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Spencer Charles Smith

Professor Adam Padgett
English 102
April 4th 2016
The Explanation for Trump
President Barrack Obama, Youre Fired! exclaims, Billionaire Businessman
extraordinaire, Donald Trump who is leading the republican race for the coveted White House.
Trump has aspirations of taking his abrupt, abrasive business tactics to Washington D.C. to
Make America Great Again. A slogan that Trump has used as a rallying cry for supporters,
reaching people who havent entered a polling center for decades. Nearly ten months after
announcing his candidacy for President of the United States, Trump has had unheard political
support and backing from not only other politicians but from American citizens. Donald Trumps
profound rise to political stardom has lead many to attempt to uncover the reasoning however his
successes beg the question is Trump political mastermind or just running a well-timed political
campaign? Americans continually growing distrust of the government and revolt against
politically correct language, has bode well for a loose lip, a non-political candidate such as
Donald Trump leading to his unforeseen political stardom.
The man who is Donald Trump and his successes can only be determined by examining
what he has done in the past. Trumps business career begins after graduating college where he
goes on to work for his father Fred Trump, a prominent real estate mogul in New York city with
a net worth of 200 million. Trump describes his introduction into the real estate market saying
that, It has not been easy for me, it has not been easy for me. And you know I started off in
Brooklyn, my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars. Trump continues to say "My

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whole life really has been a 'no' and I fought through it" (Diamond, Jeremy) Although to some
people this seems like a rather large loan for a father to give to his son, some believe that in fact
it was much larger than 1 million dollars, in fact Ana Swanson a political writer for The
Washington Post states that The $1 million loan doesnt include any of the benefits
Trump received from his familys connections and joining his fathers real estate business after
he graduated from college, and it doesnt count an estimated $40 million inheritance in 1974.
(Swanson, Ana) Although the amount Trump states that he received an inheritance from his
father does not include much of what he was actually given but no one can argue that he hasnt
turned his inheritance into billions of dollars.
Trumps access to a predefined business infrastructure designed at marketing to the
American people has not only provided Donald Trumps campaign with vital resources and talent
but with the proper industry knowledge to execute a well verse political campaign Donald Trump
has acted as if his campaign were a business which has provided him success, instead of mass
marketing, using his previous knowledge of markets and people to attack with precision
marketing. Not only has Trump used his assets from his business to run his campaign but he has
also treated his campaign as a business. Instead of simply self-funding the campaign and giving
his money to the campaign he has loaned the money to himself so that if he does lose, he owes
himself the money. This is a very strategic business move from a strategic businessman.
Donald Trumps ability to be able to run a business and to run one effectively has since
come into question since deciding to run for office. Some people believe that the fact that Donald
Trump has been bankrupt 5 times and that he has many failed Trump products such as Trump
steaks and Trump wine. With all of that being said, Trump has still successfully turned a loan of
1 million dollars into a multi-billion dollar company, an unattested sign of a fantastic business

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man.
With that being said, Trump is actually correct about a lot of respect for the way that the
government operates. This is unusual for someone that is coming from a nonpolitical position
prior to understanding the depths and operations of us government. Many citizens believe that
having a nonpolitical president is exactly what the country needs while many other Americans
have a differing stance on a non-political candidate. William Mayer states in his piece entitled
Why Trump - And How Far Can He Go? that:
We need to recruit and support more candidates for office who are ordinary
citizens rather than professional politicians and lawyers. Yet in an NBC News/Wall
Street Journal poll taken just 1 month earlier, 35 percent said they would be very
uncomfortable with a presidential candidate who was not a politician and [had] no
previous elected experience in government, while another 35 percent said they would
have some reservations about such a candidate. Only 30 percent said they would be
either enthusiastic or comfortable with a president who was a political newcomer.
(Mayer, William G.)
Mayer is introducing the idea that most of Americas reservations or not would be upset to
see a nonpolitical candidate take control of the oval office. This quite different from the
philosophies of elections past where a nonpolitical candidate had absolutely no chance of
winning the nomination much less the presidency.
This has to do with a change and development of new several ideas founded within
Americans. Mainly Americans have the development of technological innovations within human
interactions and news sources. The development of 24-hour news and a constant stream of

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information had changed not only the way Americans receive information but also the way they
process it. This changed has been completely embodied by the American population changing
the landscape of American fundamentals including politics. People are constantly looking for a
source of entertainment and interaction because of their inability to not be doing something. A
drastic change that has been developing, correlating directly with the increase in technology.
Many studies have researched the interaction of technology and its effects on political
campaigns and just society in general. Garrett Kelly and James Danziger review the effects of
technology on the 2008 campaign and the candidates ability to adapt to the changing wave of
media and media reception. They state,
Email is the dominant Internet technology for expressing political ideas, as it is
for acquiring political information. About one-third (34%) of respondents used it during
the 2008 campaign, and more than one-fifth (21%) sent political information multiple
times. While most information shared this way was produced by others, it was
presumably extracted from online sources, thereby increasing the centrality of the
Internet to the circulation of political information. (Garrett, R Kelly, and James N.
Danziger)
Kelly and Danziger solidify the ways in which media is increasingly affecting the United
States population. But not only on the United States population but on the United States political
system and the way it operates. This effect that technology has on our population is making
increasingly difficult for incumbent politicians and political candidates to have the incumbent
effect over nonpolitical candidates. Candidates that use technology such as emails and can
leverage their popularity on to the population having the known name effect for voters when

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they enter the polling station. In fact, for many running for president they can become more
popular than political presidential candidates such as Trump and his ability to constantly be in
and on the news. This fact alone has drastically increased his supporters throughout the United
States. Many life long politicians are upset about Trump's rise to political stardom not only
because he beat them in the election but because of Trumps natural arrogance. US Senator
Lindsey Graham When questioned about Trump, is on record saying worlds biggest jackass.
(Dochuk, Darren)
So, what does all of this have to do with the political candidate Donald Trump and his
success within the polls you ask? The answer, everything. David Fasenfest and Naida Simon
make this connection in their academic essay "Dumbing and Numbing of the American
Electorate" asking,
Why are we so willing to be entertained by this political spectacle, by
politicians who represent corporate views of how the world does and should work The
two later to go on to answer their question saying We have to go past traditional tropes
of false consciousness or people acting against their own interests to understand what is
going on It is certainly true that there is much to be discontented about in our current
society. But we must understand that the way this discontent is articulated is shaped by
the way we frame both causes and solutions.(Fasenfest, David and Naida Simon)
Americans are angry and rightfully so, and they dont know who to point the finger at,
who to blame. Interestingly, though, Fanfest and Simon suggest that Americans should look
inwards towards themselves to provide the answer of who to blame.
Many people and politicians are in an uproar about the success that a candidate such as

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Donald Trump is having. Many Americans and different news outlets have compared the rise of
Trump to that of Hitler in the late 1930 and 1940s in reconstructive Germany post World War 1.
Interestingly enough there are several different similarities between Hitler and Trump and the
way that they run their political campaigns. Hitler was notorious for making questionable
statements and deceleration similar to Donald Trump.
Trump is notorious for making questionable statements and declarations not only on his
twitter page but in his political interviews and in republican debates. Also, interestingly enough
Hitler was also enthralled with the new technology of the time, building one of the most
technologically advanced armies with one of the most advanced coding algorithms ever
invented. Trump shows this exact same interest with not only current day military technology but
with current day social technologies. Am I saying that Donald J Trump is going to be the Hitler
of the United States enslaving millions of American Muslims and removing all illegal aliens?
No, but simply making the point that Trump displays some of the same tendencies of that of the
most renowned fascist leader responsible for killing millions of people worldwide. The
interesting thing about this is that Trump believes personally that he understands the pulse of
American citizens. Trump says, I have a sense of people, he says. I understand people. Ive
made a lot of money because of people, because deals arent anything other than people, O.K.?(
Scherer, Micheal) For the point of view of many historians, Hitler resembled these exact same
characteristics during the duration of his campaign. The big difference behind Hitler and Trump
is that Hitler came from a military background, unlike Trump who comes from wall street.
Donald Trump overall effectively treats his political campaign the same way he would
treat another business that he owns. He uses all of his available assets from his prior businesses
to further his success as a republican political candidate for president. His success lies primarily

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in his ability to access a merely untouched political market and use his prior marketing
knowledge and infrastructure to self-promote his abilities. Trump is taking incredible, unheard
advantage of the technology available to him not ever seen in politics prior to the 2016
presidential election. Trump is not a political mastermind but is taking advantage of a vulnerable
America with a well timed controversial political campaign. Trump brought the spectacle that is
reality television to the political world and is using it to his advantage.

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Works Cited:
Diamond, Jeremy. "Donald Trump on Father's 'small' $1 Million Loan." CNN. Cable News
Network, 27 Oct. 2015. Web. 05 Apr. 2016.
Dochuk, Darren. "The Fissuring Of The Republican Party." New Labor Forum (Sage
Publications Inc.) 25.1 (2016): 26-33. Academic Search Complete. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.
Fasenfest, David, and Naida Simon. "Dumbing and Numbing of the American Electorate."
Critical Sociology (Sage Publications, Ltd.) Nov. 2015: 999+. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.
Garrett, R Kelly, and James N. Danziger. "The Internet Electorate." Communications Of The
ACM 54.3 (2011): 117-123. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.
Mayer, William G. "Why Trump - And How Far Can He Go?." Forum (2194-6183) 13.4 (2015):
541-558. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.
Scherer, Micheal. "Donald Trump." Times 21 Dec. 2015: 104-14. Academic Search Complete
[EBSCO]. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.
Swanson, Ana. "The Myth and the Reality of Donald Trumps Business Empire." Washington
Post. The Washington Post, 29 Feb. 2016. Web. 05 Apr. 2016.