Donald John Trump (1946 - )

"The Donald". His name conjures up visions of the 1980s, greed, huge deals, and pompous billionaires. Recognized by 98% of the American public, Donald Trump's penchant for putting his name on everything he owns, and for owning some very impressive things, has made him the envy of millions. His willingness to put aside the little people in pursuit of his goals has made him hated by many. And his ability to come brazenly back from a crushing bankruptcy is cause to admire his resiliance.

Trump was born in New York City on June 14, 1946 to Fred and Mary Trump, the fourth of five children.

After military school he attended the Wharton School of Business. Upon graduation, Donald came back to New York to make (and lose, and make again) his fortune in real estate. His signature deals were large, very expensive, heavily leveraged projects with his name emblazoned all over. Trump Tower is probably the best example of this. This was a sharp contrast from his father Fred, who made his fortune in fairly pedestrian apartment buildings.

He's been married (and divorced) twice, first to Ivana Trump, and then to Marla Maples. The marriage to Ivana produced Donald Jr, Ivanka, and Eric. His fourth child, Tiffany, was born in 1993 during his marriage to Maples.

Still leading a very flamboyant and public life, Trump can usually be found hanging in NYC with a supermodel on one arm and a bad comb-over.

Quotes:

"I like thinking big. If you're going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big."

"A little more moderation would be good. Of course, my life hasn't exactly been one of moderation."

"A friend called me up the other day and talked about investing in a dot-com that sells lobsters. Internet lobsters. Where will this end? The next day he sent me a huge package of lobsters on ice. How low can you stoop?"

"What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate."

Books:

• Trump: The Art of the Deal
• Trump: The Art of Survival
• Trump: Surviving at the Top
• Trump: The Art of the Comeback
• The America We Deserve

Donald Trump was a character in the 1980s comic strip Bloom County, and was roughly based on the real life Donald Trump. The story in the comic book was that Donald Trump, billionaire had been hit by the anchor of his yacht and needed to transplant his brain into the body of Bill the Cat, who was brain dead. This occurred in the last year of the strip, filling the last collection, Happy Trails. The humor, such as it was, came from the ridiculousness of a powerful billionaire's mind residing in the body of an oft-dead cat. The chance for Donald Trump's value system to clash with the gentle Opus the Penguin also led to some obvious possibilities. For example, on one occasion Opus philosophical comments that we are only really borrowing our possessions in our short time on earth, and Donald Trump is forced into near catatonia on taking this literally.

On the whole, I didn't like the addition of the character of Donald Trump, for much of the same reason that I find the later Bloom County to be less enjoyable than the early one. The early Bloom County was both imaginative and realistic, and dealt more heavily with character interaction. The later Bloom County grew increasingly surreal and full of pop culture trivia and reference, and the insertion of Donald Trump was part of that. However, something should also be said for hindsight from 2008. The reader of this has probably read, at least in passing, dozens of webcomics based on surreal and improbably premises. Twenty years ago, this was not the case. Upon opening our comics pages, we were mostly confronted with Hi and Lois, a comic strip about how the dad was lazy and liked to golf too much. Or we could read Bloom County, a strip where a plot line could revolve around the insertion of the mind of a celebrity billionaire into the body of a ex-cocaine addict cat who had run for president and died numerous times. In that context, inserting a real life person as a fictional character into a comic strip is a stroke of genius.