Joanne pre-NYMHM: 2 Nov 2016

2016 continues to be bonkers.

  1. The Irrational Downfall of Park Geun-hye [Ask a Korean]
  2. “He has solemnly told the country to trust him while refusing to produce any records to prove whether he speaks the truth or has utter contempt for it.” [Newsweek, “Donald Trump’s Companies Destroyed Emails in Defiance of Court Orders“]
  3. “For instance, could his judicial appointments be influenced by his own court cases? . . . Would lawyers, parties in cases and even judges seek to curry favor with a powerful individual in a way that might alter the outcome?” [USA Today, “How 75 pending lawsuits could distract a Donald Trump presidency“]
  4. Another great story from David A. Fahrenthold with this amazing anecdote:

In the fall of 1996, a charity called the Association to Benefit Children held a ribbon-cutting in Manhattan for a new nursery school serving children with AIDS. The bold-faced names took seats up front …[with] a seat saved for Steven Fisher, a developer who had given generously to build the nursery.

Then, all of a sudden, there was Donald Trump.

“Nobody knew he was coming,” said Abigail Disney, another donor sitting on the dais. “There’s this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don’t know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. [He] just gets up on the podium and sits down.”

Trump was not a major donor. He was not a donor, period. . . . So they warbled into the first song on the program, “This Little Light of Mine,” alongside Trump and a chorus of children — with a photographer snapping photos, and Trump looking for all the world like an honored donor to the cause.

Afterward, Disney and Buchenholz recalled, Trump left without offering an explanation. Or a donation. Fisher was stuck in the audience. The charity spent months trying to repair its relationship with him.

[Note from the future: NYMHM grew out of these public posts from Joanne Merriam’s Facebook account. We retain them here in archives to provide a record going back to the beginning of Trump’s presidency.]