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fatslob-:O on 14 September 2016
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Machiavellian said:

Character is character no matter how you slice it.  If you do dishonest business in your business life you will do the same in your personal life.  You cannot tell me there is a difference.  There is no pragmatic way to cheat your partners or screw your associates or lie to get what you want.  Those are qualities within the person and not some tactic of business.  I do not need to look to Trump closes friends to know his character, instead I use the tried and true technique of looking at his actions.  Actions will always speak louder than any words because words are a tool of the con man.

 I am sure if I asked a drug lord closes friends about his character they probably would say great things but does that excuse that person actions.  How many times have you heard people who knew serial murders say what a great person he/she was at least around them.  As I stated before, there is a body of work on Trump because he loves the spotlight so I have judged him on what he has shone me.

Now you're just grasping for straws comparing him to a drug lord ... 

Evaluation doesn't even have to be from friends or family, it could either come from longtime and intimate rivals or former persisting partners ... 

Final-Fan said:

1.  True, we agree that he isn't required to do this, but I think it's only reasonable for people to refuse to vote for someone who refuses to disclose that information.  I think if he did it would show he is not as rich as he claims to be. 

2.  You'd think that being filthy rich and having most of your life behind you would make you harder to corrupt, but I think that's not what proves to be the case a lot of the time.  Certainly Trump's history doesn't suggest he would be particularly good at holding firm against pecuniary gain at the expense of others in shady deals.  And I really don't see Trump's level of greed declining when he realizes he's close to death; I'm confident he is set in his ways; if he was going to pivot on that stance he would have done it already, since he's pretty old.  Anyway, I think he would actually prove to be highly corruptible, but probably a different style of corruption than the corruption life-long politicians tend to get into.  If your position is "they are both corrupt but at least Trump isn't the same old kind of corruption—I want some new corruption to see if it's not as bad as the type I expect from Hillary", then while I disagree with your decision I can respect it. 

3.  You still have not explained what reason we have to believe Trump actually intends to do what he has claimed he intends to do, given that you say his word is not his bond until he's signed a contract to that effect.  But if you accept that he may well be lying about anything and everything and he will be corrupt as heck, but a new and possibly less damaging kind of corruption, then it's not an important point. 

4.  His biographer is convinced that his personality is completely unsuited to the office.  He does not have enough attention to detail, and gets bored too quickly; as a result he will not want to go in depth on policy when he is not already familiar with it. 

1. Are you serious ? That guy listed over 400 million in operating income alone! Even if he takes the entire brunt of the corporate tax rate of 35%, he is still making a noticeable fraction of a billion ... 

2. Except Donald Trump has sold and rent real estate to make that money while Clinton made money by selling words ?! Depending on your definition of "corrupt" he hasn't exactly done a lot of flip-flopping compared to Romney so he doesn't really have cognitive dissonance to show that he's corrupt ... 

3. We DON'T know what he WILL do as there's a given amount of uncertainty for the future but that applies for every presidential candidate. At that point, how one decides to vote is down to his/her feelings ... 

4. Umm, Tony Schwartz is not a biographer at all and the book "Trump: The Art of Deal" is also not a biography although it does contain some memoirs plus he appears to be politically motivated too as he describes himself to be a "lifelong liberal" while "giving money to democrats year after year after year" so how can we prove that he DOESN'T have an agenda ?