[Updated December 24, 2015]

(Video) CNN’s Clare Sebastian Interview with ScanMyPhotos on Mr. Trump

Update: The Hill Op-Ed by Mitch Goldstone

An Open Letter to Donald J. Trump

Dear Mr. Trump,

It’s Mitch Goldstone here. As an entrepreneur, and indirectly connected to another New York real estate dynasty, I’ve had enough.

My Grandmother and her brother founded a real estate empire larger than yours. If not in size, then in class and dignity. While not associated with that firm, like most entrepreneurs, we all have a shared obligation for advocating the highest model of ethics, and an unwavering respect for all people.

Back in 1984, you were my inspirational hero. Largely because my second favorite business book was “The Art of the Deal,” preceded by “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” which is a tome worth revisiting. Now, you are practicing the art of the steal by distracting the media from covering news on business launches, entrepreneurs and substantive news.

Many of my loyal, hardworking employees are of Hispanic descent. Along with millions, they too were emotionally harmed by your disparaging word vomit. Your cloaked motivation for representing every person in the United States is fogged by misinterpreting the art of politics. The art of politics is about diplomacy, and building an infrastructure of metaphoric bridges to unite our country.

Your pronouncements of doom and gloom are misdirected on a nation of entrepreneurs who see the best in people and our precious country. The indisputable gloom would come from a Trump presidency. Fortunately, your chances are even less than not a casino slot payoff, but leaving the casino with any winnings, as you surely know all too well.

You are polling well, much like the heightened TV rating for a live high-speed car chase. We are entranced by the theater and can’t wait to see how it ends. But, like all evaders of the law, or in your case, eluder of the truth, it always ends with a crashing blow of reality. Whether it’s rudeness to a reporter or millions of people, you score ratings just like the distractional parade of watching a car chase.

While I represented all entrepreneurs in a successful ten-year legal battle against the banks, each business owner is a disruptor in their own right. We all strive to be transformative from slow growth companies into ones which innovate with 10-times better products.

The entrepreneurial ecosystem is made up of diversity of ideas and people. We all face daily challenges but understand how to win friends and influence people. We lead employees with supportive direction. As entrepreneurs, we audit our words and recognize that our actions matter.

You, Mr. Trump, are no entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs help enhance not themselves, but society. After a ten-year legal battle, representing all businesses and consumers across the nation, as lead plaintiff in the largest private antitrust litigation in U.S. history, along with many others, us entrepreneurs took on and beat the banks and credit card companies.

Your lack of filters and a breach of decorum is drawing spectators, but not voters. Much the way Sanjaya Malakar was a controversial finalist on American Idol; but, he had more class and admiration than you.

You are more like the 1957 character in the film “A Face in the Crowd,” where a media sensation was unmasked for the fraud he became.

If you think of the July technology glitch, forcing The New York Stock Exchange to a nearly four-hour halt was an epic failure, imagine the disconnect from millions of entrepreneurial American’s, disenfranchised by your oasis of self-promoting, anti-diplomacy rhetoric?

What you lack in diplomacy and oratory skills are outstripped by challenging fact checkers and a cloud of intimidating shouts of “excuse me.”

As an entrepreneur, I’m speaking up because most political candidates are shying away from asserting that you, as the self-appointed emperor of promotion, are without clothing, or even a Chinese-manufactured tie.

Business, like politics, is about the customer, and you lost this once loyal fan. When you boycotted Macy’s, you risked the jobs of 165,000 people. How are you going to win friends and influence people, beyond yourself?

You are tarnishing America’s reputation abroad, and damaging what is taught in business schools – that reputation matters.

I am now preparing a fact finding study and will be traveling to Berlin. As the voice of entrepreneurs addressing your actions, one step is to become an expert on the blockading mega-wall you propose to build.  In advance of my exploratory mission, I have been doing some preliminary research on the Berlin Wall.

There were two walls.  An iron one (thus the “Iron Curtain” moniker), and the more well-known cement wall.  Both were on the East German side, with a “kill zone” barrier in between.  If anyone got near the cement wall from the west, they would be shot.  Imagine the optics of the U.S. constructing a similar wall and shooting children and women?

Your bombastic tirades are far from “making America great, again.”

Mitch Goldstone
President & CEO
ScanMyPhotos.com