Did you ever like Donald Trump?

he barely even crossed my mind ever until a year or 2 ago

i was thinking about this bc i've never seen a guy become the most hated man in the world after being a not completely hated, sometimes liked or at least "appreciated", pop culture presence for decades. i'm sure people in the know realized what a piece of shit he was, but it's kind of an interesting phenomenon.

there's an old thread about whether you can ever be happy when a bad person dies, I forgot which exactly. I came very close to posting 'I'll be happy when donald trump dies, fuck that guy' but I decided not to since it seemed pointlessly crass (this was pre-trump in politics.)

always hated him, when I first became aware of him it was as 80s scumbag racist landlord and crook along w similar 80s douchebag icons like Boesky and Milken

he's been an unrepentant shithead on a national scale at least since he ginned up the birtherism bullshit. I imagine New Yorkers and older folks have hated him for a lot longer; most of his earlier controveries (housing discrimination, the Central Park Five, his lurid divorces) were before my time.

I worked at bookstores in 2004 and 2008, and discount copies of "Art of the Deal" were always really popular with wannabe-entrepreneur types. Apart from that I only knew him as an 80s celeb - I was only 12 when Gremlins II came out but I knew the bad guy was supposed to be a Trump-type.

At some point a few years ago (2013?) I noticed people being angry about him on Twitter and was like, "Oh! So he's a disgusting garbage person." And that was that.

no, I'm from New York

I had very little awareness of him before the 00s. I mainly knew him as the Apprentice guy. I'd never heard of the Central Park Five.

idk he's always been a very unlikeable person, I thought that was sort of his appeal. he was the real-world manifestation of the a wrestling heel. maybe you envied what he had and you enjoyed watching him be an asshole on The Apprentice but I never thought anyone actually liked him as a person. at best he was just...kinda pathetic.

i think he played differently in the rural midwest (haha still does :( ) bc i never heard about all of the evil aspects of his life and personality. i knew him from talk shows and commercials and that book and probably references in rap songs.

was good in "Ghosts Can't DO It"

maybe nomar can help out my lonely thread: This is the thread for posting random Trump references in rap songs

i was also a kid during his initial peak era of fame so lots of it probably went over my head and i never cared enough about him to go back and research bc he seemed like a non-entity for awhile, never thought about him again til the apprentice.

Never thought about him too much tbh.

We had Alan Sugar over here.

as a kid in the midwest i remember his name being just shorthand for "rich dude." i never watched any of his shows or paid much attention to him. i didn't spend much time thinking about this asshole until the birther garbage really

sorry shakey i was going to post Johnny Ryall but you got there first :/

i mean even in 2015 to early 2016 i just thought "this guy is a huge asshole but i love that he is around to fuck up the GOP race"

i can't honestly answer that question. when i was a kid in new jersey we had a copy of "trump, the game", which was monopoly but even shittier and with some extra zeros on the fake money. which is impressive because monopoly is an extremely shitty game. it had a lot of plastic bits shaped like "T"s in it, which i used to pretend stood for mr. t.

I think my general impression since he first entered my awareness in the mid-'80s was 'wtf is this doofus even famous for?' Then he started in on the birther shit and my opinion of him was upgraded from 'useless' to 'worthless'. Since announcing his run for presidency, my opinion was slowly cranked all the way to 'run him through a wood chipper and salt any earth tainted by his pulped remains'.

fair

Always thought he was a clownish dickhead - my awareness of him mostly came from Spy magazine. When he became a pro wrestler, my impression was fully solidified. Now that he's actively destroying the country, though, I am actively wishing for his death every time I see him or see his name mentioned.

I hope that, in tribute, his funeral will draw the biggest, most excited crowd yet. The hugest celebration. It would mean a lot. Very touching.

i had a vague awareness of his existence from the early 90s, when i was a child, onwards. the first time i ever saw him much was watching an episode of the apprentice circa 2004. i thought, wow what an insufferable dickhead.

when i was a kid in new jersey we had a copy of "trump, the game",

yes!

In my childhood he was omnipresent in a vague sort of way: rich, vulgar plutocrat with big-haired miserable women beside him. I remember a ref to him in Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The Apprentice logo with the dashing-looking profile of Donald Trump in contrast with what the dude actually looked like kinda confirmed for me that he had some kind of complex

as a kid in the midwest i remember his name being just shorthand for "rich dude." i never watched any of his shows or paid much attention to him. i didn't spend much time thinking about this asshole until the birther garbage really

same here. i missed all the apprentice stuff because i didn't watch much television during the 2000s, although i knew that he said "you're fired" and that people liked that, apparently. then suddenly it seemed like he was in the news all the time talking about birth certificates and i thought christ what an asshole

I first learned about him from Bloom County I think. Even as an 11-year-old I could identify him as a boneheaded mega-rich brat who used garish gilded architecture and beautiful women to prop up his huge ego.

Then there was The Apprentice which I never watched but I thought the world of vapid and morally bankrupt reality TV game shows was probably the perfect fit for him

Then there was the racist right-wing conspiracy theory birther shit which pushed him firmly into "this guy is an utter piece of shit" territory for me (I didn't know about the racist stuff in his past until this past election cycle)

I liked when he was machine gunning the rest of the nominees at the first GOP debate though. I would watch that again now even knowing the apocalypse that would ensue.

If he had just stayed in showbiz I'd probably just think of him as racist bizarro Regis Philbin

did any of you get introduced to him by Doonesbury?

hmm maybe, altho Bloom County might also have been responsible

I first learned about him from Bloom County

I'm guessing Fresh Prince was my introduction. I would have seen him in Home Alone 2 also, but probably not registered who he was.

https://fortunedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/new-york-post.png

http://i.imgur.com/Ph9x6BU.jpg

I might have been, I read a bunch of those collections in the late 90's/early 2000's when Trump was out of the spotlight. Thought it was odd that Trump was the one public figure that he didn't depict symbolically.

Uh xpx5 to morbs

As a non-American, I definitely had my main early awareness of him from Bloom County.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMKFIHRpe7I

I can't imagine anyone in this world liking this guy. His wife doesn't, I am pretty sure he doesn't even like himself.

i THINK HE does nto like himself but he has drank som epotion that makes him feel good about himself anyway prb from some harry potter class

He seemed fairly affable when I first saw him on Letterman around 1984 or 85, back when I only vaguely knew his name and that he was some NY real-estate billionaire. Then I spent years growing ever more annoyed by his omnipresence while trying to ignore him, but didn't start to seriously despise him until 2011. Much of the horrible stuff he's done (housing discrimination/Central Park 5), I wasn't aware of pre-2015.

Weirdly, though, I had a dream back in mid-October in which he gave me and a co-worker a ride home from work; and I had no strong feelings pro-or-con about him, since in the dream he was just "famous businessman Donald Trump" instead of "loathsome soon-to-be-unsuccessful Presidential candidate"

have always been deeply repulsed by donald trump since i first became aware of him at some point in the '80s

my impression of him was always as a joke version of a rich guy except he was real for some reason. as a famous figure, he seemed like a real "only in NYC" kind of guy.

my parents didn't like him and they were usually otm about people they disliked
they didn't go around crowing about how much they hated him, but he was a thumbs-down human being
not a winner, not successful, just a boastful wealthy asshole

which is to say not a threat to our existence generally speaking
at the time it seemed like the real enemies were in the white house ;_;

also lol @ that facial expression

I knew of him as an ott tacky rich a-hole, but when the Apprentice came on I was almost mesmerized by his laziness and inanity. It was like they'd built a show around a black hole of charisma. I guess he got more animated over time.

félix guattari in 1989:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CuK3s5uWAAAFYSh.jpg

was very annoyed by success/near omnipresence of The Apprentice in 2004. i was in 5th grade, everyone loved it. it sucked

Also jumping on the Bloom County train.

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*nkM9GBKuZpSlrV6S.png

...yet

"Donald looked back, even more annoying and eye catching. "Melania," do not touch me, "he replied.
They look at each other in their saturated feelings, like two small Spicerticer Spicer who mocked a visit of the fat state to jazz in the background and two stupid masters screamed.
Donald looked at the melanin with his breasts and little hands. "I feel like that!" Revealed Donald with a grateful smile.
Melania looked hungry, her sensation was flushed like wet fingers.
Then, Melania came to drink cold cold water.
FINISH"

I did find him funny in the first few Republican debates. That's it.

trump figures in the very end of bloom county -- he buys out the entire strip and turns it into "trump: the comic strip," w/ his own head on opus's body. occurred to me a while back that this is p much what happened to america.

i don't know that I ever liked him but I found him kind of harmlessly amusing until about 7 years ago when he started to fucking grate and then the whole birth certificate shit blew up

my parents didn't like him and they were usually otm about people they disliked
they didn't go around crowing about how much they hated him, but he was a thumbs-down human being
not a winner, not successful, just a boastful wealthy asshole

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, May 25, 2017 11:56 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is almost exactly my experience, though my parents weren't always OTM about who they disliked. Until I was out of college he was just a synonym for "rich asshole". Once I actually became familiar with him as a media personality, he made my skin crawl instantly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4otCS3FJxas

Never really liked him.

Probably knew him first from '90s tabloid/celebrity TV and stuff like this. Then one time my Dad asked me to see if Bookstop had a copy of "Art Of The Comeback" and I got really embarrassed (I lied and said they were sold out).

Later on, there was The Apprentice, which I never watched, although I will admit I was amazed at him finding a way to extend his 15 minutes yet again (remember: the show was like his third or fourth wind). My main Trump memories of the time were the Robert Smigal interview mouth bits with Conan O'Brien, which now seem pretty prescient in revealing his later irl discourse style both in interviews and Twitter.

And then the birther stuff and the twitter which both felt like increasingly desperate stabs at staying relevant way after his sell-by date. Little did we know...

my parents didn't like him and they were usually otm about people they disliked
they didn't go around crowing about how much they hated him, but he was a thumbs-down human being
not a winner, not successful, just a boastful wealthy asshole

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, May 25, 2017 11:56 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is almost exactly my experience, though my parents weren't always OTM about who they disliked. Until I was out of college Trump was just a passive synonym for "rich asshole." Once I became familiar with him as a media personality, reflexive dislike turned to visceral loathing - he made my skin crawl. And this was at least half a decade before Birthergate.

^Eek, sorry about the double post

The Art of the Feel Up

When we were preparing to move around late '91/early '92, my grandparents and my my grandmother's brother and sister-in-law stayed at our house for about two weeks to help us get everything together. My great-aunt was a generally miserable woman who was super paranoid (there was an incident of her freaking out one morning when the mailman showed up), obsessed with death and refused to sleep in the same bed as her husband on account of his snoring. The only time that she ever cracked a smile during the entire duration of their visit is when she was hearing news about Donald Trump's divorce and marriage to Marla Maples on Entertainment Tonight or whatever. That was my first association with Donald Trump and remained, for many years, my go-to whenever I heard his name mentioned.

So, no.

my my

A little surprised by all the people who knew him from Bloom County but not Doonesbury. Anyway, no, he never seemed likeable, even in the 80s. frogbs otm.

no one ever took him seriously

ever

not to get all trenchant but srsly he represents the end of certain things here, and perhaps elsewhere unfortunately

I don't remember in what context I first encountered Trump but I was an adolescent and my reaction was immediate hatred. Had the same feelings towards Gene Simmons. Gross, tacky, arrogant, unapologetically selfish businessman just read as VILLAIN instinctually.

I used to watch the early seasons of the Apprentice, but it was clear even watching that show that the guy had no idea how to be a businessman - his decisions were poorly explained and sometimes nonsensical. That was part of the fun for me, tbh. The moment I realized that our country may soon be run the same way, I was terrified. I regret that I in any way ever supported this dude

I used to watch the early seasons of the Apprentice, but it was clear even watching that show that the guy had no idea how to be a businessman - his decisions were poorly explained and sometimes nonsensical.

this was with copious amounts of vv generous reality show editing too

he barely even crossed my mind ever until a year or 2 ago

― ciderpress

^

What little I knew of him I disliked immensely - I saw him as a tacky, tasteless nouveaux-riche cunt who put gold and marble everywhere and married bighaired big titted models.

With his mouth sewn shut, he still shakes his butt
'cause he's Hitler & Swayze & Trump & Travolta

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq5s0KrFkmo

Up to The Apprentice, I neither liked nor disliked.

With the App, the AlSug version, his role was to point out the 'bleedin obvious' and occasionally say something that made sense. With the Trump version, well we only got the celeb version, he just seemed to 'support' whichever team members he liked, and beyond that didn't come over as likesble or charming. But then, that's not what the show is about, nut even the AlSug version has him occasionally cracking a joke or lightening the mood.

I'm more of a dan bilzerian fan tbh but the apprentice was good back in the day

I don't think I was conscious of him before he was groundlessly attacking Obama. He just seemed to be a buffoon. What's to like?

The thing that really creeps me out is - I get a chill down my spine just thinking about it - I have had this almost physical dislike of this person since the first time I ever heard him speak. I don't know how anyone could look at this guy and hear this guy and think, that's a leader. If like me you are privileged enough not to be in the crosshairs of this administration I think you need to try and grok the mindset of a Trump voter but...I just fucking can't, I can't, he's awful and he has always been awful and I don't understand, at an instinctual, split-second response level, how you could feel otherwise.

Circa1916 is OTMFM - 10 years ago, about, I thought to myself, there are two people in the world who I just want to be blasted into space so that we don't have to fucking deal with them anymore, don't ever have to think about them again, and those people are Gene Simmons and Donald Trump.

First encountered him here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRMJ3ftUtnw&t=46s incongruously helping with the Rumbelows Cup quarter final draw on UK football show Saint and Greavsie. Can't say I gave him much thought, other than thinking that the S&G's fawning on such an obvious rich vulgar asshole reflected poorly on the wisecracking double act.

A little surprised by all the people who knew him from Bloom County but not Doonesbury. Anyway, no, he never seemed likeable, even in the 80s. frogbs otm.

― Tomorrow Begat Tomorrow (Sund4r), Thursday, May 25, 2017 9:13 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bloom County was about a bunch of cuddly cartoon animals and Doonesbury centered on an advertising agent with a rocky marriage.

Bloom County also sadder, funnier & way better art, over time

If by 'like' you mean 'did not, at some point in the past, actively and passionately wish death or disfigurement or human centipedism on', then the answer to the question itt is yes.

If someone had said, twelve years ago, "DTrump will be pres one day", I'd have said "Oh, OK" and shrugged slightly.

After his years of denying Obama's birth certif, I'd have thought that one piece of dumbness would have proved him unfit for Presidency.

That is a good point Mark G!

I guess I was vaguely aware of him as far back as the early 90s. I think if I had to describe him back then based on what I knew it would have been something like "some rich guy who owns hotels and declared bankruptcy a couple of times". I was kind of surprised that Donald Trump was still a thing when "The Apprentice" appeared to have some achieved some level of popularity (I never watched it). Next I heard of him was the whole birth certificate thing, which seemed like some kind of desperate attempt to appear relevant. Was kind of surprised when Romney sought Trump's endorsement during the 2012 primary, thinking that associating with this guy probably has more negatives than positives. Now he's the president.

I watched season 1 of the apprentice as a kid. Was mostly struck by his hair. I think I assumed he was a more of less in on the joke celebrity grotesque. Evil Regis Philbin.

Also, someone probably posted this before but stikm

Mike Hanle y wrote this on thread Nuclear Weapons Top Trumps on board I Love Everything on Oct 3, 2001

DOnald Trump has nuclear weapons!?
Tadeusz Suchodolski wrote this on thread Nuclear Weapons Top Trumps on board I Love Everything on Oct 3, 2001

DOnald Trump has nuclear weapons!?
That's almost as scar y as letting Hanle y have nuclear weapons!

heh

interesting that this is coming from marketwatch who do not seem liberally biased

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-time-to-plan-an-escape-route-for-you-and-your-money-from-trumpland-2017-05-26

I'm old enough to remember Trump's late-80s emergence as an avatar of crassly domineering greed and, politics aside, I've always found the Donald personally, viscerally revolting. He'd have placed high on my "Worst Americans" ballot long before he started pushing the birther bullshit.

I wonder how many people have had a mad on for him since he pretty much single-handedly destroyed an entire football league.

Man, if only we could shake our addiction to glorifying garbage people in this country. Man.

you know, as a dickhead reality tv star he was fine but as Pres he is trouble

I don't know. He seems fine so far.

Fine for a fuckface

so that we don't have to fucking deal with them anymore, don't ever have to think about them again, and those people are Gene Simmons and Donald Trump.

yeah all during the campaign I was just thinking "god I can't WAIT for this election to be over so I don't have to see/hear/think about this horrible person anymore". And now I'll be hearing about for a good chunk of the rest of my life, ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I don't have a strong impression of him from living in NYC during the 80s other than people didn't take him that seriously. He got shit for tearing down the historic Bonwit Teller building but NYC was pretty desperate for real estate development and he benefited "bigly" from tax abatements and his pop's connections. I didn't pay much attention tbh, though I remember the tabloids referred to him as "Donnie" which was condescending and funny. When Spy magazine started ridiculing him later in the decade he just seemed like another of their easy targets; there were so many other pseudo-celebrities worthy of contempt in those days, spending any time thinking about Donald Trump seemed like a waste. So I didn't like or especially dislike him, he was just another rich asshole to ignore.

But to somebody who lived in New York while he was making his name, Trump as president is fucking surreal, it's like Bernie Goetz, Leona Helmsley or the Crazy Eddie voiceover guy got elected!

do even Trump's own supporters actually "like" him? (rather than liking the fact that he pisses off liberals/liking how he acts as an avatar for their various resentments and fears etc?) do Trump voters think that he'd be a fun guy to hang out with, or have over for dinner or whatever?

like, the "People look at you and they see who they want to be. They look at me and they see what they are" bit from Oliver Stone's Nixon- does anyone look at Trump and think "I wish I was that guy"?

I was around for his initial run up the charts in the 80s. I never gave him much thought - crooked, vain property developers are everywhere - and somewhere around Letterman appearance 3 or 4 I'd had enough. If anything, Gremlins 2 wasn't harsh enough.

OTOH, in 2004 I was a 39 year old office IT worker and seeing bankers, mangers, VCs, brokers, MBAs, and marketers claw, stab, and eat shit on camera all for the privilege of being gunned down by Trump made for compelling television. I could never connect with Survivor, but those first couple of seasons were some target marketing.

Weird reading this thread now: The Apprentice: schadenfreude rears its beautiful head

I spent a lot of summers in the 80s adjacent to Atlantic City and always hated casinos and cheered for Vera Coking. There were stories of DT randomly giving ludicrous tips but my dad always said they were bullshit.

I had heard his name before and knew he was powerful but never actually saw the guy until the Scottish golf course thing, and I found him repulsive instantly.

Makes no sense that the news didn't go crazy with the Molly Forbes story. Why wouldn't anyone in Scotland be able to fix her water supply?

He was not powerful. He just liked to brag about being rich.

ime he was just another new york asshole, and someone everyone hated like the mets and yankees and knicks and giants. but her emails I guess.

Also even though he isn't names in it, this quote from Snow Crash has always summed him up nicely:

he slams the button for LAVATORY GRANDE ROYALE.
Never been here before. It's like something on the top floor of a luxury high-rise casino in Atlantic City, where they put semi-retarded adults from South Philly after they've blundered into the mega-jackpot. It's got everything that a dimwitted pathological gambler would identify with luxury: gold-plated fixtures, lots of injection-molded pseudomarble, velvet drapes, and a butler.

i still have not formed an opinion of donald trump

U need more evidence imo

you never know!

Of course don weiner was a Donald Trump fan.

Xps

that look https://news.vice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/RTX37RET-1024x683.jpg

five minutes into g7 and chill and she gives u this look

does anyone look at Trump and think "I wish I was that guy"?

definitely. this guy is kinda the ultimate manifestation of most idiots' "what I would do if I won the lottery" fantasies, isn't he? "I'd buy my own jet, live in a gold tower with my name on it, sleep with a bunch of models, and be an insufferable dick to everyone"

"In the video from 2005, Trump admits to hitting on a married woman and boasts that he can wantonly kiss women and grope their genitals because he is a "star.""

the puig's dream?

Puig (Catalan pronunciation: [putʃ]; Spanish pronunciation: [pwiɣ]) is a name of Catalan origin, meaning "hill" or "mountain."[1] Hence, in Catalan-speaking areas, it appears in the names of numerous people and geographical features

ya hit the nail on the head - bullseye

also - https://www.puig.com/en/

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

8!

Who are these scoundrels!

i think they're just people trolling. i'm surprised there are this many active ilxors in general.

i'm bad at estimating though

there could be alt right lurkers i guess

BANNON

KUSHNER

we should blame all bad poll results on the alt-right lurkers

If any WH garbage person was going to lurk on ILX it would be Bannon.

Washington Post wants to talk to the three ppl who used to like Trump but no longer do

I could imagine people liking Trump back when he'd hang with The Clintons.

See that's reason number two why he should never have been considered for Pres. It's one thing if he had 'fallen out' with them for some specific reason, but the phrase "would sell his granny" seems to apply.

If any WH garbage person was going to lurk on ILX it would be Bannon.

for some reason i feel like stephen miller is more likely but i can't quite articulate why

I'm a joker
I'm a smoker
I'm a midnight toker
I sure don't want to- ah wait

stephen miller, the white house's pompatus of love

We'll only know when Trump gives a speech about the threat of radical poptimism

Or when he changes his name to Ornaldo Bloomps.

Donlado Troomps

for some reason i feel like stephen miller is more likely but i can't quite articulate why

Bannon more likely to create a login and shitpost in a stupor and accidentally almost reveal himself? Miller seems like a disciplined lurker

Bannon is the Goering, Miller is the Goebbels

Bannon is the father getting hammered in his den while listening to march music at top volume, Miller is the son in the bedroom quietly murdering his best friend.

like i said

Which one is more likely to be a shill for The Arcana?

shrill prosperity, trickling down, into posterity

Lol nomar otm

I liked him during the Republican primary debates.

“This administration is offering cakes to the fortunate few,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.

Still like him