Former president Donald Trump doesn\u2019t spend much time talking to contentious interviewers. He does a lot of interviews with right-wing media outlets and podcasts with hosts unlikely to press him on the vagueness of his tariffs-and-immigration campaign platform. He knows, as does everyone else, that he simply needs his steady, supportive segment of the electorate to turn out just enough in just enough places to win.<\/p>\n
That impulse was very much on display during his conversation with Bloomberg News editor in chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday. The conversation was contentious, with Micklethwait \u2014 quite understandably! \u2014 pressing Trump on the details of his economic proposals, proposals that are viewed by economists as inflationary and debt-increasing.<\/p>\n
But this should be an environment where Trump thrives, right? This is Businessman Trump, the guy from \u201cThe Apprentice\u201d (the TV show, not the movie), the one who knows how to make money and pledged to bring that know-how to the whole country. How is it that his conversation with Micklethwait descended into bluster and name-calling, a reversion to his campaign rally habit of doing little but insisting that he would go after a loosely defined group of enemies?<\/p>\n
Well, because Trump is Politician Trump, not Businessman Trump \u2014 if he was ever the latter at all.<\/p>\n
Among other things, Micklethwait pressed the former president on his age. This was an issue that had worked very effectively for Trump\u2019s campaign when he was running against President Joe Biden earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve just said it. You don\u2019t do old,\u201d Micklethwait began. He was referring to Trump\u2019s assertion that, when it comes to Supreme Court justices, \u201conly stupid people put old\u201d people on the bench because \u201cthey\u2019re there for two years or three years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou own and run businesses,\u201d Micklethwait continued. \u201cWould you appoint a CEO who was 78, who didn\u2019t give you a medical \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I would,\u201d Trump jumped in. \u201cDepends on \u2014 people like Biden who\u2019s in bad shape? I wouldn\u2019t appoint him. He\u2019s 81 or 82.\u201d Trump went on to say that \u201csome of the smartest people I know\u201d were older.<\/p>\n
He used the example of Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot and a political ally of the former president\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just as sharp, mentally \u2014 he\u2019s just as sharp as he ever was,\u201d Trump said. \u201cHe\u2019s 95.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, of course, he\u2019s also not the CEO of Home Depot anymore. That\u2019s Edward Decker, who\u2019s 61.<\/p>\n
In fact, an analysis of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies conducted this year by Madison Trust Company shows that only six of them are older than Trump. Only 1 in 20 is age 70 or older. The average age of those CEOs is just under 60.<\/p>\n
The oldest on the list is Warren Buffett, 94 \u2014 certainly an exceptional business leader, but also certainly an exception in his longevity.<\/p>\n
Another element of Micklethwait\u2019s question is worth picking out, though: the idea that Trump himself is a business success.<\/p>\n
The primary company Trump currently owns is the Trump Organization, which is not is not exactly a world-beater in the real estate industry. It owns a lot of property, but revenue from commercial leasing has plunged. Profits at Mar-a-Lago have soared, but that\u2019s in part because of the premium being paid for access to the former president. The most valuable element of Trump\u2019s personal portfolio, according to Forbes, is the parent company for Truth Social, an entity that is understood to be wildly overvalued. His supporters nonetheless buy shares in part as a demonstration of fealty.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s existence in the world of business is by now almost entirely dependent on his cult of personality. His efforts at generating cash look more like those of a popular celebrity than a business whiz: lots of cheap, often tacky stuff plastered with his name and signifiers of his presidency and political ambitions.<\/p>\n
To some extent, this has long been Trump\u2019s approach. \u201cThe Apprentice\u201d was a reality show that constructed an alternate reality in which Trump was a business savant, rather than the inheritor of his father\u2019s business and wealth, or someone whose business empire was largely about licensing his last name. This year, one of the show\u2019s producers wrote a lengthy reminiscence about the show, revealing how NBC worked both to plaster over his crumbling real estate empire and to bolster the perception of Trump\u2019s business acumen.<\/p>\n
This is why Trump stumbled in his interview with Micklethwait, a venue that should theoretically have been one where he excelled. It\u2019s why he similarly faltered at the Economic Club of New York last month. In 2016, he ran as the businessman who would bring a fresh perspective to politics. Eight years later, he\u2019s running as a proto-authoritarian politician whose perspective on business is \u201cit\u2019ll be fine.\u201d When asked about the economy, he\u2019s running as the guy who was president from January 2017 to March 2020.<\/p>\n
The subtext to Micklethwait\u2019s question about Trump\u2019s age was that perhaps it was time for Trump to head out to pasture, that someone his age was a risk as a business leader and therefore as a political leader. When Trump responded that people in their 70s could be perfectly competent leaders, Micklethwait chuckled that it was \u201cstrange that you didn\u2019t bring this up when you were running against Joe Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I never attacked him for his age. In fact, I used to defend him and his age,\u201d Trump replied. \u201cI attacked him for his lack of competence.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s some truth to this. Beyond rendering him \u201cSleepy Joe,\u201d which is certainly not subtle, Trump \u2014 no doubt aware he was holding a rock in a glass house \u2014 did often suggest that Biden\u2019s issue wasn\u2019t his age but his capacity. (Trump\u2019s campaign was not as restrained.)<\/p>\n
The challenge the candidate faces at the moment is that his competence is starting to draw its own scrutiny. The conversation with Micklethwait didn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Former president Donald Trump doesn\u2019t spend much time talking to contentious interviewers. He does a lot of interviews with right-wing media outlets and podcasts with hosts unlikely to press him on the vagueness of his tariffs-and-immigration campaign platform. He knows, as does everyone else, that he simply needs his steady, supportive segment of the electorate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}