Wayne Barrett, a reporter for the Village Voice once upon a time — in 1992 — wrote an extensive biography of Donald Trump. Nestled among many other fascinating nuggets of reporting about Trump’s life is something, a rare unguarded moment, that might cast a ray of light on the inner workings of a complicated mind.
Consider if you will:
“What are your goals?” he [Trump] was once asked in a television interview when he was at the peak of his success. “Goals?” he repeated, apparently taken aback by this foreign concept, unable to imagine a sense of purpose grander than a scorecard. “You keep winning and you win and you win,” he said in the midst of the crisis, reflecting on his better days. “You keep hitting and hitting. And then somehow it doesn’t mean as much as it used to.” Donald liked to recall his favorite “Twilight Zone” episode, which featured a venal man who died in an accident, was offered any wish he wanted, and declared: “I want to win, win, win. Everything I want. I went to get. I want to get the most beautiful women. I want to get the beautiful this and that. I want to never lose again.” Then, as Donald recounted the story, the man was shown playing pool, winning every time. “Everything he did, he won,” said Donald, until the godlike figure who’d granted his wish came back to the man. “And the man said, ‘If this is Heaven, let me go to Hell.’ And the person said, ‘You are in Hell.’” (HarperCollins, pp. 31-32)
We know a lot about Donald Trump. He is an exceptionally open book. His pattern of taking extraordinary risks emerges again and again.
It is more consistent with what we know about Donald Trump — to imagine him heightening the risk rather than preparing to exit the race.
Perhaps Trump’s sewing of chaos last week appears to him a path out of a Hell of “winning every time.” Perhaps he seeks the Heaven of legitimately winning against the odds rather than by virtue of having drawn an inside straight from a stacked deck.
Consider if you will…
Ralph Benko, internationally published weekly columnist, co-author of The 21st Century Gold Standard, lead co-editor of the Gerald Malsbary translation from Latin to English of Copernicus’s Essay on Money, is American Principles Project’s Senior Advisor, Economics.
