Obama 1991: "I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait..."

[William Tell]

Barack Obama once described the American dream in terms of Donald Trump's success as a business magnate, according to a new book.


A recently published biography of the 44th president by David Garrow, called “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama” unearthed the Trump quote in an unpublished law paper Obama authored when he was a soon-to-be Harvard Law School graduate in 1991, according to a Complex report.


"I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don't make it, my children will,” reads a line in the paper titled “Race and Rights Rhetoric,” Obama authored with his friend Robert Fisher.


“[Americans have] a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, values that extend far beyond the issue of race in the American mind. The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American—I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don't make it, my children will,” they wrote.

http://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...cess-to-the-goal-of-the-american-dream-as-law

 

[oyarde]

Well , it would not surprise me that in 4 or 8 years from now Obummer gets more in speaking fees than trump .

 

[shakey1]

... and the rest is history.

 

[Zippyjuan]

Well , it would not surprise me that in 4 or 8 years from now Obummer gets more in speaking fees than trump .

Before becoming president, Trump was getting $1.5 million a pop- almost four times Obama's rate. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...7b6aeab993f_story.html?utm_term=.b08548bc0785

 

[r3volution 3.0]

Barack Obama once described the American dream in terms of Donald Trump's success as a business magnate...

...not surprising, I suppose, that an anti-capitalist would cite a crony capitalist as the model businessman

 

[Occam's Banana]

Obama 1991: "I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait..."

Barack Obama once described the American dream in terms of Donald Trump's success as a business magnate [...]

"[Americans have] a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, values that extend far beyond the issue of race in the American mind. The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American - I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don't make it, my children will,” [Obama and his co-author] wrote.

People seem to be reading this wrong.

Obama is certainly not expressing any desire on his own part to "be [like] Donald Trump."
(The antecedent of the "I" and "my" in the above is not Obama - it is "the average American.")

Nor is he identifying Trump as an admirable and/or feasible exemplar for those who aspire to "success as a business magnate."

In fact, Obama and his co-author are "summarily dismiss[ing]" the statement "I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait ..." as "unfounded optimism" on the part of "the average American." (They appear to be suggesting that this "unfounded optimism" is due to "the ideals of individual freedom and mobility," which are not sufficiently aware of or sensitive to "the issue of race.")

IOW: Trump is merely being used as an example of "success" to which "the average American" misguidedly aspires.

(But that's okay, 'coz Obama and his bud Fisher are gonna set us straight ... )

 

[r3volution 3.0]

Trump is merely being used as an example of "success" to which "the average American" misguidedly aspires.

Ah, you're right.