In reply to: They do say they appreciate his honesty posted by sprack
in 1998. I have no idea if or how much his candidacy might have influenced Trump. I fell for it (and I thought Jesse was authentic when he fed me his stump speech during a lunch early in his campaign), but like Trump, it was ultimately about him and his ego. The concept of "not politics as usual" was very appealing then (Jesse's campaign slogan), and apparently remains so even after 8 years since Trump was elected.
That worked out well.