a Ziploc bag filled with $4,000 worth of $2 bills (“People always remember you if you tip with $2 bills,” he said), and departed a friend’s loft on East 20th Street.
Don’t feed the Trump
Trump is a troll
The greatest troll of all time is Donald Trump.
I say that with some certainty even though trolling has probably existed as long as the human species. Never before have trolls had the awesome tool of the Internet to support their craft.
The Internet is to trolling what airplanes are to global travel.
Sure you could do it before, but now you can do it so much better.
And the tools for trolling keep getting better.
Mail lists were the ultimate sporting venue for trolls, because they gave everyone an equal voice. At any time a troll could halt the discussion and make everyone pay attention to him. Without moderation all mail lists become dominated by trolls, eventually. This is a fundamental rule of Internet discourse.
Twitter makes trolling a little more difficult because people have to follow you before they get your announcements. But if you can get people to RT you, then you’ll get people to see your stuff even if they don’t follow you.
One way to get people to RT is to say something they strongly agree with. An even better way to get RTs is to say something outrageous, so people can express their rage. Trump uses the latter form, more effectively than anyone before him.
.. On day two, he says he was just being sarcastic. Now we can debate whether or not that’s possible. On day three, who knows what he says, but it’ll be good. Etc etc. As long as we feed him, he keeps escalating the outrage, and we keep carrying his message, crowding out any other ideas. It’s like a media filibuster. No one gets to say anything unless it’s about what the troll just said.
.. the only people who care about your condemnation are people who are already totally stoked with outrage about the troll. The people who love him love the fact that he tweaks you. Even people who hate him are fascinated by your rage. It’s like stopping to look at a terrible car accident. Or a beheading by a terrorist. It’s hard to avert your eyes.
.. In sailing, it doesn’t matter which way the wind is blowing, you can always adjust your sails to move in the direction you want to go. Same with trolls. As long as they’re controlling you it doesn’t matter if you like them or not. The only thing that makes a troll happy is attention. They probably prefer it if you hate them.
.. Now imagine what would happen if instead of erupting in rage over his comments about Russian spying, we had simply said Oh there’s Trump doing his thing. It’s not news.
.. If it came from him, it’s trolling. If it’s news about him that he didn’t control, it’s fair game.
.. Delighting his fans, and most important — crowding out any other ideas and messages that need to get out. And in the past that has meant he wins.
a16z Podcast: On Productivity, Immigration, Trump, and Media
When Ted Cruz was leading in Iowa, Trump called for a ban on Muslim travel. (34 min)
Trump is a reality television star who has learned the lessons of TV.
Donald Trump’s most enduring — and unbefitting — trait
I’ve been covering Donald Trump off and on for more than 25 years, and what has always struck me is his lack of impulse control. It was his biggest problem when I first started dealing with him in the 1980s, and it’s his biggest problem now.
.. He ended up presiding over six — count ’em, six — bankruptcies because he kept making business decisions with his gut rather than with his brain.
.. Whether we’re talking about the Bay of Pigs (when John F. Kennedy resisted the hawkish instincts of his advisers who wanted to escalate) or the bugging of Democratic headquarters (which Richard Nixon could not resist) or the invasion of Iraq (need I say more?), presidents are bombarded with chances to overreact, and their overreactions can have catastrophic consequences for our country and the world.
.. Lack of impulse control has enormously benefited his presidential campaign. It distinguished him among the
17 initial Republican candidates, allowed him to dominate cable TV news and got him massive coverage in other media as well... “The Apprentice” was a pivotal event for Trump. It made him into a truly national figure, and he says the show paid him more than $200 million during its run.
.. The crazier Trump acted on “The Apprentice,” the more he carried on and humiliated people and declared “you’re fired,” the better TV it was. So whatever instincts he might have had to develop self-control were vitiated by “The Apprentice.”
.. But there’s a downside — a huge one — to his behavior, and it’s starting to become apparent now. He’s incredibly reckless. He seems to sometimes license his name to questionable enterprises, without doing much (if any) research into them. He makes enemies he doesn’t have to make because he baits people and institutions that don’t bow down to him, and he reacts badly when organizations such as The Post (which he has banned from his campaign events) challenge him by asking perfectly reasonable questions.
.. I wonder how many middle and lower-middle types had no idea about what Trump U was up to until recently and didn’t know how Trump has stiffed all sorts of contractors over the years, resulting in lots of blue-collar workers losing their jobs. I wonder whether this knowledge will erode the faith of some Trump fans.
.. Section 469 forbids taxpayers from using these losses to offset other income unless more than half their business activities (at least 750 hours a year) involve developing or managing real estate. Not licensing their name to golf courses or making speeches or being on TV reality shows.
We ought to see if Trump has used Section 469 to shelter income in past years. And especially last year, when he was running for president.
.. Hussein amazingly managed to remain in power despite losing the 1991 Gulf War to the United States and its allies, who threw him out of Kuwait and inflicted immense losses on his military. It looked like Hussein was absolutely finished. But he emerged from the Gulf War in control of Iraq, managed to slaughter his internal opponents and ended up presiding over a country that had the world’s fourth-largest army.