had always believed in him. Which sounds sweet -- the bond of father and son and all that -- but Trump took it even farther than that. Trump made sure everyone knew how many times HE, Donald Trump, had beaten the odds. Other family members shared warm memories of the guy who built the family fortune. Trump's eulogy to his father included a mention of the New York Times article on his latest hotel.
The Trump family aren't the only victims of Donald's callousness. You might recognize September 11, 2001 as the date the World Trade Center towers collapsed. It's also the day Trump took to network television to remind the world that his building was now the tallest, making a quick jab about the building's temporary status as second-tallest before the attack on the Twin Towers.
The interview continued, with Trump being asked what he would do in such a situation if he were president -- which is crazy relevant and kind of terrifying to think about, given his nasty reaction at the time. The interviewer chalked this up to "Trump being Trump," which seems like a rather quaint way to gloss over an incredibly narcissistic reaction to the deaths of thousands of people by fire and suffocation. If "boys will be boys" is now antiquated, "Trump being Trump" sure as hell doesn't cover it.
Trump Grinched The Fuck Out Of Christmas Before Evicting A Bunch Of People
In 1984, Trump wanted to expand his real estate worth by renovating one of his apartment buildings to create fancy (and pricey) condominiums. Unfortunately for Trump, the building already had residents, and most of those residents had been there for decades, which meant their super-affordable rents were grandfathered in. Naturally, a bunch of old people with little means to work and super-low rent weren't very keen on being kicked out of their homes, so they fought Trump every step of the way. Trump, of course, fought back.
He tied them up in frivolous lawsuits and appealed to the city to allow him to fill the empty apartments in the building with local homeless people. Which sounds nice on the surface, but was ultimately a tricky plan to harass the residents even further -- a plan the city thankfully failed to fall for. He also uglied up the building by covering the windows, and hired surly renovators. And yet the residents retained their spirit.
Christmas rolled around, and the tenants hoped to spruce up the lobby and cheer themselves up with a delicately decorated fir tree, and sought permission to have the tree erected. They were told they could display the tree if they signed an agreement stating they would take it back down if the tree infringed on anyone's religious rights. They were also told that their recent actions had left the management company feeling that there was a distinct lack of Christmas spirit in the building.
A convenient mix-up caused the management company's own maintenance crew to set up the tree before it was fully authorized, so the tree was ordered to be taken back down. Trump's doctor released a letter stating his heart remained the same size that year.
The Trump Game That Absolutely Endorses Racketeering
Donald Trump has a long list of branded endeavors. From water to steak, there is no noun he won't put his name on. Trump's urgent love of himself is so great that he expects the world must be yearning for an opportunity to live a day in the life of Trump, so he provided us with that opportunity, by gum. In 2004, Trump gifted us with Trump: The Game.
Upon opening the game, you are met with a letter written and signed by Trump which invites you to be chauffeured a mile in the mogul's shoes. The letter reminds us that it takes "brains to make millions," but making billions is another matter entirely. Making billions takes Trump.
What exactly is Trump in this context? A whole lot of illegal. The object of the game is to snatch up as much real estate as possible. Sadly, no Christmas tree thwarting is involved, but theft and tax evasion play key factors, so it evens itself out. When you roll the letter "T" on the dice (the only letter on the dice, the rest are numbers), you are allowed to steal an item from another player. That might seem like standard board game fare, minus the shoehorned shout-out to the mogul's moniker, but it's merely the beginning of a very morally ambiguous experience.
The game is essentially Monopoly with rampant illegal activity. When you are confronted with taxes, certain cards give you the power to force an opponent to pay them for you. You must pay your opponent a fee when you land on their property, but that cash doesn't come out of your own pocket -- you simply take the money directly out of the bank and hand it over to the other player. Bidding on available property is a bizarre process wherein any given player can be booted out of the game at any time thanks to the "You're Fired" card, which gives the bearer the ability to "fire" someone, or forbid them from bidding on property.
Real life doesn't allow you to fire your competitors, so we'll assume "You're fired" is code for "My hitman's little red dot is currently trained on your neck, goodnight."
The only way to get back into the bidding war after your unceremonious firing is to play the Donald card. You read that right. Trump's head is so far up his own geriatric derriere that the card that would immediately take precedence over all others is not even named "The Trump Card." It's the fucking Donald.
He Rewrote Punchlines To Improve His Status
Everyone knows you haven't really made it until a scathing, secretly honest comedy roast is held in your honor. Celebrities both fear and eagerly await the day their bitter rivals unfurl years of pent-up hatred in a moderately funny way in front of a room full of their peers for the entertainment of an equally unforgiving audience armed with pizza rolls and 140 characters of commentary. As painful as the petty jabs and snide remarks may be, the celebrity knows this is the ultimate display of success and takes it in stride. Except for Donald Trump, of course.
When Bob Saget's roast contained a few too many jokes at the expense of the Olsen twins, they were cut for brevity and (hopefully) tact. When tasteless jokes about the death of Paul Walker turned up in Justin Bieber's roast, those too were wisely cut. When a joke was pitched for Donald Trump's roast, claiming Trump escaped a post-apocalyptic wasteland of a world in his fictional 150,000-square-foot space station, Trump made sure the size was upped to 300,000 square feet.
According to the roast's writers, Trump did this again and again. Swapping out numbers for bigger ones, adding zeros, always concerned with the size of his make-believe wealth.
Trump's pet unicorn has two horns, and it's female.
This bravado carries itself through the majority of Trump's televised appearances. His recent stint as guest host of Saturday Night Live saw potshots taken at all of Trump's adversaries, some of whom received multiple attacks, all of them were petty. Sources conflict as to whether or not Trump had a hand in the writing of these skits, using the opportunity to dig at his rivals and cutting skits based on political motives. We might not know for sure, but his track record certainly leans one way.
Trump Demanded Permanent Access To A Fat Man On The Apprentice
It's pretty clear Trump has a distinct disdain for women, and that's putting it mildly. Many of his Apprentice crew members have spoken out about Trump's abhorrent behavior behind the scenes of the show. Unsurprisingly, when the cameras aren't rolling, Donald's treatment of women gets even worse. One staffer said that Trump would continually refer to women by their breast size, occasionally wondering if a woman had been consorting with her Aunt Flo when her boobs seemed to fluctuate in size. All with the microphone on, mind you, because Trump has zero fucks to give.
Trump isn't totally sexist, though. He discriminates against people's bodies regardless of their gender. In Trump's mind, bigger is always better. For women, that mostly applies to their bust size -- for men, this primitive line of thinking applies to their waistline. Donald Trump believes that audiences love themselves a fat guy, that they can't help but laugh at the hefty man's pain, and so he ensures that one is always around, according to another former crew member of The Apprentice. They claim that one contestant on the show was all sausage-fingered thumbs, but Donald refused to kick him off, maintaining that viewers would continue to watch the show to see the big guy's antics.
Trump Pretended To Be His Own Publicist To Brag About Himself
During the early days of Trump's career, reporters would receive phone calls from Trump's public relations team, John Barron and John Miller -- yes, both Johns -- extolling the virtues of their boss and good friend, Mr. Trump. After a while, reporters started to notice that not only were Barron and Miller a little too enthusiastic about their employer, but that they also sounded awfully alike. In fact, they sounded exactly like Donald himself. But that couldn't be right, could it? A real estate mogul millionaire pretending to be his own publicist / number-one fan?
That was right, because that is exactly what Donald Trump was doing.
Starting in the '70s and stretching to the '90s, Trump pretended to be both Johns to boast about himself to reporters and editors around New York. Trump posed as his own publicist off and on for 30 years, and denied the charade for just as long.
It wasn't hard for reporters to figure out what was up, despite Trump's refusal to admit to it. Trump would frequently slip into first-person narrative as he bragged that starlets were falling all over themselves for a chance to be with him, and claiming that he had multiple girlfriends at once. And even though Trump never owned up to using the name "Barron" when posing as his own representative, he also used the same name when leaving messages for his secret girlfriend, Marla Maples, when he sanctioned a TV movie after his persona, and oh, when he had a son with Melania.
Trump Won't Let Associates Talk About Him, For Life
You may have heard about the bizarre non-disclosure agreements Trump's campaign volunteers are all forced to sign. These agreements forbid his staffers from disparaging Trump or otherwise revealing unflattering information about the presidential candidate ever, for the rest of their lives. A clause was included which would forbid volunteers (aka free help) from allowing their employees to speak ill of Trump as well.
So picture a person who is so passionate about Donald Trump that they want to sacrifice free time to do grudge work on his behalf. Now imagine that this person is also so successful that he or she has employees. The volunteer is somehow expected to prevent their employees from EVER saying anything bad about this candidate, who is definitely speculating about the menstrual cycle of every woman in the room at any given point. And the volunteers are going to prevent their paid employees from talking shit about Trump through -- what? Sheer willpower? The nerve of this guy.
This, of course, is insane. And also illegal. It isn't likely that any of Trump's volunteers would continue to be held to these contracts forever, and there's nothing Trump could do to enforce them. Lawyers given the ability to peruse the documents were convinced the agreements couldn't be legally binding. And that puts these staffers miles ahead of the unfortunate women who fell into the boiling pit of hell tar that is marriage with Donald Trump.
Strong-arming supporters with too much free time may not be entirely possible, but when it comes to his ex-wives, Donald has an ace up his sleeve, and he isn't afraid to hit 'em where it hurts: their bank accounts. When Trump's ex-wife Ivana signed on to sit for an interview with Barbara Walters at the height of her 20/20 fame, Trump demanded that any reference to himself, their marriage, or divorce arrangements be left out of the show completely. The basis for the request was said to be a legal document signed by the couple a few years prior which forbade Ivana from revealing private or disparaging information about her time with Trump, despite the fact that this was a personal interview and Ivana's marriage was, in fact, a part of her personal life. Ivana and Walters ignored the shit out of Trump's insistence that the interview be dropped, so Trump straight-up refused to continue making his alimony payments, claiming the interview broke their contract.
Trump would fall back on this asshole tactic again when another ex-wife, Marla Maples, felt obligated to tell the world what they were dealing with when Trump started dropping hints that he may run for president in 1999. Once again, Trump angrily cited a contract forbidding Maples from revealing personal information about her time with Trump, announcing that he had withheld a payment from Maples in order to "teach her a lesson."
Maples took Trump to court over his bullshit, where Trump insisted that she had broken the terms of their contract. The judge rightly saw Trump's claims for the gibberish they were and threw him out on his ear, stating that Maples was free to talk as much trash as she wanted about her former husband. Which is inspiring, in a way. No matter who or where we are, be we glamorous Fifth Avenue trophy wives, dedicated political volunteers fighting for a cause, or simple readers of an online comedy website, we all have the legal freedom to talk shit about Donald Trump.
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