Leadership Lessons from the Trump Presidency

Douglas G. Long

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000069976
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book seeks to demonstrate that we can learn from both 'good' and 'bad' leaders. Part One looks at President Trump's behaviour from inauguration to impeachment. The ancient Greek concepts of Kairos and Chronos are used to indicate that Trump was almost a natural fit for the US of 2017. Part Two considers the consequences of his behaviour on the US, the world at large, and for leadership overall.

There is a temptation to consider only 'good' leaders when asking what we can learn from others. This book explores the issue of what can be learned from any person in a leadership role, no matter what the value judgement we make of them. Part One explores Trump's behaviour up to the moment of impeachment and the longer-term residual impacts this will have once his term as President is over. It shows that our value judgements tend to be based on perception and a priori assumptions. Part Two explores what we can learn from the Trump event no matter what our leadership role.

Disruption is endemic in today's world. Today, it often seems that we are born, live, and die, in three quite different worlds. Yet, at its core, things have changed very little. Oligarchy has been a reality since time immemorial. Unless we are first 'unfrozen' from the status quo, change tends to be more cosmetic than actual. Donald Trump's presidency has the potential to be the thawing agent that could enable 'real' change through which new forms of both democracy and capitalism might emerge across the world.

Part One

‘The Trump Decapitalise’

Part One explores leadership issues relating to the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

1 Promises and early activities

‘Every French soldier carries in his cartridge pouch the baton of a marshal of France’

Napoleon Bonaparte

Everything in Donald Trump’s past makes it clear that, first, he has always been ambitious for power and wealth, and, second, that he views the world in a polarity of ‘winners’ versus ‘losers’ – and he hates to lose. His books and history show that he will do almost anything to make others appear to be losers in this quest to be ‘top dog’. In 2016, Trump finally acknowledged the presence of the baton in his cartridge pouch and, in 2017, he put it on full display by nominating for the US Presidency.

Until he nominated as a candidate for the presidency, across the world Donald Trump was known primarily for his real estate deals, his aggressive use of bankruptcy law to further his own ends, and for being a reality TV star. Even in the US, his was not a household name unless one was considering staying in certain up-market hotels or had seen his television show, The Apprentice. The result was that, in the very early stages, few took his candidacy seriously and he was subjected to much negative commentary from Republican and Democrat alike. History shows that the magnitude and ferocity of his ambition were seriously underestimated, as was his ability to develop and implement a winning strategy that was vastly different from any previously seen. The assumption seemed to be that any marshal’s baton that Trump might possess would prove to be plastic rather than gold. Hillary Clinton was perhaps the most prominent, but certainly not the only person, to ridicule both Trump and his supporters.

It has long been known that there are two key contributing factors to a person’s make-up: nature and nurture. It is debated as to the influence each of these has on our mature selves, but the fact that both contribute is indisputable. These factors were largely ignored by Trump’s commentators and competitors in the months leading up to the 2016 election. Assumptions and prejudice supplanted data and analysis. It was a classic example of what, for many years, has been labelled ‘PHOG Management’. PHOG Management is where decisions and subsequent actions are made on Perception, Hearsay, Opinion and Guess rather than on facts and analysis. It is a prime cause of the all-too-often encountered reality where today’s solutions become tomorrow’s problems. The result is that we end up in a vicious, downward spiral of reacting to the undesirable impacts of poorly considered decisions and actions.

Donald Trump’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, immigrated to the US from Bavaria in 1885 and he became a US citizen in 1892. Around this time he also anglicised his name to Frederick. From all accounts he was one of many immigrants who made their way to the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the hope of making a fortune in the new world. Frederick Trump was one of many who succeeded. It appears that his wealth arose primarily from running hotels and restaurants for those who were seeking their fortunes from goldfields. The information also shows that the drive shown by Frederick Trump was replicated in his sons; John became a prominent engineer and inventor and Fred, Donald’s father, became one of New York’s major real estate developers. Nature and nurture combined to make Donald both ambitious and goal orientated. The issue of ethical behaviour, of course, is a different subject.

On Frederick’s death in 1918, his wife and family inherited a significant fortune of around $32,000. Frederick’s wife, Elisabeth, and elder son, Fred, used this to continue in real estate development, while the younger son, John, developed his own path as an engineer and inventor. On Fred’s death in 1999 it appears that Donald inherited between $100 million and $200 million. Prior to this, Fred seems to have provided significant help to his son although this is disputed, with Donald Trump stating that his father only helped him with ‘a small loan’ in 1975. Others claim that this loan was the somewhat larger figure of around $14 million.

It is important to note that although Donald Trump is invariably spotlighted on the world stage, his siblings have all been successful in their chosen careers. The benefits of nature and nurture in the Trump family were not confined to Donald. By the time he became President, Donald Trump had amassed a fortune of between around $3 billion (external valuations) and $10 billion (his own valuation).

Now, whether the original support provided by his father was a small loan or $14 million, and whether or not his fortune at the time of nominating for the presidency was around $3 billion or $10 billion, is largely irrelevant. The fact remains that between 1975 and 2016 Donald Trump amassed a vast fortune. Not many people, even those who start out with financial means, grow their wealth by a factor in excess of 200 in a period of around 40 years. Valuable, available information was ignored by his detractors in favour of assumption and prejudice.

It begs the question as to how this was achieved.

Trump’s early works in print provide examples from his business in real estate investing and appearances on television. These indicate that everything tends to be reduced to a zero-sum game in which there are only winners and losers. His record shows that he has been a frequent user of the bankruptcy laws in order to minimise or annul claims from creditors and that, along with this, he has repeatedly employed the legal system to enforce payment from debtors. This reflects a Darwinian world; the weak are tolerated and supported only insofar as they can further the aims and ends of the rich and powerful. There is, of course, nothing illegal in this behaviour and it is a frequently used approach. Whether or not it is ethical is a different question altogether.

In the business arena, Trump seems to have been abrupt and abrasive. He appears to have demonstrated very little real concern for his employees or contractors, and always concentrated on doing deals that would be ultimately to his personal benefit. Perhaps he was even able to confuse fear with respect – people doing what he asked because they feared dismissal rather than people doing their jobs because of their commitment to him and his organisation. Between 1991 and 2009 his hotel and casino businesses used Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times in order to re-negotiate debt. Trump was quoted by Newsweek ¹ in 2011 saying, ‘I do play with the bankruptcy laws – they’re very good for me.’

By 2016, Trump and his businesses had been involved in more than three thousand five hundred state and federal legal actions. It appears that Trump or one of his companies was the plaintiff in 1,900 cases and the defendant in 1,450. With Trump or his company as plaintiff, more than half the cases have been against gamblers at his casinos who had failed to pay off their debts. With Trump or his company as a defendant, the most common type of case involved personal injury cases at his hotels. In cases where there was a clear resolution, Trump’s side won 451 times and lost 38.²

To quote Donald Trump, ‘I’ve used the laws of this country to pare debt … We’ll have the company. We’ll throw it into a chapter. We’ll negotiate with the banks. We’ll make a fantastic deal. You know, it’s like on The Apprentice. It’s not personal. It’s just business.’³

It is clear that Donald John Trump measures his success by the accumulation of personal wealth, power and influence, rather than how these actions have impacted on the organisation or anything else overall. Given this available evidence there must clearly be questions as to why his opponents so seriously underestimated him.

Part of the reason seems to lie in the issue of personality and background. It seems to be that Trump has always marched to the beat of his own drum. He has not been closely identified with any one political party. Over the years he seems to have changed political allegiance several times, and certainly has never held political office at any level of US government. It is unclear whether he has ever been closely linked to any Washington lobbyists in order to influence federal government decisions, partly because, in areas where he was acquiring and developing property, key people he needed to influence were at administrative or, at best, state government levels.

Some have suggested that his political rise and intention to shake the establishment has similarities with John F. Kennedy and/or Ronald Reagan. This is certainly not the case. Prior to becoming President, John F. Kennedy had been a US Congressman – he was a political insider in Washington D.C. Although the fathers of both JFK and Donald Trump were, in many ways, self-made men in terms of serious wealth creation, unlike Joseph Kennedy (the father of President John F. Kennedy) Trump’s father (a contemporary of Joseph Kennedy) does not appear to have been politically active in any overt way. Also, as a recent immigrant in the early twentieth century, Frederick Trump was most unlike Joseph Kennedy who came from a well-established, highly influential, New England family. Ronald Reagan came from a poor, mid-western family. He had been a trade union leader who had campaigned for better working conditions and remuneration for actors and, for him, acting was always his primary activity. Prior to becoming President, Reagan had established his political credentials by becoming Governor of California. Perhaps the only similarity between Trump and Reagan is the presence of their brass stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Comparisons with previous Presidents meant that Donald Trump was largely considered ‘an outsider’ whose audacity in seeking the presidency was, even if unconsciously by some, resented by many in the establishment. Wealth alone is not enough to gain ‘real’ respectability! In addition, other wealthy, ‘respectable’ businessmen, such as Ross Perot (who had strong, long-term connections to the Republican Party) had been unsuccessful previous contenders for the presidency, therefore, Trump was not to be taken seriously.

Another possible reason for this underestimation seems to lie in the audiences Trump sought. Although every politician claims to be interested in the grassroots voting public, it has become increasingly uncommon for them to speak at town hall style campaign functions that are targeted largely at undecided, or inactive, enrolled voters. And where such town hall style campaign functions are held, the audience is largely stacked with vocal supporters of the speaker. Although, as Trump’s campaign advanced, this stacking was increasingly obvious, in the early stages, it was not obviously on show. Trump’s original appeal was to use his reality TV image to attract a wide audience.

So, against all early odds, Trump became President. And the closer he came to achieving his goal, the more promises he made. Now, all politicians make promises and most people realise that they could be described as ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ – in other words, there are promises that they may try to keep and others that they really have no intention of following through. The track records of past US Presidents (like all other politicians), makes it clear that promises are made to win elections, and sometimes are actually best left unfulfilled. Consequently, no-one should be surprised that Trump has not kept (and is not likely to keep), all the promises he has made.

Depending the source you trust, the first 36 or so months of the Trump presidency has either resulted in a total failure to keep significant promises, or it has meant that, despite the best intentions and efforts of Trump and the Republican Party, the fulfilment of promises has been thwarted, or at least delayed, by Democratic intransigence, obstructing judges, and bureaucratic red tape. Those promises that have clearly been kept, such as significant reduction in tax rates, withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on the reduction of carbon emissions and the like, are seen by his supporters as evidence that Trump is on track to achieve his targets, and his failures are blamed on factors beyond his control. Trump’s detractors point out that defeats or delays are viewed as ‘victories’ in maintaining a vibrant democracy and any Trump successes are seen through the light of unfavourable consequences. In relation to Trump’s possible re-election, it is highly likely that the views of his supporters will prove more powerful than those of his detractors. We will explore the reasons for this in Chapter 2.

Trump’s promises, and the degree to which he has implemented or sought to implement them, is important. As already shown, Trump sees everything as a nett sum game. There are only winners and losers and, if he is going to win, then it follows that others must lose. The concept of a win-win outcome seems to be totally foreign to him. In 2016, the ‘win’ was to become President. Now the ‘win’ will be re-election. He is very conscious of the voter base that gave him the win in 2016.

In many countries, the President or Prime Minister is the person gaining most votes overall, or is the leader of the political party that gains the most seats in that country’s parliament. In the US, however, every state has a set number of ‘electoral college’ votes and it is these that ultimately determine who becomes President. There are well-documented instances where the President has gained office despite receiving less popular votes than his competition, the famous loss of Al Gore to George Bush was but one of them. Similarly, in 2016, Hillary Clinton may have gained more individual votes, but Donald Trump took the prize. The Electoral College votes of mid-western and southern states were key. This is where manufacturing and mining jobs had been lost because of international trade barriers being lowered or removed and/or because of a reduction in demand for coal as a key fuel. Such economic factors were highly influential in this result. So, too was the impact of conservative, evangelical Christians and those allied to the far-right wing of political thought. Those states with large numbers of voters in such categories responded positively to Trump’s promises to rebuff political correctness, to place tariffs on imports, to reduce immigration, to wind back environmental safeguards, to aggressively assert US dominance in world politics, to support narrow conservative agendas, relocate the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and so on. The geopolitical, socio-economic, environmental, human rights, and even religious implications and ramifications of these promises were (and are) seen to be totally irrelevant.

Trump’s claim was that he would ‘Make America Great Again’ and that only he could do that. No matter that he was an extremely wealthy man whose path to riches may have involved questionable ethical practices that pushed the boundaries of legality, to those who saw or who had seen businesses close, jobs disappear, and their ‘American Dream’ fading into a dissipating chimera, Trump offered hope across many areas. In a manner like those with little money who constantly buy lottery tickets in the hope of winning financial security, people felt that things could hardly get much worse and there was a vague possibility of them actually improving. These voters were not ‘deplorables’ as Hilary Clinton so offensively labelled them: they were people who wanted to be rid of the despair and difficulty they currently faced, and Trump offered an almost messianic option. Similarly, for those who wanted a return to the previous status quo of male dominance, realisation of a narrow, fundamentalist Christian view of the world, rejection of the increasing secularisation of society with its acceptance of multiculturalism and widespread tolerance of religions, sexual orientations, etc., Trump offered the potential that their wishes could be, at least, promoted and, at best, fulfilled. Trump’s behaviour in 2017 and 2018 therefore makes sense to these people.

In 1957, the American journalist Vance Packard, published The Hidden Persuaders. ⁴ In this book, he explored the rise of market research and the use of psychological concepts in order to make marketing more effective so that people were increasingly orientated to buy what manufacturers wanted to produce and that sales organisations wanted to sell. Rather than manufacturing being driven by consumer demand, consumers responded to what was produced. He explained the influence of unconscious motivators on the rise of the consumer society. He went on to discuss the way in which, from the 1950s, these same forces were then develo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• About the author
• PART ONE: ‘The Trump Decapitalise’
• PART TWO: Lessons from ‘the Trump event’
• Index