Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

Let us suppose that you have two careers. Let us suppose that you are, on the one hand, a successful entrepreneur, with considerable property investments, including resorts, and numerous other interests.

Let us suppose you are also a celebrity jackass, who mouths off on any subject that comes to mind while pretending to run for president. 

There comes a point when your business partners – even in the entertainment side of your business, who welcome a high profile – might find it advisable to severe their ties with you. NBC, and many leading figures in the entertainment industry have hit out at Donald Trump over his rambling, incoherent, attacks on Mexicans. 

Apparently Trump believes that immigrants – or possibly just illegal immigrants – are rapists, though he qualifies this by conceding that some are probably good people. It is not clear whether he means that some rapists are good people or that some immigrants might not be rapists. 

"They don't send us their best" he rants, as though the Mexican government is dispatching people to the US in lieu of sending them to prison. 

Trump is not seriously running for president, any more than he was four years ago. He pursued this ambition with rather more seriousness when he sought the Reform Party's nomination in 2000, and won the California primary, but now he is apparently a Republican, and does not, even in his own insane imagination, believe he has a prospect of winning. 

His political views are an incoherent mixture of populist drivel. On the economy he is completely out of line with the Republican Party, and much closer to Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders on trade. 

But the purpose is neither to advance a political agenda or seek election to office. His purpose is to generate publicity. This probably helps some aspects of his business, but by crossing the line from controversialist to mad racist uncle in the attic, he has found his brands – such as the Miss USA pageant – getting dropped by real businesses. 

Trump has real achievements to his credit in both careers. He has been a successful businessman, and a very successful celebrity jackass. But the time has come to focus on one career. It is as a jackass that he is genuinely world class, so that should probably be his choice.