The Illusion of Competence

By Michael Willard

I stood on a patio of the Rockefeller family’s Hudson Valley estate, Kykuit, watching from a distance as a much thinner Donald Trump emerged from a limousine with then-wife, Ivana, to attend a day-time fundraising soiree.

It was a grand sight, or at least that is what I was told I should behold. A world-class business genius was yards away from me. It was 1983, before Trump’s six bankruptcies between 1991 and 2009.

I was on the verge of launching my own company. It was long before Trump plastered his name on…