What was the moment that cemented your opinion about Donald Trump?
Ron Wagner, I met & flew Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41 & Trump.
I was an Eastern Air Lines pilot on the day of the major strike (March 4, 1989). During the strike period the airline decided to sell off its only profitable service: the Eastern Air Shuttle, which ran between DCA-LGA and LGA-BOS.
Donald Trump bought the shuttle. Most of us, including me, had met him already flying the shuttle before he thought about buying it. He seemed pretty sleazy then, but he was of no interest to me.
But, suddenly, he became of interest. Back in those days there was no public access to the Internet, so I did financial research on him at a library—I wonder if some people who read this have never been in a library.
My research showed him to not only be sleazy but to be a conman who cheated and lied and could not be trusted. Based on his past history, I suspected that he would bankrupt the shuttle in a few years and walk away with some of the assets for himself.
THE MOMENT
Still, it made sense to go to the “pitch” meeting in which he would try to sell us pilots on staying on with him. Wow! It took seconds in his personal space to know there was no way I would ever work for him. So, I stayed with the main part of Eastern, which seemed kind of a shame because I had mostly flown the shuttle and enjoyed having probably the only airline pilot job in the country in which pilots spent every night at home.
THE END
I was right. The shuttle was shut down in less than three years. It never legally went bankrupt, though. But The Trump Shuttle disappeared without bankruptcy, which helped him walk away with one of the planes I had flown for the Eastern Shuttle:
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