After mouthing off about running for president since 1998, the mighty blowhard Donald Trump announced on Monday that he is actually running for president. It says here that he’s going to do well. Trump has a blunt arrogance that will sit well with the Tea Partying, Sarah Palin wing of the Republican party. He’s rich, which as we all know, buys forgiveness for a lot of errors. He’s a well-known celebrity rolling with a crowd of midgets. He doesn’t play by the rules, which will serve him well on offense, and he has enough swagger to help him keep his poise when his rivals try to land a haymaker. Somebody is going to have to tag him early and hard for his arrogance, for believing that an American president can decree his way through the world’s problems. It’s an attack that will have to be started early, probably by someone who won’t have the legs to see the ending. Ultimately, Americans don’t want a leader who thinks that everyone is stupider than he is.
By the way, Trump brought some joy to my heart when he said that he would like to select Oprah Winfrey as his running mate. In 1992, when I was at Spy, we prepared a parody of The New York Times. In our headline story, another vain and pompous billionaire presidential wannabe, Ross Perot, made precisely the same selection. Given all the terrible things Trump has said about Spy, it is an amazing coincidence.