In the early 70s, I was working for a large, Southern California developer. They had bought a huge tract of land, zoned for more than a thousand houses, from Boise Cascade which who was getting out of the development business because it had almost ruined them. The property was purchased with a small down payment and we would take ownership in stages paying for each stage separately, but once we took down a stage and pulled building permits we had to start paying interest on all the property.

Because payments were only triggered by the pulling of house permits, we were able to work on putting in streets and other public improvements without paying for the land. The company CEO wanted us to start construction on the models and I said that would trigger the payments. He said, “No there was an exception for the models,” and he directed me to the paragraph with the exception. I was a young Director of Operations for Northern California and, while I was high enough in the company to talk to the CEO and had been to his house for company parties, I was low enough in the company to be scared shitless. But I was also cocky and the paragraph actually made it clear that there were no exceptions. I read the paragraph out loud to him.

There was a long silence and then he said, “Somebody is lying, either you are a liar or I am, which is it?”  I think I blanked about then because I don’t remember what either one of us said next, but I do remember we pulled the permits for the models the next day.

The point I want to make is that this guy, this CEO was very smart, he came out of Auschwitz broke and he left an estate worth about $1.6 billion dollars. This is the environment that Trump comes from, these are the kind of people he has worked with. It is a mistake to think Trump is stupid or crazy and, so far, the people who underestimated him have not done well.