Pando writer Mark Ames has dug up some old Spy Magazine issues from the 1980s and early '90s detailing the legendary satirical magazine's early spade work in revealing what a dedicated jerk Donald Trump is. Over the course of several issues, the magazine probed into the details of Trump's exploits and outrages.
Here are some of the highlights:
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Lesson He Learned From Punching His Music Teacher: In a book he wrote in 1987, Trump admitted to punching his music teacher in the second grade. While many would look back at such an event as immature furor, Trump didn't seem reflective about it at all: “In the second grade...I punched my music teacher because I didn’t think he knew anything about music....I’m not proud of that, but it’s clear evidence that even early on I had a tendency to stand up and make my opinions known in a very forceful way.”
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Instant Missile Expertise: “It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles,” Trump boasted. “I think I know most of it anyway.” He claimed he should be in charge of nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union.
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Less Than Perfect Understanding of the Working Class: Trump claimed that electricians “make a hundred and some odd dollars an hour. The concrete people just make fortunes. Laborers make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.”
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Attacking Lawyers for Stopping His Unlawful Evictions: A group of lawyers defended tenants at one Trump property who claimed they were being unlawfully evicted. When the courts sided with the tenants, Trump tried to launch a racketeering lawsuit against the lawyers, claiming they were trying to “prevent, frustrate, and inhibit” him from making profits. The courts dismissed Trump's case.
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Exploiting the Homeless, Bashing Refugees: Trump offered to put homeless tenants in his Central Park South building in a bid to try to drive the current tenants out so he could tear the whole thing down. The city offered to put Polish refugees there, but Trump countered he'd only allow “people who live in America now, not refugees.”
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Bashing Ronald Reagan: Although not particularly crazy sounding, this may be a crazy thing for a leader in the polls of the Republican presidential primary to say. He compared rival developers to Ronald Reagan because they were “people who talk a good game but don't deliver.”
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Telling the World African Americans Have It Easy: Spy quoted Trump telling reporters in 1989, “If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.”
- Blaming Other People For His Business Failings: In the early 1990s, Trump made a deal with Poland's tourism minister to build a series of “hotels, shops and gambling casinos in Warsaw,” but two years after the $55 million payment was made, ground wasn't even broken. “They've been patient? I've been patient,” said Trump. “Did you ever try to get quality marble in Warsaw? It's pathetic.”
What all this demonstrates is even though Trump may have changed his viewpoint on a number of things – such as his previous embrace of single-payer health care – one thing has not changed over the years. Trump remains an unrepentant blowhard, where it's 1985 or 2015.
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