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  • There's a common sort of idea out there that Trump is a toddler, he's a child

  • Acting like a toddler, having a major meltdown...acting as a child...the mind of a toddler...he's

  • a giant toddler, and there's nothing going around inside his head

  • And what people mean by that, I think,

  • is that he has poor impulse control.

  • Something the way he's wired, where he can't help himself...can't seem to help himself...he

  • can't control himself...he just can't seem to help himself, Howie!

  • And it's a way, it seems to me, of trivializing some of the wrongdoing that you see from Donald

  • Trump.

  • When he said to Billy Bush,

  • He's not saying he doesn't understand the consequences of his actions,

  • he's saying that based on his experience

  • in life, there will not be consequences.

  • And that's actually really different from a child's perspective on the world.

  • A real toddler misbehaves all the time.

  • I mean, José, earlier this week, he stuck his foot in a serving bowl.

  • He sometimes likes to try to attack small birds at the park.

  • But if you explain the rules to him, he normally follows them.

  • It's a constructive process.

  • And Trump is...old.

  • He's been around. He's not learning.

  • Donald Trump is a man who has had a lot of different brushes with the law.

  • The very first time he appeared in the New York Times, it was because there was a federal

  • investigation into illegal racial discrimination in houses that he was running.

  • Soon after the election he paid a $25 million settlement for defrauding students at a fake

  • university.

  • The first time he tried to move beyond the real estate business, he had a casino in Atlantic

  • City, the Trump Taj Mahal.

  • He build the casino with a lot of loans, a lot of debts,

  • And in December of 1990, he comes to this moment of crisis where he doesn't have the

  • funds to make the payment,

  • if he can't cover the interest.

  • So what happens is his father sends one of the family attorneys down in a car to Atlantic

  • City with over 3 million dollars.

  • And he has him go buy chips from the casino, giving cash to the Taj Mahal

  • So in effect, that's a loan

  • And eventually, the New Jersey Gaming Authorities

  • ruled, and he had to pay a fine for it.

  • But if you look at the balance of considerations, right

  • If he hadn't taken the illegal loan, he would have lost the whole casino.

  • With the illegal loan, he pays a fine, but it's not that big of a fine, and he keeps

  • the casino.

  • And that's basically the impunity lifestyle of Donald Trump: this calculated decision

  • was made that to break the rules would be better for Donald Trump, even if he got caught.

  • Looking for loopholes, and working with smart lawyers to find them is what you're supposed

  • to do.

  • We have very much normalized a culture of rule breaking in American business,

  • And Trump is an extreme example of that, but extremes tell you something about what's

  • going on beneath the surface.

There's a common sort of idea out there that Trump is a toddler, he's a child

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