Some dates need only a month and a day to trigger our memories: July 4, November 22, December 7, January 6. The years usually also come readily to mind: 1776, 1963, 1941, 2021. Each of these dates marks a moment that revealed something about America: our independence, the Kennedy assassination, an attack on our ships at Pearl Harbor that started a war, an attack on our US Capitol.

November 3, 2026, just last week, deserves a place in this company.

On that day, Americans showed how much life there still is in our democracy. Donald Trump’s name was absent from the ballot, but plenty of candidates who had stood by him were. The results were a massive rebuke of Trump and the kind of leadership he and those candidates had come to stand for.

Voters had had enough of being repeatedly lied to and then told they hadn’t seen what they saw. They were tired of name-calling, of non-stop media-bait chaos, of being encouraged to treat neighbors as enemies, and of politicians who tolerate bigotry and racism when it suits them. They rejected corruption being rewarded and seeing the wealthiest grow wealthier while too many people here and abroad went hungry, struggled to get medical care, could not afford gasoline or even lost their homes.

Also importantly, voters made clear they wanted the freedom to live by their own convictions, including the freedom to make choices that someone else’s religion did not support.

On that day, Americans showed how much life there still is in our democracy.

The vote carried a message about policies, too.

A big no to our country in an unwinnable, economically destabilizing war with no clearly defined goal or end. Likewise a no to tariffs without a direct benefit to and certainly no harm for the people who end up paying for them. Stand by the allies who have stood by America. Remember what those friendships are worth when a dictator comes calling, and no matter what, don’t cozy up to the autocrat.

Finally, that our country can do without the world’s biggest arch, a fancy White House ballroom, the Trump name on everything, or an Oval Office covered in gold, especially at a time when so many Americans are struggling to get by.

The final clear message of the election’s stunning results is that our country needs a president that parents and grandparents can point to when they talk to their children about character. A president who honors the Constitution, keeps faith with America’s allies, and works to make life better for ALL Americans, including those who voted the other way.

May November 3rd go down as the day when this all began. The day Americans took back their democracy and began to demand this kind of leadership again.

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The Day America Sent Donald Trump a Powerful Message was originally published in The Political Prism on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The week that has gone by since I posted my “Twenty Reasons” essay ― headlined in The Huffington Post as “Donald Trump Hired Me As an Attorney. Please Don’t Support Him For President” ― has been a bit of a wild ride.

I have to admit: I was somewhat shocked by the power of a story gone viral, and of HuffPost’s ability to make this happen. I was traveling most of last week and had to work hard just to keep up with my own emails on the article — in the hundreds. I confess I only waded in just a little to the thousands of comments on HuffPost and other places that picked up the article and posted it.

As I write this, 39,000 shares, on HuffPost alone, 122,000 likes, and many, many more of both at all the other sites that picked it up. When the media invitations started to come in (a bit of a surprise, too), I gave it some thought, then politely turned them down. I believe the story should be all about the substance of the article and I really did not want it to be in any way about me.

The emails I received were overwhelmingly positive. The few negative comments were not about the substance, but pointing toward the issue of a lawyer talking about his client. To these I mostly did not respond, but to the few that I did, I told them that there are a whole host of reasons why there was no ethical breach.

The conversations with Donald Trump that I referenced were not about legal matters and no legal advice was sought or given; there were third parties present for the conversations; and, technically, I represented not Donald nor his Trump Organization but a New York department store chain, of which for a while he had a substantial stock interest and so some development control.

This said, I get it that I talked about sensitive stuff, said to me with at least some expectation of privacy. Thus, even if there was no technical breach of ethics, I was doing something that would make many lawyers feel uncomfortable, including me. To this I can only reply that I can conceive of no other situation in which I would be inclined to talk about someone I knew, client or not, as I did in the article, even with respect to matters that happened thirty years ago, were it not for the grave consequences should this man be elected President.

I say this as an explanation, not an excuse. Although I truly believe I committed no ethical breach, if I am honest, even if I felt that I would have to cross this line to publish this article, I would have still spoken out. It is just that important. Whatever consequence to me would be a fair price to pay if I helped even a few people understand the real truth of the decision that confronts them.

The vast number of emails I received from people (literally from all walks of life, including from other attorneys) were very positive, mostly very grateful for my words. I was surprised that I garnered a fair amount of praise for my “courage” and “bravery.” This strikes me as a strange and sad commentary on the fear that a bully is able to engender. I received many, many heartfelt personal responses and thank you’s that were very special and inspirational. It has been a wild ride, indeed.

Originally published on HuffPost in August 2016.

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Unfiltered Lives

I Spoke Out Against Donald Trump. Here’s What Happened Next. was originally published in Unfiltered Lives on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As I have made my way through this life, I have gathered a few thoughts about how to grow, how to live, which roads to take, and which ones to avoid. Eventually, I decided these thoughts were worth committing to paper. The result was a chapter in my memoir, Naked on the Highway, called “Life Lessons” The chapter included thirty-eight of these thoughts, let’s elevate them and call tgem “principles.”

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What follows is the shortened version, with abbreviated explanations. You will have to read the book for the whole thing.

I know what you may be thinking: Thirty-eight principles? Who am I kidding? It is a rather long list. But the list, like my life, remains a work in progress. It has changed as I have grown older, experienced more, made mistakes, and -occasionally- learned from them.

In developing this list, I read and digested at least a hundred books and essays, considered thousands of life lessons and self-help doctrines, and repeatedly winnowed them down. More importantly, I have lived through these lessons-or at least most of them.

I share these principles not as commandments from on high, but as lessons from one imperfect life.

The twelve principles I share with Wells Mountain Initiative Scholars-which appear earlier in the memoir and again in my second book, Dream, Plan, Do!- may be my best attempt at a short list. This longer list, however, says more. It began with sixty ideas and gradually came down to thirty-eight.

I share them with you not as commandments from on high, but as lessons from one imperfect life. And I share them with a request: Help me improve the list. Tell me what I have missed, what you question, and which lessons speak most strongly to you. I would also love to know whether you prefer this list, the shorter list of twelve, or both.

1. Time. Time is precious. Be very thoughtful how you use it.

2. The Tyranny of Choices. An abundance of good choices can become overwhelming. Don’t let it be.

3. True Self. Let your actions reflect who you truly are.

4. Hypocrisy. Few things alienate others more completely than words that do not match actions.

5. Words. Aspire to talk less and say more-and, whenever possible, speak only after listening long and well.

6. Natural Rhythms. Learn to accept and appreciate the natural rhythms of life.

7. Prayer. Meditation, prayer, quiet contemplation, or simply the conscious effort to become still and centered can lead us toward a deeper understanding of ourselves, our relationship with God, and our connection to the people and world around us.

8. The Golden Rule. Treat others as you would want them to treat you.

9. Grace. When justice conflicts with grace and forgiveness, try hard to choose grace.

10. Forgiveness. Forgiveness is seldom fair, but it is almost always right. The alternative is often an endless cycle of resentment, retaliation, and vengeance carried out in the name of justice.

11. Love. No matter what anyone tells you, love is the ultimate and most fundamental emotion.

12. Romantic Love. Romantic love is distinct from love in its purest sense. It combines physical attraction, intellectual compatibility, sentiment, passion, companionship, and much more. Love may be simple; romantic love rarely is.

13. Process. Life is a process.

14. Feeling Good. Feeling good is almost always good.

15. Awareness. Be aware of everything and everybody around you.

16. Possessions. The accumulation of possessions, comforts, and more money than we truly need can become as much a burden as a blessing.

17. New Day. Every morning offers another beginning. Leave behind your failings of the past.

18. Win-Win. Whenever possible, seek solutions in which everyone gains something of value.

19. Empowerment. Help all discover and become their best selves.

20. Children. If you produce children, or if children come into your life by another path, care for them with passion, commitment, patience, encouragement, joy and zeal.

21. Of the Flesh. The deepest union between two people grows from compassionate actions, honest words, shared ideas and values, emotional intimacy, and mutual trust, not merely from physical desire.

22. Lies. Remember that we can lie through omission as surely as through deliberate falsehood.

23. Attitude. Attitude is not everything, but it is the first and primal battlefront.

24. Trust. Trust takes time to build, seconds to destroy, and tremendous effort to restore.

25. More. You can work harder, learn more, understand more deeply, persevere longer, sacrifice more, move faster, sit more quietly, and become a better person than you think you can.

26. Anger. Anger is part of being human. Cruelty and violence should not be.

27. Wisdom. Wisdom is often simply having lived through and learned from a lesson before,

28. Government. The structure of government matters, but not as much as leaders of integrity and citizens willing to hold them accountable.

29. Sunshine. Nearly everything looks better in bright sunlight and worse in its absence. Sunshine feels like God’s smile.

30. Not Sure. People who are very sure of themselves usually are not.

31. Everything is Attainable . Everything we need to live a fulfilled life exists within us or is more attainable than we imagine.

32. Urgent or Important. Learning to distinguish between what is urgent and what is truly important is difficult but essential.

33. Sadness. We can no more understand happiness without sadness than we can understand light without darkness, warmth without cold, or activity without rest.

34. Too Much. Many of our greatest problems arise from excess: too much food, too much work, too much play, too much information, too much consumption.

35. Responsibility. Take responsibility fully, honestly, and without excuses.

36. Mystery. Mystery is good. In matters of faith and spirituality , we sometimes try too hard to understand what may be better approached with humility, wonder, and awe.

37. Death. Death is not evil. It is part of life, giving shape, and meaning to the time we are given.

38. Life. Life is -every single day of it- a magnificent blessing.

Dream,Plan, Do! Give back!

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Anybody who knows me at all knows that I am not a fan of Donald Trump. This is despite the fact that Donald Trump and I go way back. In 1987, we were both still relatively young men. I was thirty-five; he was forty-one. He hired me as a lawyer to represent him on a major real estate project in northern New Jersey. It was a big deal for me. I had only recently started my own law firm, and landing Donald Trump as a client certainly didn’t hurt my career. So perhaps I should feel grateful. Trump, I suspect, would say I should be. I am not.

Knowing Trump, I suspected that the campaign was as much about promoting the Trump brand as becoming president.

At the time, I was pleased to have such a flashy and prominent client. But from the beginning, I was underwhelmed by the man himself — his over-the-top showmanship, his enormous ego, and the gap between the image he projected and the person I saw up close.

Fast forward to 2016. My former client was running for president of the United States. At first, it didn’t seem real. Knowing Trump, I suspected that the campaign was as much about promoting the Trump brand as becoming president.

I felt I had to say something. So I sat down and began writing a list of reasons why I believed Donald Trump would make a very bad president. I started with five. Five became ten. Ten became twenty. And each reason came with an argument explaining why I thought it mattered.

I sent the resulting essay to my local newspaper and, at the suggestion of a client’s sister who was a good friend of Hillary Clinton, to the Huffington Post. They gave it a much better title than I had: “Donald Trump Hired Me As an Attorney. Please Don’t Support Him For President.” They added some photographs and published it.

Then something happened that I never expected. The article went viral and, within a few days, received millions of views. As I recall, the Huffington Post alone showed roughly 39,000 shares and 122,000 likes. The essay was republished, quoted, linked and discussed all over the place. I was stunned.

Here is how I began the article:

“I like authenticity, especially as compared to survey-tested or heavily spun. I am prepared to let a candidate say something that I don’t completely agree with and still support him or her. I think the need to be politically correct has gone too far. I also think the media often hypes and slants stories to the point of being untruthful. I think a prosperous middle class is the key to the American success story, both economically and politically, and that lobbyists have way too much sway. I am very much a pragmatist, so much so that I like compromise more than I like ideology. I like deals, especially those that are win-win. So Donald Trump is my candidate, right? He is NOT!”

I then explained the legal work I had taken on: obtaining approvals for a major northern New Jersey shopping mall, hotel and office building that like so many Trump projects was going to bear his name: Trump Centre. Getting those approvals would not be easy. Nonetheless, I was thrilled to get the assignment. This was long before Apprentice and other TV fame, but Trump was already a celebrity businessman. He had completed Trump Tower and had an impressive office, a yacht, helicopters, and casinos, with an airline shuttle following soon. From a distance, he looked enormously successful.

Up close, I began seeing something different. One incident has stayed with me for nearly forty years. Trump, a couple of others and I were riding in a limousine to meet with the editorial board of a New Jersey newspaper. My married client decided to regale me with stories about the number and quality of young women who, in his words, “want me.” I was shocked and uncomfortable. To my embarrassment now, I admit that I kept smiling and laughing. I was a young lawyer, and I wanted and needed this very important client to be happy.

Another exchange was less offensive but perhaps even more revealing. At the time, newspaper and magazine stories regularly described the Trump family’s private apartment in Trump Tower. Depending on which story you read, it had eight rooms, sixteen rooms, twenty rooms, maybe thirty. I was curious, so one day, riding up in the elevator together, I asked Trump how many rooms the apartment actually had. I have never forgotten his answer: “However many they will print.” Truth wasn’t the point. Image was.

In my 2016 article, I summed up the Trump I had known this way:

“Donald Trump was then, as he is now, larger than life, particularly in his own eyes, and at the same time frighteningly small with very little moral grounding. He was then, and still is, all ego and show.”

That was my assessment in 2016. It is now 2026. In the intervening decade, Donald Trump has won the presidency twice, lost it once, been impeached twice, faced criminal prosecutions and a criminal conviction, transformed the Republican Party, returned to the White House, and altered American politics in ways that will be debated for decades.

Today I want to look again at the twenty warnings I wrote before any of that happened. How did they hold up? Remarkably well, I think.

Those warnings were about his fitness for office, however, not his ability to win it. He won twice, so obviously my warnings did not work. I underestimated the consequences of putting his character, temperament and worldview at the center of American political life. I also clearly underestimated how many Americans were waiting for someone exactly like him.

Trump did not create all of the anger, alienation, distrust and resentment that propelled him to power. Much of it was already there. He did recognize it, gave it voice and, in many cases, amplified it.

So what did I say in 2016? The original essay ran about 4,000 words. I know, really long. We lawyers are like that. You can find the full version online at the Huffington Post and on Substack. It also appears in my memoir, Naked on the Highway, in the chapter “Me and the Donald,” along with some thoughts about how we might do better.

Here are the twenty headlines I wrote ten years ago. Read them with a decade of history behind us, and decide for yourself how they held up:

1. The man lies all the time.

2. It is actually not all about the candidate.

3. U.S. presidents are, by design, not kings.

4. The devil IS in the details.

5. Words matter.

6. Reading is good. So is studying.

7. The new vocabulary we are adjusting to is not a good one.

8. We need to be careful with “tough.”

9. Success does matter.

10. We could not be the great country we are without the First Amendment but our media may kill us.

11. Temperament, demeanor and character are important.

12. The emperor and his clothes.

13. Sophomoric speech tricks don’t work at least not with most of us.

14. A thin skin does not work for a president.

15. Bullies will always exist somewhere, but the White House should not be that somewhere.

16. Law and order.

17. Incoherent rants, often contradictory, do not make a foreign policy.

18. How can anyone effectively be president if we don’t at least respect the office?

19. Rich and powerful guys have to play by the rules, too.

20. We must stand for something.

Ten years later, I would change some of the wording. I could certainly add more and shift some emphasis. But I believe the central concerns behind all twenty have held up across a decade and two presidencies.

Where I fell short was in judging how far Trump would go: how little restraint the conventions of the office would impose, and how readily he would treat legal and constitutional limits as obstacles to overcome rather than obligations to honor.

This is plainly a political subject, but I am here consciously avoiding politics. My argument, then as now, is about character rather than a debate over individual policies. In my judgment, habitual lying, bullying, contempt for others and the pursuit of personal gain at the public’s expense are enough to make someone unfit for the presidency. So are an unwillingness to study or prepare, a confusion of cruelty with strength, and a skin so thin that criticism becomes “fake” and a free press becomes the enemy. These are failures of judgment and self-restraint in a job that demands both.

The central argument I made in 2016 is the one I would make again today: Character matters. It matters in a lawyer. It matters in a businessman. It matters in a parent, teacher, minister, police officer and judge. And it matters enormously in our president.

In 2016, I thought I was writing a warning about Donald Trump. Ten years later, I see more clearly that I was also writing about us: what we expect from our leaders, what behavior we excuse when the person behaving badly is on our side, and whether truth still matters when it is inconvenient. Those choices determine what kind of country we become. Donald Trump has given us ten years to think about them. It is past time we answered not just with words, but with the standards we insist on, even for our own side.

Donald Trump Hired Me as His Lawyer. Ten Years Later, Here’s What I Got Right. was originally published in The Political Prism on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.