The common man and Donald Trump

“He’s a genius — absolute genius,” Rudy Giuliani said on ABC’s-This Week. “This was a perfectly legal application of the tax code, and he would’ve been a fool not to take advantage of it.”

Supposedly, and since he hasn’t released his tax returns I have had to add “supposedly”, Donald J. Trump, “may” not have paid taxes for as many as 18 years after declaring a $916 million loss on his 1995 returns. Let that number sink in for a minute, $916,000,000.00, just a little short of a billion dollars. Now the annual average household income in the United States is roughly $54,000.00. So how many households does $916,000,000.00 represent? Almost 17,000.

I do not dispute Rudy Giuliani’s comment that what Trump did was a “perfectly legal application of the tax code”. But here is the question that the “common man” needs to be asking himself, how did this “genius” lose $916,000,000.00 and how many other lives did that $916,000,000.00 disrupt and effect? I can promise you this captain didn’t go down with his ship alone.

I watch the Trump’s rally’s, I see the white, male, middle-age, working-class faces in his crowds. I hear the chants of “build that wall” and “lock her up” and still, I don’t get it. What does Joe six-pack have in common with Donald J. Trump? A man who married a Czechoslovakia fashion model (Ivana Zelníčková), had an affair, dumped her after fifteen years of marriage and married an actress (Marla Maples) twenty years his junior, dumped her after four years of marriage and married a Slovenian-born fashion model (Melania Knauss) twenty-five years younger than he is. What is Joe relating too?

Yup, I can just picture Donald and Melania hanging out on Joe six-packs deck grilling bratwurst, drinking Budweiser and watching Michigan and Ohio State on the gridiron in denim Bermuda shorts and a mustard stained t-shirt. Or at the Darlington Raceway, attending the The Bojangles’ Southern 500 yelling “Earnhardt” each time (367) Dale Jr. passes him with 60,000 of his closest friends (except for Jeff Gordon fans, no wait, Trump would be a Gordon fan). Can’t you?

The “common man” views Donald Trump as a catalyst of change, a rebel, anti-establishment. A man who speaks his mind and suffers the consequences later, $916,000,000.00 later. Here is the thing, right now the only people who suffer when The Donald screws up are Donald and the small businesses that he cheats out of being paid (yes that happens and he is proud of it, remember he is a “genius”). The collateral damage from all of his bankruptcies and losses, though impressive, is small compared to 320 million Americans, you and I, who will be affected by one of his screw-ups.

I got to be honest, a Donald J. Trump presidency scares the absolute shit out of me. A man so paranoid, so egotistical that he stays up at night, “tweeting” to right some supposed wrong or slight. A man my grandfather would have characterize as someone whose “mouth is writing checks his ass can’t cash” . The problem is, if elected, it will be our ass, and our children’s having to cash those checks for him.

“I think I was born with the drive for success because I have a certain gene.” – Donald Trump