David Cay Johnston > Quotes

“To disagree with Trump is to be wrong. To portray Trump in a way that does not fit with his image of himself is to be a loser. It is an approach to life that may work in business (where Trump can walk out and not deal with people who displease him), but government leaders do not enjoy that luxury, especially the president of the United States. If”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“Corporations have grown so powerful that they have inverted the Roman equation: rather than corporations existing to serve the state, the state serves them.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind

“You will even read about an insurance company owned by one of America’s most admired billionaires that asked a paralyzed man to die because the cost of keeping him alive was cutting into the insurer’s profits.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind

“Donald Trump’s mottos, “Always get even” and “Hit back harder than you were hit,”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“Trump often threatens to sue journalists, ensuring caution from publishers and broadcasters who want to avoid a costly lawsuit—even one Trump cannot win. This tends to discourage investigation beyond the official talking points.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“Sixteen pages of Think Big are devoted to revenge. All of them run directly contrary to this basic biblical teaching. Trump leaves no room for doubt that revenge is a guiding principle of his life—“My motto is: Always get even.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“Trump distorts information, contradicts himself, and blocks inquiries into his conduct by journalists, law enforcement, business regulators, and other people’s lawyers. Again, the record shows decades of Trump’s skill in pursuing this strategy successfully.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“No person, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the great majority lean. No person ever saw a flock of birds, of which two or three were swimming in grease, and the others all skin and bone.” —Henry George, American reformer, 1839–1897”
― David Cay Johnston, Divided: The Perils of Our Growing Inequality

“Trump spent two years suing author Tim O’Brien and his publisher for writing that his net worth was probably not in the billions, but rather the hundreds of millions. After a court dismissed the case, Trump made it clear that he merely wanted to harass O’Brien, not necessarily win damages. “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about,” Trump bragged. It was a comment that fit cozily within his philosophy of revenge. In”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“For years, Trump used fake identities to mislead journalists—and at least once to menace someone who was just doing their duty.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“To disagree with Trump is to be wrong. To portray Trump in a way that does not fit with his image of himself is to be a loser. It”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“No other modern country gives corporations the unfettered power found in America to gouge customers, shortchange workers and erect barriers to fair play. A big reason is that so little of the news, which informs us about the world around us, addresses the private, government-approved mechanisms by which price gouging is employed to redistribute income upward.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind

“Taking wildly different positions on the value of assets and using his emotional state to justify those valuations helps explain something else Trump has done repeatedly. Congress requires all presidential candidates to file a financial disclosure statement listing their assets, liabilities, and income. Trump’s ninety-two-page disclosure report valued one of his best-known properties at more than $50 million. But he told tax authorities the same property was worth only about $1 million. He valued another signature Trump property at zero—and demanded the return of the property taxes he had already paid.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“That is, of course, the kind of perspective we expect from mobsters, dictators, and others whose primary regard is for unflinching support, not for allegiance to truth or facts.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“Guthrie is best known for “This Land Is Your Land,” his ballad about the Dust Bowl, which gave farmers in his native Oklahoma an extra kick in the pants during the Great Depression. He set his thoughts about Trump’s rental policies to a song he titled “Old Man Trump.” The lyrics continue with this: Beach Haven ain’t my home! No, I just can’t pay this rent! My money’s down the drain, And my soul is badly bent! Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower Where no black folks come to roam, No, no, Old Man Trump! Old Beach Haven ain’t my home! More”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“The fact that Trump paid no tax came to light when casino regulators issued a public report on his fitness to own a casino. Trump’s tax returns showed negative income. That’s because Congress lets big real estate investors offset their income from salaries, stock market gains, consulting fees, and other income with losses from depreciation in the value of their buildings. If these paper losses for the declining value of their buildings are greater than their cash income from other sources, real estate investors can legally tell the IRS that their income is less than zero and no federal income tax is due. Trump”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“The DGE prepared its own 111-page report. It noted that Trump owed (not owned, but owed) $3.2 billion. Of that, he had personally guaranteed $833.5 million. Absent an agreement by all creditors, Trump would face an uncontrolled, domino-effect chain of bankruptcies. If just one creditor moved against one Trump property, the others would follow, creating chaos. More”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“At Trump University, we teach success,” Trump said, looking into the camera in a 2005 promotional video. “That’s what it’s all about—success. It’s going to happen to you. We’re going to have professors and adjunct professors that are absolutely terrific—terrific people, terrific brains, successful. We are going to have the best of the best. These are all people that are handpicked by me.” None of those statements were true. First,”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“Halliburton’s is a more extreme example, one in which a powerful and wealthy company transcends national borders so thoroughly that it is not an American company but a truly global enterprise with no allegiance to anything or anyone except the bottom line and the investors and executives who gain from its profits.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind

“Trump had a history of firing experts like Tracy and replacing them with less-experienced yes men.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“The faux university also did not have professors, not even part-time adjunct professors, and the “faculty” (as they were called) were certainly not “the best of the best.” They were commissioned sales people, many with no experience in real estate. One managed a fast food joint, as Senator Marco Rubio would point out during the March 3 Republican primary debate in 2016. Two other instructors were in personal bankruptcy while collecting fees from would-be Trump University graduates eager to learn how to get rich. Trump”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“The documentary also includes Trump summarizing his thoughts years after the USFL fold: “It was a nice experience,” he says. “It was fun. We had a great lawsuit.” Tollin extended Trump a courtesy in 2009 by sending him a rough cut of the film before it aired on ESPN. Trump was not happy with what he saw. In what had long before become a pattern when he was displeased, Trump took a thick, felt-tip pen to Tollin’s letter before mailing it back: “A third rate documentary and extremely dishonest—as you know. Best wishes,” Trump wrote, adding his distinctive, jaws-like signature. “P.S.—You are a loser.” Trump underlined the last word. To”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“How the promise of cheap, competitive and unlimited telecommunications service has been turned into a reality of expensive, monopolistic and limited service is just one part of the larger transformation in the American economy since the late 1970s.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind

“Why do I have to repent or seek God’s forgiveness if I am not making mistakes?” Trump asked an Iowa audience of evangelicals in 2015. The report on this in the Christian Post quoted his words, then referred to Trump’s “alleged Christian faith.” Trump”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“Many reporters accurately quote what they are told, but don’t know much about the underlying issues. For Trump and others like him, this makes it easy to manipulate most of the press.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“This philosophy was ignored by the many pastors who endorsed Trump and accepted his statement that he is a Christian. That is worth pondering because revenge is explicitly rejected by Jesus and runs counter to the whole theme of the New Testament.”
― David Cay Johnston, It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America

“Donald would run for president after failing to vote in the 2002 general election and, as records indicate, in any Republican primary from 1989 until he voted for himself in 2016. Friedrich”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“I love getting even when I get screwed by someone—yes, it is true … Always get even. When you are in business you need to get even with people who screw you. You need to screw them back fifteen times harder … go for the jugular, attack them in spades!” Trump”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump

“In effect, Wisconsin politicians forced the owners of these 8,000 small, family-owned and taxpaying businesses to turn over a month’s profits so the money could be given to one of the biggest companies in the world, General Electric, and its partners to make a film glamorizing violent theft.”
― David Cay Johnston, The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind

“Donald Trump is not a man who tries to understand how others perceive him. Rather, he dismisses those who do not see him as he sees himself. In”
― David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump