Everyone with and without kids has watched Nemo. It’s a great movie with plenty of adult comedy thrown in to make it enjoyable for the whole family. Like all kids movies, it shows a very idealistic way of the world, with a few exceptions.
One of those exceptions is a scene where the neighborhood bird comes to the dentist office to catch up with the fish on the day’s news. Suddenly it notices Nemo and realizes he’s a new addition to the tank. Nemo is introduced as being from the reef, the bird’s stumping groups. The bird responds “Sorry if I ever took a snap at you. Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta eat
Everyone has a role in our society. You can fault a bird for taking a “snap at you” as much as you can fault the Sun for raising in the morning. Certain things just are.
There is a bunch of talk about how Trump used a pseudonym in the 80s and 90s to lie himself into the Forbes list of the richest people. And how in turn, he used that lie to borrow Billions of dollars from banks.
On the surface, all blame goes to Trump. He’s a con. He’s a liar. He’s a disgrace. But very little blame is being directed to the people that deserve it most. The institutions that were supposed to have stopped him, but didn’t. After all, if “fish gotta swim…” Cons gotta con. Trump is a con artist. This is what he does. He sells himself as a Billionaire real estate businessman, when in fact we know that most of his millions come from licensing deals to other actual real estate businessman.
The clip that is running around in the Media-sphere at the moment is from a call to Jonathan Greenberg. In the early 80s, Greenberg was working as a reporter for Forbes. During this era, Trump called him pretending to be John Barron, an assistant to Trump. The call was to sell the idea that Trump’s father, Fred Trump, had transferred all of his assets to his Son. Thus Donald was much wealthier than originally thought by Forbes.
Listening to the audio, anyone will recognize “John Barron” as Trump. So how could he have fooled Greenberg?
Some critics wondered how stupid I had been not to have seen through this ruse. Yet even the most seasoned journalist could not have imagined a prominent figure doing what nobody had, as far as I am aware, dared to do before or since: impersonate a nonexistent spokesman on the phone to national media
Jonathan Greenberg
Some of you will be think, so what? This was a scam, or con, to get into Forbes. It’s just a magazine. And you’d be right, except he used the Forbes Richest People article to get banks to lend him money in return.
Aren’t banks supposed to check to make sure there is collateral? Yes, they are. But Trump again conned them not to. You’re likely to respond with, “well, that’s what they get for not doing their job“. To which I’d respond “and this the President we get for not doing ours”.
Trump is a con-artist, and as a con-man he’s going to con. It is OUR responsibility to recognize this and not fall into his traps. And, if, during any of his cons, he’s broken the law, he should be prosecuted to its full extend.
