The Secrets Donald Trump Doesn't Want You to Know About: Business, Finance, Marketing

David Cay Johnston book called the making of Donald Trump is your latest and you say in the book that in the spring of 2016 you talk to mr. Trump on the phone what was that about well I was writing a piece for Politico magazine about all of Donald's connections to a very major drug trafficker who supplied him with his helicopters to con artists swindlers American Mafia Russian mobsters and Donald had been sent an email by me asking if you want to comment with about 20 points and he called me and the essence of the conversation was you know you wrote a lot of things I like Dave but if I don't like what you're right I'm going to sue you I've from covering the Santa Cruz City Council in California 50 years ago to today it's the only politician who's ever threatened to sue me unless I write what he wants and I said well Donnell your public figure that means he would have to prove I deliberately lied and knew it and he goes I know I'm a public figure I'll see you anyway and I think this is indicative of Donald's character and his authoritarian approach you do it the way I want it or I will make life difficult for you but what do you remember reacting to when he said that what was your people friend this to me a lot of times it just goes with the job 1988 in Atlantic City is saying if met him for the first time what were the circumstances well I had left the Los Angeles Times where I'd spent 12 years to go to Atlantic City for the Philadelphia Inquirer I believed we were going to see casino gaming spread all across America which it did and I wanted to examine whether government really could clean up this business that was traditionally run by Vice Lords and crooks and within a couple of days I met Donald I immediately recognized Brian that he speak to you Bart he's selling you tickets to the Fiji mermaid and the amazing two-headed woman and then I started because he was the dominant force Atlantic City I started asking about him and his competitors including Steve Wynn and people who worked for him and some big gamblers all said to me Naaman doesn't know anything about the casino business oh come on how could he not know anything about the casino business they said that all he knows is how to extract money from the casino he doesn't know how to manage custom he doesn't know how to reinvest in the properties doesn't have a developed customers etc so Donald I had a cup of coffee not long after that and I asked him a question about craps and I deliberately made a false statement and Donald immediately incorporated my falsehood into his answer what's a con artists do that's what the the psychics advertised on daytime TV do so I had a couple more questions that I asked him where I made false statements and he immediately embraced them and I realized what I was being told was true Donald doesn't know anything it's all bluster it's all appearance it's all threats he's quick he's smart but he's not at all studious or deep and in the book I quote testimony where he gives answers to questions one of them my students at Syracuse University who are law third-year law and graduate business students at the end of my course can answer the question like this anyone who's been to the Wharton Business School can answer like this Donald's answer is gibberish he doesn't understand the most basic issues of Finance and listen how he answers questions you ask him what's your favorite bible verse because he says no one reads the Bible more than Donald Trump because there's so many there's so many another there's just so many back in 1968 he appeared on The Oprah Show it may be it I think 6850 a that just shows you my age back in 88 28 years ago what I think well first of all that was the year he asked George HW Bush to make him his running mate as vice president and said Dan Quayle got the job Donald has been talking about running for president since 1985 and 12 years later in 2000 he ran and he said I'm going to be the first person to run for president and make a profit so this is indicative of Donald Donald will tell you whatever he thinks is in his interest at the moment that's what con artists do they tell you whatever is in their interests whatever they think you want to hear and what will get you to do whatever it is they want what are your own politics well I'm a registered Republican before that I was registered in tom golisano's party in New York but I'm not a political person I voted for people on every line that's ever appeared on a ballot I'm on four different offices I don't like politics this is the one of only two campaigns in the last 40 years I've covered I did for the LA Times the governor's race in 1976 and Nevada and hated covering I don't like covering politics I'm a policy guy I am someone who believes that we should be using the government for the purposes the six noble purposes in the preamble to establish justice promote the general welfare and in fact I'm developing I hope a new course to teach at the Syracuse which is how we got the Constitution and what it's about in context you say in the book that the Trump family really haven't been voters yes interestingly two of Donald's children did not get to vote for him because they hadn't registered as Republicans and they then complained about the rules well New York has archaic awful terrible election rules but they should have known this and they're real ones who are responsible for doing this Donald hasn't voted in a bunch of elections and by the way Donald and Dell very recently was basically a Democrat and one of the things Don believes in which is a good thing in my view is universal health care we should get health care off the backs of business and it should be as he says a public good provided to everybody that's certainly not a Republican Party position give us some background on yourself where did you grow up I was born in San Francisco I consider home to be Santa Cruz California my father was a hundred percent disabled veteran of World War two my mother was a disowned heiress and I had the odd experience of growing up in a house on a cliff over the beach that my parents rented for maybe $400 a month in today's money nothing what do you mean by disowned heiress she testified against her father in a lawsuit in 1941 when he was sued for alienation of affection and his only child my mother was disowned and he was a very wealthy man and so I went to work when I was ten years old I went to work full-time at 13 I became a reporter for some weekly papers at 17 and my work immediately got noticed because I did some simple things if the school board said the average owner the owner the average thirty four thousand three hundred and fourteen dollar house in and occurs next year we'll pay $42 and 11 cents more in property taxes I thought that was useless so with long division I said you'll pay so much more per thousand in the value of your house at 18 the San Jose Mercury recruited me at 19 I was right in front page stories and the San Jose Mercury is a staff writer and I went to the Detroit I went to the University of Chicago graduate school of economics as a fellow for two quarters to the Detroit Free Press the LA Times filled up Inquirer the New York Times and then just short of 40 years of daily reporting I left and since then I've been a columnist and an author and teaching at Syracuse University in the College of Law I live in Rogers live in Rochester my wife runs the very successful Community Foundation there and in Rochester New York we had the best child care in all the United States Canada and Western Europe and it cost this much more than warehousing kids very smart program that she's in the between Bolton a couple of weeks ago Donald Trump went to Tampa to give a speech and when he got there this video which was not done by him of course was done by the folks that are opposed him played on it's about 50 seconds see to what you think so what's that all about well Donald Trump had someone come to him with what was a very good business idea the man was in the business of running continuing professional education lawyers accountants real estate agents have to go to courses to make sure they're up on the law and he went to Trump and said hey why don't we do Trump real estate professional education we charge a premium price a brilliant business idea and Donald said that's such a good idea I'm taking it away from you he gave the guy a little tiny stake I think it was 3% and a quarter million dollar salary and they decided then to turn into Trump University well first of all you can't call something a university without a license from the state and that's true and I believe every state in the Union but every state I've checked it is secondly this was not a university in even the dictionary meaning of the word and a Trump University quickly came under investigation as a scam people paid fifteen hundred dollars and what they got for that were high-pressure sales tactics where the faculty would stand over them and tell them how to call banks and borrow more money and credit cards so they could pay thirty five thousand dollars to get the full Trump University package Donald did a promotional video Trump University is all about success you're going to have success we're going to have the best faculty and adjunct faculty they will be handpicked by me the best of the very best you'll get a better education that at the best business schools and I know because I went to the best one he didn't by the way went to the undergraduate program a Wharton not it's graduate program well it turned out that the faculty knew nothing about real estate they included the manager of a fast food joint to people in personal bankruptcy and a lot of people with experience Brian in high-pressure sales tactics as with getting people to run up their debt and by the way if you run up your debt and borrowed as much as the bank's possibly give you to pay for the Trump University how would you have any borrowing capacity to buy real estate so the New York State Attorney General brought a lawsuit over this bob was told to stop using the word university he ignored it for several years the Texas Attorney General's Office did an investigation and Pam Bondi the Attorney General of Florida said publicly she was thinking about joining New York investigation she and Donnell had some kind of communication they also the Trump Donald J Trump Charitable Foundation then made a campaign contribution to Pam Bondi now charitable foundations cannot be involved in political activity this should cause the revocation of their status as a non-profit the Bondi campaign manager was asked about this and the Florida newspapers reported that we're perfectly comfortable with the gift from the Donald J Trump foundation which is astonishing Pam Bondi is a lawyer she knows better than this she also decided not to participate in the New York Attorney General's investigation and these this ad which is pretty brutal is about fundamentally Pam Bondi it's about the Attorney General who accepted this gift and by the way the Trump people tried to cover this up they argued and I explained in my book that it was money to go to a particular group an anti-abortion group that teaches people how to protest against our current abortion laws they didn't get any money that makes that it was this outfit in California they didn't get any money and they said wow it was just a mistake well if it's a mistake Pam Bondi should have given it back I'm a should have directed the money or other organizations they haven't done any of that and he goes to a core issue about Donald Donald has no regard for whatever the law is he does what he wants to do has he ever been sued oh he's been sued according to USA Today more than 4,500 times he's been sued by workers he wouldn't pay and there's a chapter in my book about that he's been sued by vendors and he's been sued by investors who say they've been swindled and right now what's happened after I finished the book a Benjamin Moore paint dealer who supplied paint for the remake of the Doral Country Club that Donald owes wasn't paid the last thirty four thousand dollars into a little business like that thirty four thousand dollars a big hunk of their year's profits he sued he spent over three hundred thousand dollars on legal fees trying to collect his thirty four thousand and the judge finally granted this Benjamin Moore paint dealer the power to foreclose on the Doral after Donald Trump's witness testified about why didn't you pay the thirty four thousand your contract said you had to pay mr. Trump feels he has paid enough and Dom does this all the time he'll take the work keeping for him he'll use it and then he'll say I'm not going to use this crap I'm not going to pay for it and if you go to a lawyer and it's $34,000 or even a hundred they'll tell you even spend three hundred thousand dollars on lawyers to fight Trump and he's done this again and again and again and again and again this book was published by web publisher Melville House press which is a little outfit in Brooklyn and in London that do something what I did my very first book would you interviewed me about temples a chance back in 1992 I complained back then my publisher was doing everything on paper and they were slow and they're efficient I said somebody needs to make this modern and quick and modernize the book business these folks did it Wikipedia say there's a liberal publishing operation and you know liberal conservative I don't care I mean I don't pay any attention to the politics of the people I work for you know when I was at the LA Times they ran editorials sometimes that basically said don't believe what that guy wrote I don't I don't care I tell the people I'm writing for what I'm going to write even when I was a reporter they never tell me unless if it's breaking is no airplane crash we need to be very right ma'am and I would do that I tell them what I'm going to do and I've always done that and if you do that of course eventually you we're at your welcome work if you work where did you get the idea to do this book and win well temple is a chance I think all but one chapter has some reference to Trump in it because he was so dominant Atlantic City when Donald announced on June 16th 2015 he was running I got ahold of my literary agent right away and said we should do a book she called around every city not going to get the nomination I said yes he might get the nomination he's serious this time and and I was particularly charged up by the fact that here he is giving this speech talking about murderers and rapists from Mexico denouncing Muslims and they're all these young people are plotting these lines and I thought Midtown Manhattan is not a place known for racism and xenophobia what did he do he's employees or did he bust people in where'd he get this crowd well day or two later The Hollywood Reporter revealed that they were actors paid 50 bucks each to show up and applauded on cue which tells you what a fraud Donald Trump is and anyhow nobody won do a book by the time it became clear he might get the nomination for traditional publishers who need about a year it was too late and I had just given up on the idea I wrote about 25 pieces about Donald for USA Today Newsweek national memo some other places many of them aimed at reporters trying to say this is what you should be asking this is what you should be questioning and then noble house calls out of the blue and they asked could we do the book in I think it was three weeks I said no but I said I can do it by a date that was four weeks later I wrote that book in 27 days it was hell and I'm frankly not sure I physically recovered at my age from doing it I'm certainly never going to do it again but 27 days because we're in the middle of the campaign 27 days it was finished a was that and well the my closing note the epilogue is dated the fourth of July actually finish the book the fifth of July we finished editing at the 10th of July and there's a picture on my Facebook page of me sitting in my garden reading the book on the 19th of July two weeks later and I went on sale August 2nd two weeks after that and the German language Edition went on sale August thirtieth they had to translate into German so lawyers top it and by the way you call him on this very already a conman and a fraud how how concerned was a publisher that they pull the lawyers in on this well sure this was vetted by a lawyer and one of the things I don't do in this book is I don't break new ground in it because I knew we had to get it lawyer quickly so what I've done here is connected the dots and pulled together my work the great Wayne Barrett's work probably the best reporter who ever worked in New York City pieces elsewhere and I had this enormous collection of cup documents I used to have to rent to storage lockers to hold my files on Donald Trump Barron Hilton the LAPD Jack Welch and some other people and now mostly got them digitized but I had all these files and so one of my grown children would sit in the other room she created the file so they were logical for me and after I was done with them a nice mess she would put everything back in order and put it away so we could get back to it when we needed it and the lawyer I don't think the lawyer on this book changed more than ten words and I know that several times when he got to a prayer of oh yeah wrong verb fix that right now do you have any worried you have to have an insurance policy to protect you well publisher has an insurance policy if Donald's going to sue me he's going to sue me I was actually surprised Donald said that to me because we've known each other he knows I don't intimidate he's tried to intimidate me in the past I mean I'm a guy who hunted down an especially vicious murderer in a black on white murder I'd run into a burning building I mean maybe I was scurrilous somewhere that I don't have out of the way in Mountain View California why did you do that get a better picture I also ran towards two buildings people were in but they got out of them before I got there thank goodness but you know you do what you need to do in your job and my job is to tell people facts they wouldn't know but for my work so you know I've been tailed by the LAPD by the government and Taiwan or people connected with it I've had lots of people threaten me you know it's it's my job and you do what you need to do or you don't do the kind of work that I do so anyway the the lawyer changed very little in this book on contrast to that I wrote a piece for political magazine that's what Donald called me about which had nothing new in it it simply pointed out a number not all of them of his connections to criminals his business dealings with him and his gratuitous connections to them that is the most heavily Lawyer piece of my career with maybe one exception and I've written stories accusing people of murder you know Jack Welch gave up his retirement benefits over a story I wrote and that lawyer ring told me that he's really been intimidating news organizations and threatening the Silman well they know that he can't win he can cost them a lot of money the former CEO of GE Jack Welsh did what that he gave up his retirement benefit Jack Welch had a retirement package that was described in to the investors only as mr. Welch shall continue to receive those emoluments he had wealth serving the company then he left his wife and she a litigator put into the public record enough information that I was able to show that he was going to get what I estimate to be about 70 million dollars of the use of a GE jet apartments ballgame tickets and stuff whether you use them or not and I laid out the economics in particular of the corporate jet and Welch then wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal relinquishing all of this and saying that some people who don't respect contracts I respect his contract I just thought investors should know what they were actually paying Jack Welch and I know from something he said to another journalist that he's furious with the mention of my name he's entitled I cost him a lot of money back to down Korea in the book you talk about an outfit called awards or the Academy of hospitality services in Academy of hospitality service or Sciences I think this is an organization run by convicted art thief and mob associate known as Joey to socks Joseph sink and it hands out what it says is the most prestigious award in the world not the most prestigious travel industry award the most prestigious award in the world it's the Five Diamond Award and the six Diamond Award and at least nineteen Trump properties have these awards on a big huge plaques on the wall and they're signed by Joey to socks and they're also signed by the chairman of the board of the Academy Donald J Trump Donald Trump gives awards to himself there are video on the Internet you can see of this I mean this absurd giving an award to yourself it works well apparently a lot of people think these are fabulous properties I point out that a couple of his golf courses have awards and yet if you look at the golf digest or golf magazine that forget which one list of 100 best golf courses no Trump golf courses on that list what's he do well well the first and foremost Donald is a masterful at making himself a household name I mean you went on television for years you're not a household name Brian and neither am i but Donald is a household name I mean that's a quite accomplishment he secondly has created this image of himself as the modern Midas everything he touches turns to gold and in fact a lot of it turns to dross and the only person who ends up with any gold is Donald he also has been successful in getting even Network television in America to run stories that in essence he is the Don Juan of our age and that women like Madonna and Kim Basinger and Carla Bruni are pounding on his bedroom door by the way he doesn't even know two of them the third one says he's the king of sleaze and had nothing to do with him she's talked to him apparently twice in her life Carla Carla Bruni married to Sarkozy and Rice and when she became the first lady of France Donald had the opportunity when he was on the Howard Stern Show as I report in the making of Donald Trump to back away from these imaginary lover stories that he planted and he didn't and but he's very good at planting these stories so the people have an image of him that has nothing to do I think with the reality of who he is his building at Trump Tower that's that's quite a building it's a significant accomplishment where is it it's on Fifth Avenue Manhattan right in the middle of the city now it's 58 stories he tells everybody at 68 that's part of how Donald exaggerated things those are things that I think he's accomplished done done very well but his companies are very poorly managed Fortune magazine looked at his casino company there was a public company and concluded that of the 496 companies they studied Donald Canyon dead last or almost last in every single category this is no surprise to people who worked for Donald and competitors so he does another area where he's great at creating this image of himself that doesn't comport with reality go back to the carla bruni story what's the rest of it what how did he get in the middle of it well when Donald was divorcing his first wife Ivana he went out of his way to publicly humiliate the mother of his children he planted all sorts of news stories that there was a competition going on in the Madonna and Kim Basinger and carla bruni and other women were trying to become the next mrs. Trump and it was it and he used a PR man named John Baron John Barron was Donald Trump he called up these news organizations and they didn't know who he was he wasn't as well known at the time to pose as this PR man promoting Trump and People magazine outed him at the time we've got a clip sue Carswell is the one that wrote the piece and rifle it and it how it was back in 1991 90 or 91 yes yeah 91 so when we're listening to this and there'll be language on the screen that is Donald Trump masquerading as either John Baron or John Miller absolutely absolutely that's Donald and they outed him in a story where they make fun of him because here's a middle-aged man acting like a 13 year old boy talking about some girl he was with it's just extraordinary there's just a little bit of this it starts off slow but you'll be able to hear it right right away he was going to name a John Miller then it did she know that was downtown well she figuring it out very quickly she had not covered him but he displayed such intimate conversation for the freshly hired PR person and talked in such detail that it was clear it was done and People magazine REM this piece saying something like there are odd stories there are unusual stories there are funny stories and then there's this really bizarre story how long did he do that go under four years four years he did that with the USFL he would call up journalists and planets GSM the United States Football League that was the spring football league which I point out in the book he basically destroyed with a litigation strategy instead of a market strategy and he would call up news organizations sometimes two different reporters and he would be John Baron or John Miller and then he would calls himself and verify the story to get it planted he he did this he got a story planted that way in the New York Times about the USFL the Football League he he also used it to menace to threaten people with litigation that they didn't back off in particular there were about 150 to 200 illegal immigrants from Poland who were demolishing the Bonwit teller department store where the site which is now Trump Tower they were being paid $4 an hour they slept on the site in the middle of winter because they had nowhere else to go they didn't have hard hats or goggles or any safety equipment and then they didn't get paid until they threatened to hang Donald's overseer off the side of the building because they hadn't gotten paid and Donald was later found by a federal judge to have engaged in a conspiracy to cheat the workers out of their money $4 an hour and he's not paying people Bulgari yes what is it and what's the story well Bulgari is a high-end Italian jewelry company with stores all over the world including across the street from Trump Tower and Donald Trump engaged in something known as the empty box scam he bought a fifty thousand dollar piece of jewelry and then a fifteen thousand dollar piece and he had them shipped out of state that if they were shipped out of state to a non-resident of New York there would be no sales tax - there might be used tax due in that state that that's not enforced very much and Donald was not eligible for this because he lived in New York he lived right across the street when law enforcement got on to this and the New York Attorney General Robert Abrams began investigating bottle got when to this now he had a casino license and his involvement in any crime would vitiate his license so Donald went to law enforcement to help them and he wasn't the only one involved Mary Tyler Moore Henry Kissinger were involved in this it's a scam that's gone on for decades it continues to go on there's a case right now about this if those people know it was illegal order of course they do and and the Bulgari was so cheap in doing this but instead of paying the postage for what the wait would be of the jewelry they saved a little bit of money by sending empty boxes with no weight but the significance of the story is it's clear evidence of Donald participating in tax cheating and that should have cost him his casino license had the state of New Jersey had any interest in tightening up and enforcing the law that required Donald's and all other casino owners to prove by clear and convincing evidence that they are morally fit they're honest they don't associate with criminals so if you were with some of your friends and Donald Trump was elected president and you're sitting around talking and all of a sudden you look up on the screen the winner is Donald Trump what's the first thing you'd say them I'd say well how long until we have a constitutional crisis Donald does not understand the powers limits and duties of our president under the Constitution he talks like the president is a dictator he has said he will order our military to engage in illegal acts and if you're a senior United States military officer my guess is you are reading up very carefully on how you refuse an unlawful order from the commander-in-chief in order to use nuclear weapons in Europe where our friends are at which Donald has talked about in order to torture people you know we executed Japanese soldiers after World War two for waterboarding and that would be the the big concern the second one would be if Donald's presidency on States I'm absolutely certain that I will have trouble with somebody in federal law enforcement he will find some way to make my life difficult because that's about this Donald's philosophy which he's written about a great length and spoken about and lectured about and interviewed about is get revenge destroy anybody if someone just won't do you a favor destroy their life and take pleasure in that that should make you really really happy he says when he destroys people's lies it just makes him so happy so I if you get selected I'm going to have trouble what would you say this same group if Hillary Clinton is elected um you know I haven't thought a lot about that I mean you know Hillary Clinton like John Kasich is competent to be President she knows what the job isn't how to do it I I don't see any tension she's going to pursue policies that are inimical to the long-term interests of the country I don't like a lot of her policies but but you're going to investigative reporter and you must have looked at what's going on with the foundation and all no and the reason is I can't do everything I don't know Hillary Clinton when I left the LA Times if I had gone to Little Rock I have you write in the book about Hillary Clinton there's a lot there I went to Atlantic City and I met Donald Trump there are good books about Hillary Clinton well-written books is also some garbage on both of them but there's some well-written books and I encourage people in my book to go read those books I've written about Hillary Clinton twice in my life and never spoken to her anybody on her staff in 1997 in The New York Times I pointed out that the Clintons paid more than twice as much federal income taxes the law required despite spending almost 9,000 ten thousand dollars a year having their tax returns prepared and it was because she mishandled as a tax matter the royalties from her book it takes a village she said she'd give them all away well she took them as income paid the taxes and gave away the difference she was furious about this she went absolutely nuts about it the New York Times actually didn't publish my story the first year so I had to wait a year and redo it after I had some editors lined up about it and then the next year I went to the White House to get the president's tax returns and I said up there's nothing here about the new book what is it and I think Jodie Enda from Knight Ridder hollowed out letters to buddy in socks and I go yeah about the pets and the spokesman says well the Clintons gave the copyright to a public charity which was the implicit advice in my story and I said oh really and the spokesman said yes and the White House wants to be on record that the Clinton did not take their advice from the New York Times which point everybody erupted laughter because they obviously did that and it meant more money for charity and less for the government how many years Whitney where you live the New York Times what was your beat and when did you leave it I was with the New York Times for 13 years I left in April of 2008 I came there to show that we could cover taxes in a different way and examine how the system actually works as opposed to what politicians and others say about it which is why I did it out of New York and my home in Rochester New York not Washington I also changed the way all journalists cover executive compensation by showing things that were right in front of us that we weren't paying attention to and but principally I did I did taxes and you know as measured by Congress my work resulted in over a quarter trillion dollars of tax dodges being stopped and a lot of people went to prison the biggest while the biggest was President Bush had in his tax plan that he wouldn't show us before the election a stealth provision that would allow very very Eisen by president george w bush in his tax plan there was a I called stealth provision because he wouldn't show us the plan before the election that would repeal the gift tax and that was an idea that conservative Republicans put into the law in the 1920s and when the White House was the White House press secretary Ari Fleischer was asked about this he expressed that you know I knew my stuff about taxes and then they quietly withdrew this provision that Congress later staff reports show that would have cost just in the first ten years about a quarter of a billion a trillion dollars quarter of a trillion dollars and that was the Bermuda mailbox scam and a lot of other professor small dok2 teaches tax law Duke has called me the de facto chief tax enforcement officer of the United States and he told the media for restarting you got a book you're planning on taxes yes the book I was working on when I dropped for this is tentatively called the prosperity tax an entirely new federal tax code for the 21st century economy we have a really great tax system in America for 1960 and we no longer live in the US your age we have an industrial age tax system and we need to have a tax system for the current economy and this book will have the actual statutory language I'm not a lawyer but I've learned how to write that story language and I expect it to be less than 100 pages and it will it uses things that are all in them already there's virtually there's only one thing I have in there that's not already in the law it's much simpler very few people will have to file a tax return nobody has to there's a group that can choose to corporations will have a much easier time it'll be much more efficient we can shrink the IRS down and I've set up a mechanism by which if you want to cheat on your taxes you have to engage in a criminal conspiracy with the other person the other person is liable for the taxes and you're both going to go to prison what's that publishing time for this well if I am NOT teaching this year so I can finish it so I'm hoping the book will be out in 2018 speaking of tax how much tax as Donald Trump paid from what you know well we know as a matter of fact that he paid no income taxes in 78 79 80 for 92 and 94 we know that in recent years his adjusted gross income that's the last line of the front page year tax churn was less than $500,000 now the tax law has all sorts of provisions that allow some people at the top to live tax free or virtually tax free private equity managers like Mitt Romney hedge fund managers and people who are full-time real estate professionals like Donald Trump there is good reason to believe because of those rules that Donald probably has paid no income taxes or maybe a couple years a little bit since 1978 and do you think he will release those returned yes never not a chance it is never going to happen and when Donald and his son say there's nothing there there's nothing there you couldn't tell anything from Texans you give me Donald Trump's complete tax return for one year and I'll back engineer and tell you the value of his hard assets I'll tell you where his income sources I'll tell a lot about him you mentioned earlier about Donald's religion Donald Trump's religion excuse me and also is a Bible reading here's Jerry Falwell Jr who spoke at the convention this year on his behalf and has been supporting him yeah well you know I've known and spent time with mobsters who were good family men I mean out that part doesn't impress me what troubles me are the pastors who were saying that Donald Trump is a good Christian man Donald Trump in his own words is aggressively antithetical to Christianity first of all he denigrates communion well you get your little water and your little cracker when he's asked as he's been many times to cite a favorite passage from the Bible because he says nobody reads the book the Bible more than Donald Trump he gives a conman answer well there's so many there's somebody there's just so many and the one time he tried which I recount in the book he got it wrong and it was out of Leviticus knife or an eye and he didn't even understand what that concept actual means I'm sorry in Sermon on the Mount Matthew 5 especially Matthew 5:39 245 Jesus's message was you turn the other cheek you were kind to other people God rejects that he says he says of people who do that you're fools you're idiots you're Schmucks and you can just do it in passing this is not a gap this is a well established record so to the pastors who are endorsing Donald Trump if they want to endorse him and say look he's better than the other person I think probably that that makes perfect sense but do not deceive your flocks do not allow this man to beguile you with flattery do not tell people this falsehood and I've emailed a couple of them and offered my book on a short description of what's there only one got back to me through an assistant to basically say well thanks if we want to know anything we'll get in touch with you ministers have an absolute duty not to deceive their flocks and not to tell them that a man whose own lengthy statements and actions are aggressively anti the message of Jesus Christ is a good Christian man and to vote for him for that reason that's that's an awful development and I want to these pastors called to account they're the members of their flocks and other religious leaders should be raising Cain about this given expensive why Jerry followed you're supporting me they have the largest I believe Christian University in the United States with their online service well I I hope that's because he's badly informed that's my hope my concern is that he's more interested in political outcomes than he is in following the message of Jesus Christ you have a story in your book about a man named satyr SAT TRS excuse me a trader SAT ter but you say sometimes his name was spelt SAT er Felix seder is the son of the reputed Russian mob boss who by the way is threatened now twice to sue me over writing about him he was Donald Trump's senior advisor he had a business card senior advisor to Donald Trump he had at his office was right in the main suite of Trump Organization offices in Trump Tower he and Donald traveled all over together Loveland Colorado Denver Phoenix Fort Lauderdale New York they were involved in putting building projects together Felix aider is a defendant in a private attorney general action in the state of New York accusing him of running a quarter billion dollar tax fraud and only an accusation it is a tax fraud that could not have taken place but for a letter that Donald Trump signed that authorized changes that made it possible in this tax fraud goes through Icelandic banks to Russian oligarchs and a Felix aider is a convicted violent felon he put a the broken end of a margarita stem glass so deeply into a man's face it took 110 stitches in his face will never be right and he's a convicted stock swindler with the help of four mob families in New York he ran a 40 million dollar stocks game that he's pled guilty to Donald is not supposed to be when he had a casino associating with these folks secondly they're borrowing money from banks and they hid this the reason Felix aider sometimes put an extra T in his name was so journalists and others wouldn't find out about his background Donald Trump had a duty to investors and the bankers he borrowed from to inquire into this man's background he didn't or he didn't want to and he has told I think it was the AAP Jason Horowitz has been a very good job at the AAP I think was the one he said this to he said I hardly know the man if he was in the room I wouldn't recognize him I've got video and photographs and interviews they did together and that's absurd he knows this guy very very well and this is part of these not fully developed understanding we have of Donald's connection to the Putin regime and to the Russian oligarchs that should be very much the subject of a lot of inquiry by my peers they should be deeply digging into what is what is it the Donald Trump is advancing the primary foreign policy objective of Vladimir Putin weaken NATO he won't say a single critical word about him he's been paid millions of dollars by Russian oligarchs he's boasted I I had every one of them in a room in Moscow was eight years ago he's tried to do all sorts of deals in Russia there's a forty seven story building in one of the former Soviet empire countries with his name on it and there is this tax this alleged tax fraud and stater is at the center of all of this what is Donald Trump doing spending years in very close relationship with this convicted violent felon in stock swindler and they're a bunch of lawsuits about it including hiding this man's criminal background from investors that damage their interests as a result what Marx would you give your peers that you mentioned well overall I think the American news media has done an awful job now I know some people listening to this tour meeting saying well nobody bedded Barack Obama actually they did he just have to go look and read the news about it I mean I know about women he dated and kids he went to grammar school with and high school with and lots about Barack Obama what his professors said about him and fellow students at Columbia and at Harvard where he was incredibly highly regarded this is an example of this in Donald Trump's case you're only now starting to see an inquiry into them now the Washington Post had about twenty reporters on this and I helped them with some things I gave them documents and stuff as I often do for other reporters which most journalists ought to but I do and they've done some pretty good stories but they're written in the way that highbrow newspapers now do this so that unless you're a sophisticated reader you don't get the point The Wall Street Journal has done nothing of any consequence the New York Times has recently done some very good stories but the same thing they've written this very highbrow fashion that you can easily not grasp what's going on what about television absolutely appalling Brian I've been on the national networks broadcast networks in Australia Canada Britain France Germany repeatedly I haven't been on a single u.s. broadcast network none of the Sunday morning talk shows they've had people on who don't know what anything talking about things about Donald Trump and speculating when I could give them hard facts and where do you think they're doing it well first of all and most importantly Donald Trump is great television I mean you can't turn it off and Fox News has said you know that when they turn off or one of their agents has said when they turn when the major not Donald Trump people turn their TVs off it's like it's like not just watching a car wreck it's like watching this incredible car wreck and so people want to see it so there is a commercial interest secondly newsrooms have been shrunk anonymously I mean basically the fastest disappearing white-collar job in America in the last 15 years has been journalists and the resources aren't there I once spent $10,000 of the Los Angeles Times as money on one paragraph today to get $10,000 to do a story you'd have to really convince editors that was something substantial there and then I think more importantly the duty of journalists which is to tell you that which people don't want to tell you has been in decline because of all the attacks from people who don't want to hear things and they mount attacks and both have left them to write about this here's his dad this is 1985 getting a her out Rachel Alger award in New York I remember read that Shakespeare baby that's there but Fred Trump was an incredibly industrious guy he was really hard-working but he also was a guy who profiteer Don GI housing to the war and President Eisenhower when he found out that Fred Trump had four million dollars of excess profits threw a fit in the White House and the proof of that is a hundred federal investigators are put on Fred Trump and a few other developers and when he was hauled before the Senate Finance Committee you know and this is indicative of the future under Donald Trump he said well this is all just a misunderstanding I didn't profiteer I haven't taken any money before I guess I have four million dollars more but but it's in bank I didn't take it so I'm not profiteer and and the Fred Trump honest well let's see they color-coded applications for rentals so when a black or puerto rican renter would show up with solid finances to rent an apartment they would be steered to a building for blacks or puerto ricans they would be steered away from Beach Haven and I have the lyrics to a song about Fred Trump's racism by Woody Guthrie because of the generosity of the Guthrie family in the book and and he was well known for his association with the mob guys for Willy Tomasello his partner who was a mob associate speaking of that there is a documentary that has been held up for a long time and here's an excerpt other this thing is called Trump what's the deal you can buy it on youtube for two dollars and ninety five cents you'll read I think you run for that buy it for about ten well I mean you can watch it yeah to dine fight but here's just a little excerpt I want you to explain it after we just see this so what happened to the Taj Mahal and what about this documentary well I covered all of that back then and these were terrible deals i wrote that they were both going to fail promptly and they couldn't pay their bond interest which is exactly what happened this documentary by Livy Hondros was a terrific job of telling you who Donald Trump was it was only shown twice and Donald's threats of litigation shut it down Donald has shut down many things with threats of litigation I wrote a proposal for a Tim Burton movie about Donald Trump and his threats of litigation meant that it never came about finally Libby Hondros decided when he was running for president I've got to put this out there they updated it just a little bit in the opening because people need to see this and it's 80 minutes and it's a great quick lesson on bomb drop I'd rather you buy my book but Libby's movie is always very good this particular deal was indicative of the fact that Donald doesn't have the business skill he says he has he cannibalized his own market he took over this this white elephant of a property the Trump Taj Mahal his name will now disappear on October 10th from Atlantic City because his casinos are gone and he goes around saying that it's terrible from the Atlantic City what do you know there are casinos in Atlantic City this day were making nice fat profits above average profits for the country for all businesses why didn't he because he was a his company was terribly managed when he had competent executives three of them are killed the helicopter crash unfortunately but every other case he eventually drove out his competent executives because he was demanding and bullying and mistreated people and if you're competent you know what are you gonna put up with this for you go somewhere else and he put in place yes ma'am and by the way to your earlier question a Donald Trump administration will be full of people many of them you've probably never heard of who's distinguishing characteristic will be total loyalty to Donald Trump not to the Constitution not to the American people not to the long-term welfare of the country but to Donald Trump personal we're running out of time and I got a couple more names I want to bring up Bob Liberty is that Bob low buddy was the Biggest Loser in Atlantic City he was a con man and a mob guy not a made guy but a mob associate who I spent a lot of time with and Donald was fined for removing black women and Asian dealers and cocktail waitresses because he thought it was currying favor with Bob because Bob when he was losing money would let loose this just vile language crazy language in many cases and Bob low buddy when I entered him because hey I didn't know Donald was doing that that's outrageous I would never remove somebody you know I say these terrible words but but you know I'm not the racist Donald Trump is the racist Bob Lowe buddy calls you a racist that's pretty Pat where is he now he's dead he he died a few years ago Donald tried to seduce his daughter and Steve hide who was in the casinos it was very competent told Bob Labbadia who told the story to me you got to keep Donald away from your daughter because you're going to kill him and I'm going to lose my best customer and Bob as he told the story to me wet to Donald and said after Donald had given her cream-colored Mercedes and had a video made for her birthday and other things that if you approached my daughter again I will castrate you without benefit of a knife by the way you mentioned in the book about his germophobia yeah and now he's shaking hands yeah I don't know that's very interesting I actually did shake hands with Donald once a long long time ago and I noticed it was immediately you know doing this and disappeared into the bathroom but he's now shaking hands I think somebody has told him doesn't look good if you don't do that I'm going to let you pronounce the name Akio Kashiwagi Akio Kashiwagi was the biggest gambler in the world and I'm the only journalist who watched him gamble at the rate of fourteen million dollars an hour two hundred thousand dollars about seventy bucks an hour and Donald Trump lured him twice to Atlantic City he completely mishandled this guy he should have won twelve million dollars off of them and instead he lost about six and I recount in the book the story of what happened here and Donald hired of Jeff's Markham who was a teenager helped invent radar and went on to be a co-founder of the RAND Corporation one of the great geniuses of the last century to watch the game because he was convinced the guy was cheating and I recounted the story that I'm the person who figured out there was a half million dollars of chips missing that nobody else noticed and it turned out that Kashiwagi had in fact scammed him for the half million dollars with the chips but the story is mostly about how if Donald had understood the game of baccarat and the math he would have realized that there came a point when it was an 87 to one odds that he would wipe the guy out and instead he gave him the excuse to walk away from the table and Donald lost money as a result and that's indicative of the fact that Donald just doesn't know anything I would go back to the lawyers in this book what did they or did they execute editing I mean I've been doing this for so many years almost 50 years now that I know how to write things so that they're legal and they're fair how did you get on the New York Times bestseller list a lot of people bought the book how did they find out about it television hasn't had well because I have a pretty good-sized Twitter following they Melville House is very good at marketing and they were out telling people about the book the initial orders we got from bookstores were just nothing because they're a bunch of Trump books and I my fear was what would happen to my last two bestsellers they ran out of books well that happened a lot of bookstores ran out of books so first weekend and then they started ordering lots of books so it's now readily available but that was just devastating to me the first time around I'm going up the New York Times bestseller list and then have enough books this time the the people of Melville House have been extraordinary in their understanding of how you market a book and get people to buy it was there any other title beside the making of Donald Trump I wanted to call the book the art of deception they want to do that that's not a neutral title it and it turns people off I've actually had people post things on the internet because they think this is a pro Donald Trump book and it was designed to be neutral and to tell you what it's about and it's essentially where does this guy come from who is he and it's I start with you know his grandfather who was a German draft dodger who made a fortune running whorehouses on through Donald's development in his education and then all of these associations that he doesn't want you to know about and my goal was to balance Donald Trump's masterful PR image of himself with all the things Donald does not want you to know

Channel: The Film Archives

Views: 2,804,419

Rating: 4.4874496 out of 5

Keywords: business, money, economics, rich, famous, twitter, wiki, news, age, memes, height, net worth, birthday, market economics, credit, card, debt, loan, stock market

Id: C8bAHb4yVko

Length: 52min 52sec (3172 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 11 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/sjthree]

I didn’t think I’d listen to the whole thing, but I did. This guy was very well informed and predicted a good deal of Trump’s presidency - the fact that his administration would be full of people loyal to Trump above all else, his ties to Russia, and his authoritarian style. I also found the part about Trump being his own PR man to be hilarious and pathetic. Haha.

[u/BringOn25A]

This is from before the 2016 election. The predictions in it about what would happen if he was elected are right on the money.