Donald Trump was born and raised in Queens, NY, in a very nice neighborhood and went to private schools. He was desperate to get out and take over the Manhattan real estate industry and be accepted by the elite society folk. He didn’t, and he wasn’t.
When he looked for a lawyer he didn’t look for a Roy Cohn, he got THE Roy Cohn. Accountants? How about Borgers, who his media empire just had to fire because the SEC has them on the hook for massive fraud. Choosing an accounting firm because of their willingness to commit fraud should be a major red flag for doing business with or buying this new meme stock.
I know another guy, born about fifteen years before Mr. Trump, in Ridgewood, Queens. Ridgewood was then a neighborhood of German immigrants. My grandfather fled the Hitler’s Brownshirts in the 1920’s, illegally entered the US where he met and married a Swiss emigré and they had my Dad, who grew up speaking only German in the home. Dad attended public grade school and Grover Cleveland High School and dreamed of being the first in his family to ever go to college.
He did that, played his fiddle and called square dances to get through college, got out of Queens and achieved a Masters and Doctorate, became a college president and nationally known non-profit leader. When he started his own consulting business at age sixty, his lawyer was a decent one who could help with client contracts and special projects, and his accountant was my Mom, who became a CPA having graduated college the same year I did. She graduated Summa cum Laude, me just Deans’ List. They raised four kids who do OK.
There are a lot of good people in Queens. People who live normal lives, teach school or work for the fire department, or own a local business. Their lives are lived on the up-and-up, crossing at the crosswalk, paying their taxes and raising families.
The so-called hush money trial going on in lower Manhattan the past few weeks is somewhat of a comeuppance for a guy who got too big for his britches and who, unfortunately, has never paid the price for a single misdeed. The details are so sordid and tawdry that it makes me blush, no, it makes me want to take a long, hot shower. A gentleman doesn’t ask a lady to dinner and answer the door in silk pyjamas. Ick. He doesn’t get undressed while she’s in the bathroom and block her from leaving, with his bodyguard outside the door, or seduce/coerce her into sleeping with him to get out of the trailer park. In the end, she didn’t even get dinner, just seventeen years of paying for one stupid mistake.
Lies, cheating, cover-ups, hush money. It’s no way to live a life. It’s no example to set for one’s children, and certainly not “qualities” that should define the president of the free (at least for now) world. Sad to say, I’m not shocked or surprised at Donald Trump’s panoply of nefarious deeds. I spent a couple of years in the NYC real estate industry (trade group) in the 80’s and no-one had anything good to say about Trump even back then. And these were his peers.
What hurts me, as a woman who grew up in the era of ERA and reproductive rights is the imperiousness, the intended cruelty, the derogation of ALL women by this deeply flawed, weak bully. To think that his misogynistic attitude has become mainstream and that all the rights women have earned are on the chopping block (abortion, contraception, interstate travel, privacy, no-fault divorce) even by the Supreme Court is unconscionable.
My German grandfather was an illegal immigrant, a fleer of Hitler’s upcoming dictatorship. My mother, a Canadian citizen and US Green Card holder for her last fifty years, has left me an option. I’d like to fight for my country and womens’ and voting rights but if we lose, I suppose I can learn all the lyrics to O Canada.
Just because I’m not shocked by Trump’s sordid deeds or gilt-encrusted life, doesn’t mean I understand or condone it. After all, what would my Auntie L say, the lady who reinforced etiquette and assured that I could walk across the room with a dictionary balanced upon my head? To simpler days… ahead. Cheers! Dee
Cooking with Dee 