Reisman: Trump, the one-armed bandit of U.S. politics
After hearing that Donald Trump was running for president, I fished out my anatomically incorrect Trump talking doll that was buried under a pile of junk on my desk.
More than a toy, it is a fetishistic symbol for success worship as well as a reminder that a sucker is born every minute.
Press a button and the 12-inch figure is supposed to say, "You're fired," and other Trump catch phrases, but either the battery wore out or the internal voice mechanism broke a long time ago. Oddly, it doesn't resemble America's favorite billionaire huckster so much as it does Brian Williams, the disgraced TV anchorman who was "disappeared" by NBC for making things up.
Nevertheless, The Donald doll is outfitted in a blue suit and red necktie—the signature billionaire costume Trump wore at his big announcement Tuesday.
"Our country is in serious trouble," Trump said. "We don't have victories anymore. We used to have victories. We don't have them. When was the last time anybody saw us, let's say, beating China in a trade deal? They kill us. I beat China all the time."
People cheered at that, forgetting perhaps that Trump has been a prime beneficiary of cheap overseas labor.
When Trump last flirted with a presidential run four years ago, it was revealed that most of the Trump-brand merchandise—cufflinks, stuffed animals, golf hats, sweaters, neckties, tie clips, etc.—were made, well, you guessed it, in China. Trump labeled shirts were manufactured in Korea and Thailand.
The talking doll, which is still widely available on E Bay, wasn't mentioned. But the Stevenson Entertainment Group, the toy company that designed it, has its products manufactured in China. Full disclosure: I "pantsed" the little guy but could find no evidence that it was made in China or anywhere else for that matter.
You may recall that Trump threatened to run for governor last year, only to back out because the state Republicans wouldn't get rid of the competition, namely Rob Astorino, who was the eventual nominee.
Go figure. Now he is joining enough competing GOP presidential candidates to stage a creepy reality show where contestants lie, stab each other in the back and debase themselves before a huge national audience, something similar to "The Apprentice." Oh, that Trump!
His supposed entry into the 2016 presidential sweepstakes makes him the third candidate with Westchester ties—the others being Hillary Clinton and former Gov. George Pataki. Astorino issued official congratulatory messages to both Pataki and Clinton when they joined the fray, but the county executive was silent about Trump. (Trump donated $15,000 to an earlier Astorino campaign.)
Astorino's spokesman, Bill O'Reilly, said Wednesday that Astorino had a good relationship with Trump and wished him well, "but unlike George Pataki who has deep, deep Westchester roots, or Hillary Clinton, who lives here now, Mr. Trump is more associated with New York City."
That may be true. But neither Clinton nor Pataki own golf courses in Westchester. Unlike Trump, they don't have eyesore skyscrapers in New Rochelle and White Plains named after them.
And nobody ever put their "brand" on a phantom state park either. Trump has that dubious distinction, as evidenced by large green signs on the Taconic State Parkway heralding "Donald J. Trump State Park," a 436-acre expanse of woods overlapping Yorktown and Putnam Valley.
Trump donated the property in 2006 when he couldn't turn it into, you guessed it, a golf course. Only the park was never developed for public use. Four years later, the state closed it and 57 other parks and historic sites because of budget cuts.
Furious, Trump threatened to reclaim the land. He never did get it back, proving that he more than met his match when he decided to tangle with the stubborn bureaucrats who serve with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.
He might have more success with terrorists.
Trump has been a little coy on this subject. However, earlier this week he finally revealed how he will defeat ISIS: He will bomb them, surround them and then send in ExxonMobil to take their oil.
Sounds like a plan.
Up until now, his greatest success in fighting international terrorism was to inadvertently rent out his lush Bedford estate to Moammar Gadhafi. This was in 2009 when the Libyan dictator was in the neighborhood to give an incoherent speech to the United Nations.
Word got out, though. There was an uproar and the mad nomad from hell was sent packing along with the camel he rode in on. A couple of years later, Trump triumphantly claimed he "screwed" Gadhafi out of the rent money.
This more than proves that Trump is a true American product, durable yet cheap enough to have been made in China.
Email: preisman@lohud.com. Twitter: @philreisman