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Think Like a Champion
by Donald Trump


(Click for Amazon book review)

OnTheIssues.org BOOK REVIEW:

This is a business book, not a policy book. Trump has written several other business books too -- this is just the most recent one before he announced for the presidency, so people might read this one with more interest. The point that political readers should get is this: it is a normal, boring, plain ol' business book -- not flamboyant and not loud -- political readers should see THAT side of Trump too!

This book rehashes well-worn business advice, including its title. Trump starts each chapter with an old chestnut of a business platitude, such as Ben Franklin's "Diligence is the mother of good luck" to start Trump's chapter on work and luck. In that chapter (pp. 173ff) Trump explains his fondness for old chestnuts: "I've always been big on quotes, whether they're mine or someone else's, because very often they distill ideas down to their essence." Here is a collection of some of the old chestnuts as expressed in Trump's chapter titles:

Trump does sometimes have new business ideas, and he writes about them in this book. For example, his signature project (and his personal home), Trump Tower in New York City, is a "mixed use" project: it includes both hotel rooms and residences. Trump claims he invented that idea, and spread it around the world at his other big projects. However, his new ideas are the exception -- generally he follows the establishment way, asserts the old chestnuts, and spends page after page advocating that readers should follow the establishment way and respect the old chestnuts. Politically, that implies that when Trump has a new idea, he researches it well and then spends a lot of time perfecting it.

So why does the mainstream media portray Trump the way they do, as flamboyant and thoughtless and anti-establishment? First let's establish how poorly the mainstream media portray Trump, then we'll offer our rationale as to why they do so. First, the mainstream media seem obsessed with reporting on Trump's foibles -- the majority of all of our press feeds in the last month have been about Trump, and almost all articles were negative. And second, the mainstream media seem obsessed with NOT reporting on Trump's actual policy stances. For example:

Before Trump even announced for president, OnTheIssues had hundreds of excerpts from Trump's books and statements during his previous presidential flirtations. After Trump announced for president, OnTheIssues readily found dozens more excerpts, and we will find dozens more every month because we LOOK for them. Trump wrote a policy book in preparation for the 2012 presidential race, and Trump also has an older policy book which he wrote in preparation for the 2000 presidential race. Those are serious policy books, and serious reporters might read them and stop whining that Trump has no policy positions -- because those books are full of them!

Serious reporting about Trump might include how his issue stances changed between his 2000 policy book and his 2012 policy book -- OnTheIssues does exactly that in our book review of Time to Get Tough. The current mainstream media has failed at serious reporting on these grounds:

-- Jesse Gordon, editor-in-chief, OnTheIssues.org, August 2015