Trump’s Bixpo show offends – but it’s show biz

I wouldn’t be writing about Donald Trump’s Bixpo speech Sept. 14 at the Budweiser Events Center if people weren’t talking so much about it.

At a Business After Hours gathering at the First National Pavilion adjacent to the Bud Center, a few hours after Trump’s appearance, attendees buzzed about the performance by the world’s best-known real estate developer.

And most of the talk was not kind.

“Is this guy supposed to be some sort of role model?” That incredulous question, posed by a prominent Fort Collins real estate broker, sums up the comments nicely.

If you missed Trump’s speech, or the media coverage of it, here are a few nuggets. We’ll omit the four-letter expletives that Trump sprinkled too liberally in his hour-long ramble.

Among his rules of the road to success:

• “Be paranoid,” he said. Hire good people, then watch them like a hawk “because they’re gonna try to fleece ya.”

In other words, trust – the most basic ingredient in any business relationship – is not so much an ideal as a liability.

• “Get even,” he said. “If somebody screws you, you screw ’em back 10 times over. At least you can feel good about it. Boy, do I feel good.”

In other words, revenge is sweetest when it does the most harm.

Here is a man who does for business advice what Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinnison did for comedy.

Throw in the offensive comments Trump made about women and the snide remarks about the “losers” of the world – presumably anyone whose success can’t be measured by the size of a bank account – and you have, in Trump, a perfectly packaged pig.

But before this column washes away on a wave of righteous indignation, I’ll offer this: Trump is a showman as much as he is a real estate developer. “The Apprentice,” his reality-TV series, is in its fourth season, having risen to the top of the Nielsen scorecard.

Show biz. That has become as much Trump’s game as building hotels and casinos. And show biz was what the Bud Center appearance was about.

Watching people watching Trump – and most of the audience spent at least some time doing that – showed me something encouraging about those who attended. The low points, like those described above, left most people wide-eyed, open-mouthed, like witnesses to some kind of violent accident.

For a few others, Trump’s laugh lines brought just what they intended. I watched one man nearly doubled over with laughter when Trump described “this dog of a woman” he had fired from his staff. All of us know a few people in this region’s business community for whom Trump actually is a role model. That’s discouraging.

During a question session following Trump’s speech, a woman took a hand-held microphone to ask about the importance of ethics in the conduct of business.

For the first time during his stage appearance, Trump paused. It seemed for a few moments as if he had never really considered the idea and, based upon what we had all heard from him, he likely hadn’t.

His response to the question was a muddled mess of platitudes, as my own notes reflect.

Ethics, it seemed obvious, were not part of Trump’s program for that day or, for that matter, any other.

New editor Tom Hacker covers real estate for the Northern Colorado Business Report. He can be reached at (970) 221-5400, ext. 223, (970) 356-1683, ext. 223 or at thacker@ncbr.com.

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