Donald Trump’s Place
By KEVIN BAKER
JUNE 18, 2016
... He likes to portray himself as a major player as a developer, which must serve as a source of constant amusement to New York’s actual real estate dynasties, all those Dursts and Rudins, LeFraks and Zeckendorfs. Contrary to what many of his followers insist on believing, he is not a self-made man. Over the course of his career, Mr. Trump appears to have been more of a grifter than a businessman, as recent investigations by The Times and USA Today have shown, racking up four corporate bankruptcies while continually enriching himself at the expense of stockholders, contractors, employees and customers.
For that matter, he doesn’t seem to even come from anywhere very specific. Mr. Trump’s mannerisms and patois are ineluctably those of New York, something he plays up at times, but he came of age on the mean streets of Jamaica Estates, a wealthy, exclusive, lily-white enclave in Queens, and seems to most enjoy the ambience of his Florida retreat, Mar-a-Lago ...
If Donald Trump comes from anywhere it is the recent past, the go-go, out-of-control, disco Manhattan past of the 1980s, where champagne wishes and caviar dreams are always on the menu. It’s the same appeal behind Trump University and the general, relentless flogging of his name: You, too, can have all this, whatever this is ...
But the more urgent question is whether Mr. Trump can give up being Mr. Trump — if he can resist the demands from the vociferous, yearning crowd that hangs on his every word, which wants him to speak the hidden truths he claims to know. He seems unable to do anything other than give them what they want, egging on their anger against every protester who dares to appear, quickening the spiral of violence at his rallies ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/opinion/campaign-stops/donald-trumps-place.html