Donald Trump Gets Skewered With His Own Words

Contradictions, bombast, fulminations, arrogance. Grandiosity and metastasized pride. All these things surface, time and again, in the portrait of Donald Trump created by a Bay Area writer who relied on only one tool: the words of the GOP front-runner for president.

"At this point when I hear him speak, I can lip-sync it," said longtime Bay Area journalist Carol Pogash, who decided to gather and curate many of the real estate mogul's thoughts.

The result is a little red book published at the end of January: "Quotations From Chairman Trump." The electronic version came out in December.

"This past summer I was listening to Trump and watching him and reading what he was saying," said Pogash, who lives in Orinda. "I was as shocked as everyone else, but I thought it was important that someone do something. So many reporters were giving him air time and not questioning him."

The 184-page collection, published by RosettaBooks, is modeled on "Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung."

Trump and the former Chinese leader share an authoritarian nature, Pogash said, so a similar compendium of sayings made sense.

"Mao was my model but I was influenced by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert," Pogash said. "It's very funny but deadly serious."

Pogash read every Trump tweet, listened to his speeches and interviews, and devoured stories about him. Most quotes span the period from June 16, 2015, when he declared that he was running for president and characterized Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug pushers, to Dec. 7, when he called for a total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.

"It was a perfect coda," Pogash said. "He continues to make outrageous statements, but I feel like the book covers his basic nature."

A sampling of quotes:

• "I went to the Wharton School of Business ... I'm, like, a really smart person." (Speech in Phoenix, Arizona, July 11, 2015)
• "I'm the most successful person ever to run for president. I mean, off the record, Ross Perot isn't successful like me. Romney was -- I have a Gucci store that's worth more money than Romney." (Des Moines Register, June 1, 2015)
• "When you talk about George Bush, I mean -- say what you want -- the World Trade Center came down during his time." (Bloomberg Television, Oct. 16, 2015)
• "If Hillary Clinton can't satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?" (Retweet, April 16, 2015, later deleted)
• "Apologizing's a great thing but you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize sometime hopefully in the distant future if I'm ever wrong." ("The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," Sept. 11, 2015)
• "How stupid are the people of Iowa?" (Speech in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Nov. 12, 2015)

In the book, Trump tramples his opponents and trashes everyone from the media to Seventh-day Adventists to Caroline Kennedy.

It took Pogash a couple of months to put the collection together. She found herself in the peculiar position of rooting for him -- because if he dropped out of the race, she would have wasted her time. This fixation with Trump took over her life. It was as if he'd become a long-term house guest. Even now, anytime he gives a speech she still watches, hoping he'll say something new.

"My husband has called my office Trumplandia," Pogash said. "Dan and I and Donald Trump are living in this house. Plus the dog, of course."

It's not as if her husband, Dan Detzner, an American Studies professor at the University of Minnesota, isn't interested in politics. "But I don't think he signed up for this," Pogash said.

The book has been "rumbling along" and sales are steady, said Pogash, who started her career on TV on the original "KQED Newsroom" and has written books about San Francisco General Hospital during the height of the AIDS epidemic and the Susan Polk murder case. Now she writes mostly for the New York Times.

"As long as Trump is in the race, it will continue to sell," she said. "It's a weird situation to be in. Many times I've said that what is good for the book is not necessarily good for the country."

Part of her is surprised that Trump is still around, but part of her isn't.

"So much of what he's said is transparently false and that doesn't seem to matter," Pogash said. "He lives in the world of reality TV -- and that's not reality. But many people are struggling and looking for scapegoats, and Trump is providing them. They think he's the answer to their problems.

"I see him as a boastful, insecure man who constantly needs to tell himself and the rest of us that he’s smart, and who requires constant and unbridled adulation."

The book was put to bed the day before Trump declared that Muslims shouldn't be allowed into the United States. Pogash begged her publisher to get in one final quote -- anything else could go. It took a while, but she finally convinced him.

The book provokes strong reactions. Some people tell Pogash they don't want to hear anything about Donald Trump, while others are overjoyed that it exists. She's heard nothing from Trump or his campaign.

"When Trump calls me an idiot, I'll have succeeded," said Pogash, who sometimes refers to the candidate as the "bully in the china shop."

She's hoping the book holds him accountable, given that his quotes have been amassed in one place and that the repository is in print, which is less ephemeral than other media.

"Am I still obsessed with him? Unfortunately, yes," Pogash said. "And I will be until Election Day. He's unlikely to become president, but my book will be there as a remembrance of a time when a man who made such absurd statements became such a dominant force."