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