Donald Trump's Ghostwriter Tells All
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
But Peter Thiel is backing Trump. Are people in the valley silently backing him? or is Thiel and odd one out?
I know HN is not the place for politics but this time I couldn't stop asking.
When the election is concluded it is essentially a certainty that Trump will have lost San Francisco and Silicon Valley by huge double digit margins.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/06/trump-trumps-wins-hi...
> As a result Trump has more votes than any candidate in Republican history.
Without context, that doesn't mean much.
Did he receive more votes than any primaries candidate in Republican history? Yes. But given the fact that these primaries received more votes than any other primaries, that loses significant power.
When you look at numbers, it's easy to pick the result that makes a specific case. That's what the author is doing here.
In fact, as an exercise, it's easy to make the opposite case - that he had extremely low support compared to previous primaries - by using the same numbers.
Look at the table right under that quote. In 2012, Romney had 10,048,134 votes, compared to Trump's 13,406,108. Advantage Trump? Well, if you take a look at the total numbers - 19,272,346 vs 30,335,825, respectively - it means Trump had 44% of the votes, while Romney had 52%.
Similar lower percentage numbers repeat when you compare him to other candidates from that table. He ended up winning by getting the right delegates, but not the number of votes.
So while saying "Trump has more votes than any candidate in Republican history" is correct, saying "Trump received the lowest winning percentage of votes from any Republican candidate since 2000" is also correct (the table stops at 2000 so not sure about other years).
So... not popular with elites.
Additionally, the record number of competitors all split the vote against him, leading to an early point where his competitors had -- mathematically -- a very difficult uphill battle.
I disagree with you that he has 'wide appeal'. I think he holds zealous appeal among the demagogic and ideological crowd, but I vehemently disagree that he has wide appeal.
Trump might be [insert something], but we should be worried by the control the media retain over mass opinion. People are genuinely angry at him, people feel a visceral disgust. But they can't grasp why and outsource fact checking and decision making to their favorite tv channel.
If you want to know more about candidates' policies, check out to their website:
Donald Trump https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions
Hillary Clinton https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/
Unfortunately, third party candidates are never taken that seriously. There are alternatives: http://www.bealibertarian.com/
"Just the other day, two years old, two and a half years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic."
An authority figure saying that on national TV probably caused and will result in many infections, many to children who cannot take vaccines due to medical reasons.
I see that he jumps to such quick conclusions on almost every topic instead of delving deeper into it.
So not one of them said discriminating against people based on their religion and attempting to disqualify public officials based on their ethnicity is disgusting and completely against the values of this country?
Perhaps your next task should be to surround yourself with people who don't think that way.
Trump’s efforts — which included a plan to house homeless people in the building in order to harass the tenants — ...
If this is true, then he is no more than a sociopath and a mafia boss.
> Trump denounced Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” near the end of the speech
Incorrect. The quote was, "They're not sending their best... They're sending people that have lots of problems... they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, their rapists."
Here's a good summary:
""Their" or "They're"? Which interpretation makes most sense...
"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best... [Mexico is] sending people that have lots of problems... [Mexico is sending] their rapists. And some [people Mexico sends], I assume, are good people."
OR
"When Mexico sends its people... [all Mexicans are] rapists. And some [rapists], I assume, are good people."
Anybody taking the second interpretation is just looking for an excuse to gin up fake outrage by intentionally misquoting Trump. Trump says enough outrageous things on his own. You don't need to make up new ones."
> Many Americans, however, saw Trump as a charmingly brash entrepreneur with an unfailing knack for business—a mythical image that Schwartz had helped create.
He helped market the image, sure, but it's not mythical. Trump has done really well in business, is definitely a brash entrepreneur, and probably has some charm to get so far.
> It wasn’t because of Trump’s ideology—Schwartz doubted that he had one.
Actually he's been fairly consistent on communicating issues such as other countries ripping off the US on the world stage. Here's an example that Schwartz should have known about back in 87: https://www.buzzfeed.com/ilanbenmeir/that-time-trump-spent-n...
> “It pays to trust your instincts,” Trump says in the book, adding that he was set to make hundreds of millions of dollars after buying a hotel that he hadn’t even walked through.
Yes, because to really ascertain the value of an asset you need to inspect it in person, it's not like people trade stocks of companies they've never visited, or buy commodities they've never touched...
Look, I get it. The point of the article is that the guy who ghost-wrote the Trump book doesn't like him. That is something I would like to hear more about as an undecided voter. But why throw in all the clearly biased bullshit above? If you need to lie about someone to further discount them - as the media has done repeatedly - maybe there's something there worth thinking about.
Edit - since I find this piece interesting I want to add more quotes and comments:
> “It was one of a number of times in my life when I was divided between the Devil and the higher side,” he told me. He had grown up in a bourgeois, intellectual family in Manhattan, and had attended élite private schools, but he was not as wealthy as some of his classmates—and, unlike many of them, he had no trust fund. “I grew up privileged,”
> “I was overly worried about money,” Schwartz said. “I thought money would keep me safe and secure—or that was my rationalization.”
Sounds like someone wanted to fit in with their elite Manhattan friends more than uphold their values. If the only way you can maintain your lifestyle is by "selling out", what does that say about your life?
BTW in the initial quote he says "They're" several times in a row, and then the last case "They're/their" rapists would either have to be a very odd piece of rhetoric, or most likely another "they're", in which case he actually, literally, did say "they're (all the people Mexico is "sending" us are) rapists".
I don't think this article meets the standards of the New Yorker -- it's really more of a People magazine article. I guess they had the exclusive, and they hate Trump so, whatever.
But complaining that the article doesn't parse out the exact and/or intended "meaning" of Trump's statements (which are well-known) is stretching it.
Some other race-baiting accusations never proven by Trump:
A Mexican-descended judge can't be impartial. Obama was born in Kenya. Millions of Muslims celebrated 9-11
These statements are absurd and rather than defend them, Trump and his camp change the subject and attack the media for questioning it.
http://adst.org/2015/04/a-flood-of-cuban-migrants-the-mariel...
> more than 125,000 Cubans fled their country and overwhelmed the shores of the U.S. Castro, whose façade of popularity and support was badly shaken, then upped the ante by allowing thousands of criminals and mental patients to leave as well. The Mariel boatlift was ended in October by mutual agreement between the U.S. and Cuba. However, South Florida had to contend with the repercussions for years to come, including a marked increase in crime (which, among other things, influenced the plot for the 1983 remake of the hyper-violent movie classic Scarface.)
Yes, other countries have gamed the immigration system before and could do so again (if they're not already currently).
Here's some more reason for concern:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...
> "in Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide are for illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens" and that "60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in Southern California" were illegal aliens, based on a "confidential California Department of Justice study."[194]
"The Mexican government drew fire from American advocates of tighter borders on Wednesday for publishing a pamphlet that instructs migrants how to safely enter the United States illegally and live there without being detected."
So, is that explicitly sending rapists and criminals? No. But it is providing information for criminals on how to evade US border patrol and illegally enter the United States.
> Howard Kaminsky, the former Random House head, laughed and said, “Trump didn’t write a postcard for us!”
Is that a lie? Because Trump says:
> I wrote the book. I wrote the book. It was my book.
One of them is lying.
The point of the article is not about whether Schwartz "likes" Trump. It's about truth versus fiction.
When two people's accounts are flatly contradictory, it doesn't mean that one of them is "biased." It means that one of them is wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter
> A ghostwriter is a person who is hired to author books, manuscripts, screenplays, speeches, articles, blog posts, stories, reports, whitepapers, or other texts that are officially credited to another person.
I'm certain this is not the first case of such an event taking place. This seems perfectly reasonable.
The examples I gave show clear bias and at times lies. However in reading further I'm seeing more interesting negative insights into Trump and his particular temperament.
If there's one thing I've learned this election cycle, it's that you really have to weigh the good with the bad. And like any entrepreneur I don't doubt Trump has made a lot of mistakes. But would the good outweigh the bad for American leadership? That is what I am still deciding.
Edit - would appreciate someone explaining why they think this comment is so unreasonable. It's a ghostwriter. The point is to give the other person credit and let them say they wrote it. Lots of others have done this before and are doing this now.
1) He never brings up Hillary's ghost writing of her book. (Hint: can you guess why?)
2) He never brings up Bill Clinton flying on the "lolita express" plane. (Hint: can you guess why?)
[1] http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/10/paris-hilton-is-better-a...
What he created and grew is undeniably better than where he started, even with loans from his father.
I believe he has a few misses like selling steaks, water, and maybe his university wasn't great, but jeez, a handful of failed ventures out of 515 subsidiaries?
This is actually his biggest strength in my eyes. Organizational management. Making things move, making things profitable, getting the right people into position to execute.
To quote my brother-in-law.
Besides, government is not a business.
I'm not entirely convinced of that.
Many government systems operate very similarly to a corporation.
The question is: What could have created without those loans? Without the connections from his father?
If it's true that he would have more material wealth if he had just invested that money in an index fund, I don't know that we can say he's a particularly great businessman. If we compare him to people that have created much more with much less, it's certainly difficult to argue he's in the same class as they are.
How many people in America that run small to medium sized businesses would have been able to do as well as he did if given the same resources? This is something that's hard to come to any sort of scientific answer on, but I imagine the number would be quite high, and I don't think that they would all be qualified to be president.
As a voter I'm comparing him and his managerial expertise with Clinton. I weigh the ability to manage an organization very high when it comes to who I'd want running the country (which in a lot of ways functions like a large organization).
Clinton has not managed anything of note, except an incredibly wasteful charity: https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Clinton-Foundation-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack
> With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans! Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they'd go kill some Americans?! What difference, at this point, does it make?!
Here is a taste about what the FBI has to say about Clinton's emails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBLrEkPhMCQ
People needlessly died on her watch, she let classified materials get out, and she tried covering up for it too.
Is "Mexico is sending us their rapists" that much better? Instead of a plainly racist remark, it's a xenophobic conspiracy theory that plays on Americans' fears, with no evidence to back it up. Seems like you're really grasping at straws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...
> "in Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide are for illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens" and that "60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in Southern California" were illegal aliens, based on a "confidential California Department of Justice study."[194]
edit - and in case it's not clear, where do you think the vast majority of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles are coming from?
It might be true that a disproportionate number of outstanding warrants in LA are for illegal immigrants. Trump could have stated that, but he didn't. He said something completely different. He's inept (can't keep facts straight), or inarticulate (can't express facts), or he's inciting xenophobia by purposefully distorting the truth. None of those are good qualities.
Yes legal immigrants - the good ones that we vet and choose, i.e. the best of the best from the countries of which they come - don't commit much crime.
That's how it should be. And that's the type of immigration system we should aim to maintain.
How the media manages to conflate legal with illegal immigrants has been so incredibly frustrating this election cycle.
Also LA is not the only city. It's a nation-wide problem: http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/08/08/illegal-a...
There is a sizeable crowd out there that believes that "fake but accurate" is an acceptable strategy to get what they want.