ENG 396a ~
Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal is yet another ‘how to’ guide of a wealthy man’s life. Franklin’s tone is more ‘matter of fact’ while Trump’s approach is cool as a breeze, and both of course are unapologetic. Each work illustrates their individual life experiences, and wise decision-making that leads to the illusive ‘American Dream’. Trump’s nonchalant attitude toward wealth is peppered with the deeds of good will, but there remains a façade within that casual tone that reveals the true nature of the beast. The Holiday Inn stock marks the harsh reality of business transactions. Just as Franklin’s interactions with Keimer would be gainful, this transaction for Trump is extremely profitable. Setting the wealth aside, how was it attained? Taking advantage of a weaker businessman, of course. Franklin’s victories were at times modest, but Trump did it smiling straight in the face of the enemy, the competitor. Mocking their incompetence in a way that is triumphant and demoralizing. Hoorah. Monopoly anyone?

Trump, like Franklin, strategically reveals the course of events in a mask of orderly fashion. In Trump’s day-planner narration he introduces the maneuverings towards Holiday Inn during a phone call with Alan Greenburg. He anticipates a few options, and is prepared for all of them, even selling off his shares, “If I did that today, I’d already be up about $7 million” (3). Fourteen days of trading, sitting on shares, like a shootout on some dusty road where nothing happens, psyching out the enemy for the pleasure of creating tension. Trump admits that he likes “seeing the lengths to which bad managements go to preserve what they call their independence—which really just means their jobs” (3). Incompetence should justly be dealt with. Go get ‘em “Rambo” (51).
The narration drifts off to promote Trump’s political connections, and then comes the Georgia widow’s tragedy, a little sports, a few projects, then Trump mentions a lawsuit stating that “Nowadays, if your name is Donald Trump, everyone in the world seems to want to sue you” (7). Taking away the strategic day-planner narration as an indicator of chronological accuracy, the sequence of stories here acts to diminish the importance of Holiday Inn stock ventures, hype up the good will aspects, then follow up with a pity party. This is a successful execution of events. The big news about Holiday Inn doesn’t climax until half the book later where the nature of the beast is revealed.

Turns out that Trump had a reason to ‘smoke out’, ‘buy out’, or ‘call out’ that management of Holiday Inn, and he made them grovel in debt before disarming. He hears from his “Ace” (2) that Holiday Inn has to borrow a ton of money to battle against a “potential hostile” (222). Trump sells the stock and makes a killing, “many millions of dollars” (223). He attempts an honest, passive, modesty to explain:
Looked at another way, I earned back from my Holiday Inn
stock much of the money I’d paid them just three months earlier
to buy their share of my casino in Atlantic City. (223)
So essentially, they tried to get in his house, his gold platted pistol gets rid of them, and he turns around and does the same thing to them. Only difference is that they have to weaken their position further by borrowing the means to get rid of him. This was Trump’s revenge under the guise of good business.
How will his consciousness sit? Trump is obviously an intelligent man who recognizes the church’s influence by characterizing “the cardinal” as “a businessman with great political instincts” (36). Trump is a true American who identifies “two of the all-time-great characters, Rocky and Rambo” as the work of “genius” (51). Yet for his Holiday Inn endeavors he learned “something even more valuable than money from the experience: a first-hand view of corporate management in America” (223).