In God We Trust

Donald Trump vs. Mao Tse-Tung at the Negotiating Table: A Fractured Fairy Tale—Part 1

 

By Dr. Donald Wayne Hendon
DonaldHendon.com

Obama had a little too much to drink on St. Patrick’s Day and fell asleep early. He had a long dream. How long was it? It was so long, it takes three Fractured Fairy Tales to tell it. Here’s Part One:

 

Donald Trump and Mao Tse-Tung want to make a deal. Just imagine!  Today’s capitalist big-shot and the guerrilla warfare expert of the middle 20th century! Use your imagination.  Here’s how this “fractured fairy tale” could have happened in 2013: 

 

Trump Sends a Feeler to Mao

 

One of Donald Trump’s top executives contacted one of Mao’s closest friends and told him that Trump wants to build a casino-hotel in Shanghai that would be larger than any of the casino-hotels in Vegas and Macau—a tribute to Trump’s huge ego. One of Mao’s biggest hobbies is gambling, and he has already set up several small private casinos in Beijing for the exclusive use by him and his close friends. Mao likes the money Trump’s executive is talking about, but he knows he can get a lot more from him. And he really wants to get the best of that obnoxious capitalist, who likes to call himself “The Donald.” Mao has said for years that The Donald is Donald Duck, and so he started calling Trump “The Haircut.” Likewise, Trump’s oversized ego makes him think that Mao is nothing more than a naïve country boy who is no match for Trump. “I’ll have fun beating him to a pulp.”

 

At first, Mao thought it was strange that The Haircut was interested in Shanghai and not Macau, the former Portuguese colony, which became a part of China in 1999. Macau’s casino industry had grown rapidly in recent years. Three giants in the Vegas casino industry, all multi-billionaires, had built huge casino-hotels in Macau in the last ten years. Steve Wynn, who owns Wynn’s and Encore. Kirk Kerkorian, big stockholder in MGM Resorts International, which owns many hotels, including the Bellagio, MGM Grand, Luxor, and Monte Carlo. And Sheldon Adelson, whose Las Vegas Sands Corporation owns the Venetian and Palazzo. Adelson also owns the huge Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—the government there gave him a monopoly for ten years.

 

All of a sudden, Mao had an Aha! moment. “Trump is in a pissing contest with Adelson, Wynn, and Kerkorian. He wants to get into mainland China so he can build its biggest casino-hotel—one that would put the three other guys’ casino-hotels in Macau to shame!” Then, Mao thought, “It would be fun to get into a pissing contest myself—with that egotistical maniac, Donald Trump. I’ll win, for sure. There’s no way in hell I would lose to The Haircut in my own country. He’s going to build here, and I’m not going to build anything in the U.S. Here, I control all the shots. There, The Haircut and his cronies in the U.S. government control things. I think I’ll see what Trump has to offer.” 

 

So after getting some initial feelers from Trump’s flunkies, he decided to research The Haircut—his life, his past dealings, his habits, etc. He figured Trump, like all capitalists, would be an easy mark.

 

Mao Thinks About It—Hard

 

Mao got Chinese translations of a couple of books which told everybody who read them what The Haircut’s favorite negotiating weapons are—the ones he uses the most. Both were written by Trump’s associates. One by Schwartz, the other by Ross. “What an idiot Trump is,” Mao thought. “I would never reveal my favorite weapons to anybody. Knowledge is power. The more I know, the more powerful I am. The less the other person knows, the less powerful he is.”

 

“I’ll never be as stupid as The Haircut is—he’s already made an important concession to me before we even began to negotiate. He gave me a lot of important knowledge about himself without getting anything from me in return. I wonder why he doesn’t know what we Chinese have always known—never give a concession without getting something in return.”

 

Mao thought back to the old days of the 1930s and 1940s when he had spies in Chiang-Kai-Shek’s army. “They fed Chiang wrong information about me and told me what he was going to do next. That’s the main reason I defeated him.” Mao knew he didn’t have any contacts in Trump’s organization, so he decided to let himself be interviewed by the news media. He knew the western media would jump at a chance to interview him, and he was sure that The Haircut would read what the media said.

 

Mao Takes Action

 

So the next day, Mao gave one of his few interviews to CCTV, the number one Chinese cable news channel in the world. He knew CCTV would translate his words into English.

 

Here are the most important things he said in the interview:

 

“I have always disliked capitalism. Over the years, though, I learned that I can take advantage of the greed all capitalists have. I understand several entrepreneurs in the United States are interested in opening up Las Vegas-style casinos in our largest city, Shanghai. Many people in Shanghai already travel to Macau, around 800 miles away, a three-hour airplane trip. And all they do there is spend the weekend gambling. This was bad a few years ago, because Macau wasn’t even part of China. But Macau is part of China today, so that makes it acceptable to me. But traveling so far away from their cities just to gamble is wasteful. I would like Shanghai residents to stay in Shanghai and have the Macau and Las Vegas experience in their own city. So I’m open to the idea of building the world’s biggest casino-hotel in Shanghai. I invite inquiries from owners of big casinos in Vegas—people like Sheldon Adelson, Kirk Kerkorian, and Steve Wynn. And maybe even that guy with the bad haircut, Donald Trump.”

 

Readers, what do you think Trump will do when he hears about this? Read tomorrow’s installment of my latest fractured fairy tale.

 


 

Dr. Donald Wayne Hendon is a consultant, speaker, trainer, and author of 10 books, including Guerrilla Deal-Making (with Jay Conrad Levinson) and 365 Powerful Ways to Influence. Deal-Making contains the 100 most powerful tactics from 365 Powerful Ways—along with 400 countermeasures. There are 121 aggressive tactics, 92 defensive ones, 24 cooperative ones, and 16 submissive ones to get what you want from other people. Plus 81 dirty tricks to watch out for and 31 tactics to prepare you for your interaction with them. Knowledge is power is Hendon’s assertive tactic 32. Getting something in return when you concede is Hendon’s defensive tactic 88. And interview by news media is Hendon’s assertive tactic 75. Download Chapter 1, free of charge, at www.DonaldHendon.com. Play his free online Negotiation Poker game by going to GuerrillaDon.com. Apps will soon be available.

 

Copyright (c) 2013