I think Donald Trump running for President is similar to Bu La'ia's 1994 gubernatorial aspirations in the sense that both men weren't really serious about running for their respective offices and were using the political process as a way to solidify their brand names, or in Bu's case, more as a joke ("eh, we go see how far we can make um in the governor's race. you like?")
The similarities end there, though. Donald Trump is a billionaire and self proclaimed populist that is playing to the lowest common denominator in the Republican Party, claiming that he is a Birther, that US foreign policy needs more "spine" (whatever that means), and that he would "pound China." Bu La'ia is a Maui boy who grows taro, participates in the Kaho'olawe cleanup projects (cleaning up all the practice freedom bombs that the navy used on the island before the term "freedom" became used to describe everything from the justification of illegal invasions of sovereign countries to deep fried potato sticks sold in the cafeterias of Congress), wants to decriminalize marijuana, and advocates replacing sugar cane cultivation with taro, which may be a thinly veiled reference to food sovereignty issues in Hawaii.
Whereas Donald Trump is running for office in order to expand his multi-billion dollar empire of lavish hotels, casinos, and shitty reality TV shows, Bu La'ia was probably just doing it for the lulz.
By the way, When Bu La'ia ran for governor, he received 5,761 votes in the Democratic gubenatorial primary, enough to place him third among seven democrats running, and that's AFTER he got disqualified for not meeting the age requirement to run for governor.
I highly doubt that Donald Trump would come anywhere close to that in the Republican primary.
i was one of the 5000 + votes :)
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