Dan Roberts in Washington and Lauren Gambino in New York
Donald Trump’s shifting political and business loyalties are laid
bare in a new book that challenges his credentials as a conviction
politician in often lurid detail.
Despite a recent campaign focus on letting “Trump be Trump”, the
431-page biography instead charts the career of many Trumps: the
showman, the womaniser, and a business partner who quickly ditches
failing schemes.
The book, the first of several expected on Trump, was compiled by a
team of two dozen Washington Post journalists, led by Michael Kranish
and Marc Fisher, during a three-month period earlier this year, in which
they had some 20 hours of interviews with him.
Challenged with evidence that he had changed party affiliation seven
times between 1999 and 2012, the Republican candidate defended his
political flip-flopping as a necessary expediency. “I think it had to do
more with practicality, because if you’re going to run for office, you
would have had to make friends,” he told the authors.
He declined to say whether he had voted for Hillary Clinton, for whom
he once hosted a packed penthouse fundraiser and donated campaign
contributions six times over a decade. “I felt it was an obligation to
get along, including with the Clintons,” he once said, according to the
book titled Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money
and Power.
But the team of reporters also reveal new accounts of business
reversals, including interviews with some of the victims of a collapsed
Florida property scheme who sued after discovering that he had little
responsibility for it other than receiving income for the use of his
name.
Instead, reports the Washington Post book, one of the project’s
actual developers had pleaded guilty in a separate Wall Street fraud
case involving mafia crime families. Trump insists he “barely knew” the
man.
Trump also confirms a notorious incident in which unwelcome tenants in
one of his skyscrapers were encouraged to leave by being told they would
have to walk 60 flights to get to work because the elevators had
mysteriously shut down.
Yet much of the detail of Trump’s business dealings – from a mortgage
venture described as a “boiler room” to a vitamin sales scheme said to
share similarities with pyramid schemes – may please supporters with
depictions of a man who invariably ends up “winning”. A controversial
clothing line, made mainly in low-wage factories offshore, is said to
have netted Trump $1m with no money down.
The self-proclaimed teetotaler, who doesn’t like shaking hands for
fear of germs, also emerges as a consummate master of media
manipulation.
NBC executive Jim Dowd is quoted saying Trump believed the Apprentice
TV show provided him with the opportunity to run for the White House.
“He told me ‘I’ve got the real estate and hotel and golf niche. I’ve got
the name recognition, but I don’t have the love and respect of middle
America.’ Now he did. That was the bridge to the [2016 campaign].”
The book details Trump’s parasitic, and at turns downright bizarre,
relationship with the press. Trump even granted a reporter an in-person
interview at the hospital on the day his daughter Tiffany was born. In
another instance, it appears Trump, pretending to be a spokesman for himself, leaked details of his first divorce from Ivana to People magazine.
Early in his career, he employed a “carrot and stick” approach with
reporters to both garner attention and pre-empt negative press. When
Trump learned a journalist from the Village Voice was interested in
digging into his business dealings, he called the reporter, Jack
Newfield, and later referred to him as a friend. At one point he offered
to help get Newfield an apartment in a more affluent neighborhood. But
Trump also warned him, “I’ve broken more than one writer.”
“For decades, Trump’s daily morning routine included a review of
everything written or said about him in the previous 24 hours. The
clippings were usually culled by Norma Foerderer – for two decades
Trump’s ever-present chief assistant – who also handed her boss a spiral
notebook containing media requests, most of which he would handle
himself,” according to the book. “As his celebrity grew, the daily pile
of Trump related news coverage swelled; still, he diligently tried to
review everything written or said about him.”
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Trump routinely made headlines for
his splashy persona and high-stakes investments. The book notes that he
was adored by working-class New Yorkers, especially ones from the outer
boroughs who appreciated his Queens accent, and by immigrants, who saw
him as the epitome of the American dream, excessive but successful.
Reporters became accustomed to speaking to Trump directly. On occasion, the book said, it appeared he would masquerade
as a spokesman for the organization under the name “John Miller” or
“John Barron”. He even used “The Baron” as a codename when leaving
messages for Marla Maples while he was still married to Ivana Trump.
Barron is also the name of his youngest son with his current wife,
Melania Trump. Incidentally, when he first met Melania, he allegedly
asked for her phone number even though he was on a date with another
woman at the time.
The book also describes how Trump was devastated by the deaths of his
casino executives, Stephen Hyde, Mark Grossinger Etess, and Jonathan
Benanav in 1989. The four attended a meeting at Trump Tower in New York
that ran longer than expected. Having missed their flight home, the men
boarded another helicopter back to Atlantic City. A scrape on the rotor
blades caused the helicopter to split apart in mid-air.
Trump learned of the crash first, and called the three families to
inform them, according to the book. In an interview with the Post, Trump
compared that experience to when the military informs “soldiers’
families when they’re gone”. Later Trump would claim that he was
supposed to be on the helicopter and changed his mind at the last
minute. “It was, like, a fifty-fifty deal,” he told CNN, though this account has been disputed.
The book describes how Trump adopted the ethos of Roy Cohn, a fearsome New York lawyer and former consigliere to Senator Joseph McCarthy,
who represented the builder for 13 years: “All press is good press”.
Cohn, who died of Aids in 1986, weeks after being disbarred, is credited
with inviting Trump into New York’s influential social and political
circles that proved useful as he grew his business in the city.
Trump later explained his philosophy to Elizabeth Jarosz, a
second-season contestant who later became a brand strategy consultant.
“All publicity is good publicity … When people get tired of you is when
you do more publicity, because that’s when you become an icon,” she
recalled.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." Samuel Adams, (1722-1803)