American Presidents: Totalus Rankium - 45.1 Donald Trump

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Here we go... time to look into one of the most controversial presidents in US history - Donald J Trump. In this episode its all about his pre-presidential life. Was he a business genius? How did the casinos do? Who is John Barron? Who needs that much gold paneling in their home? Find out!

Welcome to Totalus Rankium, this week, Donald J. Trump, part one. Hello, and welcome to American Presidents Totalus Rankium. I am Jamie. Jamie, we're an audio podcast. What you've just done will not go across. That's fine, it's for you. This is only for you. It's fine. I don't know what to say. I'm Rob. I'm Rob. And this is Totalus Ranking. That's it. Ranking all of the presidents from Washington to Biden.

And this is episode 45.1. And I can't believe we're actually here. It's the last one we'll be doing a full episode. Well, covering the full life of. It is obviously Donald Trump. And Jamie, do you want to explain what you've just done? I've not done anything. What are you wearing, Jamie? I'm wearing my school clothes. Okay. And a hat. It's an audio podcast, Rob. And a hat you've just put on. Oh, my normal white hat that has a smiley face on it. Yeah, yeah.

Let's just say you've got, I'm guessing this is you not wanting to admit that you now own a red baseball cap. Yeah, yeah. To be fair, I got it from a joke site. I didn't order it from, you know. Yeah. Where's it made? It's obviously not made in America. No.

Made in People's Republic of China. So it could be an authentic MAGA hat then, because that's where they're all made. Yeah, that's true. Seriously, you got it from a joke shop? Well, like an online jokey thing. Oh, interesting. Interesting. Anyway, we should probably start, jokey thing. Oh, interesting. Interesting.

Anyway, we should probably start, Jamie, because, wow, here we are. It's Donald Trump. We're at the end. Well, let's do an intro, shall we? What am I starting with? Just zoom in on a guy sitting in a wheelchair. And I know this is not part of the episode. I know it won't be.

Okay. But he's sitting in a wheelchair. He's holding up his little blue flag with a name on it. He can't quite see what it is. He's watching the TV. Suddenly, he just pauses. He drops the flag. His mouth opens.

He just screams. Well, you know what? I think that can be the intro. Okay, cool. It's just him screaming. And it comes up with Donald Trump. Yeah. It's simple him screaming. And it comes up with Donald Trump. Yeah. It's simple and effective.

Do you want to elaborate what that is? No, just a guy screaming. Just a guy screaming. Look of horror. Can't control it. Well, here we go. Before we jump into Donald Trump, just to say at the start, I am determined to keep this to three episodes. Yes, a lot happens with Trump. Yes, it's a very convoluted time in American history, but you can't argue it's any more convoluted than, say, the Civil War or the Revolutionary period.

So, yeah, I don't think we should spend more than three episodes on Trump. We've increased the number of episodes recently because there's more information with modern people. But I really don't want to go beyond three episodes. But let's be honest, there is an insane amount to cover as we go over the life of one of America's

most controversial presidents. But I'm just going to be upfront with everyone here. This has been, ooh, a hard episode to put together. Yeah, I knew it would be. Always knew it was going to be. Because Trump goes out of his way to hide his past.

Pretty much everyone else. You can read biographies written by people who know what they're talking about. People who have studied these people for years. You could have read The Art of the Deal, Rob. I'll go into that in a bit. And then more modern ones, like Obama, that was more tricky. Fewer people have written books about him yet, but I did have some of his work and there were some things I could find. Trouble with Trump, though, is he has gone out of his way to hide his past.

And to put it bluntly, he lies a lot. That is just a fact. Whether you agree with his policies or not as a president, he lies a lot. And that is just true. But it's always been true with him. So trying to look into his past is sometimes quite tricky. In many ways, it's been harder to find out about the past of Trump than, say, Lincoln. Wow. Yeah. Because you're never really sure what's going on and what's truthful. So, just bear in mind, some things that we talk about today may not quite be right, because it's hard to pin down.

And also, there's a lot going on, so I will be missing things. There will be things that you think, oh, well, he'll definitely mention this, and I brush right past them, just because there's too much to cover. But all of that disclaimer out of the way, let's begin, shall we? Not with Donald Trump, but his grandfather. Ooh. Grandfather Trump. Do you know anything about Grandfather Trump?

German ancestry? Yeah, modern Germany, Bavaria, we're talking. This is Friedrich Trump. Friedrich was born in 1869 in the kingdom of Bavaria. And in 1885, he emigrated to the United States to live with his sister, who had gone over a couple of years before. And when he got there, he changed his name to Frederick. A fitting, slightly more common thing that immigrants do.

He got to work as a barber when he got there, and he saved up all his money. And then in 1891, he moved to the brand new state that had just been created, Washington State. Went to go and see where Fraser was hanging out. Nice. Anyway, once he was in Seattle, he opened a restaurant slash bar slash brothel. Blurred the lines back then.

Yeah. He was doing well enough when the Klondike Gold Rush happened. This is when gold was discovered up north in the Yukon region, up in Canada area. This is weird shiny metal. Yes. Yellow, so strange.

So, Frederick Trump decided to go and run a hotel slash brothel on the trail up north. This was called the Arctic. That's what he ran. Essentially, in my head, I'm imagining Al Swearegen from Deadwood. That, in my head, is now Trump's grandfather. He's just running a seedy bar slash brothel. In fact, I will quote a description

of the bar from at the time. I will quote here, For single men, the Arctic has excellent accommodations as well as the best restaurant in Bennett. But I would not advise respectable women to go there to sleep, as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings, and uttered to by the depraved of their own sex. Fair enough.

So, if you're a single man passing through, swing by, you'll probably enjoy yourself. Yeah. But apparently, yeah, it's not for the ladies of the town. Yeah, unless they worked there. So there we go. Frederick Trump became rich off the brothel, essentially. That's where Trump money comes from. He married a woman called Elizabeth, and he moved to New York.

And the two of them had a son called Fred, and a couple of other children that I'm not going to go into for time reasons. Frederick used his money to buy up land in the rapidly growing city of New York. However, just over 10 years later, he died of pneumonia or the Spanish flu. I saw two different things. So there you go. He's dead. The family company was held by Elizabeth until the younger Fred, now in his 20s, took over the family business of buying land and building houses upon it. So they are getting into the real estate business.

He expanded the business considerably, building thousands of homes, and was soon one of the biggest names in housing in the city. He wasn't, like, famous or anything. But if you were in the construction business you knew the name Trump. His main method of making money was to get money from government housing schemes to build houses

and then he would overestimate the costs to build on purpose and then spend that money on other projects. So... That's a family tradition. It's a fraud, essentially, but... Yeah.

Yeah, but it was fine because no one caught him much, sort of. Like, a few people... He went to court a few times, but hey, he had money and he was able to deal with it. Yeah. His biggest achievement was getting in with the Madison Club crowd. Don't know what that is. Well... Madison Avenue.

This was the time in New York where it was ran by the Democratic Party machine, as we've seen, and the Madison Club was an exclusive club that these political machine members were part of. So, group of elites in the city. Fred Trump had ingratiated himself with these people, building homes for them in their neighbourhoods.

So the political friends he made at this time would see the Trump family through the rest of his life and his son's life. So to sum all of that up, the money came from Grandad running a brothel, essentially, and some other businesses, to be fair. The political connections come from the dad, who managed to get us with with some high up politicians now as fred's empire grew and he he was building houses in the thousands he and his scottish wife mary started to have children after two girls and a boy mary ann fred junior and elizabeth they have their second son donald is born in 1946 two years later they would have their final child, Robert, so that's all the Trumps born. Fred showed very little interest in raising his children, fairly typical

of the time. We've seen this before. According to some family members, however, he was sociopathic in his levels of lack of empathy. This apparently wasn't usual father figure just not paying attention to the children. Apparently it went even further. I found one example. Nine months after giving birth to Robert, Mary, so the mother, was rushed to hospital when the eldest daughter, Mary Ann, found her mother unconscious and bleeding. So Mary was rushed to hospital. Right.

The last birth of Robert had resulted in severe complications. Now Fred used his political connections to get Mary rushed to the Jamaica hospital where the best doctors were working at the time. After several hours, he received a phone call from the hospital

and then called his eldest daughter into his office. So Fred has stayed at home and the children are still at home. Mary's in the hospital. And Fred calls the eldest daughter, Mary Ann, into his office, and says to her, and I quote, They told me your mother won't make it through the night. Go to school tomorrow, and I'll call you if there's any change.

But yeah. Yeah. Then he left for the hospital, leaving his distraught 12-year-old behind. Yeah. Yeah. Mary actually pulled through the night. She didn't die. Mary Ann found this out the next day, when halfway through the day,

she just was told to go to the principal's office because there was news. So she had to walk through the school, assuming she was about to be told her mother was dead. But she was actually told good news. However, her mother was very ill and spent a long time in surgeries, never fully recovered. Now, there were several stories about Fred like this. Apparently, Fred was very, very distant

and really struggled to communicate with his children. Yeah. Yeah. They sort of walk in. How is Mother? How is in. How is mother? How is she? How is she? Oh, I don't know.

Yeah. Dead, probably. Yeah, he just clearly did not know how to communicate with his children. Now, I couldn't find any examples of how he treated Donald, because again, these stories have been hushed up. But I'm guessing if that is the way he deals with his wife dying, almost dying, and relaying that news to the eldest sister, I'm guessing it's going to be fairly similar for all the other children.

Yes. Yeah. Anyway, because Mary was so ill, it was actually Mary Ann, the eldest sister, who was looking after the little baby Donald. He's three years old at this point. And soon enough, Donald is off to school. Hurrah! Off to school he goes.

School was a small private school which would send a limo to pick up the Trump kids and others in the neighbourhood to go to school each morning. The family... A limo? Yeah. The family are doing well. Yeah, I'd say so. His first teachers describe Donald as a little jolly boy.

That's one of his first teachers. That's nice. But after a couple of years at the school, things were not going so well. Donald was often involved in fights and teasing other children, mostly younger children. That's so out of character. Well, we'll see. However, Fred was on the school board, so all of this was overlooked. You can't chuck the kid out, not when the father's on the board. And at home things were not going great. Donald is seven years old now, and he had started bullying his little brother Robert. He started hiding his toys and breaking them and calling him names.

One day it became so bad that the elder brother, Freddy, in order to stop Donald, dumped a bowl of mashed potato on top of Donald's head. Oh, that's an image. Much to the amusement of all the other siblings. They all found it hilarious. Donald was furious and apparently never had a good relationship with his brother

Freddy from that moment on. Because Freddy's the older brother that died of alcoholism didn't he? Yes. Donald always, that's Donald Trump, always spoke very fondly of him. But I mean, I'm guessing Yeah, when I

say didn't get on, I mean, there was a fractious relationship. Yeah, I'm not saying it was all at war between them, but this story, incidentally, was brought up in an anecdote not many years ago by one of the sisters when Trump was there. And apparently he had a face like thunder when the story was being relayed. Because he did not like the memory at all.

He was unable to laugh off this childhood prank from his brother. Well, you know, you're a bully. Anyway, back at school, things were not improving. Donald had started arguing with teachers and full-on bullying the other children. One of the school members pulled Fred to one side and recommended military school. It's like, we can't ignore this anymore. Your child is being very badly behaved.

Any other child would have been kicked out. Can you please take him to military school? Yeah. So we don't have to deal with this anymore. Now, by this point, even Fred had to admit there was a problem here. He couldn't turn a blind eye to it anymore. Donald was acting out.

He just was. So, he was told, you're going to military school, young lad. He was not happy about this at all. He hated the idea of being sent away from home at the age of 13. But he had no choice. Away he goes to the New York Military Academy, which was referred to by his siblings as the Reform School. Donald felt like he was being punished, because it was very clearly you're

not behaving well enough, you're going to military school. Well, it is a punishment, isn't it? Yeah. Well, who knows? Maybe this has been the making of him. Maybe they'll sort things out. Whole new character, I'm sure. Yes. Anyway, life at military school, very different as you can imagine. Yes. He's been living a very, very privileged life where he can do what he wants. His daddy's on the board. He can shout at his teachers. All of a sudden, everything is very regimented

and there was no way he was going to get away with teasing the other kids anymore. However, he wasn't completely abandoned. Don't think that the family just went, off you go, little Donald fend for yourself. You're being punished. Fred went to visit him every single weekend. So he did see his father

regularly, but his mother mostly didn't go. Remember, she's very ill and she's not very well. So his relationship with his mother just wasn't as close back then, as far as I can tell. Again, it's hard to read into these things because there's very little information on it.

But he was talking to his dad regularly at this point. Now, despite hating it at first, the military school did seem to do Donald some good. He paid far more attention in class. He joined in with sports, particularly baseball. As far as I could tell, he had few friends. But again, Trump has gone back and made sure no one ever talks about his past by threatening to sue them.

So his classmates don't talk about him. And believe me, there'll be many journalists try and find out this stuff and they just can't. They keep hitting the brick wall. But as far as I can tell from things I read, he seemed to mostly keep to himself. Meanwhile, Fred was trying to get Freddy

into the family business of the Alderbrother. It was not going well. Freddy, significantly older than Donald, was a full adult by this point, and he had trained to fly. And he wanted to be a pilot. Gotta fly in the air! Fun excitement. I get to wear those goggles and the leather hat. Leather hat'm going to fly in the air. It's fun and excitement.

I get to wear those goggles and the leather hat. Leather hat? Yes. Yeah, leather coat. Leather coat. Yeah. Yeah, the goggles. Big gloves.

Big gloves. Yeah, exactly. Fred was absolutely disgusted by the idea of his eldest son becoming a glorified bus driver. It's like, no, you need to be taking over the family business.

One day, when Freddy placed an order of windows for Trump construction, Fred started shouting at his son for wasting money in front of all of the employees. Shouting in our quote, Donald is worth 10 of you. Ooh. Yeah. Now, Freddie had had enough of this and quit and went off to follow his dream to be a pilot. Now, this is when, Donald's a bit older now, but he's still in the military school,

so obviously his father and him, their relationship has formed quite strong by this point. And you can see that Fred's starting to see Donald as the heir apparent, rather than Freddy. Interesting. Now, Donald, by this time, he'd finished military school and he's off to Fordham University. But suddenly, with no warning at all, he got a placement in the very exclusive Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, studying economics. So, yeah, Daddy clearly pulled some strings

and made sure he got into a better university after the term started. And if he's taking over a business it does make sense to go for something like economics. Yeah exactly yeah so you get the impression Fred is now thinking oh no hang on if he's my heir apparent I need to I need to bump him up a bit make him more prestigious. Now as far as we can tell he didn't do very well at Wharton University. He struggled to fit in. I do actually have a quote from a classmate here.

You could see he was cut different. He was a non-drinker, which was kind of rare. He never smiled. There was an air about him, not obnoxious or offensive, just distant. So he just kept to himself, by the sounds of things. Didn't really make many friends. So I always thought he stopped drinking after his brother died, but apparently it was before.

No, he was never a big drinker. Maybe he stopped completely, but no. As far as I can tell, he was never a big drinker. Yeah, interesting. We do not know how Donald did academically because, yet again, in later life, he threatened to sue the school if they ever released his records. So, yeah, that probably tells you something.

If he did really well, he wouldn't be trying to hide it. So presumably he did not do well, but we don't know how well he did. No. Also, around this time, Donald received a deferment from being drafted. The Vietnam War's going on. Oh. Yeah, and Donald doesn't need to go. No.

Yeah. Officially, it was bone spurs. Yeah. Yeah. There is no evidence that this is the case, however. Almost certainly, his father called in a favour to stop his son from being sent to war. I mean, he had just been through military school

and he played sports whilst he was there. There's nothing to indicate that he was unable to do this. But like I have said, and we have talked about on this podcast before, war is awful. People don't like sending their children to war. People try and get out of it in various ways. Yeah. Yeah. We have seen... I would have done. Yeah. To be fair. Clinton used his brains to get out of it. Bush used his wealth to get out of it, even though technically it looks like he didn't because he did serve just in a ridiculous, wrong way. So yeah, everyone's trying to get out of this draft.

Donald gets out of it because of his father, just as Bush did. So yeah. Anyway, Donald graduates. He finishes university. Presumably not brilliantly. But what does he want to do with his life? I'm guessing take over the business?

Yep, you got it. That's what he wants to go and do. He wants to take over the family business. And just so you know, there is a lot of detail out there about Trump's business deals. That's something that Trump is happy for people to talk about his past. Yeah. The Art of the Deal, which I'll talk about more in a bit, is all about his

business deals. But then there are other books where people actually pull apart The Art of the Deal and try and find out what actually happened, because The Art of the Deal is all self-publishing bluster. Self-aggrandizing. Yeah um which i mean trump admits that himself this is what he does he builds himself up and the ultimate deal did that very well um but it's it's not true but you can extrapolate from it things that did happen and people have if you are interested in the business deals of donald trump oh you can find. This is where I had far too much to sift through and I'll be honest, a lot of it was incredibly dull. So I'm going to

skim through his business deals just to give you a sense of the kind of stuff that he was going to be doing at this time. To begin with he was made vice president of various companies that Fred Trump owned. At 24, he was promoted to president of Trump management over his brother

Freddie. Freddie, not happy about this. Freddie, by the way, has failed his career as a pilot and he's come back to work for the family again. Did he do like a Gene Roddenberry and crash every plane he went into? Possibly. He crashed the plane into the Trump headquarters. Crawled out.

Whoops. Not again. Justled out. Whoops. Not again. It just keeps being pulled back. Yeah, anyway, Fred saw something in his second son. He realised that Donald did not have the attention span or eye for detail that was needed

to run the company. Oh, really? But what Donald did have and had it in spades was vision and attitude. And that can go a long way in business. That's true. Yeah. So Fred was more than happy for Donald to be taking over that aspect of the business,

hoping that as he grew older, he'd get better at the actual day-to-day running of businesses. Yeah. Yeah. So Donald was ambitious, very ambitious. He would often talk about impossible feats that the company would achieve one day. And Fred liked this in his son and figured that, okay, we can steer him into achieving some great things. So the plan was to send his son into Manhattan and get the company in there. They didn't have any real estate in Manhattan at this point.

And Manhattan obviously is the gold standard in real estate. So let's see if we can get him. And essentially, Donald's job to begin with was just to scope out properties. Just look around, where could he buy, meet with people, discuss possible business deals. Things tick along pretty well to begin with. The Trump company stuck to Brooklyn, as none of Trump's leads went anywhere to begin with. But they're still making lots of money through house building. As ever, the same model is happening here.

They are overcharging the government for housing funds, not using the money on the houses, and then spending that money to get into different deals. So they just keep building up their wealth that way. This, however, did catch up with the company in 1976, where Fred was arrested in handcuffs. Some of his properties were found to be breaking so many laws that they were officially deemed as slums. So the Trumps are now slum landlords. They have these properties. They are not in any way looking after them whatsoever. They are falling apart.

No. However, this arrest goes nowhere. The Trumps win. Rent strikes then occurred in some of the Virginian properties that the Trumps owned due to a lack of basic things such as hot water. So they're apartments and just didn't have hot water. And they weren't fixing it. And it's almost a basic right,'t it well yeah anyway fred and the lawyers spent time dealing with all of the

legal troubles that the company was in donald however had little to do with this apart from the time that he met with one of the tenants lawyers sorry the tenants lawyers so the tenants has bound together to yeah sue the company over lack of basic amenities. And they had hired this lawyer. Donald entered the room, which had the tenant's lawyer called Buzz Gilbert in it. Great name. It's a really good name, isn't it? Buzz Gilbert.

Anyway, so you've got Buzz Gilbert representing the tenants. And then you've got the Trump company lawyer. Don't need to know his name. Anyway, Donald enters the room. He told his own lawyer to sit down and shut up. And then he put his arm around Gilbert and said, and I quote, Buzz and I are going to settle this thing. Gilbert, taken aback by this, stepped away and said, my name is Mr. Gilbert, and I'm going to speak to your lawyer. Trump brushed this off, left the room and let the lawyers talk. But it's what happened next that's interesting and I think sums up Trump's

personality quite well at this time. Buzz Gilbert later on that week got a call from Donald, essentially saying, I liked the way you handled yourself there. We want to retain your services. yourself there. We want to retain your services. Gilbert, confused, asked for a stupidly high price. He's like, okay, well, pay me this much to be on retainer. Trump agreed immediately. No haggling whatsoever.

He's like, yeah, fine. Gilbert was hired for a year, paid, and never did any work for the Trump organisation. So essentially used his money as clout. It was to save face. Trump went in there, was unable to chummy up to the other lawyer,

but that makes it seem like he's lost. But if he then pretends that it was all part of a test, a job interview almost, well, actually, I liked the way you did that and now I'm going to give you a job. It puts him back in charge again, doesn't it? It saves face. No longer feels like he lost that conversation. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. That's really interesting. Yeah, and I didn't find many snippets of him like actually talking

in his past, but I came across this one. It's like, oh, okay, that's interesting. And it does match with what we know what he's like later on in life, where he likes to win. If he feels like he's lost, he is very angry. So yeah, you get the feeling he was like that at this early age. He's still in his mid-twenties at this point. So yeah, he was like that way back then. Anyway, by now he is living in Manhattan. He is still searching for new properties. It still hasn't worked out, but he was starting to make some connections. Or more to point, he started using his father's connections to their full potential. Donald started to develop his own make some connections. Or more to point, he started using his father's connections to their full potential. Donald started to develop his own using these connections.

The most important connection in his life was formed around this point. Because this is a man called Roy Cohn. Roy Cohn was a well-known millionaire fixer in New York. He soon became like a second father figure to donald now cone was the chief counsel to none other than joseph mccarthy when all that was going off as in mccarthyism yeah yeah cone played a major role in all of that let's just pretend we've got a list of names of commies in the government to try and scare people. So he's deep in all of that. Cohen also has ties to the church and the mafia, and generally was the stereotypical sleazy New

York lawyer who was incredibly well-connected. Apart from his connection to Trump, he represented Murdoch a lot in the 1980s, so I'm jumping forward a bit here. He pushed Murdoch's rise in the media landscape of the country at the time. Skipping ahead even more, Cohn was finally disbarred from being a lawyer when he was caught entering a dying patient's hospital room and literally forcing a pen into their hand, changing the will of this dying patient to give himself money. This is the kind of person we are talking about here. Oh, he's a knob. I would like to go

into all the reasons why he is an awful, awful man. We don't have time. Just know he clearly lives in a volcano. Oh yeah. Yeah. Jackson's volcano has been redecorated, made worse. By the way, again, skipping way ahead, but when this went to a hearing for his disbarment, Trump turned up as a character witness for Cohn. What a good guy he is. Yeah. Anyway, but like I say, that's in the future. I just want you to know what kind of person Roy Cohn is. And he is now the biggest role model in Trump's life. So shortly after they met, Donald hired Cohn to represent the company. The Justice Department were charging the Trumps of racially discriminating potential tenants. There had been some reports, shall we say, reports of doormen turning back black applicants at the door. And also four different rental agencies working for the Trumps

admitted that they had race codes for certain buildings. So it wasn't that they weren't allowing black people to live in their buildings. If they got applicants from black people, they could only live in certain buildings. They were segregating their tenants. That's what they were doing. I mean, that's not good luck, is it? Oh, it's not.

One staff member in one of the properties said that the instructions like this came straight from Fred Trump, and that it was his job in the company, as in the person who reported this, to, and I quote, decrease the number of black tenants. Right.

Yeah, it seemed fairly clear-cut here. Anyway, the government was willing for the Trumps to simply change their rules. Change your rules, start doing it correctly, we'll let this one slide. Yeah. But after talking to Cohen, Donald decided they should fight it. We're not doing anything wrong. It's our buildings.

So Cohen suggested, why don't we countersue the government for $100 million? For reasons. I'm sure they came up with something. This was understandably laughed out of court immediately. And after a year or so of tying up the court's time, the Trump company settled the case and they changed their laws. However, the Trumps did not have to admit to any wrongdoing. And the 20-year-old Donald Trump loudly announced that they had won the case, despite the fact they hadn't.

Again, that's so out of character. I couldn't imagine Donald Trump doing that. But, I mean, you could argue, for him, they had won. He genuinely saw this as a win. He was headline news for a while. It wasn't his father who was in charge of his counter-suing, it was him. So he'd actually hit the press. People were talking about him, and oh, he enjoyed that. The change in some poxy laws that the company didn't really plan to follow anyway didn't mean anything to Donald. I don't care. We probably won't do that anyway. In fact, they didn't, because a year later it was found they had changed nothing at all, and they were still doing it. So they were dragged back to court. Again, Cohen was there crying that the Trumps were being unfairly treated.

Again, this was laughed out of court. The evidence was so obvious that they were racially discriminating. And again, the Trump company said, oh, well, we'll mend our ways. So there you go. Meanwhile, Donald had finally found a place to invest in Manhattan. That was his job, remember? He's got somewhere actually there's several i am simplifying this a lot because there are many business deals

start to happen all at roughly the same time and they all take different times to complete so this is a huge simplification but one of the ones one of the main ones he got at this time was the old commodore hotel in in manhattan it was falling apart in an area ripe for redevelopment. Now, the mayor of New York and Fred were old friends. And through this, Donald got to know the new mayor of the city. Useful man to know. And through all of this, he was able to get some very generous tax cuts on what he was doing. Trump and Hyatt Hotels went in together to fully refurbish the building.

This was the first of his major projects, although, like I say, others are going to follow and overlap. He was soon developing a luxury tower block in the heart of the city that would be called Trump Tower. Ah, I've heard of it. Yes, and he had his sights on a casino in Atlantic City. But in the meantime, he was distracted, because he had met someone. And that is Vanya

Winklemeyer. How these two met is, you'll be shocked to know, unknown. Yeah. Because Trump keeps telling so many different versions that the truth has got lost. We just don't know anymore. It would seem that it was an event linked to the Montreal Olympics because that keeps popping up in various stories. Vanya was born to a Czech father and an Austrian mother, and she had skied for the Czech national team. She was good, but she hadn't quite made it onto the Olympic team, but she was still very good at it. Despite not making it onto the Olympic team,

Trump often introduced her to friends as an Olympic skier, to the point where most people thought she genuinely was an Olympic skier, but she wasn't. But she was still very good. I think if you're close to getting on the team, that is still very impressive. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so very good skier. What she was doing at the time was modelling in Canada. Donald immediately took to Avania. She was a blonde model with an exotic accent. It was exactly the kind of thing that he was looking for. They soon start seeing each other and he starts boasting to everyone he knows about her. However, he was worried. Was Avanya just with him for his money? Was she a gold digger?

It is a fair question to ask. Well, his mentor, Cone, told Donald, essentially, yes, don't marry. Yeah, what are you doing getting married? You don't want to get married. It's a waste of time. But if you insist in getting married, make sure you've got a very strong prenup. So, shortly after proposing, negotiations take place. Which is... A business deal.

Yeah, everything has turned into business transactions, even getting married. Because from our perspective, prenups are not really much of a thing in the UK, I think, unless you're absurdly wealthy. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's certainly... Yeah, but it's just we don't live in a culture of prenups in this country. I'm guessing absurdly wealthy people maybe do have them, but if they do, they are not talked about.

It is almost like a shameful kind of oh we didn't believe in our marriage kind of thing yes or oh that's so yeah i get the feeling that in america it's seen as slightly more socially acceptable to talk about yeah because they are cautious yeah but yes no i admit from from my perspective prenups seem strange but you can't see it when there's a lot of money involved and you're worried that you're getting married to a gold digger. Anyway, negotiations. One early draft from Donald and Cohn, because they're working on this together, had that Evania would return all gifts given by Donald should they divorce. Like, literally anything. Anything he ever gave her, she would

have to give back. This paperclip added to the list. Well, exactly. Evania was horrified by this and quite angry. She was expecting just a straightforward down the line, okay, well, yeah, prenups, they happen. But no, this seemed almost like she was being had a go at already. Yeah. She was so angry and so annoyed by it, Donald hastily drew up a new prenup. She could now keep and so annoyed by it, Donald hastily dropped a new prenup.

She could now keep any clothes and expensive gifts. That's fine. And also, she would get $100,000, just as a sort of handshake goodbye. Which is a lot of money, but it is a drop in the ocean for the Trumps. He probably has that in his wallet. Yeah. Anyway, things went back and forth for a while. A lump sum for any child produced was apparently debated, but rejected,

after maybe they thought that sounded a little bit tacky. Donald wanted a lot of children. In fact, I've not written this in my notes, so I'm going to have to remember it. I think it was five, but it might have been seven. But the thing that stuck out, and I did remember, is he said he wanted that number of children because he wanted to make sure at least one of them turned out like him. Oh my god. Yeah. You get the feeling

that's him looking at his siblings and his father. Oh, yes, yeah. And thinking, well, I'm the one like my father, so I don't want to end up with children like my brother, who I don't get on with. Well, he, Don Jr., I'd say he's very similar. Well, yeah.

It'd be interesting which child Trump thinks is most like him. Ooh, yeah. Because I bet they're all vying for sort of... Oh, God. Have you watched Succession? No. Oh, you should watch Succession. It's more sort of based on Murdoch,

but there's a lot of Trump in there. Very powerful, wealthy family. And the children trying... Completely inept children trying to vie for who's going to be the heir. It's very, very well done. But yeah, I just... Actually, my Minubi on Ivanka, I reckon

he probably thinks she's probably the stronger. She had quite a high position in the government and everything. Yeah, yeah. She definitely seems the most capable of them. Yeah, yeah. But don't rule out the misogyny. That's a good point.

Yeah. Anyway, we are getting very sidetracked here. We're just speculating on which children of his Trump likes. And that's not what we're doing. He doesn't even have any children at this point. Anyway, they're negotiating their divorce. That's what they're doing before their wedding. Right, in the end, it was agreed that if they were divorced,

Evania would get $20,000 a year unless the marriage lasted nine years. In that case, it would go up to $30,000 a year. So that's nice, isn't it? The prenup also explicitly stated that Avania agreed that she would not expect to live like a millionaire and have a lifestyle full of yachts. This was so later on she couldn't claim that she needs to be kept

in a lifestyle to which she'd been accustomed to. I mean, this falls apart because Trump and Avania can't help but spend money and they are instantly living the life of millionaires with luxury yachts. But still. Anyway, with all that wedding planning done, the two get married in April of 77. Star Wars. Yes, that's what was playing on in the background.

Many of Avania's friends were there. Donald had many business associates attending. I honestly don't mean that in a snide way. I genuinely can't tell if he has any friends. They're never mentioned. There were associates and there were business partners in everything I read. Roy Conan seems the closest thing,

but that's more of a sort of father figure mentor. Yeah, the father he never had. But he does have, who's also a mentor. He's got two father figures. Yeah. Anyway, by 1980, the father he never had But he does have, who's also a mentor He's got two father figures Anyway, by 1980 The Grand Hyatt opens And three years later, Trump Tower opens To much fanfare

I simply don't have time To go into all the dodgy Deals involved in these But believe me, there are loads If you are interested in this Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Wayne Barrett, who goes into all sorts of information about this area. Just know that the building of Trump Tower is a story of labour exploitation,

organised crime, dodgy tax breaks, and purposeful destruction of artwork promised to a museum as it was discovered that it would cost more to remove it than just destroy it. Yeah, it's all very underhand. But in defence of Trump here, it is no different to practically any other building project in Manhattan in the 80s. It's not like he's doing anything that all the other companies aren't. This is construction in the 80s. Yes, it's all very dodgy,

but it's all dodgy all over the place. To be honest, I think the worst crime he made was the decor. Oh, we're jumping ahead, Jamie. Don't worry. Oh, so sorry. Don't worry, I covered the decor. Thank you. I wasn't sure whether you'd seen it,

so I was going to tell you to look it up. But we'll do that in a moment. Anyway, Trump Tower cost over $200 million million to build and it was a huge success. Trump was easily going to get that money back. Partly because of its location. Partly the build. It was a good building. Partly to give Trump his due.

It was his growing abilities. Because his father had been right when he realised that Donald had no eye for detail, but had all the bluster and understood the media. An example, as the tower neared completion, Donald confidentially called up an influential gossip magazine and let it slip that the royal family of Britain were looking into acquiring 21 rooms in Trump Tower. Britain were looking into acquiring 21 rooms in Trump Tower. So, obviously, this is now everywhere in all the gossip columns. The royal family are going to live in Trump Tower. Well, he's a journalist. They're not just going to take Trump's word for it, obviously. What kind of journalism would that be? How times have changed. So, the British royal family were contacted by the American

press, and the British royal family did what they usually do, no comment. Oh. We're not commenting on this. Now, those in America perhaps not realising that this is how the royal family in Britain operate. They never comment on stuff. It is standard. You're not getting comments on stuff like this. And in Britain, you realise that.

The royal family don't comment on stuff. However, in America, they phoned up, got a, we couldn't possibly say, in a clipped British accent, and they went, well, that's clearly a yes then, isn't it? So they took that as a yes. Not a final yes, but oh, it seems like something's in the work here. So rumours spread like wildfire, and Trump Tower is soon the most desirable new property to live in by the mega-rich. And the story was entirely made up by Trump. The royal family in no way were expressing an interest. But Trump realised you can generate interest by just lying.

In a way, that's quite genius. Yeah, it is. And this is... It's brilliant. Believe me, I will critic criticize trump a lot in these episodes but this is something he is good at he is very good at creating a story around himself from nothing at all because the lies he tells are so barefaced and brazen everyone assumes well there's no way he'd be making that up yeah yeah. Yeah. So it works. Anyway, Jamie, you'll be pleased to know. Here we go.

The crown jewel in Trump Tower is, of course, his own apartment right at the top. Far larger than any other apartment in the building. Trump wanted this to not just be his home, but also the base of his business. This is where he was going to bring people to make deals. It had to make an impact and show just how successful he was. And Donald, by this point, had developed, shall we say, certain simple tastes. God, just, like, if you're listening and you're not sure, and Jamie do it now, just Google Trump Tower apartment.

Oh, yeah. It's just like, oh, my goodness, yes. It's like, I'd say it's a mix between Versailles and Colonel Gaddafi. That's a very nice way of describing it. It's just...

It's not comfortable. It's just insane, isn't it? Okay, try and describe what you can see in these photos. I don't have the vocabulary. I mean've got one word gold yeah gold marble ornate but it's las vegas it's all it's almost too much it's like even play like you go to it's like somebody who's never been to europe is trying to replicate like a, a French, an old French palace. Yeah, it's...

Or an Italian castle. There's that sort of vibe to it, and it's not quite hitting the mark. It's too much. Well, yeah, Trump in many ways is a very simple man in his tastes. Yes, we all know that. I would argue, anyway. His thought process seems to have been this.

Gold and marble are expensive. The more of both you have, the more successful you are. So how much gold and marble can we fit into this apartment? I've heard a rumour, and you might be talking about this, I don't know, that he actually has a solid gold toilet. Maybe not solid gold, but a gold-plated toilet. I don't know that for a fact, because that might just be one of those urban myths. But he would not surprise me. But I don't know. I did not come across that, but I have heard it before.

Anyway, as space is a premium in New York, what is more expensive than gold and marble? It's space. So not only did it need to be full of gold and marble, it had to be the biggest living room in Manhattan. So if he's got that, then he's clearly the most successful. And in the end, he had what he wanted. For a few months, anyway. Because then, he visited another apartment in the city, he walked in, and his drawer dropped. And he was absolutely outraged that he had just walked into a bigger

apartment than his. So he immediately ordered a new architect to rip out the entire apartment and redo it with a bigger room. Oh. Yeah. Oh, and put in some columns. Yeah, I'm looking at the columns now. Yeah, I've read a fascinating article

about the architect who was doing it. And he must have been so stressed. Oh, well, apparently he went to say the columns, he wanted to say the columns should go. Yeah. But he opened up the conversation with, the columns are too wide. And Trump, who was also thinking of getting rid of the columns as well himself,

went, no, they're not too wide. They should be bigger. And because he disagreed with the architect he then decided to keep them anyway because he didn't want to lose face i assume or he had a change of heart but anyway yeah they're they are it's a big room but there's a lot of columns yeah stub a toe walking through. Anyway, the interior designer who finished the apartment to tight specifications later told how Donald was proudly showing off his apartment to his associates and his family. And apparently they would walk around with him and make all the right noises until he left the room and then they burst out laughing.

And they said things like, and it's interesting what you said, because they said the same. One of them was that it looked like a casino. And the other one was it looked like Louis XIV on LSD. I like that. Yeah. But who can account for taste, hey? And Donald was happy with his apartment, and he's the one who has to live there.

So if he is happy, that's all that matters. matters yeah so he has got his very golden marble apartment and it is the best apartment in manhattan he could reasonably argue so he he's very happy with it and he is at the peak of his business career at this point right unfortunately for him he really was at the peak of his business career at this point, because this is when things start going downhill, and we are roughly in the mid-80s. So another 50 years to go. Oh no, 30 years. Almost 40 years to go.

Yeah. Incidentally, this also marks the end of his father steering things in the background. All the deals he's done so far, the hotel and Trump Tower, Fred Trump's been pulling the strings in the background, making the connections, making sure things happen. Fred's getting on in age now and he's pretty much letting Donald take over. Anyway, what's he going to do next? He's got Trump Tower, he's got his hotels. What's the next step? Casinos. Yeah, you got it. Donald applies for a gambling license for Atlantic City. Not only was this an obvious win, but it would get him away from his father's influence.

Yeah. It would prove to himself that he could be successful outside New York without his father pulling the strings. Oh dear, yeah, yeah. Now, using the many political ties that he now personally had, he was able to buy a small casino in Atlantic City, and he was partnered with Haraz, which is a company. The idea was that Trump would oversee construction, Haraz would

operate the property. So, division of how it's done. Trump has no experience in running a casino, after all. He's in construction. So, here do the building, there run the casino. Makes absolute sense. That's actually quite savvy yes just assuming he can do it all yeah exactly to be fair to him opens in 84 however there were problems immediately haras was known as a low stake venue it was the name on the cheaper casinos and trump always demanding the best had built high roller suites in the hotel section. So it didn't really work. The people going to the casino couldn't afford the rooms,

and the people who could afford the rooms would go to a different casino. So in an attempt to change this, the name was changed from Haraz at Trump Plaza to simply Trump Plaza. Shortly after this, Haraz get out, worried about the future of venture. They were worried that this big push in casinos in Atlantic City that was happening, because gambling had only just become legal in the state. They were worried that it was a bit of a bubble

that was going to burst. So they get out and they sell their share of the business to Trump. So now Trump is running the casino. Yeah, but it'd be fine. How hard can a casino be to run? So by this point, just to recap, Trump has got the Hyatt Hotel.

He's got Trump Tower. He's got Trump Plaza in New York, which I skipped. It was another property. And Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. They all have value. And if you believe Trump's assessment of them, he was by now a billionaire.

They're doing very, very well. Let's just hope there aren't any tax audits or lawsuits that challenge that in the future. Well, this is the thing. Despite the fact he had all these very expensive properties, he actually has very little money. Because it's all tied up in these future investments. That's why you're a billionaire, though. You sort of get out loans based on the value of your assets.

Yeah, exactly. So that's how he's able to keep it going, because I can obviously afford to pay you back. Look at all these massive businesses I've got. Yes. Now, he knew he had very little actual money, but that didn't matter because he was a big name now, and that got doors open so he could just keep opening doors,

especially banks and investment firms. Soon enough, Trump had more potential money than he knew what to do with. The banks were falling over themselves to give him money. Not actual money money, but money he could invest in properties and businesses. And surely they'll work out. The guy's a genius, he keeps telling us. So he thought, just like the marble and the gold, it's a very simple thought.

If one is good, two is better. If one casino is good, two casinos is twice as good. In fact, why not three casinos? Why not four casinos? Well, actually, there was a state law that said you could only own three casinos. That's why not four. but hey, he could get three Now, common business sense would perhaps argue that operating three casinos In direct competition with each other in a very narrow market

Was perhaps not the best idea But Trump went ahead and soon bought the Atlantic Hilton And renamed it Trump Castle And then a third casino that he called Trump Taj Mahal. Oh, it made me cough, it's so funny. Yeah, this is one of these things where I think, in distance, given a couple of hundred years when historians are looking at this time, Trump's naming conventions, I think, will raise eyebrows

because there'll be lots of other things being said. This will be lost until people look into it and people will be saying things like, I'm sorry, he called his casinos what? But it comes back to that being grandiose, isn't it? To being big and amazing. The Taj Mahal, the biggest thing, the castle. Strong, powerful.

Yeah, yeah. It's simple effective marketing yeah slap your name on it in massive letters give it a strong name and people will like it and it works yep it's it's it's brash and it's bold and it's a sledgehammer uh approach to things but you can't argue that things like this do work if the businesses are run well um anyway uh trump decided that he he'd had enough of getting partners in so he was going to run these three casinos himself or more to point he was going to delegate it to staff in particular he put the hilton trump castle in charge of um the very experienced running casinos. Let me check my notes here.

Oh yes, it was Avania. Yes, she went and ran that hotel. The Olympic skier. Yes, yeah. Well, not actually an Olympic skier, but a very good skier. A very good skier. Better than us. Yeah, yeah.

And who knows, maybe she was better at running a casino than I would be but I would argue perhaps more experienced people could have run casinos better but Trump liked to keep business in the family because he could trust those people. Yes. However that said his brother Robert, his younger brother, wanted to run that casino and he was very angry when Avanya was put in there instead. So a bit of friction in the family. Anyway, as Trump is applying for licenses around gambling and finding funding, etc., there were some who highlighted the lack of experience that Trump had,

as in the people issuing the gambling licenses and the permits to build and stuff. Some people in the government were going, should we be giving this to Trump? Has he got any experience whatsoever? licenses and the the permits to build and stuff some people in the government were going should we be giving this to trump has he got any experience whatsoever yeah but trump was on a role at this point and he was very good at self-promoting his own image investors invested because it was trump the south made genius the name yeah the name pay for the name it's around this time that the forbes 400 list was created Didn't exist before. And when it was created, it listed the 400 richest Americans. Trump was outraged that he was not on it.

Like I've said, most of his money was actually in investments that hadn't come to fruition yet. So he shouldn't have been on it. But Trump did not let it go. Two years after the first list, Trump was determined to get on. So, he started phoning up people. In particular, he phoned one of the lead reporters who compiles the Forbes 400 list and pretended to be John Barron. John Barron is a Trump alter ego. Trump would often phone up people pretending to be working for

the Trump organisation, a spokesperson for Donald Trump. He'd call himself John Barron. That's interesting. That is interesting. He named his younger son Barron as well. He named his younger son after his own alter ego. Which is interesting. I'm not sure what that says.

But it's a thing. It's definitely a thing yeah anyway john barron argued to this reporter that all of fred trump's wealth was actually his now his i mean sorry my boss is honest i'm i'm john barron not not donald yeah anyway forbes eventually decide that trump was worth 100 million which manages to scrape him onto the list. However, this is just false. The claims have been looked into since, and people have actually worked out how much he was worth at this time. And if Forbes had not just taken John Barron's word for it, Trump's worth would actually have been

5 million at this point. Oh, wow. That is it. Of actual liquid money, of stuff that he can get his hands on, 5 million is it. Everything else is bluster. Interesting. Yeah. I keep saying that, but it is interesting.

But that is not the public perception at all. Donald is riding a high. Everything he does at this point is being heralded as a success, mostly by him, but the media buy into it. He actually owes various banks hundreds of millions by this point because of all of the different loans he was taking out rapidly, continuously. But that is the investment game. It's all about borrowing, investing, and moving around the imaginary money that doesn't actually

exist. So he buys up more land in Manhattan, land that he had tried to get when he first started out, that he couldn't. Well, he gets it now, so it's doing even better in New York. And it's around this time that he buys Mar-a-Lago. Yes, Mar-a-Lago is in Palm Beach in Florida. It had been built in the 20s during a Floridian land boom. Its builder had then bequeathed the property to the

National Park Service, hoping it could be used for public good. Maybe. Who knows? Ironically, maybe a winter White House for the president to stay in oh was one of the ideas yeah which is interesting well that paid off well yeah um however the the the state couldn't keep it the upkeep was too expensive so they put it up for sale trump was interested instantly this was his ideal idea of a mansion it was big it was bold it was in your face there was no subtlety about

mar-a-lago and also a great place to store documents oh yeah it had lots of bathrooms i'll say we'll get into that later but we won't that's post-presidency maybe we'll mention it briefly anyway mar-a-lago makes a statement uh He and Avania had seen it years before and loved it, so Trump goes after it. He's going to buy it. Now, again, the details are very convoluted in him buying this property, and I'm not going to pretend to understand the ins and outs of mortgages from a New York bank for a Florida property in the 1980s.

Yeah. Because I started looking into it and my head started hurting. But I'm going to summarize. 80s. Yeah. Because I started looking into it and my head started hurting. But I'm going to summarize. Trump had a business partner high up in a bank that gave Trump a mortgage for Mar-a-Lago. So here, have a mortgage. But it was a very unusual mortgage. It was, for various law-bending reasons, more of a personal loan than a mortgage. Okay. And it was guaranteed by Trump's net worth, not how much he actually had. It was also, and this is the important thing, unrecorded.

So, in other words, it was a loan that was concealed from public record. No one could see it. I mean, instantly that sounds a bit dodgy, right? It does a little bit. Why do you have to do that? Well, in the end, and it's hard to pin down

because trump again constantly has changed his story on this and they actually end up going to court to argue the value of the property and this whole court case going on um but trump paid around 10 million for the property because the loan was in secret he announced to the world that he paid cash and no one else couldn't say otherwise so again he's coming across as if he's got all this money uh which he doesn't guess how much of his actual money he spent on mar-a-lago he does spend some money uh five dollars a little bit too low there uh two thousand eight hundred and he spent on Matt O'Reilly. What? I could have paid for that. Yeah, I know. It's insane, isn't it? And everything else is just from friends in high places giving him very dodgy loans. Yeah. Anyway, Trump decided to expand his growing empire in Florida. He was doing very well

in Manhattan. He's got Atlantic City up and going, so let's move to Florida. Oh, but he soon hits some problems. He didn't know Florida. Alligators. Yeah, he bought a 32-storey condo. He called it Trump Plaza of the Palm Beach, because you can't have too many Trump Plazas.

But he either didn't realise or didn't care that this location was not a good location. It was described as buying a condo on the shore of New Jersey and boasting that it had a view of Manhattan. That's where it is in Florida. You could see the nice part from the windows, but you weren't in it. That's not to put down New Jersey, by the way. That wasn't my words, that was someone else's.

New Jersey is clearly the best state because it gave us Bruce Springsteen. We all know this. Yeah. Anyway, the lobby of Trump Plaza on the Palm Beach was decorated with elephant skin chairs and leather wall panels. Yeah. And he waited for people to buy the apartments. Two years later, only 93 out of the 221 were purchased. Meanwhile, Trump had been lobbying local politicians to close the airport that was nearby, or at least put a no-fly zone

over the Mar-a-Lago estate. He had become obsessed with this. He was furious that planes flew over his mansion. He spent... From the sound or just the indignation that, you know, why are you flying over my house? It's my airspace. You'd think that, wouldn't you? But then actually stop and think about what we know about Trump. What else is a consequence of planes flying over property? Apart from the immediate noise and stuff. Troll.

It devalues the property. Oh, yeah, of course. If he can stop the planes flying over it, he would immediately be able to turn around and sell it for a higher price. Yeah. All about the business deals. That's what it's for. But he becomes a bugbear.

He becomes obsessed with this at this point. He spends ages trying to convince politicians to take up his cause. None of them bite. His proposals were ridiculous. Yeah. In the court case, which I mentioned a moment ago, over the value of Mar-a-Lago, to take up his cause. None of them bite. His proposals were ridiculous. Right. In the court case, which I mentioned a moment ago, over the value of Mar-a-Lago, because it was all a bit dodgy, him buying it,

he would refuse to talk if there was even a faint sound of a plane. And he would loudly say that the airport was a disaster. Now, this was particularly ironic because Trump's private plane was so loud that it was banned from taking off from this very airport at night. Yeah. Because, you know, there's cars, and they're extra loud when you go... Yeah. That kind of plane.

Which I just really like that touch. After all of this, oh, he hates the airport, he hates the airport. He's got a bloody plane there, which is really loud. Anyway, Trump soon gets fed up with Florida. He wasn't getting very far. The people seemed to be mocking him. There were regular headlines in the papers that said things like Trump the chump. He just didn't feel popular down there.

The politicians were clearly avoiding him. He didn't like it down there. He wanted to go back to Manhattan. That's where he lived. That's were clearly avoiding him. He didn't like it down there. He wanted to go back to Manhattan. That's where he lived. That's where his apartment was. Yeah, he's going to go back there. He loved Mar-a-Lago, the mansion, but Trump saw it as a way to show off to his clients. It wasn't really somewhere he wanted to live. His heart was still in New York. Because back home, he was working on the project that he was most invested in what do you think it is trump university no it was his own self-image yeah yeah he and i'm not just saying that

flippantly he really ratchets it up at this point he starts self-promoting like there's no tomorrow pouring all of his time into self-promotion because the businesses are just kind of ticking over and he's done the buying and the deal part and he's bored of them just running as businesses. So it's South Promotion now. There were several things he wanted to do to promote himself. First of all, if he was rich, he should really own a football team. That's what rich people owned.

He'd been in talks with various people since the early 1980s. Now, as we have established on this show, we are no American sports experts, are we? Nope. I watched a bit of American football a few years ago. It's boring. I don't understand it.

Yeah, I think we tried to figure out what the positions in baseball were at one point Or something, oh no it was football wasn't it Yeah it was football wasn't it But I think We are both happy with the idea That in America you've got like

Two football league things going on You've got the college game And you've got the professional game The NFL Collegiate and NFL yes However what you might not know And I certainly didn't is back in the mid 80's the professional game, the NFL. Collegiate and NFL, yes. Yeah, yeah, there we go. However, what you might not know, and I certainly didn't, is back in the mid-80s, there was a new professional league starting up.

This was the USFL. And the idea was you were going to have the NFL and the USFL, and they were both going to run at different times in the year, so they didn't compete with each other, and you had two leagues going on. More football, more fun, more money being made. Everyone's a winner. That's the idea. Yeah. Now, obviously, this is a brand new league,

so it was nowhere near as prestigious as the NFL. But that also meant that if you wanted to buy one of the teams, you could buy them at a fraction of the cost of an NFL team. So Trump decides he's going to buy one of the teams, you could buy them at a fraction of the cost of an NFL team. So Trump decides he's going to buy one of these cheap teams instead of one of the expensive ones in the NFL. But because he's a business genius, he's not just going to buy a team and try and make them do well. What he's going to do is he's going to buy a USFL team and then convert it into an NFL team. So then suddenly they'd be worth 10 times as much.

The plan is simple in broad strokes. Number one, buy a cheap USFL team. Number two, the USFL at the moment was not in direct competition with the NFL. Like I say, they played at different times of the year. But if Trump used his influence to push for the USFL to play at the same time as the NFL, it would then hopefully force a merger between the two leagues. Step three, he's now got an NFL team. Step four, profit.

That sounds like a long-term plan as well. That's not going to happen in a year, is it? Not a year, but they try and do it fairly quickly. The plan plays out almost perfectly to begin with. Trump buys a team and Trump is such a big name at this point. He's not just in charge of this team, he's now a big voice in the USFL.

So, the people in charge of the league, he is now in there with them. And Trump convinces them that against their original plans, they should move the time when the league play to exactly the same time as when the NFL plays. And then what they should do is sue the NFL for having a monopoly. This would damage the NFL and they'd be forced to merger.

I'm sure America would love that, right? This is textbook business hostile takeover. Yes. Applied to a sports league. So, off they go. Trump was a major part of the trial, because they do move, they do sue. This goes to trial. Really?

Yeah. Oh, wow. He didn't do too well in the trial. The NFL were able to clearly show that Trump did not care about football. Trump was saying this was all about his love for the game and how it was an outrage that the NFL had a monopoly and the hardworking Americans love their football. They should support the underdogs, which is the USFL.

But the NFL were able to turn around and go, no, look at the guy. He's not even a football fan. He's clearly making money here. They were able to use his own words against him because Trump... I know nothing about football. Trump wasn't subtle in this plan. He kept telling people what a genius move it was, and he was telling people this is what he was going to do. So they were able to use his own words against him. However, when the jury came back, they found the NFL guilty of antitrust policies.

Ooh. Trump was ecstatic. He was going to make a fortune from this. However, the fine then came through. It was decided that the NFL had to pay the USFL, guess how much? I want to go something ridiculous like $5 or something. That is ridiculous. You're five times too high one dollar

that's brilliant which to be fair was tripled to three dollars because antitrust fines are automatically tripled so oh yeah why the automatically triple that's ridiculous it's like it should be this yeah it's to stop monopolies from forming it's like yeah we've got to find them now let's really make it even yeah it's that's why so that one dollar becoming three um i bet that hurt well in other words what had happened here is that the jury after listening to trump talk for several days had decided that, yes, technically, actually, the NFL had broken some trust laws. However, Trump did not deserve to benefit from this. So they found the NFL guilty, but then punished Trump.

Trump was furious, but not as furious as the football fans, because this breaks the USFL. It folds soon after. The promising second league never happened. All the football fans were just left with less football. It's true, though. I think, you know, it's true of billionaires. They do try and make, they try and buy football teams.

Like in WWE, Vince McMahon, who is currently living in shame. He tried to, oh, don't you know? No, it's wrestling. Oh, no, this isn't wrestling. This is real life. Just when you finish... Is it a wrestler? Vince McMahon, he owns the WWE.

He's like a billionaire. Oh, no, I think I know the guy. He's got like a big face. I don't know. Maybe he's not. I mean, he's definitely got a face. He's got a face. Yeah, okay, right.

But yeah, he actually tried to create his own American Football League. And he's tried to do it twice. The first one just collapsed because nobody watched it. He tried to do it a second time. Then COVID hit and it collapsed. Yeah, this is nothing new. It certainly still happens. You remember with like real football a couple of years ago,

they tried to start a super league or something, didn they with all the best teams find or sued yeah that fell apart immediately yeah so this this kind of thing happens a lot rich people try and make more money using sports teams and hey sometimes it works in this case it certainly didn't trump losers uh anyway meanwhile what's going on in his life? On a personal level, one of the closest people to him was dying. His mentor, Roy Cohn, was dying of AIDS. Now, due to the stigma at the time, Cohn told everyone that it was cancer, publicly, but everyone who knew him knew that it was AIDS. Trump's sensing weakness started to distance himself from his father figure,

causing a rift between the two. started to distance himself from his father figure, causing a rift between the two. When Cohn asked Donald for a room in one of his buildings for his boyfriend, who was now dying of AIDS, to stay in, Trump offered him a room. Okay, you can use one of my rooms, that's fine. But then sent a bill for the room to Roy. Roy Cohn was just devastated by this, and I'll quote him, I can't believe he is doing this to Roy. Roy Cohn was just devastated by this, and I'll quote him,

I can't believe he is doing this to me, Donald **** his ice water. Yeah. Anyway, the relationship didn't break down completely. However, the two still talked on the phone. But by the time Cohn died, Trump was not asked to speak at the funeral. Those close to Cohn said that Cohn's protégé had abandoned him and therefore

he didn't deserve to speak. So yeah, they're really distanced at the end there. This follows a precedent where various times in his life Trump has expressed disgust or fear at people who are not well or in any way disabled. This seems to pop up with Trump a lot. He gets very uncomfortable when he's around people ill of health or not, in his mind, perfectly formed. We will come across this again in the future. Yes, it seems like, yeah, he just, as soon as his mentor got ill, he just did not want anything to do with him anymore. Because he hates, oh no.

He's a self-confessed germaphobe. He calls himself a germaphobe a lot. Okay. In fact, he used that as defence why he didn't get urinated on in a Russian hotel room. He said he wouldn't do that because he's a germaphobe. To be fair, that probably does hold some ground. Yeah, I mean

it does. Yeah, I can imagine that. Anyway... He must hate again COVID then. My goodness. Oh, we're getting to that. We will. Because that's Trump's presidency. Anyway, despite some personal and business setbacks, Trump is still determined to present himself as a financial genius. And it was around this time that he got an idea.

The football thing didn't work, but he's going to self-promote, so why not write a book? Well, not actually write a book, obviously. Why not pay someone to ghostwrite a book? The idea first came after he'd been interviewed for GQ back in 1984. He was told by the owner of the magazine that if he published a book, it would sell. And that sort of weaseled its way into Trump's mind. And you start to think about it a couple of years later. Yeah, he's going to do it. He's going to write this book or get it written

anyway. But who to write it? Now, this is interesting. A couple of years previously, a man named Schwartz had written an article which outlined how brutally Trump treated his tenants, highlighting one practice where Trump would employ homeless people to hang around the tenants that he wanted out of his buildings. Bloody hell, really? Yeah. So Schwartz uncovered this and wrote an article about it, essentially saying, isn't Trump awful? For whatever reason, Trump loved this article.

It's a tension. It's a tension, but also it makes him strong. He is a man you don't mess with. If you mess with Trump, he will figure out a way to kick you out of your apartment. I can only assume that is. But anyway, Trump wanted Schwartz to write his book. So Schwartz got a phone call one day. He was absolutely amazed. I'm sorry, what? You want me to write your book? But I hate you. Well, they met, and Trump told Schwartz that he wanted to write his autobiography. Now, Schwartz thought about it and said, and I quote, You're only 38. You don't have a biography yet.

You're not old enough, essentially. Which someone really needed to point out to Obama as well. I was going to say, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but it's okay, said Schwartz. We could do something else. How about you write a book, or I write the book for you, about

your best business deals. Let's not do your life, let's do your business deals. Now Trump loved that idea immediately. That was far better than the biography. Yeah, it could all be about his business deals. Fantastic. So he practically hires Schwartz on the spot. So Schwartz starts interviewing Trump, but comes across a problem. Trump had no attention span or interest in

creating the book. He just wanted the book to be done. In fact, I'll quote Schwartz here, it's impossible to keep him focused on any topic other than his own self-aggrandizement for more than a few minutes. So Schwartz, getting desperate, stayed with the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago for a weekend. But Trump just soon grew angry at all the questions. It's just been pestered. About to give up, Schwartz came up with one last-ditch idea that would probably be rejected, but it's the only way he can see of doing this. He proposed to Trump, Why don't I just follow you everywhere, and why don't we set up your phone so I can listen in on all of your calls?

Trump loved the idea. He didn't see this as an invasion of his privacy or anything. He thought, brilliant, this way I don't have to do anything different, I can just be me, and this guy writing my book will see what I do, and then he can write the book, and I don't need to change anything. He thought, brilliant, this way I don't have to do anything different. I can just be me and this guy writing my book will see what I do and then he can write the book and I don't need to change anything. Fantastic. So that's what they do. For 18 months, Schwartz becomes Trump's shadow and probably finds out more about Trump than anyone else ever has. Poor guy. He soon starts to get to know how Trump deals with people. He would, in the bulk of conversations, flatter, bully, or shout at people, depending on who he was talking to. And then, to sign off, he would tell

the other person, regardless of who it was, or whether he had been bullying, shouting, or flattering, he would tell that person his latest success, just to sign off. Like, by the way, I've done this. And then he would end every single conversation, regardless of the call, with, and I quote, you're the best. And then he'd hang up. And that's how he operated on his phone. Which, yeah, it's interesting. Again, it's that, just keep building up your image,

building up your image. Doesn't matter who you're talking to. Oh, by the way, I've done this great thing. Yeah, he just shouted at someone for 20 minutes. Yeah. You're a piece of crap, I hate you. You're the best, bye. Yeah, yeah.

It was... That's how he talked to people. Anyway, Schwartz got his information, but soon realised another problem once he was listening in on phone calls. Trump lied all the time. Like, all the time. Yeah.

He would regularly tell different people completely different things about the same event. And he would tell Schwartz things that had happened on the phone call that he had just listened to that weren't true. So Schwartz would walk into the room after listening to the phone call and Trump would tell him that a different conversation

had taken place. I can't believe Trump would do that. Well, either Trump had forgotten that Schwartz was listening on the phone, or he just didn't care that Schwartz knew he was lying. It just came second nature to him. I'll quote Schwartz here. He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.

Since most people are constrained by the truth, Trump's indifference to it gave him a strange advantage. It gave him a pallor. He just didn't care if people knew he was lying. There was no embarrassment about it at all. He just lied, and sometimes it stuck. And if he didn't, he'd shrug it off. Anyway, Schwartz eventually finishes the book, Art of the Deal. It's written as Trump, and Trump comes across as the hero in every single chapter, you'll be shocked to learn.

Any bad deal in his life was simply left out. It was released in 87 and instantly became a New York Times bestseller. Trump obviously claimed that he wrote it himself. It instantly made Trump more famous and solidified the idea that he was a financial genius. Schwartz himself later deeply regretted writing the book, saying that he had, and I quote, put lipstick on a pig, and saying that he should have called the book sociopath. But that was much later,

and for now, Trump was riding a high. It's nice to think as well that Trump's never read the book as well, because I don't get the feeling Trump reads. No, he famously does not read many books. But I don't know, a book all about himself? Maybe. No, I doubt he's read it. He's had someone read it and tell him about it.

Ah, maybe. Anyway, like I say, he's riding a high. He's now a big name in the world, as well as being rich. It's got to the point where he's wading into political debates in New York. In one particularly disturbing case, he decided that the world needed to listen to him after a rape of a woman in Central Park in 1989. Oh, yes. Yes. Now, we don't have time to go into this in detail.

If you don't want to go and read books and things about it, there is a fantastic dramatization of it called When They See Us on Netflix. Very, very good series, which is mostly accurate. So go and watch that if you just want to get a sense. But here, cliff notes. Five teenagers of black and Hispanic ethnicity were arrested in Central Park for the rape of this woman, and they were intimidated until they confessed to the crime. Now, later, DNA evidence proves that they did not do it. This is no longer up to dispute. They are innocent. It is a fact. However, at the time, Trump spent $85,000, that's the modern

equivalent of roughly $200,000, to take out a full-page advert in the New York Times stating that the death penalty should be brought back for the five teenagers. In fact, I will quote the advert here. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer. I want to hate these murderers, and I always will. How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their civil Well, I'm assuming this was released when people didn't know. Yeah, so this was when people thought... So he's jumping on a bandwagon. Yes.

It's a tension. He wants to look like a good guy. And a hardliner for crime. Yeah. No-nonsense crime. Trump was lauded in many circles with his no-nonsense attitude, and a lot of people do very much believe in the death penalty. So it's no surprise that Donald Trump does. Lots of people in America do.

However, when it came out that they were innocent, and again, this isn't debatable, they are innocent, Trump simply refused to believe it. When asked about it in 2002, he said, if you look at some of the prosecutors, they think the city should never have settled that case, so we'll leave it at that. So Trump still thinks they're guilty.

He will not back down on that to this day. Well, no, he probably realises they're innocent. He just doesn't want to lose. Yeah, exactly. You never ever admit you're wrong. This is a fundamental Trump philosophy. So anyway, yes, so he does that. But Trump has other things to think about than trying to kill wrongly convicted minorities. To try and simplify, the wealth of Trump was all built on his image. He had massive, massive amounts of debt by this point, and all his money was tied up in the success of all his ventures. However, he had realised that if he kept growing

and building, it looked like he's succeeding, so he can always borrow more money. This is still his business plan. Look like I'm doing well, borrow more, invest, borrow more, invest, and hope the train never catches me. Because after all, who wouldn't lend money to the financial genius of Donald Trump? So he keeps spending, he keeps investing. But there's a reason why you can't do that. The bills were coming in, and the businesses he was investing in were not all going well. In particular, the casinos, the crown jewel in the business rather than the accommodation empire, they were really struggling. The casinos were being poorly run, to put it bluntly.

It did not help that he was paying for three casinos and all the rights to be operating them and stuff. Paying the state to have a casino there. All of that stuff. He's paying for three of them. And there were three casinos that were all taking customers off each other. And they were being run by family members

with no experience. Who were often rotated in and out. Because as they started to not do very well, Trump would fire them and just put some new person in with no experience. who were often rotated in and out because as they started to not do very well, Trump would fire them and just put some new person in with no experience. So he's saturated his own market and is in a constant state of flux. Yeah. When Trump was told that Plaza Casino was only going to bring in $64 million the next year, Trump was very angry because he needed that number to be 95 or over or he was in serious trouble. In fact, I'll quote him, I expect 95, 100 million next year. Now, he was talking to

the president of Trump Plaza, who replied that these, the numbers are accurate. There's nothing we can do. 64 million is the projection. And be honest that's generous trump replied and i quote there's no way that's going to fly you guys better get your numbers squared away at that point the president replied what the hell do you want from me and trump replied i want you to go back and do your budget and get it up to where it should be and this was how it was going across the board this is what he was doing in all of his business trump increasingly was lying to the banks and investors about his worth and his projected profits and increasingly he was being sued by various groups who were starting to catch on to the grift i was going to say where's the scrutiny like

aren't the banks doing their diligence and kind of going... No, to put it bluntly, they are not because it's Donald Trump. And Donald Trump's name is so big in the late 80s that banks, at least the smaller banks, but big enough to be lending hundreds of millions, see it as a win to be doing business with Donald Trump. We're a bank that works with Donald Trump. We're a bank that works with Donald Trump. And he's a genius, don't you know? So banks wanted to. And no investigations

were taking place because he was too well connected. He knew politicians. And he paid politicians lots of money, often the maximum amount you were allowed to contribute to their campaign funds. And who knows if there was anything behind the scene? I wouldn't like to speculate. Anyway, he was also able to get... Well, he was also able to get a deal with a bank that he was

close to, to have an allowance, get this, of $450,000 $450,000 a month. So almost half a million pounds a month in allowance. Yeah, the bank were just going to give it to him. The bank knew that Trump going under would ruin them because they've invested so much in Donald Trump.

So they figure, well, let's keep him afloat. Let's just give him some pocket money so he can stop his businesses from going under and then we're all happy because we're all living on this pile of imaginary money right now and everyone goes under if trump goes under so he was being given nearly half a million a month at this point by his bank to stop him from going under when it looked like his main casino would indeed go under anyway his father then arranged for someone to buy 150,000 dollars in chips in the casino so the next bill was magically paid now this is very illegal you can't just go into a casino from the streets and say here casino have lots of money and then walk

away again oh look the casino can now pay its bills. Yeah, there were regulations for this kind of thing, but hey, they did it. They paid another bill with it. So, to sum that part up, what I'm trying to say is the casinos are starting to crack under the strain of how badly they're being run. In the meantime, personal life,

he's going through a divorce. Avania had had enough with Trump's very obvious and public affair he was having with Martha Maples, who was a former model and Miss Georgia winner. That's his next wife. That's his next wife, yes. Trump very publicly wrote a cheque for $10 million for Avania, settling the prenup, and then boasted to the press that he was the only real estate agent in the country that

could write a cheque for $10 million. The truth is, this cleaned him out. Literally. At this point, he has no worth. He is broke. And the bank are not happy with him at all, because they are now essentially paying for his divorce. They were even less happy when they found out that trump was buying diamond rings and such for his new mistress that's not what we're giving you all that money for trump we're giving it to you so you can keep your businesses afloat anyway eventually all this catches up with him in 91 he is forced to declare bankruptcy on the two two of the casinos he owed millions by In 91, he is forced to declare bankruptcy on the two of the casinos. He owed millions by this point, and he was forced to sell

a large amount of his business interests and his mega yacht, unable to afford it. Newsweek described Trump as, and I quote here, As ever, however, it's hard to actually figure out how much trouble was in, because he'd spent a lot of money to keep a lot of stuff secret. After his third casino goes under, so they all go under, he started making money in another way. His businesses are folding from under him, everything is starting to collapse,

so he gets an idea, Trump is a big name. I will license out my own name. Now this is what leads to all the humorous things that we have now got. And it also leads to a game. Which of these things do you think are real? So these are businesses who apply to Trump and say, for

this much money, can we use your name? So he's franchising himself? Yeah. Yeah. So I'll just say one? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay, so I'll just say one. You say true or false.

Trump Burger. True. Good, well done. Trump Burger is true. Trump Vodka. True. Yeah, that one's real. Trump Steak.

True, he likes steak. Yeah, Trump Steak's real. Trump Golden Ale. False. No, that one's true. Trump Golden Ale was a thing. Trump Ice. As in frozen water? Yes.

True. Yeah, yeah, it's true. The Trumptini. These are going to be true, aren't they? I mean, this is the last one, and yes, they are all true. Yeah, oh my goodness. They're all true. Trumpetini, by the way.

I didn't get organised enough. Maybe we will for the next episode. Yes. Because it is Bacardi lemon, so a lemon-infused white rum. Okay. Contro, some sour mix, so some lemon juice mixed with some water and some sugar, and a splash of cranberry juice.

That's a Trumptini. So I figure we should get that organised for the next episode and we can drink a Trumptini whilst we record. We could also eat some Trump ice and a Trump steak. That would be fun. I've heard that trump likes his steaks

very well done as well um yes but being a germaphobe i understand i would understand why because people do get freaked out by like red meat and stuff yeah yeah definitely so when you hear of all of these things it's like oh trump did this trump did this actually he had very little to do with any of it his His name got put on it. He usually did adverts for them, but they're nothing really to do with him. He's just sold his name for cash. Anyway, according to the Wall Street Journal,

he spent five years in the mid-90s negotiating with banks and ending up paying half of the $110 million that he owed personally. That's not his businesses. That's his personal debt. Somehow, though, and I don't know how, he enters the second half of the 90s in a position to start growing the business again. I want to tell you how he did this, but I'm just going to use a quote

from an attorney from the New Jersey Attorney General's office, which had spent years looking into the many irregularities in Trump's businesses. I will quote here, I'm not certain if there's any one person on our staff that really understands it. Wow. It is such a mire, convoluted mess of business deals, shady goings on. It's just impossible to unpick. But what we do know is he is in hundreds of millions of dollars debt personally

at the start of the 90s by the end of the 90s he's starting to grow as a business again yeah anyway he decides to go and to the miss universe game at this point wonderful yes in 96 he buys miss universe organization which includes miss usa and even more disturbingly miss teen usa um i'm not going to go into all the seedy stuff around this because believe me there's so much stuff we're on a time limit and this is all very very depressing and i just don't want to spend my time researching it and talking about it frankly but this is where the later infamous Hollywood Access tape, it's what it was about. It's not when it was recorded, but this is where Trump is bragging

that he could easily sexually assault the women involved and they would let him do it because he was a star and he owned the business. This is the grab them by the cap kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Reports of him regularly walking into the changing rooms of these contestants as they are getting changed and all sorts it's all very very seedy anyway he's now in

that that racket so there you go he also carried on his business method of borrowing large amounts of money using fraudulent overinflated estimates of his worth and using that money to invest in other projects that he could then use to borrow more money etc etc he's just going back into the same pan yeah right and here i have made a decision so this is a decision i ran by um our patreons on discord just to make sure i'm getting this right as i said at the top of the episode i am determined to get trump done in three episodes and i got to this point and I realised I've already exceeded my word limit. And I, well, self-imposed a word limit

to stop episodes getting too long. And I wanted to get to him declaring his run for presidency in this episode. And we are still a decade to go. Yeah. In fact, a couple of decades. But I am determined to start the next episode talking about him trying to become president. So what'm going to do is incredibly incredibly quickly i'm just going to gloss over

two decades okay yeah i think we know enough about him to make a judgment about his business deals i don't think anything hugely different or new happens it's just new things he buys and new things he does things like trump university which is which is a place where you can buy a certificate and say you've done a course on business. That got sued because it's not actually teaching anyone anything, and Trump University had to be shut down. So things like that happen, but I'm just not going to go into them because we just don't have time in this podcast.

And I'm not spending three months of my life looking into this and doing five episodes i'm just not um so here we go two decades in like three minutes or something in 1999 he divorces martha yeah they got wed in 93 by the way because by this time he was already having an affair with his new ex-model and And this time, it was a woman from Slovenia called Melania. He obviously has... Ah, I've heard of her. Obviously has a type, does Donald Trump. Models with

accents. She was 27 to Trump's 51, so it's getting a bit icky by this point. Anyway, he marries her in 2005. However, something new and exciting has happened at this point, because in 2004, he was hired to be the host of a new reality TV show called The Apprentice. Yes. Now, the producers had approached Trump, who was reluctant at first,

saying that reality TV wasn't a quote for the bottom feeders of society. He looked down on this. This was awful. However, he was soon won over in a meeting about it because they told him the idea of the show was you will be yourself and you will be a business genius. And Trump liked the sound of that. And this show, more than anything else, gave Trump the stardom that he had been looking for his whole life. Yeah. Each week, he would get to play the tough boss who always seemed to know what he was talking about. And he was a natural at it. Again, many things to criticise him about.

This was something he did well. He was good at hosting this reality TV show. After taping the pilot, the producers instantly realised that this is going to be about Trump, not about the contestants. We thought it was going to be about the contestants. It's not. Trump was brash.

He went off script to the point that he ignored the script. He refused to follow a script. He talked a whole bunch of nonsense. Lots of it made no sense. But especially after a bit of editing, it made for brilliant TV. Catchphrase, you're Fired was invented by Trump. Yes. He wasn't told to do that. It was ad-libbed and they

loved it. It was kept and it was imported to all the other versions of The Apprentice that went around the world. For 14 seasons he hosted this show, making him a household name across the whole country and cementing this idea that he was a business genius despite the fact that he had only really been running a failing companies

since the 80s i mean he had had some successes obviously but a lot of things had gone very wrong and it was whilst he was the host ofrentice that he became obsessed with ratings. Apparently his mood would alter radically depending on what the ratings were week on week. He just had to know what his ratings were. You see that this never goes away. Because when he was campaigning and when he was president

he would quite often talk about his ratings. Which was interesting. It comes from his time on The Apprentice. It was him judging how well he was doing. Anyway, this is where we're going to leave Trump. A popular reality TV host with a paper business empire, increasingly doing more and more interviews on TV

and starting to wade into politics. He also had a stint in WWE as well. Yes, he did, which I decided not to go into because I started looking into it and just went, oh, that's a lot of information and we don't have time. I'll just cut it out. But yes, he absolutely did. There is a lot that I've missed out.

He gets all over the place. We don't have time to go into it all. And I will decide when I'm doing my notes where we jump back in because i know i brushed over a lot maybe i'll go back and look into a bit of stuff but i'm determined to get him down those escalators declaring he's going to run for president roughly at the start of the next episode so there you go that's trump part one we've done a trump episode did any of that surprise you nope no although i do feel more sorry for him. I think there's lots of

things that probably happened in his childhood that we're unaware of, or it could just be a genetic trait that he is sociopathic. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's all very armchair psychologist, isn't it? Yeah. But, and I don't mean it in a, oh, he's crazy,

he's violent. He clearly struggles with empathy and his father does as well. This is clearly a characteristic of both the Trumps. Yeah. It's demonstrated throughout his whole life. And also, he has no shame and is a compulsive liar. But he knows how to sell himself. And that is his biggest quality.

Yeah, he does. And it's what he's most proud about. And he's proud for a reason. He's good at that. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, he's so good at it. He eventually becomes president based on it.

I mean, that is phenomenal. It hurts me when you say that. Yeah, nothing jumped out and really surprised me. There were some details about his early life that I wasn't aware about. I was expecting to be able to find out a bit more. But like I say, it's hard to find out some of his stuff. He doesn't like people knowing about him. At least his past.

Right. Okay, well, we're going to leave it there. Yeah, that's a good idea. That is. Trump, thank you very much for listening. Thank you for downloading us, wherever you do download us. And also thank you for our patrons. You do allow Rob to keep to continue doing what he's doing.

Yeah, and I what he's doing. Yeah. And I think that's it. No special mention. No news at the moment. Don't think so. Nope. Well, let's just say goodbye then. Right.

Thank you very much and goodbye. Goodbye. Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, I came as soon as I could. You said it was urgent on the phone. Is there a problem with the new apartment? I mean, I think it's built perfectly to your specifications. We've got a lot of gold in there. I need to ask you a question. Is this the best apartment in Manhattan? I mean, yes, yes, Mr. Trump. Obviously, it's the best. I mean, you should have seen all that marble. It's a lot of marble. We had to put several new beams in the entire building just to keep it up.

It's a lot of marble, sir. Yes, this is definitely the best apartment. And the size of the living room? Huge. Huge. Or, in fact, if I look at the specifications here, huge. So, yes, very, very, very big. Yes, is there a problem? Well, Covfefe, I agree with you, because obviously this is the best apartment in Manhattan.

Of course it is. I'm Donald J. Trump. Damn it. Yes. Yes, of course. Of course. So what's the problem? I want it bigger.

Bigger? Bigger. I want more space. I need more marble. I need more gold. I need more frescoes. I need more of those things that go from the floor to the ceiling made out of marble. I need more gold i need more frescoes i need more of those things that go from the floor to the ceiling made out of marble i need more of those more pillars uh mr trump i want

bigger floor space i want more pillars i want them huge right okay well mr trump can i just remind you about the conversation we had a couple of months ago about how the living room now literally goes from one end of the building to the other and if you want more floor space you would need to have to actually build out of the building yeah do it you want me to build outside your window yes do it outside your window. Yes, do it. Can't you do it?

Do I need to find someone better? Are you a fool? I can do it, but you do realise, Mr Trump, that you have hired me as an interior decorator. I am here to make your apartment look the way you want it. So you're saying you can't do it then? You can't build an external interior design? I would argue that the exterior, the current exterior of this penthouse suite,

of this tower block, doesn't fall in my remit. And in fact, I would, I mean, I don't want to, obviously I don't want to argue, but I would suggest that that would fall under the person who constructed the building in the first place. Well, fine. Fine then. Just get out. Get out of the building. I don't want you here. Just get out. You're mucking up the marble. Look at your

dirty feet. Just get out of here. Get out of here, you filthy scum. Fine, fine. I'm going. You know what? This has been a disaster. Everyone laughs at this building. It is clearly insane. No one lives in a palace of gold. This is ridiculous. You can't get rid of me. I quit. You can't quit because you're fired. Oh, you're, you're fired. You're... you're fired. I like the sound of that. Trump Tower. I'm sorry, Mr Trump, are you okay?

I'm fine, why? Who are you talking to? Get out, you're fired! Yeah, I like it, I like fine. Why? Who are you talking to? Get out! You're fired! Yeah, I like it. I like it. You're fired. You're fired. You're fired. You're fired. Yeah, I like it.

You're... You're fired. You're fired. You're fired.'re fired you are fired you're fired your services are no longer required no no you're fired oh put the finger you're fired you're fired you're fired you're fired you're fired you're fired oh double finger point you're fired