With Trump about to re-enter the White House, after all that he has been through, and all of us, I am thinking about the road that brought us all here quite a lot lately.  A lot of it feels providential.  Especially when I think back on the many books that Trump wrote that were self-help in nature.  And if the question had to be answered as to why Donald Trump wants to be president, I think he told himself and everyone else the answer to that question in his very first book and his most famous, The Art of the Deal.  That is a book that I love a lot, and I have read it many times over the years.  The copy I have in the video is one I bought in 2015 when he was running for president, and I’d carry it around with me in case I had a chance to get him to sign it, which I had an opportunity to do at least twice.  In 2015, it wasn’t so hard to get access to him.  It was nearly impossible after he became president.  But in 2015, when nobody, including most area Republicans, thought he had a snowball’s chance, I was one of his early cheerleaders. I was heavily involved in his early rallies, especially at the Savannah Center in West Chester, Ohio.  Then again, I was at the Sharonville Convention Center, where I was given VIP access to that event.  But I’m never that guy who worships celebrities.  Later, I would learn my lesson on being so discreet with Vivek Ramaswamy and J.D. Vance on getting my books signed.  If I get another chance, I’ll have Trump sign my current copy of The Art of the Deal because of its enormous historical significance.  I read a lot, and my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, and their children will most likely remember me for my books and love of reading as they go through my things over the next hundred years; I think some of these signatures will be important to them.  Perhaps inspire them to reach their own levels of greatness by example.  And President Trump’s signature on anything will say a lot about this current age. 

The Art of the Deal is a book I have loaned out to many people over the years who have asked to borrow it.  I have an extensive collection of books that have always been the ones people ask me to read.  But it’s also the book they are least likely to bring back.  The 2015 edition was released after Trump left The Apprentice and launched his presidential campaign.  But since then, publishers and media companies have been trying to pull Trump’s books off the market by not replacing the ones out there so they can pretend that one of the most well-known celebrities in the world doesn’t exist.  But with that one, I didn’t complain much; I would buy another one after people didn’t bring it back because I felt that more of those books floating around out there were good for the country.  This is, of course, before Trump was president and why I was an early supporter.  I first read The Art of the Deal when it came out and was on the top of the charts at number one in the fall of 1987, which was an extraordinary time for me.  It was my first year out of high school; I was engaged to my wife and trying to find ways that I could bring success to our family.  Trump was the hottest ticket in the world toward self-help success and the embodiment of achievement during Reaganomics.  My wife and I would spend most of our evenings at her parent’s house, and they were very successful.  So there was a lot of pressure on me by the nature of expectation so I had to learn a lot, fast.

We were planning a fancy wedding at the Beckett Ridge Country Club, where they were members.  There was more going on here than just kindness.  My wife was a fashion model at the time, and she was being groomed for New York society in that industry, and I was in the way of that.  So, the expectations for me were very high, so I would sit each night and read many books about success and how to get it because that was the world I was stepping into to have a wife like that.  Trump had some wise words based on his personal experience.  Out of all the books on success and finance, I read that year under those conditions, it was The Art of the Deal that most spoke to me and gave me the impression that it would be an essential book someday, even beyond the measure of a New York Times bestseller.  As I read the book, I thought this guy would be a good next president.  The Reagan years were ending, and George Bush offered to continue the goodwill.  But I was suspicious.  It would take someone with a lot of energy who loved talking to people and making deals who would need to continue Reagan’s excellent work.  That line of thinking would later encourage me to step away from Bush and the other Republicans at the time and go on quite a young adventure with Ross Perot and his daughters down in Texas, but that’s a whole story of its own. 

What is most evident in The Art of the Deal is that Trump is doing all this running-for-president stuff for more than revenge after all that has been done to him.  He is one of the most positive people functioning in the world today, and he has a unique sense of business and communication that few people ever master, and he loves bringing people together.  He likes people a lot more than I do.  He enjoys making deals, so The Art of the Deal was an important book.  Before Trump came along, I didn’t know that any successful people enjoyed making deals like Trump did.  As President of the United States, he would get a chance every day to have the life he talked about at the beginning of that now-famous book.  Trump is happiest when every minute of every day is filled with talking to people and helping them succeed.  And making deals with people doesn’t mean screwing them over, but finding mutual benefits in working together that they might not see themselves.  And that Trump could invent that role for himself lent directly to this idea that he would be a great president.  And as the years would tell, he was.  And now he’s poised to do it again.  And if I had to do it again, I don’t have many regrets, but the times that I met Trump, I just stood there cooly, not getting wrapped up in his celebrity; in the context of history, I’d get him to sign The Art of the Deal for me.  It’s been a long history, and the significance of that book can’t be underestimated, especially in the context of this second term.  I think I do love President Trump.  I don’t feel that way about many people in the world, and my support of him started with that book many years ago.  Ross Perot was the next best thing for me in those early years, which began with The Art of the Deal and my need to be successful in life because I was expected to be successful because of the person I married.  But more than all that, The Art of the Deal was an insight into the future before the rest of the world realized how important it would be and how the future of all human civilization has formed around it uniquely.  And it’s been a journey I have enjoyed being a part of.

Rich Hoffman

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