The trumps three generations that built an empire

Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster eBook Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Simon & Schuster CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP or visit us online to sign up at eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION THE FOUNDER: FRIEDRICH TRUMP CHAPTER 1: The New World CHAPTER 2: Seattle Day s and Nights CHAPTER 3: Tales of Monte Cristo CHAPTER 4: Mining the Miners CHAPTER 5: Klondike Fever CHAPTER 6: Here to Stay THE BUILDER: FRED TRUMP CHAPTER 7: Born to Work CHAPTER 8: Savvy in a Brookly n Courtroom CHAPTER 9: Washington to the Rescue CHAPTER 10: Home Building’s Henry Ford CHAPTER 11: Putting a Roof over GI Joe’s Head CHAPTER 12: The Perils of Success CHAPTER 13: Clashing Visions THE STAR: DONALD TRUMP CHAPTER 14: Born to Compete CHAPTER 15: Manhattan Bound CHAPTER 16: From Brick Box to Glass Fantasy CHAPTER 17: The Twenty -Eight-Sided Building CHAPTER 18: Gambling on Atlantic City CHAPTER 19: The Tallest Building in the World CHAPTER 20: Spinning out of Control CHAPTER 21: Pulling Back from the Brink CHAPTER 22: Trump™ PHOTOGRAPHS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX PHOTO CREDITS TO MY CHILDREN, SASHA AND NEWELL, AND TO MY PARENTS, NEWELL AND GRETA BLAIR PREFACE On Tuesday, June 16, 2015, two days after Donald Trump’s 69th birthday, his daughter Ivanka, wearing a tailored sleeveless white dress, stepped onto a temporary stage in the lobby of Trump Tower Eight American flags stood at attention along the back of the stage, which had a speaker’s podium faced with bright blue and edged with red Across the front of the podium, in large white allcapital letters, was the name Trump, a website address, and a presidential campaign slogan, Make America Great Again!, recycled from the 1980 campaign of the nation’s last celebrity candidate, Ronald Reagan It was the culminating moment in an only-in-America story, the three-generational rise of a family dynasty based on doing whatever it took to win, never hesitating to push the envelope, and never giving up Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich, who came to New York from Germany as a 16-year-old in 1885, amassed a nest egg—the first Trump fortune—by mining the miners during the gold rush era Starting in Seattle, where he became a U.S citizen, and ending up in the Yukon, he established the Trump MO: scope out the best location (his tended to be in the red-light district); open a business (in his case, restaurants, at times on land to which he had no legal right); and offer customers (most of his were rootless newcomers who had yet to see their first nugget) some right-now comfort in the form of booze and easy access to women When he later attempted to repatriate to Germany, he massaged this history, insisting that he was a quiet sort who avoided bars and that he had been in the United States during the years he would have been subject to compulsory German military service solely because he wanted to support his widowed mother But German authorities saw him as a draft dodger and sent him back to the country of his current citizenship —the same fate his grandson would propose for undocumented immigrants more than century later Donald’s father, Fred, became a multimillionaire by exploiting every loophole when constructing government-backed housing in Queens and Brooklyn When payment for federal projects was by the unit instead of the room, he upped the number of efficiencies and one bedrooms, even though the architects had intended larger apartments and the buyers, many of them GIs returning from World War II, needed more space for their growing families Later, when building apartments subsidized by New York State, Fred set up shell equipment companies and billed the state for trucks and cement mixers he rented from himself at inflated prices A generation later, Donald refined the family formula by adding new techniques, including celebrity branding and extreme self-praise While he heeded classic business basics like “location, location, location,” his personal mantra would be “exaggerate, exaggerate, exaggerate”—and he used it to become a billionaire through high-end building; casino gambling; and his reality TV show, The Apprentice As fresh-faced young contestants competed for a job with the Trump Organization, he played the archetypal boss, pouncing on mistakes and dismissing excuses, ever aware of the bottom line But what few contestants or viewers knew was that behind this role lay a life story with more twists and turns than any television producer could possibly imagine Nor did they know that Donald himself had been a lifelong apprentice to a powerful man whom he admired, rebelled against, studied, competed with, and eventually surpassed—his father, Fred Donald, the erstwhile apprentice and one of the most celebrated figures of his time, lived in the center of photographers’ cameras, but his own master existed outside the media’s glare The two men’s lives were vastly different—as different as business in the middle of the twentieth century from that of the early decades of the twenty-first, as different as America during and after World War II from what the country became in the post–cold war era Perhaps the biggest difference between this apprentice and his master was that Fred put his name on only one development: Trump Village, a cluster of 23-story middle-income apartment buildings in Coney Island It was his tallest project as well as his last Everything Donald built was far taller; and every pitch for every venture hyped not just the project at hand but the Trump name itself, which a prescient ancestor had changed from Drumpf Starting with Trump Tower, Donald’s signature building in Manhattan, everything—from the 12-inch-tall Apprentice Talking Donald Trump Doll, a pint-sized personal mentor with the real-estate magnate’s pursed mouth and bushy eyebrows, to the 98-story Trump Tower Chicago, the 16th-tallest structure in the world—would bear the Trump name front and center in large, shiny letters, seemingly a guarantee of success when attached to any business undertaking This apprentice did not always follow his master’s advice When Donald ignored his father’s oldfashioned all-brick aesthetic in favor of modern glass-walled skyscrapers, he achieved great success; when he disobeyed his father’s financial precepts and signed personal financial guarantees for nearly $1 billion, he brought about a near disaster But unlike other magnates of the time, Donald emerged from financial turmoil to create a second, virtual empire From the start, he had marketed himself as the embodiment of the American dream of wealth and fame, and to claw his way back from the brink, he would cash in on that achievement Rather than restricting his name to buildings, products, and other enterprises which he actually owned, he would license the use of his name, a practice that would produce a tidy income in fees, insulate him from financial risk, and allow the world at large to think that he held title to far more than was the case Now, as TV cameras and reporters clustered in front of the podium, Donald and the rest of the country were about to find out whether the same magic that was presumed to attach to his name in business would carry over to the political realm And who better to hand him off to the public than his daughter Ivanka, a former model with her own line of jewelry, perfume, and clothing? Now 33 and the mother of two children, she was also an executive at the Trump Organization, as were her two brothers from Donald Trump’s first marriage, Donald Jr., 37, and the father of five children, and Eric, 31 With her brown eyes and her long blond hair tucked up in a neat chignon, Ivanka bore a marked resemblance to her mother, Ivana, also a former model But when Ivanka began speaking, she was her father’s daughter Radiating self-confidence, she said she was introducing a man who needed no introduction; nonetheless, she spent five minutes lauding his success, vision, brilliance, passion, strength, boldness, and independence When she finally finished, a recording of Canadian singer Neil Young’s rendition of “Rockin’ in the Free World” reverberated from the cavernous lobby’s peachcolored marble walls Then, as is customary at the announcement of a candidacy, the contender appeared But rather than enter from the wings, as is traditional, Donald Trump stood at the top of a gilded multi-story escalator with his third wife, Melania, yet another former model, also wearing a white dress Gazing out, they seemed for a moment like a royal couple viewing subjects from the balcony of the palace Donald waved, flashed two thumbs up, and slowly descended to take his place on the podium He was heavier and more jowly than when he first stepped into the national spotlight some four decades earlier, and his hair—blond in childhood, then light brown, and later, infamously, an improbable orange—was now a subdued blond comb-over As usual, he was wearing a white shirt and a bright red tie, but he had traded his habitual black Brioni suit for a navy number; on the video clips that played around the world in the days that followed, the combination of podium, attire, and flags produced a television-savvy cornucopia of red, white, and blue On most such occasions, the next step would be for Trump to declare his candidacy for the Republican nomination But the first thing on his agenda was to establish that his announcement was better than those of his rivals and that they were nincompoops “Whoa,” he began, looking out into the lobby “That is some group of people Thousands.” In fact, there were only a few hundred people, but no matter “This is beyond anybody’s expectations There’s been no crowd like this.” By contrast, he said, at their own announcements, the other candidates didn’t know to check out the air conditioner or the room size and “they sweated like dogs”—proof positive, evidently, that they were hapless idiots with no idea how to get even the simplest thing done Seemingly, these shortcomings gave him permission to leap to a spectacular conclusion: “How are they going to beat ISIS?” he said “I don’t think it’s going to happen.” It was vintage Trump What mattered wasn’t whether his opponents were liberal or conservative, prochoice or prolife, or ultimately whether they were Democrats or Republicans What mattered was that he was a winner and everyone else was a loser—in his mind, the only categories that counted Indeed, the entire Trump family history—grandfather Friedrich; father Fred; and now Donald himself —has been one of focusing relentlessly on winning and doing everything possible to come out on top It wasn’t the first time Donald Trump had shown an interest in the Oval Office In 1987, as part of a publicity campaign for his first book, Trump: The Art of the Deal, he took out full-page newspaper ads declaring that the United States needed more backbone in its foreign policy, gave a speech in New Hampshire during primary season, and distributed bumper stickers that said “I ♥ Donald Trump.” In 2000, he made another presidential feint with the sketchy set of policies enumerated in a quickie new book, The America We Deserve; and in 2004, 2008, and 2012 he hinted that a run for the White House might be in the offing But now, after a lifetime of devoting himself to being a winner in the business world, he was ready to run—to use his real-world expertise and no-holds-barred approach on the nation’s behalf “Our country is in serious trouble,” he said at Trump Tower “We don’t have victories anymore.” It was time for America to return to the winner’s circle, and he was the one person with the strength and the skills to make that happen He began immediately by declaring that Mexico was sending drugs, criminals, and rapists across the border Predictably, the ensuing hubbub forced NBC, Univision, and ESPN to cancel their contracts with him—which in turn allowed him to seem a man of heroic proportions, willing to take risks and make sacrifices to get America back on track (In addition, the canceled contracts gave him an out from shows with declining viewerships and opened the door for him to file potentially lucrative lawsuits, a tactic he often employs.) And that was just his first day on the campaign trail The next month, when Senator John McCain said that Trump was firing up all the crazies, Trump shot back that McCain wasn’t a war hero because real heroes don’t get captured After the first Republican debate, during which CNN news anchor Megyn Kelly asked Trump about his record of calling women derogatory names, he said she was overrated and unprofessional, retweeted a post calling her a bimbo, and implied that her poor performance was because she was menstruating Political experts said that he had written off the Hispanic vote; the military vote; and, even though he had a history of hiring women executives at the Trump Organization, the female vote But he was targeting a different audience—the millions of disaffected, alienated, and above all angry Americans who felt their lives were going nowhere and longed for someone to help them get the respect and prosperity they deserved And they heard him With each poll, his ratings increased The nomination that was supposed to be Jeb Bush’s for the asking began to seem like it might be within the grasp of the brash billionaire who told the disenfranchised what they wanted to hear—that they had a legitimate beef and that he could and would take care of it Throughout his career, Trump has been a master builder, a master negotiator, and a master salesman But perhaps what he is most masterful at is finding the leverage point in any situation In his first big project, the transformation of a decrepit midtown Manhattan hotel into the Grand Hyatt in the 1970s, he wangled an unprecedented tax abatement by leveraging the desperation of New York City, then in financial meltdown, to get rid of a highly visible eyesore and to launch a major construction project In the early 1990s, when his own ever-expanding empire was on the ropes, he leveraged the Trump brand to persuade creditors not to foreclose, which would have meant removing his name and the perceived value that went with it, and instead to lower interest rates and work out a repayment schedule In effect, he had made himself too big to fail, a status that allowed him to emerge similarly unscathed from subsequent corporate bankruptcies in 1999, 2004, and 2009 Now he was leveraging the global celebrity he had gained from The Apprentice to roll over the rest of the Republican candidates Whenever any of them criticized him, he tossed out a stinging remark that in ordinary circumstances would have seemed petty but now appeared as further evidence that he would not let anything, including what he sneeringly referred to as “political correctness,” get in the way of his efforts on behalf of his supporters He wasn’t being rude or thoughtless or insensitive; rather, he had elevated himself to a special truth-teller status that permitted him—even required him—to talk that way It was a realm where policy details—exactly how he planned to deal with Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Israel, Egypt, ISIS, terrorism, Mexico, China, Japan, trade policy, border security, illegal immigrants, health care, education, unemployment, climate change, tax reform, and all the other things he said the Obama administration was totally mishandling—were unnecessary and distracting His plan, it seemed, boiled down to little more than Trust me, I can handle it and I’ll take care of it Because he was so wealthy, he insisted, he would not be beholden to donors—which raised the question of whether someone who had made his fortune by using other people’s money would actually pour that fortune into his own campaign For the moment, the calculus seemed to be that he would leverage his fame so that large ad buys would be unnecessary, and after he won the nomination the Republican Party would be obliged to pay The rollout followed the Donald Trump playbook—the manual that had allowed him to become, as it were, the people’s billionaire He was born rich, had become even richer, and lived in a 53-room penthouse crammed with marble and mirrors and gilded furniture and crystal chandeliers, yet he would hold fast to the blunt, uncensored demeanor that allowed him to come across not as some refined upper-class snob—the kiss of death in politics—but as an ordinary guy who tells it like it is and happens to be the biggest winner in the world Whether this would be enough to achieve election to the most powerful job in the world was unclear But at the least, as he saw it, he would be the most stupendous, mind-blowing, and altogether amazing presidential candidate the world had ever seen Gwenda Blair October 2015 I NTRODUCTION ... for the asking began to seem like it might be within the grasp of the brash billionaire who told the disenfranchised what they wanted to hear that they had a legitimate beef and that he could and... little land, like the Trumps, this practice meant that children inherited uselessly small pieces of land In the United States, on the other hand, the Homestead Act, passed in 1862, ensured that anyone—anyone!—could... barges The blue sky of Indian summer stretched above the vessels as they heaved their way toward an immense circular structure at the southern tip of the island Thick walled and bristling with cannons,