Thursday, September 26, 2024

Opinion Today: Let’s check Trump’s references

We collected 91 testimonies from those who have known and worked with the former president.
Opinion Today

September 26, 2024

Author Headshot

By Kathleen Kingsbury

Opinion Editor

I've been involved with hiring a lot of people over the years, interviewing job candidates and talking over their strengths and weaknesses with my colleagues.

The most crucial and revealing part of this process is often the reference check. Whether I am recruiting a junior editor or a senior executive, hearing from people who have worked closely with candidates, who can speak to their working style, how they handle themselves under pressure, what they will bring — for good and for bad — to the workplace, is imperative. Most of us wouldn't hire a dog sitter without deeply vetting his work; why wouldn't we do the same for the office of president?

So, for the latest project from the editorial board, we looked to the people who have worked most closely with Donald Trump to see what they had to say about the man who would like to hold, for a second time, the highest office in this country.

We combed through the many books written about him, rewatched hours of interviews and testimony, and looked to the extraordinary reporting from our newsroom and others. What we assembled is, in effect, 91 letters of reference from 91 people speaking to their experiences with Trump. It runs the gamut from those who knew him before he went into politics — his family, colleagues from Trump Inc., people who worked with him on "The Apprentice" — to esteemed Republican politicians, people he personally hired during his tenure in the White House and heads of state who dealt with him on matters of global security.

We hope you pay close attention to what they have said. Our conclusion? This is not a candidate who should make it past the reference check.

Read more here:

Here's what we're focusing on today:

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