Top Irish businessman dumps on Donnie-boy

[yankeedoodle]

Michael Smurfit is a very successful Irish businessman who lived in Trump Tower and played golf with Donnie-boy.  Reading this, you might think that, knowing what he knows, he doesn't think Donnie-boy is fit to play President.

Sage and suave in a classic three-piece suit, Smurfit throws his head back and shifts energetically in his seat when I ask if he holds much hope for the presidency of Donald J Trump.

The two men are long-standing friends - Smurfit lived in Trump Tower for 25 years - and they've been playing golf together for years.

"I know Donald quite well. I've had many a dinner with him over the decades, played a fair bit of golf with him. We have that in common, we're golfers and now he owns a competing golf club to mine, you know, he's my enemy, isn't he?" laughs Smurfit, owner of the K Club in Co Kildare.

"I think Donald Trump is equivalent to the two hurricanes that have hit America," says Smurfit, who has a picture of himself with Trump, under which he's penned the caption, 'One day I'm going to be President'.

"Nobody's seen anything like him before or since, nobody knows what he is going to do, I don't think he knows himself. I think he was more surprised than anybody when he became president."

Though the men's paths crossed many times, Smurfit doubts Trump's business skills are easily transferred to politics. "He doesn't have the tools, in my view, to deal with it, he doesn't have the skills, he doesn't have the team, he's not a consensus builder."

Smurfit says he is at a loss to understand what drove Trump to the White House. For Smurfit, politics and business are not necessarily a good match.

"I never found in my lifetime that a good businessman made a good politician because a businessman is clearly taking decisions, executive decisions and not consensuses.

"As a boss, you can't be a consensus builder all the time as a politician must be," says Smurfit, recalling a business colleague who wanted to 'take on the establishment' by entering politics, only to be belted back at the first try.

"He was a very successful businessman and that was a lesson to me. I never believed that the really successful businessman makes a good politician."

Michael Smurfit: Great leadership - and life - is all about risk
https://www.smurfitschool.ie/news/michael-smurfit-great-leadership---and-life---is-all-about-risk.html