After the Gold Rush Vanity Fair September 1990 Vfarchive HEAD TOPICS

After the Gold Rush Vanity Fair September 1990

10/22/2022 3:25:00 AM

From the #VFArchive Ivana Trump once told her lawyer that from time to time her husband read a book of Hitler' s collected speeches—and kept a copy in a cabinet near his bed

Vfarchive

Source

VANITY FAIR

From the VFArchive: Ivana Trump once told her lawyer that, from time to time, her husband read a book of Hitler's collected speeches—and kept a copy in a cabinet near his bed. Unfortunately for Donald and Ivana Trump, all that glittered wasn't gold. But the reign of New York's self-created imperial couple isn't over yet. Donald's Midas touch may be tarnished, but the banks are still throwing money at him, while Ivana is busy brokering a future of her own. MARIE BRENNER reports on how the Trumps are still going for it all ''Old custom? He's only had Mrs. Post's house a few months. Really! I'm going home," one Palm Beach resident whispered to his date.The Trumps had bought Mar-a-Lago only a few months earlier, but already they had become Palm Beach curiosities. Across the road was the Bath and Tennis Club, ''the B and T," as the locals called it, and it was said that the Trumps had yet to be invited to join. ''Utter bullshit! They kiss my ass in Palm Beach," Trump told me recently. ''Those phonies! That club called me and asked me if they could have my consent to use part of my beach to expand the space for their cabanas! I said, 'Of course!' Do you think if I wanted to be a member they would have turned me down? I wouldn't join that club, because they don't take blacks and Jews." Read more:
VANITY FAIR » Judge: Former President Donald Trump knew vote fraud claims in legal documents were false Former President Donald Trump deposed in defamation suit filed by columnist E. Jean Carroll Donald Trump deposed in defamation suit filed by E. Jean Carroll 'I would still vote for Donald Trump, and I'm an American Jew'

Dried Apple Hand Pies Recipe - Lisa Donovan

This Dried Apple Hand Pies recipe from Lisa Donovan gets its flavor from apple cider, dried apple slices, green cardamom, and lemon zest. Read more >> Judge: Former President Donald Trump knew vote fraud claims in legal documents were falseWASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump signed legal documents challenging the results of the 2020 election that included voter fraud claims he knew to be... “authoritarian movements in other countries... often begin with efforts to delegitimize elections. Many of those promoting the stolen-election narrative... know that it is false and are using it to gain power.' docrocktex26 Oh, neat. Will this bring on more charges? Every person capable of rational thought knows the voter fraud claims were false long ago. Former President Donald Trump deposed in defamation suit filed by columnist E. Jean CarrollFormer President Donald Trump answered questions under oath Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, a magazine columnist who says the Republican raped her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room. He answered? No fifth? Who believes her…. Now do this guy. Donald Trump deposed in defamation suit filed by E. Jean CarrollFormer President Trump answered questions under oath Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, a magazine columnist who says he raped her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room. 'I would still vote for Donald Trump, and I'm an American Jew'In this exclusive Newsweek essay, Ari Hoffman discusses Trump, Judaism and America. Yes'a boss DONALD'S CLUB. 'I'd still vote for Donald, and I'm an idiot'. Jan. 6 Committee Formally Subpoenas Donald TrumpBREAKING: The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol subpoenaed former President Donald Trump, setting up a ferocious battle that will likely see him defy the summons. Donald Trump Formally Subpoenaed by January 6 CommitteeThe panel sent a letter to the former president’s lawyers on Friday, demanding his testimony under oath by mid-November and outlining a series of corresponding documents. September 1990 Marie Brenner W e have an old custom here at Mar-a-Lago," Donald Trump was saying one night at dinner in his 118-room winter palace in Palm Beach.5:54 PM on Oct 19, 2022 CDT WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump signed legal documents challenging the results of the 2020 election that included voter fraud claims he knew to be false, a federal judge said in a ruling Wednesday.The deposition gave Carroll’s lawyers a chance to interrogate Trump about the assault allegations as well as statements he made in 2019 when she told her story publicly for the first time.Subscribe to our weekday newsletter Add WBUR to your morning routine The email address entered is invalid It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email Thank you! You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. ''Our custom is to go around the table after dinner and introduce ourselves to each other." Trump had seemed fidgety that night, understandably eager to move the dinner party along so that he could go to bed.S. ''Old custom? He's only had Mrs. Jean Carroll, we were able to take Donald Trump’s deposition today. Post's house a few months. 6 attack on the Capitol. Really! I'm going home," one Palm Beach resident whispered to his date. ''Oh, stay," she said. Though the judge’s conclusion has no practical bearing on a separate Justice Department investigation into efforts to overturn the election, any evidence that Trump signed documents he knew to be false could at minimum be a notable data point for criminal prosecutors trying to sort out culpability for far-ranging efforts to undo the results.” His legal team worked for years to delay his deposition in the lawsuit, which was filed when he was still president. ''It will be so amusing." It was spring, four years ago. Those false allegations were part of a filing that Trump’s legal team made in Georgia state court on Dec. Donald and Ivana Trump were seated at opposite ends of their long Sheraton table in Mrs. Carroll was to have been questioned by Trump’s lawyers last Friday. Marjorie Merriweather Post's former dining room. Later that month, Eastman warned in a message that Trump had been made aware that “some of the allegations (and evidence proffered by the experts)” in that Georgia filing “has been inaccurate. They were posed in imperial style, as if they were a king and queen. They were at the height of their ride, and it was plenty glorious. Trump under oath verified the complaint was true to the best of his knowledge. Trump was in Florida on Wednesday. Trump was seen on the news shows offering his services to negotiate with the Russians. There was talk that he might make a run for president. He said the emails are “sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States. Ivana had had so much publicity that she now offered interviewers a press kit of flattering clips. He hasn’t faced any criminal charges related to Carroll’s allegations and any prosecution is unlikely. Anything seemed possible, the Trumps had grown to such stature in the golden city of New York. The ruling is the latest development in a monthslong legal battle between Eastman — a conservative lawyer and lead architect of Trump’s last-ditch efforts to stay in office — and congressional investigators. It was balmy that night in Palm Beach; Ivana wore a strapless dress. The air was redolent with the fragrance of oleander and bougainvillea, mingled with the slight smell of mildew which clung to the old house. The committee has argued that there is a legal exception allowing the disclosure of communications regarding ongoing or future crimes. As a result, Carroll chose to sue Trump for defamation over comments he made in 2019 when he denied any wrongdoing. To his credit, Trump had no interest in mastering the Palm Beach style of navy blazers and linen trousers. Often he wore a business suit to his table; his only concession to local custom was to wear a pink tie or pale shoes. In a stunning ruling in March, the judge  had asserted  that it is “more likely than not” that Trump committed crimes in his attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election. To her credit, Ivana still served the dinners her husband preferred, so on that warm night the guests ate beef with potatoes. Carroll’s lawyer has told the court she intends to file such a suit against Trump after that window opens in late November. Mrs. The totality of the evidence makes clear that “Trump filed certain lawsuits not to obtain legal relief, but to disrupt or delay the January 6 congressional proceedings through the courts,” the judge wrote. Post's faux-Tiepolo ceiling remained in the dining room, but an immense silver bowl now rested in the center of the table, filled with plastic fruit. As always, it was business with the Trumps, for that was their common purpose, the bond between them. The judge ordered Eastman to give the documents to the committee by the afternoon of Oct. Jean. In recent years, they never seemed to touch each other or exchange intimate remarks in public. They had become less like man and wife and more like two ambassadors from different countries, each with a separate agenda. Defamation suit Also Wednesday, Trump answered questions under oath in a lawsuit filed by E. The Trumps had bought Mar-a-Lago only a few months earlier, but already they had become Palm Beach curiosities. In a recent statement, Trump called that story “a complete con job. Across the road was the Bath and Tennis Club, ''the B and T," as the locals called it, and it was said that the Trumps had yet to be invited to join. The deposition gave Carroll’s lawyers a chance to interrogate Trump about the assault allegations as well as statements he made in 2019  when she told her story publicly  for the first time. ''Utter bullshit! They kiss my ass in Palm Beach," Trump told me recently. ''Those phonies! That club called me and asked me if they could have my consent to use part of my beach to expand the space for their cabanas! I said, 'Of course!' Do you think if I wanted to be a member they would have turned me down? I wouldn't join that club, because they don't take blacks and Jews. Jean Carroll talks to reporters outside a courthouse in New York on March 4, 2020. Sisak contributed. " As if Mar-a-Lago and the Trump Princess yacht were James Gatz's West Egg estate, invitations were much prized, for the local snobs loved to dine out on tales of the Trumps. And now this! Embarrassing their guests by having them make speeches, as if they were at a sales convention! When it was Ivana's turn to introduce herself that night, she rose quickly. 19, 2022, in a lawsuit filed by Carroll, a magazine columnist who says the Republican raped her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room."I am married to the most wonderful husband. He is so generous and smart. “We’re pleased that on behalf of our client, E. We are so lucky to have this life. " She was desperately playing to him, but Donald said nothing in return. We are not able to comment further,” said a spokesperson for the law firm representing her, Kaplan Hecker & Fink. He seemed tired of hearing Ivana's endless praise; her subservient quality appeared to be getting to him. Perhaps he was spoiling for something to excite him, like a fight.” His legal team worked for years to delay his deposition in the lawsuit, which was filed when he was still president. Maybe all the public posturing was beginning to get boring, too. ''Well, I'm done," he said before dessert, tossing his napkin on the table and vanishing from the room.” Trump’s lawyers didn’t immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment about the deposition. Palm Beach had been Ivana Trump's idea. Long ago, Donald had screamed at her,"I want nothing social that you aspire to. Trump was in Florida on Wednesday. If that is what makes you happy, get another husband!" But she had no intention of doing that, for Ivana, like Donald, was living out a fantasy. She had seen that in the Trump life everything and everybody appeared to come with a price, or a marker for future use. Anything Trump said during his deposition could potentially be used as evidence in an upcoming civil trial. Ivana had learned to look through Donald with glazed eyes when he said to close friends, as he had in the early years of their marriage,"I would never buy Ivana any decent jewels or pictures. Why give her negotiable assets?" She had gotten out of Eastern Europe by being tough and highly disciplined, and she had compounded her skills through her husband, the master manipulator. The deadline for criminal charges over sexual assaults that occurred in the 1990s has long expired. She had learned the lingua franca in a world where everyone seemed to be using everyone else in a relentless drive for power. How was she to know that there was another way to live? Besides, she often told her friends, however cruel Donald could be, she was very much in love with him. This night Ivana had managed to wedge in the publisher of the local social paper, ''the Shiny Sheet." As usual, Donald's weekend guests were paybacks, for he trusted few people. He had invited one of his construction executives, the mayor of West Palm Beach, and the former governor of New York, Hugh Carey, who in his days running the state as"Society Carey," boosted by huge Trump donations, had been crucial to Trump's early success. For years, Ivana appeared to have studied the public behavior of the royals. Her friends now called this"Ivana's imperial-couple syndrome," and they teased her about it, for they knew that Ivana, like Donald, was inventing and reinventing herself all the time. When she had first come to New York, she wore elaborate helmet hairdos and bouffant satin dresses, very Hollywood; her image of rich American women probably came from the movies she had seen as a child. Ivana had now spent years passing through the fine rooms of New York, but she had never seemed to learn the real way of the truly rich, the art of understatement. Instead, she had become regal, filling her houses with the kind of ormolu found in palaces in Eastern Europe. She had taken to waving to friends with tiny hand motions, as if to conserve her energy. At her own charity receptions, she insisted that she and Donald form a receiving line, and she would stand in pinpoint heels, never sinking into the deep grass—such was her control. This spring night, a squad of servants had been outside to greet the guests, as if they had arrived at Cliveden between the wars. Most of the staff, however, were not a permanent part of Mar-a-Lago; they were local caterers and car parks, hired for the evening. In addition to the dining-room ceiling, Ivana had left Mrs. Post's shabby fringed sofas and Moroccan suites totally in place, giving the impression that she was trying on Mrs. Post's persona too. One of the few signs of the new owners' taste was the dozens of silver frames on the many end tables. The frames did not contain family pictures, but magazine covers. Each cover featured the face of Donald Trump. When the Trump plane landed in Palm Beach, two cars were usually waiting, the first a Rolls-Royce for the adults, the second a station wagon for the children, the nannies, and a bodyguard. Occasionally, state troopers were on hand to speed the Trump motorcade along. This took a certain amount of planning and coordination, but the effort was crucial for what Ivana was trying to achieve."In fifty years Donald and I will be considered old money like the Vanderbilts," she once told the writer Dominick Dunne. T his past April, when his empire was in danger of collapse, Trump isolated himself in a small apartment on a lower floor of Trump Tower. He would lie on his bed, staring at the ceiling, talking into the night on the telephone. The Trumps had separated. Ivana remained upstairs in the family triplex with its beige onyx floors and low-ceilinged living room painted with murals in the style of Michelangelo. The murals had occasioned one of their frequent fights: Ivana wanted cherubs, Donald preferred warriors. The warriors won."If this were on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, it would be very much in place in terms of quality," Trump once said of the work. That April, Ivana began to tell her friends that she was worried about Donald's state of mind. She had been completely humiliated by Donald through his public association with Marla Maples."How can you say you love us? You don't love us! You don't even love yourself. You just love your money," twelve-year-old Donald junior told his father, according to friends of Ivana's."What kind of son have I created?" Trump's mother, Mary, is said to have asked Ivana. Developer Sam Lefrak would say of Donald Trump,"A peacock today, a feather duster tomorrow." However unlikely it seemed, Ivana was now considered a tabloid heroine, and her popularity seemed in inverse proportion to the fickle city's new dislike of her husband. ''Ivana is now a media goddess on par with Princess Di, Madonna, and Elizabeth Taylor," Liz Smith reported. Months earlier, Ivana had undergone cosmetic reconstruction with a California doctor. She emerged unrecognizable to her friends and perhaps her children, as fresh and innocent of face as Heidi of Edelweiss Farms. Although she had negotiated four separate marital-property agreements over the last fourteen years, she was suing her husband for half his assets. Trump was trying to be philosophical. ''When a man leaves a woman, especially when it was perceived that he has left for a piece of ass—a good one!—there are 50 percent of the population who will love the woman who was left," he told me. Ivana had hired a public-relations man to help her in her new role. ''This is all very calculated," one of her advisers told me. ''Ivana is very shrewd. She's playing it to the hilt." Many floors beneath the Trumps, Japanese tourists roamed the Trump Tower lobby with their cameras. Inevitably, they took pictures of the display of Trump's familiar portrait from the cover of his book Trump: The Art of the Deal, which was propped on an easel outside the Trump Tower real-estate office. The Japanese still took Donald Trump to be the very image of power and money, and seemed to believe, as Trump once had, that this red-marble-and-brass monument was the center of the world. For days, Trump rarely left his building. Hamburgers and French fries were sent up to him from the nearby New York Delicatessen. His body ballooned, his hair curled down his neck. ''You remind me of Howard Hughes," a friend told him. ''Thanks," Trump replied, ''I admire him." On the telephone he sounded ebullient, without a care, as confident as the image he projected in his lobby portrait. Like John Connally, the former governor of Texas, Trump had millions of dollars signed away in personal guarantees. The personal debt on the Trump Shuttle alone was $135 million. Bear Stearns had been guaranteed $56 million for Trump's Alexander's and American Airlines positions. The Taj Mahal casino had a complicated set of provisions which made Trump responsible for $35 million. Trump had personally guaranteed $125 million for the Plaza hotel. In West Palm Beach, Trump Plaza was so empty it was nicknamed ''the Trump See-Through." That building alone carried $14 million worth of personal debt. Trump's mansions in Greenwich and Palm Beach, as well as the yacht, had been promised to the banks for $40 million in outstanding loans. The Wall Street Journal estimated that Trump's guarantees could exceed $600 million. In one astonishing decade, Donald Trump had become the Brazil of Manhattan. 'A nybody who is anybody sits between the columns. The food is the worst, but you'll see everybody here," Donald Trump told me ten years ago at the"21" Club. Donald had already cut a swath in this preserve of the New York establishment; we were immediately seated between the columns in the old upstairs room, then decorated with black paneling and red Naugahyde banquettes. It was the autumn of 1980, a fine season in New York. The Yankees were in the pennant race; a movie star was running for president and using the term ' 'deregulation" in his campaign. Donald was new then, thirty-four years old and very brash, just beginning to make copy and loving it. He was already fodder for the dailies and the weeklies, but he was desperate for national attention. ''Did you see that The New York Times said I looked like Robert Redford?" he asked me. Trump hasn't changed much physically in the last ten years. Then, as now, he was all cheeks and jaw, with a tendency to look soft in the middle. He retains the blond hair, youthful swagger, and elastic face that give him the quality of the cartoon tough Baby Huey. Trump is a head swiveler, always looking around to see who else is in the room. As a boy, he was equally restless. ''Donald was the child who would throw the cake at the birthday parties," his brother Robert once told me. ''If I built the bricks up, Donald would come along and glue them all together, and that would be the end of my bricks." He was already married to Ivana, a former model and athlete from Czechoslovakia. One night in 1976, Trump had been at the bar in Maxwell's Plum. Maxwell's Plum is gone now, but the very name evokes the era of frantic singles underneath the Art Nouveau ceiling. It was the place where flight attendants hoped to find bankers, and models looked for dates. Donald met his model, Ivana Zelnickova, visiting from Montreal. She liked to tell the story of how she had gone skiing with Donald, pretending to be a learner like him, and then humiliated him by whizzing past him down the slopes. They were married in New York during Easter of 1977. Mayor Beame attended the wedding at Marble Collegiate Church. Donald had already made his alliance with Roy Cohn, who would become his lawyer and mentor. Shortly before the wedding, Donald reportedly told Ivana,"You have to sign this agreement.""What is this?" she asked."Just a document that will protect my family money. " Cohn gallantly offered to find Ivana a lawyer."We don't have these documents in Czechoslovakia," Ivana reportedly said, but she told friends that she was terrified of Cohn and his power over Donald. The first agreement gave Ivana $20,000 a year. Two years later, Trump had made his own fortune."You better redo the agreement, Donald," Cohn reportedly told him. "Otherwise you're going to look hard and greedy." Ivana resisted."You don't like it, stick to the old agreement," Trump is said to have replied. Donald was determined to have a large family."I want five children, like in my own family, because with five, then I will know that one will be guaranteed to turn out like me," Donald told a close friend. He was willing to be generous with Ivana, and a story went around that he was giving her a cash bonus of $250,000 for each child. The Trumps and their baby, Donald junior, lived in a Fifth Avenue apartment decorated with beige velvet sectional sofas and a bone-and-goatskin table from the Italian furniture store Casa Bella. They had a collection of Steuben glass animals which they displayed on glass shelves in the front hall. The shelves were outlined with a string of tiny white lights usually seen on a Christmas tree. Donald was trying to make time in the world of aesthetes and little black cocktail dresses. He had just completed the Grand Hyatt, on East Forty-second Street, and was considered a comer. He had put together the Fifth Avenue parcel that would become Trump Tower and had enraged the city establishment with his demolition of the cherished Art Deco friezes that had decorated the Bon wit Teller building. Even then, Trump's style was to turn on his audience. "What do you think? Do you think blowing up the sculptures has hurt me?" he asked me that day at"21." "Yes. " "Who cares?" he said."Let's say that I had given that junk to the Met. They would have just put them in their basement. I'll never have the goodwill of the Establishment, the tastemakers of New York. Do you think, if I failed, these guys in New York would be unhappy? They would be thrilled! Because they have never tried anything on the scale that I am trying things in this city. I don't care about their goodwill." Donald was like an overgrown kid, all rough edges and inflated ego. He had brought the broad style of Brooklyn and Queens into Manhattan, flouting what he considered effete conventions, such as landmark preservation. His suits were badly cut, with wide cuffs on his trousers; he was a shade away from cigars."I don't put on any airs," he told me. He tooled around New York in a silver Cadillac with"DJT plates and tinted windows and had a former city cop for his driver. Donald and I were not alone at lunch that day. He had invited Stanley Friedman to join us. Friedman was a partner of Roy Cohn's and, like Cohn, a legend in the city. He was part of the Bronx political machine, and would soon be appointed the Bronx County leader. Later, Friedman would go to jail for his role in the city parking-meter scandal. Trump and Friedman spent most of our lunch swapping stories about Roy Cohn."Roy could fix anyone in the city," Friedman told me."He's a genius.""He's a lousy lawyer, but he's a genius," Trump said. At one point, Preston Robert Tisch, known to all as Bob, came into the upstairs room at"21." Bob Tisch and his brother, Laurence, now the head of CBS, had made their fortune in New York and Florida real estate and hotels. Bob Tisch, like his brother, was a city booster, a man of goodwill and manners, a benefactor of hospitals and universities. "I beat Bob Tisch on the convention-center site," Donald said loudly when Tisch stopped by our table."But we're friends now, good friends, isn't that right, Bob? Isn't that right?" Bob Tisch's smile remained on his face, but there was a sudden strain in his tone, as if a child had misbehaved. "Oh yes, Donald," he said,"good friends. Very good friends." "Donald is a believer in the big-lie theory. If you say something again and again, people will believe you." L ate on summer Friday afternoons, the city of noise takes on an eerie quiet. In June I was with one of Donald Trump's more combative lawyers."We certainly won't win in the popular press,'' he told me,"but we will win. You'll see.'' I thought of Trump a few blocks away, isolated in Trump Tower, fighting for his financial life. The phone rang several times. "Yeah, yeah? Is that so?" the lawyer said, and then laughed at the sheer—as he phrased it—"brass balls" of his client, standing up to the numbers guys who were representing Chase Manhattan and Bankers Trust, whom he was into for hundreds of millions of dollars."Donald's very up. This is the kind of challenge Donald likes," the lawyer told me."It's weird. You would never know anything is wrong. ""Don't believe anything you read in the papers," Trump had told his publisher Joni Evans."When they hear the good news about me, what are they going to do?" Random House was rushing to publish his new book, Trump: Surviving at the Top, with a first printing of 500,000. In the Trump Tower conference room that week, one lawyer had reportedly told Trump the obvious: the Plaza hotel might never bring the $400 million he had paid for it. Trump stayed cool."Get me the Sultan of Brunei on the telephone," he said. "I have a personal guarantee that the Sultan of Brunei will take me out of the Plaza at an immense profit." The bankers and lawyers in the conference room looked at Trump with a combination of awe and disbelief. Whatever their cynical instincts, Trump, the Music Man of real estate, could set off in them the power of imagination, for his real skill has always been his ability to convince others of his possibilities. The line between a con man and an entrepreneur is often fuzzy. ' 'They say the Plaza is worth $400 million? Trump says it's worth $800 million. Who the hell knows what it is worth? I can tell you one thing: it is worth a lot more than I paid for it,"Trump told me."When Forbes puts low values on all my properties, they say I am only worth $500 million! Well, that's $500 million more than I started with." He began belittling her:"That dress is terrible.""You're showing too much cleavage.""Who would touch those plastic breasts?'' 'D o people really think I am in trouble?'' Trump asked me recently. "Yes," I said,"they think you're finished." It was an afternoon in July, when the dust seemed to be settling, and we were in the middle of a two-hour phone conversation. The conversation itself was a negotiation. Trump attempted to put me on the defensive. I had written about him ten years before. Trump had talked about a close friend of his who was the son of a famous New York real-estate developer."I told him to get out from under his father's thumb," Trump told me then."That was off the record," Trump told me now. I looked up my old notes."Wrong, Donald," I said. "What was off the record was when you attacked your other friend and said he was an alcoholic.'' Without missing a beat, Trump said,"I believe you." Then Trump laughed."Some things never change." "Just wait five years," Trump told me. "This is really a no-brainer. Just like the Merv Griffin deal. When I took him to the cleaners, the press wanted me to lose. They said, 'Holy shit! Trump got taken!' Let me tell you something. It's good for me to be thought of as poor right now. You wouldn't believe some of the deals I am making! I guess I have a perverse personality. ... I've really enjoyed the last few weeks," he said, as if he had been rejuvenated at a spa. Deals had always been his only art. He was reportedly getting unbelievable deals now from the contractors he had hired to build his casinos and the fiberglass elephants that decorate the Boardwalk in front of the Taj Mahal, for they were desperate, unsure that they would ever get paid for months of work. Trump was famous for his skill at squeezing every last bit out of his transactions. He was known to be making shocking deals now that he never could have made two months before."Trump won't do a deal unless there's something extra—a kind of moral larceny—in it," one of his rivals once said of him. "Things had gotten too easy for me," Trump told me."I made a lot of money and I made it too easily, to the point of boredom. Anything I did worked! I took on Bally, I made $32 million. After a while it was too easy." The fear of boredom has always loomed large in Trump's life. He has a short attention span. He even gave the appearance of having grown bored with his wife. He told me he had grown weary of his deals, his companies,"New York phonies,""Palm Beach phonies," most social people,"negative" writers, and"negatives" in general."You keep hitting and hitting and hitting, and after a while it doesn't mean as much to you," Trump told me."Hey, when you first knew me, I basically had done nothing! So I had built a building or two, big deal. " That morning, Trump had been yet again on the front page of the New York Daily News, because Forbes had dropped him off the list of the world's richest men, placing his net worth at $500 million, down from $1.7 billion in 1989."They put me on the front page for this bullshit reason!" Trump said."If they put me on the cover of the Daily News, they sell more papers! They put me on the cover of the Daily News today with wars breaking out! You know why? Malcolm Forbes got thrown out of the Plaza by me! You know the story about me and Malcolm Forbes, when I kicked him out of the Plaza hotel? No? Well, I did. You'll read all about it in my new book. And I didn't throw him out because he didn't pay his bill. So I've been expecting this attack from Forbes. The same writer who wrote about this also wrote that Merv kicked my ass! The same writer is under investigation. You heard about that, didn't you?" (A Forbes writer is under investigation—for alleged use of outdated police credentials. He did not write that Trump was taken by Merv Griffin. )"What happened to me is what is happening in every company in America right now. There is not a company in America that isn't restructuring! Didn't you see The Wall Street Journal this morning about Revlon? What is going on at Revlon is what has happened to Donald Trump. But no one makes Revlon a front-page story. My problems didn't even merit a column in The Wall Street Journal."  (Revlon was selling $182 million worth of stock to raise cash, but that was hardly the same as Trump's crisis. ) Trump spoke in a hypnotic, unending torrent of words. Often he appeared to free-associate. He referred to himself in the third person:"Trump says. . . Trump believes." His phrases skibbled around and doubled back on themselves like fireworks in a summer sky. He reminded me of a carnival barker trying to fill his tent."I'm more popular now than I was two months ago. There are two publics as far as I'm concerned. The real public and then there's the New York society horseshit. The real public has always liked Donald Trump. The real public feels that Donald Trump is going through Trump-bashing. When I go out now, forget about it. I'm mobbed. It's bedlam," Trump told me. Trump is often belligerent, as if to pep things up. On the telephone with me, he attacked a local writer as"a disgrace" and savaged a financier's wife I knew as"a giant, a three in the looks department." After the Resorts International deal, at a New Year's Eve party at the Aspen home of Barbara Walters and Merv Adelson, Trump was asked to make a wish for the coming year."I wish I had another Merv Griffin to bat around," he said. Before the opening of the Taj Mahal, Marvin Roffman, a financial analyst from Philadelphia, correctly stated that the Taj was in for a rough ride. For that, Roffman believes, Trump had him fired."Is that why you attacked him?" I asked Trump."I'd do it again. Here's a guy that used to call me, begging me to buy stock through him, with the implication that if I'd buy stock he'd give me positive comments. ""Are you accusing him of fraud?" I asked."I'm accusing him of being not very good at what he does." Congressman John Dingell of Michigan asked the S.E.C. to investigate the circumstances of Roffman's firing. When I asked Roffman about Trump's charges he said,"That's the most unbelievable garbage I've ever heard in my entire life." Roffman's attorney James Schwartzman called Trump's allegations"the desperate act of a desperate man." Roffman is now suing Trump for defamation of character. "D onald is a believer in the big-lie theory," his lawyer had told me. "If you say something again and again, people will believe you." "One of my lawyers said that?" Trump said when I asked him about it."I think if one of my lawyers said that, I'd like to know who it is, because I'd fire his ass. I'd like to find out who the scumbag is!" One of Trump's first major deals in New York was to acquire a large tract of land on West Thirty-fourth Street being offered by the bankrupt Penn Central railroad. Trump submitted a plan for a convention center to city officials. "He told us he'd forgo his $4.4 million fee if we would name the new convention center after his father," former deputy mayor Peter Solomon said."Someone finally read the contract. He wasn't entitled to anywhere near the money he was claiming. It was unbelievable. He almost got us to name the convention center after his father in return for something he never really had to give away." Trump's first major real-estate coup in New York was the acquisition of the Commodore Hotel, which would become the Grand Hyatt. This deal, secured with a controversial tax abatement from the city, made Trump's reputation. His partner at the time was the well-respected Pritzker family of Chicago, who owned the Hyatt chain. Their contract was specific: Trump and Jay Pritzker agreed that if there were any sticking points they would have a ten-day period to arbitrate their differences. At one point, they had a minor disagreement."Jay Pritzker was leaving for a trip to Nepal, where he was to be incommunicado," a lawyer for the Pritzker family told me."Donald waited until Jay was in the airplane before he called him. Naturally, Jay couldn't call him back. He was on a mountain in Nepal. Later, Donald kept saying, 'I tried to call you. I gave you the ten days. But you were in Nepal.' It was outrageous. Pritzker was his partner, not his enemy! This is how he acted on his first important deal. " Trump later even reported the incident in his book. "Give them the old Trump bullshit," he told the architect Der Scutt before a presentation of the Trump Tower design at a press conference in 1980."Tell them it is going to be a million square feet, sixty-eight stories.""I don't lie, Donald," the architect replied. Eventually Trump bought out the Equitable Life Assurance company's share of the commercial space in Trump Tower. "He paid Equitable $60 million after an arm's-length negotiation," a top real-estate developer told me."The equity for the entire commercial space was $120 million. Suddenly, Donald was saying that it was worth $500 million!" When The Art of the Deal was published, he told The Wall Street Journal that the first printing would be 200,000. It was 50,000 fewer than that. When Charles Feldman of CNN questioned Trump in March about the collapse of his business empire, Trump stormed off the set. Later, he told Feldman's boss, Ted Turner,"Your reporter threatened my secretary and made her cry." When the stock market collapsed, he announced that he had gotten out in time and had lost nothing. In fact, he had taken a beating on his Alexander's and American Airlines stock."What I said was, other than my Alexander's and American Airlines stock, I was out of the market," Trump told me swiftly. W hat forces in Donald Trump's background could have set off in him such a need for self-promotion? Ten years ago, I went to visit Trump's father in his offices on Avenue Z on the border of Coney Island in Brooklyn. Fred Trump's own real-estate fortune had been made with the help of the Brooklyn political machine and especially Abe Beame. In the 1940s, Trump and Beame shared a close friend and lawyer, a captain in a Brooklyn political club named Bunny Lindenbaum. At that time, Beame worked in the city budget office; thirty years later he would become mayor of the city. Trump, Lindenbaum, and Beame often saw one another at dinner dances and fund-raisers of the Brooklyn political clubs. It is impossible to overestimate the power of these clubs in the New York of the 1950s; they created Fred Trump and gave him access to his largest acquisition, the seventy-five-acre parcel of city land that would become the 3,800-unit Trump Village. In 1960, an immense tract of land off Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn became available for development. The City Planning Commission had approved a generous tax abatement for a nonprofit foundation to build a housing cooperative. Fred Trump attacked this abatement as ''a giveaway." Soon after, Trump himself decided to go after the tax abatement. Although the City Planning Commission had already approved the nonprofit plan, Lindenbaum went to see Mayor Robert Wagner, and Beame, who was in Wagner's camp, supported Trump. Fred Trump wound up with two-thirds of the property, and within a year he had broken ground on Trump Village. Lindenbaum was given the City Planning Commission seat formerly held by Robert Moses, the power broker who built many of New York's highways, airports, and parks. The following year, Lindenbaum organized a fund-raising lunch for Wagner, who was running for re-election. Forty-three builders and landlords pledged thousands of dollars; Trump, according to reporter Wayne Barrett, pledged $2,500, one of the largest contributions. The lunch party made the front page of the newspapers, and Lindenbaum, disgraced, was forced off the commission. But Robert Wagner won the election, and Beame became his comptroller. In 1966, as Donald was entering his junior year at the Wharton business school, Fred Trump and Lindenbaum were investigated for their role in a $60 million Mitchell-Lama mortgage."Is there any way of preventing a man who does business in that way from getting another contract with the state?" the investigations-commission chairman asked about Trump and Lindenbaum. Ultimately, Trump was forced to return $1.2 million that he had overestimated on the land—part of which money he had used to buy a site nearby on which to build a shopping center. Fred Trump's office was pleasantly modest; the rooms were divided by glass partitions. The Trump Organization, as Donald had already grandly taken to calling his father's company, was a small cottage on the grounds of Trump Village. At the time, Donald told reporters that"the Trump Organization" had 22,000 units, although it had about half that number. Fred Trump was seventy-five then, polite, but nobody's fool. He criticized many of his son's early deals, warning him at one point that expanding into Manhattan was"a ticket on the Titanic . " Donald ignored him."A peacock today, a feather duster tomorrow," the developer Sam Lefrak is said to have remarked of Donald Trump. But ten years ago it was clear that Donald was the embodiment of his father's dreams."I always tell Donald, 'The elevator to success is out of order. Go one step at a time,'"Fred Trump told me. "But what do you think of what my Donald has put together? It boggles the mind!" Donald Trump has always viewed his father as a role model. In The Art of the Deal, he wrote,"Fred Trump was born in New Jersey in 1905. His father, who came here from Sweden. . . owned a moderately successful restaurant." In fact, the Trump family was German and desperately poor."At one point my mother took in stitching to keep us going," Trump's father told me."For a time, my father owned a restaurant in the Klondike, but he died when I was young." Donald's cousin John Walter once wrote out an elaborate family tree. "We shared the same grandfather," Walter told me,"and he was German. So what?" Although Fred Trump was born in New Jersey, family members say he felt compelled to hide his German background because most of his tenants were Jewish."After the war, he thought that Jews would never rent from him if they knew his lineage," Ivana reportedly said. Certainly, Fred Trump's camouflage could easily convey to a child the impression that in business anything goes. When I asked Donald Trump about this, he was evasive:"Actually, it was very difficult. My father was not German; my father's parents were German. . .Swedish, and really sort of all over Europe. . . and I was even thinking in the second edition of putting more emphasis on other places because I was getting so many letters from Sweden: Would I come over and speak to Parliament? Would I come meet with the president?" Donald Trump appears to take aspects of his German background seriously. John Walter works for the Trump Organization, and when he visits Donald in his office, Ivana told a friend, he clicks his heels and says," Heil Hitler," possibly as a family joke. Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler's collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler's speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist. "Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?" I asked Trump. Trump hesitated."Who told you that?" "I don't remember," I said. "Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he's a Jew. " ("I did give him a book about Hitler," Marty Davis said."But it was My New Order, .