Mining for suckers

Leaving an Appalachian coal mine at the end of a shift.

In last year's campaign, Donald Trump made much of the wonderfulness of coal-mining and of his solidarity with coal miners and  workers in some other old industries, many of whom were then suckers enough to vote for him -- enough to get him elected by Electoral College, with the help of the Kremlin. But this quote from a 1990 Time magazine interview with him suggests what he really thinks of these people:

"I love the creative process {of the real-estate business}. I do what I do out of pure enjoyment. Hopefully, nobody does it better. There’s a beauty to making a great deal. It’s my canvas. And I like painting it.

"I like the challenge and tell the story of the coal miner’s son. The coal miner gets black-lung disease, his son gets it, then his son. If I had been the son of a coal miner, I would have left the damn mines. But most people don’t have the imagination — or whatever — to leave their mine. They don’t have 'it.'''

Trump was born on third base as a son of a rich and ruthless developer. The future president then went on to inherit tens of millions of dollars.  He sure had "it.''

-- Robert Whitcomb