Trump Wants Revenge: As President he could get back at his enemies

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trumps-campaign-based-revenge?akid=14312.294211.8Saure&rd=1&src=newsletter1057458&t=6

Increasingly, the evidence is pointing to a certain conclusion: Donald Trump is running for president because he believes the power and fame of the White House will allow him to settle the score in his ever-expanding list of petty grievances.

Sure, there are other things he likes about it, like the attention and the opportunity to slap the word “Trump” in gold lettering across the front of the desk in the Oval Office, are motivating factors. But for those who have been following the campaign closely, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Trump spends much, perhaps most of his time, honing an enemies list of people he imagines have personally slighted him and fantasizing out loud about putting them and anyone he associates with them in their place.

Farah Stockman and Keith Bradsher of  The New York Times published a piece Monday detailing a major grudge that Trump holds against a group of Chinese investors that helped save him from a financial crisis in the ’90s. He made a lucrative deal with this group of Hong Kong billionaires to sell them the Bank of America building on Avenue of the Americas, allowing him 30% of the profits and paying him feeds to develop the building. In 2005, they sold the building for $1.76 billion.

“Although it was believed to be the largest residential real estate transaction in the city’s history,” Stockman and Bradsher write, “Mr. Trump was furious, and contends to this day that his partners did not consult him first.”

Trump claims he was mad because he thinks he could have gotten a better deal, a claim that’s even those completely ignorant of real estate economics can see is self-serving nonsense. Still, he sued the men who had saved him from financial ruin, making wild accusations and tying them up in court for years.

He lost the lawsuit, but now runs around telling audiences he won it, portraying the portion of the building he owns, which was what he settled for after his loss, as if he “got from China in a war.”

He mentions this deal, pretending he won when he lost, during his many campaign tirades portraying China as some kind of economic predator that will stop at nothing to destroy the American economy, saying, “we are being ripped so badly by China” and that they are out to “rape our country” and that our trade deficit is “the greatest theft in the history of the world”.

It’s a bizarre obsession, but this New York Times story suggests that his paranoia could be the direct result of his personal vendetta against a group of Hong Kong billionaires that he sued because he wasn’t asked to sit in on their sales meetings.