Steve Burke of Comcast, NBC’s president Bob Greenblatt, and Paul Telegdy, head of reality television, are great guys, and my relationship with all of them has been an amazing experience. I’m so glad we settled our litigation, and life goes on.
My lawsuit against Univision continues though, and at some point I expect to win a lot of money from them. They broke a contract and for that they must pay. It’s sad because I had such a great liking for the two top executives, Randy Falco and Beau Ferrari. Who knows? At some point we’ll probably have that relationship again.
The publicity about severing ties those first few weeks was relentless: ESPN BREAKS TIES WITH TRUMP—even though I never had a deal with ESPN. They were using my golf course on the Pacific Ocean, Trump National Los Angeles, for a golf outing. NASCAR CUTS ALL TIES WITH TRUMP—but I had no ties with NASCAR, they were renting a ballroom at Trump National Doral for their annual banquet. And, in fact, I kept their substantial deposits and will rent those places to someone else—hopefully for more money.
Things have calmed down and people are now giving me great credit for raising the problem of illegal immigration. I made that issue so important because it is so important to the future of America. I wasn’t surprised it caused a lot of problems. Most politicians don’t want to get too close to something that controversial. I don’t care. I learned how to be direct, how to be honest, and how to stand up for my beliefs from my father.
Fred Trump, my wonderful, tough but loving father, built, owned, and managed buildings in Queens and Brooklyn. He made enough money to just sit back and relax, but that wasn’t who he was. Even on weekends he’d be walking through a building, a house, or a construction site. If the halls were dirty or a bulb was out, the people working there would know about it. My father wasn’t overly concerned with hurting someone’s feelings—he wanted the floors to be cleaned or, as he would often say, in “mint condition.” If the person responsible couldn’t keep them clean, he was gone. My father believed he had an obligation to his tenants. His motto was simple: You do your job, you keep your job. Do it well, you get a better job. That always made sense to me.
Unfortunately, politics doesn’t work that way. In politics, once someone gets elected, it’s tough to get them out. There’s no motivation to try to get anything done. If the American public had any idea what really goes on, they’d be much angrier than they are already. Congress’s approval rating would be even lower than it is now. Career politicians like it this way; being a politician is their career. I know many of them; believe me, they couldn’t get a job in private industry. They don’t want anyone taking away their great pension plan and health benefits—that you are paying for.
The special interests and lobbyists also like it this way. They’re earning a lot of money selling influence—and giving away money is a lot easier than cleaning floors. Believe me, I know how it works, I’ve made a lot of campaign contributions.
I’m not taking a penny from those people. I’m paying my own way. So the old rules don’t apply to me—and those people who benefit from those rules don’t know how to react. At first they hoped if they ignored me I would go away. The American people certainly proved them wrong. They love the fact that someone is finally standing up for their interests!
They couldn’t ignore me, so they started attacking me. These veteran politicians looked for the place I was most vulnerable—which is why they attacked my hair, which is mine, by the way. They showed a lot of courage attacking my hair; this resulted in what might be the strangest political headline ever written when NBC News reported: TRUMP DEFENDS HAIR, ATTACKS MEDIA AT CAMPAIGN RALLY!
Recently though, they have been claiming I haven’t put out enough specifics. There’s a good reason for this, and it fits perfectly with my overall philosophy of leadership: Many of our problems, caused by years of stupid decisions or no decisions at all, have grown into a huge mess. If I could wave a magic wand and fix them, I’d do it. But there are a lot of different voices—and interests—that have to be considered when working toward solutions. This involves getting people into a room and negotiating compromises until everyone walks out of that room on the same page.
No one likes to compromise. Believe me, I will never compromise on the basic principles I’m discussing in this book. Yet every party to a decision needs to feel his position is understood. The hardest part of putting up a building is getting the city officials, the city council, the environmentalists, local zoning boards, and the ever-critical media to agree that this was an acceptable project. Then we have to bring in the banks, the contractors, and the unions to make sure the project is financially feasible.
If I’d said at the beginning, “This is exactly the way we’re going to construct this building,” the headlines would have announced: MAJOR OPPOSITION TO NEW TRUMP PROJECT! Nothing would get done.
The same principles apply to management of the federal government. Congress can’t pass a budget because no one knows how to negotiate with the various interests involved in funding our government. Most of the time Congress simply accepts last year’s spending, which was a continuation of the previous year’s spending. That is followed by an agreement on an emergency temporary stopgap measure. There is no final resolution, so the same broken process is repeated year after year.
We need to find the best people, including experts in various fields and economists, as well as congressional leaders to provide perspective and determine which programs are working and should be kept or expanded, which programs should be cut, and what new programs might be added to deal with the changing world. Career politicians always claim to have these answers—but how is that possible when they haven’t properly analyzed the situation?
A great leader has to be flexible, holding his ground on the major principles but finding room for compromises that can bring people together. A great leader has to be savvy at negotiations so we don’t drown every bill in pork barrel bridges to nowhere. I know how to stand my ground—but I also know that Republicans and Democrats need to find common ground to stand on as well.
We need to see more real achievements in the first 100 days of the next administration than we’ve seen in the seven years of the Obama presidency. Washington needs to get moving in the right direction again. Hopefully you will understand that is more important than all the wonky details of grand plans that will never be enacted.
And by the way, I have outlined plenty of policy initiatives. This is not “the politics of hope.” This is “the politics of reality,” which only a strong businessman like me can develop.
Another favorite gimmick my opponents use to attack my ideas is to claim I’m not a conservative, or not even a Republican. Or worse, I’m not a politician! They claim this makes it impossible for me to get things done in Washington.
I’ve got news for them: Washington doesn’t work.
Ironically, it was this type of criticism that helped my ideas attract attention and gain popularity in the first place. The contrast reminded Americans what they really think of career politicians.
As for being a Republican and conservative, let me tell you a story about how our political system really works. In May 2015 the president of a major conservative advocacy group, the Club for Growth, came up to my office in Trump Tower. He seemed like a very nice, reasonable guy. During that meeting he said some very complimentary things about my business success and told me that people like me were needed in Washington.