CBS This Morning on Monday eagerly hyped a new expose by the Washington Post: As a child, Donald Trump pulled pigtails and threw rocks at kids. This is the same Washington Post that went after Mitt Romney for allegedly forcing a haircut on another boy in 1965. Talking to reporters Marc Fisher and Michael Kranish, CBS co-host Norah O’Donnell wondered, “You go all the way back to his childhood to help reveal some of Donald Trump. What did you learn?”
Post editor Marc Fisher revealed the not-so-startling revelations: “We learned as he once said, he hasn't changed since second grade. Keep that in mind as you hear about some of the things that he did, such as throwing rocks at a toddler in the yard right across from his own home, pulling the pigtails of one of his classmates.”
Fisher stated that Trump himself sees this “as evidence that he was a mischievous, rambunctious kind of kid.” He added, “People who were around him during that time saw him as quite a ruffian, really.”
The Washington Post book, Trump Revealed, is 448 pages. The hosts on CBS did not explain when they would release a similar effort on Hillary Clinton. As Brent Bozell and Tim Graham noted, the Post on August 15, devoted a front page look at the Democrat’s 1969 college address. The headline oozed, “At Wellesley, fiery speech was a breakout moment." Bozell and Graham wrote:
In 1969, Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a commencement speech insulting liberal Republican Sen. Edward Brooke as too conservative, too out of touch. It was a "moment of glory," the Post proclaimed, the culmination of what "her campaign now describes as social justice activism."
In contrast, the Post in 2012 devoted 5400 words to the “pranks of a then-17-year-old Romney. In the 2013 book Collusion, Bozell and Graham wrote:
Reporter Jason Horowitz penned a 5,400-word "expose," a bombshell. on how Mitt Romney may have pinned a boy down and cut his hair in 1965. 1965. Nineteen sixty-five. That's almost a half- century ago. Even if every detail in this hit piece was accurate-and they weren't-how is it relevant? The same journalists that who couldn't find anything relevant in the mistresses Bill Clinton or John Edwards were "romancing" in the risky present of their presidential campaigns could somehow find something more compelling - a haircut -- in the yellowed past of Mitt Romney's high -school career. The Post carried several full pages of breathless prose under the big headline "Romney's pranks could go too far."
The Post reported that Romney's Cranbrook schoolmate John Lauber was "perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality," and that he screamed for help as a brutish Romney held him down and forcibly hacked off his hair. Another student, David Seed, told the Post he ran into Lauber three decades later at an airport and apologized for not doing more to help him. Seed claimed Lauber said, "It was horrible. . . . It's something I have thought about a lot since then." The paper recounted another incident in which Romney allegedly once shouted "atta girl" to a different student at the all-boys' school who, years later, came out as gay.
A young Romney gave haircuts and Trump pulled pigtails. But Clinton delivered an inspiring speech. This is the difference in how the Post investigates the backgrounds of Republicans and Democrats.
A partial transcript of the segment is below:
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CBS This Morning
8/22/16
8:04:11 to 8:10:32
6 minutes and 21 secondsANTHONY MASON: Trump is scheduled to give a speech on immigration later this week.
NORAH O’DONNELL: And With us this morning for a new look at Donald Trump's life, Washington Post investigative reporter Michael Kranish and senior editor Marc Fisher. They’re the co-authors of the new book Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money and Power. It compiles the work of more than two dozen Washington Post reporters, fact checkers and editors. Together, they examined Trump's childhood and his beginnings in real estate and the international expansion of his branded empire. Trump Revealed is published by Scribner, an imprint of Simon and Shuster, a division of CBS. Good morning to both of you.
MICHAEL KRANISH: Good morning.
MARC FISHER: Good morning.
O’DONNELL: Now, I should point out you spoke with Mr. Trump and interviewed him. Right?
FISHER: Yes. We spent, as a group, more than 20 hours with him. He was extremely generous and gracious with his time, despite all of his bluster against the media and against the Washington Post. He was quite forthcoming.
O’DONNELL: You go all the way back to his childhood to help reveal some of Donald Trump. What did you learn?
FISHER: We learned that, as he once said, he hasn't changed since second grade. Keep that in mind as you hear about some of the things that he did, such as throwing rocks at a toddler in the yard right across from his own home, pulling the pigtails of one of his classmates, getting into a physical altercation with a teacher that led to his father removing him from school and sending him off to a military boarding school.
O’DONNELL: In fact, in one of your interviews he admits that he gave his music teacher a blank black eye?
FISHER: Yeah. It's possible that was a bit exaggerated, but he certainly got into an altercation there and he sees this as evidence that he was a mischievous, rambunctious kind of kid. People who were around him during that time saw him as quite a ruffian, really.
MASON: The most influential relationship in his life seems to be his relationship his dad, his father, who was a very successful developer in New York, particularly in Queens and Staten Island. Trump, ultimately, took that business into Manhattan. Can you talk about that relationship and that shift and what it seems to have symbolized?
KRANISH: So, he left Brooklyn and Queens. He wanted to come to Manhattan and his father had said that you should never be a nothing in life. You should love what you do. So, throughout Donald Trump’s life, he had this onus on his shoulder to meet his father’s expectations, that he would be something and a great something and put his names on buildings and exactly what he did. However, his father told him don't go deeply into debt. Now, Donald Trump said he is the king of debt so he did not father — follow his father's advice on that. In fact, his father had to bail him out numerous times and give him money, loan him money.
O’DONNELL: But when he moved into Manhattan, that also was a turning point in some ways because he was then sued by the Justice Department. Correct?
KRANISH: That's right. The U.S. Justice Department sued Donald Trump and his father by name for not renting to blacks at their properties in Queens and Brooklyn. This was one of the largest racial bias cases of its time. Donald Trump had to decide whether to fight this case or to settle. And one night, he was in a nightclub in Manhattan and he walks in there and lo and behold there is a man named Roy Cohn there. Roy Cohn was the lawyer for Joseph McCarthy of Army/McCarthy hearings fame. They got to talking and Roy Cohn says don't settle this case, fight like hell against the government and when they hit you, hit back ten times harder. Trump decided to do that. In the end, he did have to settle the case but he kept the Cohn philosophy, even to this day of hitting back and hitting back ten times harder.
KEVIN FRAZIER: What is Donald Trump's reaction to this book now?
FISHER: Well, we don't know yet. Ahead of time, he told us repeatedly he wanted a true, accurate fair book which was exactly our intent. but he also warned us again and again he would sue us and he has sued people in the past when they have written about him and what tends to trigger his lawsuits is anyone who questions just how rich he really is. So he gives all kinds of numbers about how rich he is, $9 billion $10 billion, $12 billion.
