Trump has a well-established history of affection for eminent domain use and abuse. Most famously, he hounded an elderly widow, Vera Coking, in Atlantic City to give up her house so he could build a limousine parking lot for the now-failed Trump Taj Mahal casino. Coking refused, and with the help of the nonprofit Institute for Justice (IJ), she won her case.
That was in 1998. Seven years later, another case went to court in which a developer once again sought to use eminent domain to confiscate privately-held land for private building purposes. IJ again worked to defend against what amounts to state-facilitated theft, but this time the bandits won. That case was Kelo v. New London, and in the good company of about eight in 10 Americans, conservatives and libertarians were pissed.
But Trump loved it.
"I happen to agree with it 100 percent," he said of the Kelo majority in an interview on Fox. His illogic was simple:
If the government wants the development to happen, it should happen.
"If you have a person living in an area that's not even necessarily a good area, and government, whether it's local or whatever, government wants to build a tremendous economic development, where a lot of people are going to be put to work and make [an] area that's not good into a good area, and move the person that's living there into a better place — now, I know it might not be their choice — but move the person to a better place and yet create thousands upon thousands of jobs and beautification and lots of other things, I think it happens to be good." [Trump, via RedState]