A biography for David Cay Johnstonhasn’t been written yet.
“Trump has... been sued thousands of times for refusing to pay employees, vendors and others. Investors have sued him for fraud in a number of different cities. But among Trump’s most highly refined skills is his ability to deflect or shut down {{w|law enforcement}} investigations. He also uses threats of litigation to deter news organizations from looking behind the curtains of the seemingly all-wise and all-powerful man they often refer to as The Donald.”
“Business owners who are prudent about making promises and are known for honoring their word often go through life without a single lawsuit. Trump has been a party in more than 4,000 lawsuits, some of them accusing him of civil fraud...”
“[C]rowds of young people... filled the Trump Tower auditorium in June 2015, interrupting with applause forty-three times as Trump announced his campaign with vicious {{w|denunciation}}s of Mexicans, Muslims, and the media. ...A day later news broke that the crowd was not ...voluntary ...Many ...were actors paid fifty bucks apiece. ...[S]uch dishonesty continues a pattern that traces back throughout the life and career of Donald Trump.”
“Trump has worked hard to make sure few... know about his lifelong entanglements with a major cocaine trafficker [Joseph Weichselbaum].., with American and Russian mobsters and many mob associates, and with various con artists and swindlers.”
“Trump applauded Putin throughout the campaign... [which] paralleled the language... of mob soldiers speaking about their bosses.”
“The hiring of Manafort and others, specifically {{w|Felix Sater}}, a Russian-born real estate mogul with mob ties whose 2015 emails indicate that he hoped to help secure both a Moscow-based real estate deal and the American presidency for Trump—showed a disturbing pattern of associations with those around Vladimir Putin, head of the {{w|kleptocracy}} in Moscow...”
“For five months, Trump's campaign manager was Paul Manafort, advisor to dictators and near dictators including a pro-Moscow regime in Ukraine that was ousted by a popular uprising.”
“He appointed as chief executive of his campaign, and, later, White House strategy chief, Steve Bannon, a known anti-Semite who, in his time at {{w|Breitbart News}} Network, published racist articles and bizarre conspiracy theories...”
“Trump never faced tough questions as a candidate where he could not walk away or give nonsense answers without repeated follow-up. This is a serious problem for the future of American democracy in the television era, when appearances matter more than reality.”
“[H]e does not have a clue about the Constitution's system of checks and balances.”
“Trump doesn't know anything. ...Trump's own words and conduct ...and his comments on many issues ...show how appallingly ignorant he is.”
“I... watched Trump run briefly in 2000 for the nomination of the Reform Party... during that brief campaign Trump declared he would become the first person to run for president and make a profit. ...For the 2016 run, a large share of Trump's campaign money was spent paying himself for the use of his Boeing 757... in addition to his smaller jet, his helicopter, his Trump Tower office space, and other services supplied by Trump businesses.”
“In 1990, I broke the story that, instead of being worth billions, as he'd claimed, Trump actually had a negative {{w|net worth}} and escaped a chaotic collapse into personal bankruptcy only when the government took his side over the banks...”
“While at my last paper, I won a {{w|Pulitzer Prize}} for exposing so many tax dodges and loopholes that a prominent tax lawyer called me the "de facto chief tax enforcement officer of the United States."”
“[B]ecause labor returns have gone down there's not enough {{w|aggregate demand}}... to buy goods and services. ...The next thought should be ...capitalists will change because people have to buy their products. No, if your a global level capitalist, it doesn't matter. As long as there aren't riots in the streets, you can sell your goods in other countries.”
“George Will had a column in The Washington Post this week in which he said that the proof that the {{w|Great Society}} failed after 50 years was people trusted the government under LBJ and now they don't any more. ... [I] would argue... the facts show just the opposite. People don't trust the government anymore because they recognize it does not work in their interest, it works against their interest...”
“We are... seeing... failure to enforce the law. I have written for 15 years about a way that real estate in partnerships cheat. It's easy to spot but you have to do the work... The guy who figured it out was given all sorts of awards by the IRS. No one will do it. The governor of New York, who should be in the forefront... because it costs the state as much as $700 million in a peak year, refuses to do this, and... his administration has... literally lied, claiming repeatedly that they're looking for this, but there's no court case of any kind.”
“When you and I were young and a company laid people off, you would see the president, not the CEO... in those days, say "...I'm gonna work for a dollar a year" or "I'm going to take no bonuses until everybody is rehired." Today it's... "Ooh, I fired 10,000 people. I'll get a bigger bonus!"”
“Back in 1996 I was the principle reporter at The New York Times on a huge series... that changed the way executive pay was reported. We showed how the head of {{w|Coca-Cola}} had gotten a $100 million pay one year and he only paid taxes on about $2 Million... [H]e had built a fortune of just shy of a billion dollars at that point, tax free... [T]here were members of the board of directors of Coke that did not understand how much money they had paid him.”
“John Adams... wrote that his fear... of what would destroy America was a business aristocracy would arise. Instead of people being yeomen farmers who owned their own land, or workers who owned their own tools... workers would be mere wage earners, and... not being truly independent, would vote for the policies that benefit the business aristocracy, and we would lose both our liberties and our democracy... a good indicator of what's going on right now.”