Prediction #1: During the week of July 18th, Cleveland, Ohio, is going to burn down. Honestly, it's a minor miracle that Cleveland didn't catch on fire when the Cavaliers won the NBA championship last week. But when the Republican National Convention comes to the Quicken Loans Arena in just under three weeks, the riot-inciting hate speech of Trump and his supporters may well lead to a conflagration that would make Chicago '68 look like a garden variety be-in.
Prediction #2: There is absolutely no way Trump wins the general election in November. First of all, the way the Electoral College has been trending the last few cycles (coupled with President Obama's approval rating), any Democrat probably beats any Republican, even a Democrat as unpopular as Hillary Clinton. On top of this, Donald Trump is a classic tea-party candidate (without the official affiliation) who appeals to the far right but is too radical for the average voter. Trump's campaign rhetoric has been so absurd that I'm inclined to believe that he's doing it on purpose, to drive the Republican Party right off a cliff. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that he and Hillary got together over coffee a couple of years ago and hatched the whole sordid scheme. They're friends, and he's been a Democrat in the past. Hillary surely knows how unpopular she is, and she knows that the more conservative her opponent is the better chance she has of winning. In the process, Trump has exposed the base of the party for what it is. They took the bait, and the party leadership is rightly mortified, which is why some of the rioting might take place on the convention floor in prime time. Talk about reality television.
The only rational thing I heard Ted Cruz say during the primaries was when he told a Trump supporter, "With all due respect, sir, he is playing you for a fool." If it isn't obvious by now that Trump is playing a long con, you haven't been paying attention. His smear of Mexican immigrants as rapists wasn't said off the cuff when he thought the microphones were off; it came in his official announcement for the Republican nomination. And the rest is history. From an art history standpoint, it might be the most successful piece of performance art ever, but that's another story.
Anyway, I met the man back in the late nineties, when I was living in Manhattan and doing freelance work for the League of American Theaters. The League was responsible for recruiting Broadway stars to participate in the Donald J. Trump Fifth Avenue Mile. I was a regular runner then, and I often ran in 10K races in Central Park, coordinated by the New York Road Runners Club. This is the organization that puts on the New York City Marathon each year, and they were also in charge of the Trump Mile. This annual event actually consisted of something like thirty mile-long races, each one associated with a different group or organization. There was one race featuring world-class sprinters, one featuring local high school athletes, one featuring Wall Street lawyers, and so on.
The Broadway Mile (as our division of the Trump Mile was called) was supposed to feature Broadway stars, but by the eve of the race, there were only three confirmed participants. I got a call from my contact at the League. "Hi, Ned. What are you doing tomorrow?" I knew right away that she needed me to run the race, as filler, so to speak.
Here's a gratuitous picture of me as a runner from around this time, although this picture was taken in Charleston.
But when my cohort arrived, we bonded quickly and I easily changed my mind. The Broadway "stars" turned out to be Martha Washington from 1776 and two understudies from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. When our time came to be escorted to the starting line, our "limousine" was a two-and-a-half-ton Dodge pickup truck. We all climbed into the bed of the truck and were whisked the wrong way up Fifth Avenue toward the museum. It was a gorgeous October morning. The street was lined with spectators and I started waving like a fool. I felt like Kramer.
When we got to the museum, the steps were packed with more spectators. There was a PA system set up, and before I knew it I was being announced to the crowd. "And from the League of American Theaters: Ned Hartley!" I smiled and waved to the crowd. My head was swimming. At one point I was vaguely aware that my contact was talking to someone behind me, but I didn't know who it was and I wasn't paying attention to what they were saying. Then I heard this soft, benevolent voice say, "I want to thank you so much for coming out today, Ned." I turned, offered my hand and said, "Thank you," and I did a double take: "Mr. Trump."
I'm going to be honest with you. My first impression was that this was a handsome man. I didn't look at his hair, and we did not speak at length. Somebody from the Roadrunners Club took a picture of my cohort flanked on one side by Trump and on the other by then Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Man, I wish I had a copy of that photo. Also, the race T-shirt was pretty cool. Here's a detail of an old photograph of a friend of mine wearing the shirt. Note that the lettering is in gold, of course.
As for the race, I came in second. When the actors (two women and one man) arrived, they all confessed that they weren't regular runners, and one of them looked at me and said, "Well, we all know who's going to win." I only mention this because it led to one of the best parts of the story. I reminded them that I wasn't allowed to win, and I recommended that the three of them hold hands and cross the finish line together. Which they did! My contact and I held back, which was good for her because shortly after the start of the race she informed me that she wasn't a runner at all and was already starting to experience shin splints. It was easily the slowest mile I ever ran.
The top three male and female finishers in each race division were awarded a round silver-plated trophy platter. I overheard a race official wondering how he was going to distribute the female awards, since the top two women had essentially tied. As for me, I was awarded the platter for Second Place--Male. I don't know where it is now. For many years my dog ate off of it.