Donald Trump Attempted To Use A Constitutional Loophole To Take Away An Elderly Widow’s House, And He’ll Do The Same As President


Donald Trump is a clever man.

While his detractors continue to paint him as everything from a “sore loser” to an “idiot” to a “fascist,” one could hardly argue against the fact that Trump knows what he is talking about. That’s the way he has always been, and he intends to stay that way.

Everything else — from his promises to bring “waterboarding” back into mainstream, his calls to ban Muslims from entering America, or his love to attack his rivals on personal fronts — are, like the man himself, gimmicks Trump’s campaign has designed to shift the focus from what matters, and by all accounts, he has been more successful than even he would have imagined.

Trump’s deployment of these “ruses” are not really innovative, to be honest. People at the helm of power have constantly developed plans, even elaborate hoaxes, to detract the citizenry. Colonizers from Europe created methods, after much deliberation, that would help their officers subdue subjects by means of “division” by provoking anger against another community by constantly painting “the other” as the enemy, and Trump — in 21st century’s America — is only remolding that age-old gripe within people into a persistent, vehement, and lifeless rhetoric.

Donald Trump will continue to use constitutional loopholes make "America great again."
Gotcha. A carnival float mocking U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Germany. [Photo by Sascha Steinbach/Getty Images]

Even as much as a passing glance at Donald Trump’s history will show us that the man has never been shy of using such skulduggery to have his way. There are numerous examples — many of them unproven, of course — that can bring into light the lengths Trump has gone into making sure that he finishes the job he started. In this regard, Trump is a “winner,” and that is an ominous sign for the future of America.

For instance, according to Vox, in the late 1990s, Trump forced an elderly Atlantic city widow, Vera Coking, to give away her home so that he could build a limousine parking lot for his high-end casino.

But Vera persisted, not ready to give in the face of overwhelming odds. Trump, with legal consultants surrounding him in plenty, did not take long to figure out a way to get what he wanted. “Eminent domain,” a constitutional clause that allowed governments to take away private property for “public use” in the pre-war era, was his savior.

Through the 1950s and later, what defined “public use” was a matter of great contention. Courts began allowing private stakeholders to have a claim as long as the property being claimed was put into “public use.”

Donald Trump had struck gold. His limousine parking lot was, according to the man, meant to be used by the “public,” and so here was the ruse he had designed to throw the old Vera Coking out of her ancestral home.

Did it succeed?

Donald Trump pinatas
[Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]

Remarkably, Trump failed. Coking had lived in her home since the 1960s and had previously turned down another developer’s $1 million offer for her house. She managed to defeat Trump-influenced Atlantic City’s Casino Reinvestment Development Authority with the help a libertarian law firm called the Institute for Justice, which fought the city in court. In a historic ruling, the court did not agree with the notion that the limousine parking lot would serve a “public” purpose.

Better sense prevailed on that occasion, but who’s to say that Donald Trump will not use such tactics if he gets elected to the White House? The truth is — there is no guarantee.

Cases like that of Vera Coking prove that Donald Trump will be an outmaneuvering, snide president, and while that is partly the political charm he can sometimes exude, it can equally prove a “yuge” menace for the future of the United States of America.

Are you still going to vote for him?

[Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images]

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