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1 hour ago, LondonLax said:

The best bit was the long reminiscence about the guy with the yacht who went to fancy parties and who got up to things he couldn't tell Boy Scouts about. 

William Levitt, a racist who had a whites only policy for house sales and who apparently helped normalise the model of US suburban development, both pretty seriously bad things.

But it seems Trump was lying about that party.   Again. 

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President Trump cursed mildly, taunted President Obama, and reminisced at length about Nov. 8 (“that incredible night with the maps”) while speaking to a crowd of Boy Scouts in West Virginia on Monday night. But one of the strangest passages in the speech at the Scouts’ annual National Jamboree was an anecdote about Trump seeing the real estate developer William Levitt at a party hosted by another developer, Steve Ross. It’s the kind of story Trump loves to tell, but is it true?

Levitt was the creator of midcentury housing developments known for affordable and nearly identical houses. The original Levittown, on Long Island, was popular among returning World War II veterans, and notorious for its refusal to accept applications from anyone other than whites. For Trump, however, Levitt’s story is meaningful primarily as an illustration of what happens when a great businessman makes the fatal error of “losing momentum,” which I guess he thinks is a good lesson for Boy Scouts to learn.

In his speech on Monday, Trump rambled his way through a summary of Levitt’s career and personal life: His spectacular rise, the sale of his company to a New York conglomerate, his purchase of a yacht, his ensuing “very interesting life” (“You’re Boy Scouts so I'm not going to tell you what he did”), his repurchase of the company, and ultimately his bankruptcy. Years later, Trump’s story goes, he saw William Levitt, former titan of real estate, at a cocktail party:

    And it was very sad because the hottest people in New York were at this party. It was the party of Steve Ross—Steve Ross, who was one of the great people. … And I was doing well, so I got invited to the party. I was very young. And I go in, but I'm in the real estate business, and I see a hundred people, some of whom I recognize, and they're big in the entertainment business.

    And I see sitting in the corner was a little old man who was all by himself. Nobody was talking to him. I immediately recognized that that man was the once great William Levitt, of Levittown, and I immediately went over. I wanted to talk to him more than the Hollywood, show business, communications people.

    So I went over and talked to him, and I said, “Mr. Levitt, I'm Donald Trump.” He said, "I know." I said, "Mr. Levitt, how are you doing?" He goes, "Not well, not well at all." And I knew that. But he said, "Not well at all." And he explained what was happening and how bad it's been and how hard it's been. And I said, "What exactly happened? Why did this happen to you? You're one of the greats ever in our industry. Why did this happen to you?” And he said, "Donald, I lost my momentum. I lost my momentum."

Trump has told versions of the story before, including last year at a speech at a Catholic college in Wisconsin, in which he referred to Levitt’s wife as “La Belle.” (Levitt’s yacht, La Belle Simone, was named after his wife Simone.) The anecdote also appears in his 2004 book Trump: How to Get Rich. (The book was written “with” Meredith McIver, the longtime Trump Organization staffer who took the fall for Melania Trump’s plagiarized speech at the Republican National Convention last summer.) The chapter “Maintain Your Momentum” is less than a page-and-a-half long, and it consists entirely of the Levitt story. In the 1950s, Trump writes, Levitt “was the king.” He scoured his work sites for nails and wood chips to make sure nothing went to waste, and he eventually sold his company for the equivalent of billions. Then, alas, he retired, “married the wrong woman,” squandered years on the Riviera, and so on. Again, Trump arrives at the fateful party:

    I saw William Levitt at a cocktail party in 1994, two weeks before he died. He was standing by himself in a corner, looking defeated. I didn’t know him well, but I approached him, hoping to acquire some wisdom from the master. “Mr. Levitt,” I said, “how are you doing?”

    “Not good, Donald, not good.” Then he said the words I’ll never forget. “I lost my momentum. I was out of the world for twenty years, I came back, and I wasn’t the same.”

There are small differences between the two stories, and between each story and the historical record. In the Jamboree speech, Trump is a “very young” man who brashly introduces himself to the older developer. In the book, he is 47 years old and already an acquaintance of Levitt’s. In the book, Trump writes that the party took place two weeks before Levitt’s death. But Levitt’s 1994 obituary in the New York Times reported that he had been at a Long Island hospital for the last 18 months of his life. He entered the hospital after suffering a ruptured intestine and died of a progressive kidney disease, which makes his appearance at a swank Manhattan cocktail party mere weeks before his death seem somewhat unlikely.

Did Levitt really dispense a perfectly packaged nugget of Business Wisdom to the upstart 47-year-old just before he died? Did the party even take place? Who knows. We do know, however, that Trump has a long history of mangling facts and distorting details. The important thing is that he’s maintaining his momentum.

 

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1 hour ago, itdoesntmatterwhatthissay said:

But perhaps if they attended the rally it might be? 

#PartialNews

Come on, you're being obtuse. 

Of course the news media picked up on the newsworthy bit of the speech. But why don't they report on all the planes that don't crash?

Edited by HanoiVillan
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49 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Come on, you're being obtuse. 

Of course the news media picked up on the newsworthy bit of the speech. But why don't they report on all the planes that don't crash?

So you're saying there is no story at all in President Trump attending a jamboree rather than just paying lip service to it? 
I'd say very many young people (who will probably never be old enough to vote for Trump) will have felt quite inspired that day.

Obtuse was the right word, but perhaps not for me ;)

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5 hours ago, itdoesntmatterwhatthissay said:

So you're saying there is no story at all in President Trump attending a jamboree rather than just paying lip service to it? 

No news value, yes. 

Which is how the president attends dozens of similar events without it crossing my or your consciousness. 

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9 hours ago, itdoesntmatterwhatthissay said:

Jamboree. I used to wrong word but meh, potato/potato!

Nonsense.

A yearly get together of scouts is not a rally. It is not a matter of semantics or tomato/tomato.

What he did was wildly inappropriate and your comparison to Corbyn's political rallies is shallow and insincere.

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1 hour ago, StefanAVFC said:

Nonsense.

A yearly get together of scouts is not a rally. It is not a matter of semantics or tomato/tomato.

What he did was wildly inappropriate and your comparison to Corbyn's political rallies is shallow and insincere.

Jesus christ you guys really are entrenched in anti-Trump rhetoric aren't you.

I said from the start it was a wholly classless display but as a scout I would have been wrapped if a President came to my world jamboree and spoke for so long. It would have served as an inspiration and a memorable experience that my club, the scouts (of which there are 3.4m in the US), were privileged enough to experience! It's absolutely worth reporting from both sides.
As I said, the word obtuse was correct, move outside the bubble you think is the world and don't just clamour for things that support your ever narrowing point of view. 

And besides, use an effing dictionary!

Quote
jamboree
ˌdʒambəˈriː/
noun
  1. 1.
    a large celebration or party, typically a lavish and boisterous one.
    "the film industry's annual jamboree in Cannes"
    synonyms: rally, gathering, get-together, convention, conference; More
  2. 2.
    a large rally of Scouts or Guides.
    synonyms: rally, gathering, get-together, convention, conference; More

People Assembly annual rally,  Scouts annual rally.....potato, potato; especially on a forum where every one of my posts made a point of saying that Trump did the wrong thing! 

But still, two political speakers turn up to speak at an event for X, but they use that position to talk about their politics and not the issues at hand....or they lightly touch on the issues and use it as a political platform.....how are they any different? The difference here is the majority of vocal people detest Trump but go either way with Corbyn, or, outside the UK nobody cares about him.

Again, for the millionth time, I like Corbyn and have respected him for twenty years. However, if you think he is above playing politics, then you are not only mistaken but part of this whole political problem.
I said it a week ago and I'm saying it again, when chanting 'ohhh Jeremy Corbyn' is almost as acceptable as '**** the Tories' then you have a damned problem. Particularly when the inept similarities between the parties are there for the world and their supporters to see.......if they were brave enough to scratch the surface like Corbyn was doing for 30 odd years previous. 

Edited by itdoesntmatterwhatthissay
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I really don't get how you can't see the difference between Corbyn talking politics at a political rally (did he incite booing of Theresa May I wonder?) and Trump talking politics to children at a scout gathering.

I'm out.

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It's nuts. WTF is wrong with people. 

The worst thing is actually seeing peoples comments on it, and the majority I have read have all been in support of it, and have no idea why it's even remotely wrong.

Sometimes I do pray for a nuclear Armageddon. 

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3 hours ago, itdoesntmatterwhatthissay said:

Jesus christ you guys really are entrenched in anti-Trump rhetoric aren't you.

I said from the start it was a wholly classless display but as a scout I would have been wrapped if a President came to my world jamboree and spoke for so long. It would have served as an inspiration and a memorable experience that my club, the scouts (of which there are 3.4m in the US), were privileged enough to experience! It's absolutely worth reporting from both sides.
As I said, the word obtuse was correct, move outside the bubble you think is the world and don't just clamour for things that support your ever narrowing point of view. 

It's not about rhetoric or wanting only things that support a certain world view.  Let me try to explain how I see it.

We all know his speech was utterly inappropriate.  Having started by commenting that he wouldn't be talking about politics he then did so, in a crude, narcissistic and vain way, as usual.  So he kind of gets that some occasions require certain protocols, but then he loses it, drifting off into the usual bluster and bragging, regardless of the audience or the occasion.    It's like a political version of Tourette's.  Like having a house guest who shits on the dinner table.  It would be deeply unpleasant and extremely embarrassing in any context.  Leading an audience of children into booing the last President is so inappropriate, so bizarre, that the predominant reaction is not so much criticism and anger, as bemusement and a kind of horror that the person displaying such uncontrolled, self-centred and sociopathic behaviour is not a drunk in a bar or someone off their face on spice, but one of the most powerful people on earth, sober.

My concern is not so much that he made a daft speech which was wholly at odds with the setting and the occasion, but that if he lacks any sense of self-control, responsibility towards others, or understanding of the duties and obligations which accompany the role he holds, then that creates a whole set of risks for millions of people, not just in the US.  His apparent refusal to accept the bounds of law as it applies to him, his demand for personal loyalty from the FBI, his nepotism, his dealings with the mafia going back decades, are far more worrying than his ludicrous performance in front of a bunch of scouts, but they reflect the same grave weaknesses and failings which make him unfit for office.  Any office. 

Any one of his stupid and loathsome performances might be an occasion for mockery, but the pattern and the persistence is very troubling.  The recent speech was just a graphic illustration of a deep-rooted problem, not the problem itself.

What makes it worse is that the people who maintain him in power, though they must see this, still pretend that there's nothing wrong, and that they haven't really chosen this most unsuitable of people to hold a position of such power.  I suppose they think they can control him.  It will end badly.

 

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1 hour ago, PieFacE said:

It's nuts. WTF is wrong with people. 

The worst thing is actually seeing peoples comments on it, and the majority I have read have all been in support of it, and have no idea why it's even remotely wrong.

Sometimes I do pray for a nuclear Armageddon. 

Sadly if you scratch the surface I would guess around 20% of the US hates the LGBTQ community and thinks they are "evil/weird/perverts/unnatural" (make your choice.)

The country was founding on the blanket acceptance of a genocide and happily based it's economy on human trafficking for hundreds of years. The US only began to deal with the aftermath of slavery in the late 60's / early 70's and that's really only a generation ago. (It's debatable if the issues can ever really be resolved.) I would say at least 30% of the white population is racist and would happily put anyone who is slightly brown on a boat to anywhere other than the "homeland." That 30% honestly believe that if the US was just white it would be great again.

Thats' Trump base. Add another 10% of the population that was sick of 'business as usual" in Washington and thats where his votes came from. 

 

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