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Title: Donald Trump's 'kinder, gentler' version: "an Ayn Rand fan"
Source:
USA Today
URL Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opini ... pick-politics-column/82899566/
Published: Apr 12, 2016
Author: Kirsten Powers
Post Date: 2016-04-12 14:14:37 by Hondo68
Keywords: dynamites a housing project, Howard Roark, The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
Views: 757
Comments: 2
Donald Trump's 'kinder, gentler' version: Kirsten Powers
Ayn Rand, the Russian-born American novelist, in Manhattan circa 1962. (AP Photo)
The Donald explains why politics is 'a crazy business' and why he never cries anymore.
Is Donald Trump about to make a pivot toward presidential?
In an hour-long interview Thursday in his New York office, Trump promised, “The time is going to be soon.”
Trump assured me that he is ready to “start building coalitions” at the right moment. “I’ll tell you what else is going to be soon. My whole life I’ve gotten along with people. ... People you see excoriating me on TV ... are calling my office wanting to get on the team. I actually asked a couple of them, ‘How can you do this after what you said?’ And they said, ‘No problem.’ ”
At this, The Donald seemed hurt to discover the dirtiness of politics.
“It’s a crazy business,” said the man who helped invent the lunatic asylum called reality TV.
Could he build coalitions with people who had wronged him? Could he, for example, see appointing Sen. Marco Rubio to a position in his administration?
“Yes. I like Marco Rubio. Yeah. I could,” he answered. As for a potential Rubio vice president: “There are people I have in mind in terms of vice president. I just haven’t told anybody names. ... I do like Marco. I do like (John) Kasich. … I like (Scott) Walker actually in a lot of ways. I hit him very hard. ... But I’ve always liked him. There are people I like, but I don’t think they like me because I have hit them hard.”
He seems to have forgiven Rubio for his cringe-inducing attempt at stand-up comedy at Trump’s expense. “He made a mistake,” Trump said. “He became Don Rickles for about four days, and then I became worse than Don Rickles.”
I told Trump about a Hillary Clinton-supporting family member who, after watching a Trump speech, noted to me that he'd be very hard to beat. Everything Trump says — opposition to the Iraq War, criticism of trade and criticism of Washington — is right, she told me.
So, why not just stick to substance and stop with the other stuff?
“Maybe the other stuff is part of it,” Trump said. “If I didn’t do it, then you might not be talking to me about a race where we are leading substantially.” Or as Trump told Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa on March 31: “Sometimes you have to break an egg. ... I think I have two more left.”
Fair enough. But this attitude underscores the problem for the Republican establishment. A conciliatory Trump — if such a man exists — is predicated on him securing the presidential nomination if he has the most delegates. When asked about the possibility of a contested convention, Trump mused darkly, “I wouldn’t be happy about it.” He added, “The nicest thing that will happen — the minimal — is that if I leave, all those people are gone, and the Republicans will go down to one of the great defeats in history.
This kind of tough-guy talk is typical of Trump. But I wondered, perhaps he could see that vulnerability is also important for leadership? “No. I don’t love to see leaders who sit back and cry. We’ve seen some of them.” Crying is fine for other people, Trump told me, but it’s not something he has done since he was a child.
Trump described himself as an Ayn Rand fan. He said of her novel The Fountainhead, “It relates to business (and) beauty (and) life and inner emotions. That book relates to ... everything.” He identified with Howard Roark, the novel's idealistic protagonist who designs skyscrapers and rages against the establishment.
When I pointed out that The Fountainhead is in a way about the tyranny of groupthink, Trump sat up and said, “That’s what is happening here.” He then recounted a call he received from a liberal journalist: “How does it feel to have done what you have done? I said what have I done. He said nobody ever in the history of this country has done what you have done. And I said, well, if I lose, then no big deal. And he said no, no, if you lose, it doesn’t matter because this will be talked about forever.
"And I said it will be talked about more if I win.”
Poster Comment:
– Donald Trump says he identifies with Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.” He praised the novel and its protagonist in a broader interview with USA Today that posted yesterday. “It relates to business, beauty, life and inner emotions. That book relates to ... everything,” the GOP front-runner told the paper. Columnist Kirsten Powers writes that she pointed out that “The Fountainhead” is “in a way about the tyranny of groupthink.” Trump reportedly sat up and told her, “That’s what is happening here.”
For those who haven't read the book since high school, Roark is an architect who dynamites a housing project he designed because he is angry about changes that others made to his blueprints. He’s then put on trial for arson, but a jury acquits him after he delivers an eloquent speech about the need to always stay true to one’s self. Gary Cooper delivered the courtroom monologue in the 1949 film adaptation:
Bottom line, Roark is a self-centered individualist who steadfastly refuses to submit to the will of others. “He is presented as the author's version of an ideal man — one who embodies the virtues of Rand's objectivist philosophy,” the CliffNotes character analysis explains. “Roark is an example of free will — the theory that an individual has the power, by virtue of the choices he makes, to control the outcome of his own life. A man's thinking and values are not controlled by God or the fates or society or any external factor — but solely by his own choice.”
Is The Donald threatening to blow up the Republican Party if he’s spurned in Cleveland? He almost certainly has not thought through the implications of publicly identifying with Roark and embracing objectivism. But it’s nonetheless another revealing window into his psyche.(1 image)
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He added, “The nicest thing that will happen — the minimal — is that if I leave, all those people are gone, and the Republicans will go down to one of the great defeats in history.
There you have it.
Yet another threat to burn the party down if he isn't the nominee, even if he doesn't qualify.
#2. To: hondo68 (#0)
Trump described himself as an Ayn Rand fan.
Trump apparently didn't notice how the D's tarred the GOP (and Romney) as a bunch of Ayn Rand fanatics in the last two election cycles.
He really does live in his insular little Manhattan tycoon bubble.
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