The Trump Family Confronts New Frontiers | Full Documentary | Biography

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♪ [shutter snapping] - This American carnage stops right here and stops right now. - His presidency, and the lead-up to his presidency, will be studied for the rest of American history. Donald Trump is a street fighter. ♪ - When you think of how we started in 2015, he understood where America was going to some degree before America did. - Over the years, I've surprised a lot of people. The biggest surprise is yet to come. - I used to think that Donald Trump really understood the zeitgeist of the nation. - You're fired. You're fired. You're fired. - Now I realized he is the zeitgeist. ♪ - There was virtually not a person on the planet who didn't know who Donald Trump was. - To listen to this-- it's just so ridiculous. - There's a toughness to him. I mean, he can take a lot of bullets. He can catch bullets in his teeth. - Donald Trump is a survivor. - He comes as advertised. It can be disgusting, but there is a genius to it. - I don't think people change. I'm a very big believer in the fact that when you are a certain way, that's the way you are. I love to fight. I always loved to fight. My father was a very tough man. ♪ - Okay? Whenever you're ready. ♪ - There's a clear through line that's passed down from generation to generation. - If you become a power broker in Manhattan, you are the man. - Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. His name is his power. - Do whatever you have to do. You say whatever you have to say. Winning is everything. ♪ - I think that to understand Donald Trump, you really have to go back to the beginning. ♪ [metal creaking] ♪ - Please watch your step. ♪ Okay. - [laughs] - This is called, uh, "topping out," right? - This is called topping out. - I--see how much I know? [laughs] - Let's grab a handshake. - Sure. How you doing, Don? - Good. [somber music] They can live in Houston, they can live in Paris, they can live anywhere in the world. Many of these very wealthy people have chosen Trump Tower, and I think it's a very important step for New York. I think it's a vital step for New York. [applause] ♪ - Trump Tower is nothing if not a symbol that winning is everything. ♪ - Trump Tower was really the thing that put him on the map in so many ways. It won him recognition and even honor and brought him to a level that he thought had not been possible for his family to date. - And by the way, uh, he is a chip off the old block. - This is my father, Fred Trump. - Right. - He was able to surpass his very demanding father, leaving behind Brooklyn and Queens and taking over New York. ♪ But this was not the beginning. The Trump family saga starts much earlier on. - All right, so you know I'm trying to march you through your life. - I'm not in the past. - Yeah. - I'm--I'm a person that thinks to the future. - That's--that's the thing, is-- - I just don't like wasting time on the past. ♪ - Other people do have to know about how you got here. - I'm never in the past. - Right, I know, I know. - In 2014, I did four sit-down interviews with Donald Trump. ♪ I wanted to know how was it that this kid from Queens turned himself into the character that became the Donald Trump we know? Uh, let me see if I can-- - I don't like talking about the past. Past is over. No, I don't want to think about it. I don't like to think too much of the past... - All right, well-- - Other than-- other than-- this is very important-- I learn from the past. ♪ - Donald's grandfather, Friedrich Trump, came to the United States in 1885. He was 16. He came from a wine-producing small village in Germany, but wasn't content to stay there. - In the middle of the night, he writes a letter and leaves it for his mom, and in the morning, he is gone. ♪ - For Friedrich, the goal was to really become a wealthy man. - Railroads were advertising every day, "Buy a ticket to fortune. Buy a ticket west." - Friedrich took off for the Northwest, the last part of the physical frontier, where things were wide open, and a young man with a lot of energy might be able to do very well. ♪ Word began to circulate of a mining town just getting going northeast of Seattle, called Monte Cristo, being bankrolled, of all things, by John D. Rockefeller. - Rockefeller is, of course, this living emblem of success in America, and so, if John D. Rockefeller says, "My engineers have discovered there's this great vein of silver ore," well, off you go. ♪ All you had to do to stake a claim was declare that you had struck silver on a piece of land, and it was yours to work, and no one else could have it. In Friedrichs's case, he announced that he had found something when he hadn't even dug a single hole. - He had no intention of mining, and he, in fact, instead built a hotel. He looked at the world that he had come into and figured out where there was an opening and figured out how to do it. He was very savvy about that. ♪ He set himself up to mine the miners, providing food, fine dining, and... - There is a wonderful euphemism called "Rooms for ladies." - Pretty much of a code word for prostitutes. - There were prostitutes hanging out in the bar, and, uh, any man who wanted to take a hooker upstairs-- there were rooms available. ♪ [jaunty music] - Friedrich was supremely ambitious, was willing to do whatever it took in order to get ahead. ♪ - In 1897, a ship came into Seattle laden with gold from the gold fields of the Yukon. - These men stagger off onto dry land, but they can barely walk down the gangplank because of their sacks and bags of gold, and that set off the Yukon gold rush. Friedrich thought "I want a share of the action." ♪ - Friedrich makes his way to the Yukon. Like everybody else, it's by foot, an astonishing journey up mountain passes, single file-- was an extremely arduous, difficult, life-threatening situation. ♪ - The White Pass trail-- you could have horses on it, and horses could pull loads over, but these miners had no idea what that, in fact, involved. The horses were completely unsuitable for the absolutely grim conditions, and they died on the trail, or they fell and broke their legs, or their owners simply shot them because they couldn't go any further. There was a terrifying piece of that trail called the Dead Horse Gulch, which was packed solid with dead horseflesh. In fact, one of the miners who went up that trail said that you could've just laid all the horses end-to-end, and you would've been walking over dead horseflesh for 50 miles. - But for Friedrich, it was an opportunity. He had tent restaurants along the way, and where would you get fresh meat? What do these people need? They need food. So he uses those dead horses, and serves up horse burgers, serves up horse steaks. ♪ - Friedrich arrives in Bennett with all of his guile and all of his resourcefulness intac, and he is ready to go into business. ♪ - Bennett was a newly-built town that was thrown up by people on the way to the gold fields. - Bennett was a very savvy place to be, because all the miners had to come through Bennett, so there was always gonna be traffic. ♪ - He establishes himself, builds his hotel-restaurant. ♪ - It's filled, it's bustling, and apparently, the best restaurant in town. That's what the press accounts said. ♪ - But he hears there's a railway being built to a place further down the river called Whitehorse, which, at that stage, was barely more than a couple of buildings. ♪ - Friedrich knows that Bennett would be bypassed. Now, what's his response to this? ♪ It is to put his restaurant and hotel on a raft and float it down the river to Whitehorse. ♪ [train horn blows] - By the time the train arrived there, he had a restaurant, a hotel there. Of course, that means that he's in on the ground floor and makes a fortune really fast. - I don't think, given Friedrich's character, anything else is going to happen. This is a guy of consummate ambition. ♪ - And he must have led a wild life, 'cause you can imagine-- - Right. - He owned a one-room hotel, and he'd move the hotel. He'd take it down-- - Oh, yeah, and float it on a barge. - And float it on a barge and then move it to a better area. - And they served more than food, 'cause-- - Right, right, right. - You could satisfy all your appetites. - He must have led some wild life. - Booze, beds, and women. - Right, and se-- - But he got rich. - It had to be, uh-- but he did well. - Yeah. - And he was-- he was a great guy, from what I hear. I mean, he was--he was-- must have been terrific. ♪ - In his early '30s, Friedrich goes back to Germany, and he has a few things on his mind. ♪ One is to find a wife. He's looking for a lovely German woman to marry, and he discovers Elizabeth Christ. ♪ The two fall in love and were eventually married. [somber music] In 1905, they return to New York. She's carrying her son, Donald's father, Fredrick. Friedrich is not going to operate a saloon-slash-restaurant- slash-house of ill repute. He is going to become a businessman, and his business is going to be real estate. ♪ Friedrich is looking out on the world that is New York City and searching for a frontier. Just as there was a railroad being built to Whitehorse, in the Yukon, he sees that the place to be is Queens. The frontier is going to be reached by the Queensboro Bridge. This is a mighty edifice that is going to literally open up to the crush of people interested in the suburbs. The people need homes, and he decides that it's a wonderful opportunity for the real estate man on the make. ♪ ♪ - In the spring of 1918, young Fred, Donald's father, is 12 years old. ♪ He went out for a walk with his father. As they're walking along, his father says he's not feeling well... ♪ And within hours, he's died. ♪ Eventually, it becomes clear that what's killed him was the influenza epidemic that's sweeping the country in 1918 and has claimed millions of lives. [desolate music] - you can imagine the sense of siege and worry about how you were going to survive. Fred--he was the oldest son, and as the oldest son, he had to step into this role and take care of things. - Of course, their lives were drastically changed. - Fred Trump Sr.'s experience was in some ways, a classic, uh, borough ethnic, uh, story. His childhood was foreshortened, so he worked hard, and that kind of an upbringing can make you, or it can break you. It made him. - My father was the greatest, 'cause he taught me everything. He was very knowledgeable. He was a very smart guy. He was a very good negotiator, and he taught me a lot, and I learned a lot from my father, from Fred. ♪ - At the age of 17, Fred built his first home. He took the profits from that to build another, and the profits from that for another, and pretty soon, the family business was taking off. ♪ - At the height of the Depression, 1934, with a good deal of homelessness, the federal government is trying to address this issue by creating the Federal Housing Administration. - The Congress has made it easier for private capital to build modest homes and low-rental dwellings. - By seeding all this money, by backing all these loans, the FHA creates this whirlwind of development. ♪ - This was the beginning of the Trump empire. - The FHA would be responsible for the funding of some of Fred's biggest projects. ♪ Without the FHA, there is no Fred Trump. - From the beginning of the FHA until the end of the 1930s, he built thousands of homes. He was touted as the Henry Ford of home-building at one point, because he had figured out how to do this as economically as possible. ♪ - Donald Trump grew up in a part of Queens called Jamaica Estates, which is not what we generally think of when we think of the boroughs in New York City. ♪ - Donald's house, the first time I saw it in Jamaica Estates, was huge. ♪ It had six giant, white, two-story pillars, and had an under-the-house garage. - 23 rooms and even a kind of coat of arms over the doo. - I was incredibly blown away. Today, I could say it was a mega-mansion. ♪ - Donald Trump is the middle of three boys in a family of five children, and his older brother, Freddy, was kind of his hero. He was the sibling that Donald Trump looked up to the most. - He was such an amazing guy, and the best personality, best-looking guy you'll ever see, and... he was smart. - Yeah. - He had everything, but he was a very handsome guy. - He was a guy with a great sense of humor, always fun to be around. ♪ We went to the Trump house often, but we never went through the front door. We always went through the garage, because Mr. Trump would rather not have us around. I think he just thought that, uh, Fred was wasting his time with friends and should be doing more serious things. ♪ - In the 1950s, the Trumps are one of the wealthiest families in America. Fred Sr. set the standard, set the expectations, and they were very high. This was not a "let's go out in the backyard and play catch" kind of dad. This was a "do as I say," tough, old-fashioned father. Donald Trump was taught that life is a competition. You must win. You must be tough. ♪ - Fred Trump saw the world as one of winners and losers, a very binary approach to life, and he impressed upon his children the idea that they simply had to be winners. - His father was a brutal man. I think that Donald got used to being treated in a totally businesslike and transactional way. He himself describes the relationship with his father as businesslike. - To the boys, he says, "You are killers and you are kings." ♪ Fred means "kings by divine right." There is a sense in the Trump family that we are genetically superior. - I think you have a natural ability at things. I'm a big believer in--in-- - Nature. - No, n-not nature. I'm a big believer in natural ability. Genetically, some people can handle pressure better than others. I knew numerous people that committed suicide. So the one thing I learned about myself, uh, is that I have a very unique ability to handle pressure. Honestly, in my opinion, that's a genetic thing. People don't know about me-- I have very low blood pressure. I have the blood pressure of a great athlete. I have very low blood pressure. ♪ - There is a real belief that Trumps are destined to rule, and they got the message, and the message was that you were supposed to prevail at all costs. ♪ - Fred Trump, Jr. would talk about wanting to go into the family business because of his admiration for his father, and was very, very clear that he wanted to be the next head of the company. - Donald was not the young man destined to fulfill the job of running the Trump Organization. - But he refused to be ignored. He was the kid that the family had to pay attention to, if only because he was an enormous discipline problem. ♪ - Donald and I were cutups in school. We used to throw spitballs at each other and play bumper chairs in class, pull girls' hair, and that's how come we got detentions, which I politely nicknamed as DTs-- detentions for Donny Trump. - He was someone who, uh, acted out at school. - Birthday parties, he would grab the cake and throw it around. - He was angry. He would glue his brothers' and sisters' blocks together. - He was disliked by many of his teachers. - Threw erasers around, actually hit his teacher under the eye with one. - He took pride in being, uh, this tough guy who pushed back against other kids, or against teachers who would try to tell him what to do. ♪ - He was, in short, a terror. ♪ - I was a very, um, rebellious kind of person. I don't like to talk about it, actually, but I was a very rebellious person, and, um, very set in my ways. - I don't like that guy. ♪ - Loved to fight. I always loved to fight. All types of fights. Any kind of fight, I loved it, including physical, and I was always the best athlete, some--something that nobody knew about me. ♪ - Okay, throw the ball. - During this period, "West Side Story" was big on Broadway, and was soon to become a movie. - All right! ♪ - The Sharks and the Jets were in the imaginations of kids in New York City. - As Donald tells the story, after he had seen "West Side Story," he and his buddy bought themselves some switchblades. ♪ - Donald wants everyone to believe that he's a tough guy. He promoted this image of himself. "I'm gonna play with knives. I'm gonna do things that nobody else does." He was impossible to control. ♪ - Then his dad found the switchblades, and that was the last straw. ♪ - Fred Trump was a man who kept score. He kept score every time the school called, every time a letter came home, every time he found something-- the knife collection that Donald acquires. He saw it as a reflection on him. ♪ Something must be done about it, and his solution was going to be extreme. ♪ ♪ - At the end of seventh grad, I went away to camp. Donald went away to do whatever Donald did, and when I came back in September with all my friends, I noticed a seat in homeroom that was not occupied where Donald usually sat, and I asked the homeroom teacher, "Where's Donnie?" ♪ - Against his will, Donald Trump is sent to military school by his father. In 1959, he arrives at New York Military Academy about an hour north of New York City. He's 13 years old. - I think that had to be the most miserable existence Donald Trump could imagine for himself. - He has to wear a uniform. He no longer is driven around by the family chauffeur. He is in the dorms with everyone else, in the barracks. ♪ - When I got here, it was "Hello. Good morning. Now you're in military school, and your life has changed." - All these normal things that go on in a normal kid's life-- they came to a screeching halt. - Your first year, you were the low man on the totem pole, and you're responsible for learning new guy rules. There was mental hazing. There was physical hazing, You had to throw yourself against a wall if an upperclassman came by and, you know, apologize for being in his way. You might get, uh, a forearm to the chest. You might get paddled. You might get hit with a broomstick, a couple of right hooks on your shoulder, two or three upperclassmen screaming in your face for 15 minutes. - Before you know it, you're beat up. ♪ - Donald went through new guy rules with Major Ted Dobias. This is a tough guy. - He was part of the Allied invasion of Italy, and at the end of the war, saw Mussolini swinging from a noose. - They used to come here. They were flunkies-- they call them flunkies-- and they grew up to be somebody. ♪ - Donald ran up against Major Dobias like running into a stone wall. It's not flexible, and if Major Dobias would see an attitude, that attitude ended very, very quickly. - He was a rough guy, physically rough and mentally rough. In those days, they'd smack the hell out of you, really getting in your face, I mean, like, big-league. He said things like "Stand up," and I'm going, "Heh, give me a [bleep] break." - [laughs] - And this guy came at me-- you would never believe it. These were guys that didn't take [bleep]. ♪ You could go two ways: you can fight the system. You're not gonna win, 'cause you're not gonna beat guys like this. - Right. - Or you can acclimate and deal with the system and evolve in the system, and I did that. ♪ - Theodore Dobias was a taskmaster far beyond anything that Donald had seen from Fred Trump, and yet, he kind of takes to it. He liked the discipline. He enjoys the hierarchy. He didn't like being bossed around-- he never had-- but he liked the idea that the kids who were on the receiving end of all of that aggression would, in fairly short order, get to deliver it themselves. - For Donald, the idea was to play the game and win the game, turn around, and set the terms yourself. He literally bowed and scraped before Ted Dobias in order to win his favor, and he discovered that it worked. ♪ It was Donald who wound up an officer. ♪ - You know, I went in there as a wise guy. - You were little. You were 13 years old. - 13, but I went in as a wise guy that... was a little difficult. By the time I graduated, I was, like, top of the military heap. ♪ - Every year, we would send a certain number of cadets down to New York to march in the Columbus Day parade. ♪ - So on Columbus Day, 1963, Donald Trump led the parade. ♪ - In Trump's mind, this return to the city and having, clearly, a position of authority-- this is a bit of a retort to his father and a chance to say to his father, "Look what I've become. "You thought that you needed to send me away "because I wasn't heading down the right road. "Look what I've become. Look what I can do. "Look how I can lead. Look how I can be that winner that you demanded." ♪ It was a way of taking that step into Manhattan, of going where his father would not go, and he was determined to show that he could take the family and its legacy to a new, tougher, higher place. ♪ - One of the tactical offices at the time was a man named Colonel Anthony "Ace" Castellano. As they were walking up the street, Donald looked over, and he goes, "You know, Ace, I'd really like to own some of this property someday." ♪ - My father was a very good builder... - Mm-hmm. - And he really did a good job. He would build a building, and next door, they'd build a building, and my father's houses were better... ♪ And he'd build them cheaper, so he'd spend less money building a better house, and he'd sell it for more. ♪ - In the mid-1960s, Fred Trump starts to think at this point, about moving beyond more modestly-sized projects and build on a scale unlike anything Fred Trump has built before, named Trump Village. ♪ - Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hold it. Trump Village, a middle-income co-op in Coney Island, housing 2,800 families. ♪ - Trump Village Apartments. How do you get in here? - [indistinct] Move it. - Is it worth waiting? - Yes. My mother lives in a terrible apartment. - They say it will take six or seven years, or maybe eight. - Well, I'll take that chance. - This is a project that ends up being far greater in scope than anything he's done before. His previous projects-- the buildings were, at most, five, six stories, and here, he really sets his sights much higher, literally... ♪ And it's also the first time that Fred Trump labels a project clearly with the family name. ♪ - Trump Village would emerge as one of Fred Trump's greatest public successes, but ironically, it also was gonna be the source of one of his greatest public humiliations. ♪ In 1966, New York State began probing into what was going on at Trump Village. - Fred Trump is hauled in for questioning for misusing funds, over-billing the government for equipment, for services, related to Trump Village. - It includes him charging the state about $8,000 apiece for tile scrapers that normally cost $500. ♪ More glaringly, he overcharges the state for about $6.6 million in fees. The net result is it's very clear Fred Trump is gouging the state of New York and New York residents to line his own pockets. One of the commissioners finally says, "Is there any way "we can prevent someone like this from ever getting a state contract again?" ♪ - Here he is, the patriarch of the family, somebody they looked up to. To have him being publicly called out like that was extremely embarrassing to them. - Neighbors, schoolmates-- people were asking questions, that they were seen as unpatriotic, possibly criminal. - The 1966 state investigation really had a-- I would say a devastating impact on Fred Trump. ♪ Trump Village really becomes the last significant project that he builds. ♪ - Fred spent three decades building his company, and he was now looking for an heir who he felt was worthy of inheriting that mantle and moving the company forward, but when Donald graduates from college, the expectation is that he's gonna join the family business to work first for his father, and then, eventually, for his brother Fred, who is considered the heir apparent. ♪ - I think that what Fred expected of Fred Jr. was something, that it was-- it was almost a, um-- a classical king's approach to raising sons. "If this son is worthy of me, he can rise to the throne." Uh, not every son is going to thrive in that kind of environment. ♪ - There was a nervous quality about Fred. ♪ He was always on. ♪ I wondered, in retrospect, whether some of his anxiety was, uh, caused by the constant pressure of trying to please his father. - The point of no return in his relationship with his father was the attempted development of property in Coney Island. ♪ - I remember Steeplechase vividly. It had a--a face with a big smile, with lots of teeth showing. It was a happy place. It was a playground, and it was a reminder that Coney Island was this haven for people in New York. Off the subways came streamig a million people on a weekend. A million people coming to Coney Island, and many of them were coming to Steeplechase. ♪ - By the '60s, Coney Island is in decline, so Fred Trump buys the Steeplechase very quickl, largely under the radar of the folks in Coney Island. He wants to build housing there. Problem is, Fred Trump fails to get the necessary zoning change that would enable him to build this housing. ♪ The business community in Coney Island is desperate to have Steeplechase preserved. Fred Trump knew that if it got landmarked, uh, there was nothing much more he could do with the site. ♪ - Fred got Fred Jr. involved in accelerating their demolition of this property before they had permission to build on it. Fred Jr. is trying his hardest to work with his father to demonstrate that he's as tough and as smart as his father. ♪ - So Fred Trump organizes a wrecking party of sorts... - To celebrate the development of apartments along the seashore and the success of the Trump Organization. - Invites all these people to come and basically hurl bricks through the great glass windows, through the enormous painting on the glass of the great smiling face of Steeplechase. ♪ - The thought that you would encourage people to throw bricks, to destroy that smile, that face that was such an integral part of growing up in Coney Island-- I mean, it's unbelievable. ♪ In the end, it was a public relations nightmare for the Trumps. Fred Jr. could never do the political work and the other logistical work that was required to make the development real, and the property, even today, is not the site of any housing. ♪ And after the fiasco at Steeplechase, it was clear to all of the Trumps that Fred Jr. was not going to fulfill his father's expectations. Early in life, Donald looked up to Fred Jr. as the big brother. He was a very charming, very caring young man... ♪ And yet, Donald became very competitive with Fred Jr. and really showed him no mercy. ♪ - If I were going to make a movie of this, I would see a younger brother trying to get primacy in a family. ♪ This became an increasingly terrible situation. ♪ Fred Trump would belittle Fred Jr. In meetings, he would sadistically attack him, saying "What do you know?" ♪ - In the early 1970s, Fred Sr. takes the fateful move. He makes Donald president of the Trump Organization. What Fred Sr. is communicating here is unmistakable. Donald has made it. He is the future. Fred Jr. has not made it, and he's never going to make it. ♪ He had talked so much about working for his dad and taking over the company. I think that the father at some point decided that Fred was... a loser. ♪ I've gotta believe that, uh-- uh, Fred took that rejection very hard. ♪ - Fred essentially drove his son, Fred Jr., out of the family, and I think Fred ended up, uh, a lost soul. - He had his own dream: to be a commercial airline pilot. ♪ In the end, Fred left the Trump Organization and went off to train as a pilot. ♪ - He was having a tremendous hard time, and he started drinking, and he got hooked on alcohol... ♪ And he became a very serious alcoholic, and it was rough for him. ♪ - I've thought, uh, long and hard about Fred's life, and, uh, wonder how much of a role that, uh, rejection from his father may have played in his-- in his sad life. ♪ - I like to learn from other people's mistakes. I like to learn from my mistakes, but I like to learn more from other people's mistakes, because why should I have to make a mistake if I can learn from somebody else? I've learned so many lessons by watching other people make mistakes-- some fatal and some not fatal, and some not even near-fatal, but I study other people's mistakes. ♪ - Fred Jr. did not do much of anything the way that his father expected. His whole approach to life was contrary to the old man's... ♪ And Donald observed Fred Sr.'s impatience with Fred Jr. ♪ It's identified by him as a sign of Fred's weakness. Donald's takeaway from this is that it's an example of what he should never do in his own life, and he sees, "Here is this big opportunity for me that my brother squandered." ♪ ♪ - When I was growing up, the signs on the Belt Parkway didn't say "To Manhattan." They said "To New York City," so you had a very strong sense that Manhattan was New York City, and you were not. You're in the outer boroughs. You grew up with this chip on your shoulder. - The city so nice, they had to name it twice. Well, New York, New York is Manhattan. It's the lake in the park. It's the skyline after dark. It's the Empire State, it's the monument to world peace, the UN, and if you become a power broker in Manhattan, you are the man. ♪ - From an early age, Donald Trump knew there was more than Queens. He felt constricted by, uh, his father's world of the outer boroughs. ♪ - Imagine a young Donald Trump. He leaves this mansion that he lives in with his parents in Jamaica Estates and every morning, makes his way down south along Belt Parkway to Avenue Z in Brooklyn, not far from the waste treatment plant, and into the shabby offices of the Trump Organization. - He was trying so hard to get away from being the son of a developer from Coney Island, a father who operated out of a very modest, almost trailer-like affair filled with cigar store Indians. ♪ - Donald Trump hated going to that job. He was there to collect rents. He was there to process the paperwork. He was there to check in and keep an eye on the contractors. This was not where he wanted to be. - You're a young guy. - Right. - This is early '70s. You're barely 30 years old when you start this. - Right. Younger. Younger. - 28. - Yeah. - What are you thinking? What are you-- are you thinking, "I've really got to get into Manhattan"? - I worked in Brooklyn for my father. ♪ You know, I did very well. I did a lot, but I always wanted to be in Manhattan. ♪ My father was a very good builder... - Mm-hmm. - But he built on his own territory. He felt comfortable in Brooklyn and Queens. He never wanted to enter Manhattan. He didn't think it was his place. ♪ - For Donald Trump, Manhattan--it's like Oz. He's staring across the East River at Oz, and he wants a piece of that. ♪ - And he gets a one-room studio and he moves into Manhattan. He's gonna become a player. - He had his Cadillac convertible with personalized license plate, "DJT," and he would go bombing up and down the avenues, looking for properties to buy, thinking, you know, "If I could just start small" doing in Manhattan what his father had done in the outer boroughs. Real estate prices were going down, and so it was open territory for a real estate developer who was eager to make his mark. ♪ He was generating and grooming this image of himself as a playboy millionaire, and so he would go out to the clubs that were hot at that moment. ♪ - Le Club was a place where you would roll up to the bar hoping to meet model, so you can see that a Donald Trump would be attracted to that kind of a scene. ♪ - I was one of the very first female members of Le Club, and it was glamorous and fun, and they played fabulous music. It was the hottest place in town. It had a very intimate dance floor. All the women were chic and well-dressed and the men were handsome, wearing either suits or tuxedos, and you could really fall in love with anybody in this place. ♪ And I remember one night, I went over to the maître d', and I said, "who is that man?" He said, "He's a new member. His name is Donald Trump." I thought he was extremely handsome. He had a way about him that just caught my eye immediately. - You went to Le Club. - Le Club, right. - The greatest I've ever been to. The level of beauty was-- Le Club, to me, was the greatest club that I've ever been associated-- - In the world? - I-I've been to every-- I've been everywhere. ♪ - Trump would hang out there in order to be noticed, but also to get to know the movers and shakers of this new world of Manhattan that he was diving into. - Donald very much set his sights on becoming a player in the hierarchy of New York real estate, but before he could make his move in Manhattan, a problem arrived on the doorstep of his father. ♪ The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the Trump Organization, alleging that they had discriminated against black and Latin families wanting to live in the buildings that his father had built. ♪ This was a big problem that could jeopardize any deal. ♪ - The 1973 lawsuit alleges rampant discrimination on the part of the Trump Organization. We're not talking about discrimination here and there. We're talking about systemic, structural discrimination. ♪ - And this is the kitchen here. - I was contacted and asked to be a tester for the, uh, Beach Haven apartments, which were owned by Trump Management. ♪ - There was a sign outside that said "Apartment for rent," and this articulate, well-dressed black man had applied for the apartment, and the superintendent-- he said to the man, uh, "I'm sorry, but the apartment is taken." - As I remember, there was a gentleman, and he said, "I have none to show, "because there's nothing vacant right now." Right after I--I left, they sent a white person. - The super greeted me with open arms like he was just waiting for me, and he handed me the lease, and I just ran, and when I got outside, I met up with the commissioner, and we walked back into the building, and at this point, the superintendent-- all he could say was, uh, "Well, uh, I'm just doing what my boss told me to do." - You feel outraged. You feel insulted. I'm a young black man who has been to college, who has a job, so you do feel a sense of anger at the fact that society still allows this sort of thing to happen. ♪ - In 1973, I went out to Trump Village and tried to interview as many people as I could... ♪ And we found out that if a person of color did apply to live at Trump Village, that on their application would be handwritten a big C, for "colored." ♪ - Those applications would then be put in a separate pile, and those people would be offered either no apartment, or they'd be offered a lesser apartment at a lesser property. The Justice Department comes after Donald Trump and his father Fred, accusing them of racial discrimination. - And everyone around him, including his father, is saying, "Just settle, Donald. Nobody beats the federal government." ♪ - As Donald Trump was deciding whether to settle the racial bias case on behalf of the company and his father, he goes into Le Club, he walks in, and there's a man at a table, and that man is Roy Cohn. ♪ The meeting between Roy Cohn and Donald Trump began one of the most important relationships in Trump's life. ♪ - This fight, I have absolutely total confidence is going to be won, and won completely and totally. - To this day, Roy Cohn is one of the most controversial and hated people in America. Mention his name, and people will throw things at you. ♪ - To Donald Trump, Roy Cohn is exactly what his father had called a killer. ♪ - Donald Trump had two mentors: his dad, who taught him there are killers and losers, and Roy Cohn, who said even when you lose, you win. Doesn't matter if it l-- you say it's a win when it's a loss. ♪ - Roy Cohn, as a young man, was chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy. ♪ McCarthy was the rabble-rousing senator from Wisconsin who rose to power on a lie. - All Senator McCarthy has been trying to do is expose the Communists. - The lie was that there were hundreds of people in the government who were Communist. It was all fake. ♪ - Roy helped Senator McCarthy invent things, s-- out of whole cloth, invent, you know, Communist conspiracies and Communists in the State Department and all that. Roy pushed that through. - Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist-- - Wait a minute! Let me answer the question! - Ask the next question. - Are you asking me to violate the Constitutional guarantee... - It does not violate the Constitution to answer a question. - It does. ♪ - Years before Twitter, years before cable news, Roy knew that he could get headlines, he could make allegations, and that would stick. ♪ - But McCarthy and Roy Cohn were driven out of Washington in an utter state of disgrace when they were belittled by Joseph Welch in a beautiful moment of American theater when he said... - Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency? ♪ - When Roy came to New York, he played it like a win, and he rose to become one of the most powerful fixers in New York of the 20th century. ♪ - Roy and Trump met at Le Club, which was, in those days, the place to be, and Donald proceeds to tell him that the U.S. Justice Department is going after the Trump family really hard for discriminating against people in their--in the housing they own, and everybody's telling Trump, "Just settle it." Roy is the first one who says to Trump, "What are you talking about? "Go after the Justice Department. "Counter-attack. You can win this." - Roy Cohn was a great lawyer. You talk about a controversial guy. I mean, he was a controversial guy. - Unbelievable. - But if he was your friend, he would fight to the death. - Did you know his reputation? - I-I-I did, but his reputation was tough. I needed a tough lawyer. You know, I was dealing with tough people, and Roy was very good, and Roy, for me, did a great job. ♪ - Donald and Fred Trump, along with Roy Cohn, called a press conference. - He did something preposterous, which is they said that they were suing the Justice Department for defamation. ♪ - Donald says "This isn't about racism. "I don't want them in there because they're all welfare recipients." - Nothing could be further from the truth. It was just a made-up story. - He knew it was an effective public statement to make to spin the public debate in a different way. This was all Roy Cohn. It's Roy Cohn who's got Trump at his knee, telling him how the world works. ♪ - Roy understood how to generate news and how the media worked, and he understood the interplay between public events and media coverage. ♪ Trump marveled at Cohn's understanding of how to sell an idea, both his legal tactics and the coverage of the matters in which he was involved. ♪ - I remember the first big argument in court. Roy Cohn speaks, uninterrupted, for 45 minutes. Donald Trump was very flippant, and one of his comments during one of the breaks was, you know, "You don't want to live with them, either." ♪ - Roy assures Donald that they can go into this and win. They don't. They lose. They have to settle with the federal government. - The Trump Organization-- they say, "We didn't admit guilt. "We didn't say that we did anything wrong. "We settled with the Justice Department just to make it go away." To this day, you know, you ask Donald Trump about that, and he says, "Well, we won that." ♪ - Of course, that's not true. It was a big victory for the Justice Department. ♪ - I think that case, you know, to this day, is in--in Trump's mind. He hated being accused of discrimination. He hated the idea of the government going after him and his father... ♪ And he holds animus towards the government to this day. ♪ [sirens blaring] - Standard & Poor's bond rating service said today it is absolutely certain that New York City will default on its debt. - President Ford has been against federal help for New York, saying it would establish a costly precedent. - Default if you must, but don't expect help from the federal government. - People were fleeing the city, and that was when Ford said "Drop dead," the famous article. - Right. - Yeah. - You know, it wasn't, like, that competitive. I was wanting to come in, and other people were afraid to touch it. - Going the other way. - Everybody was on the sidelines - They were all gone or bust, and--and the city was doing terribly. Crime was through the roof. [sighs] I didn't think about it, because I was counter to the market. I was very counter to the-- - Yeah. - I've always been counterintuitive. ♪ - The Manhattan that Donald Trump crossed the bridge to fulfill his dreams was a Manhattan in pretty sorry shape. ♪ - Crime was at record height. People were afraid. The city was near bankruptcy. I wrote the column for the "Daily News," writing about New York. The attitude in New York was a depressing attitude. It was a feeling that, "Oh, my God, this city's really in danger." ♪ - In other news, the Penn Central, which has been running in the red for a long time now, decided today to sell off some choice real estate, including ten blocks in downtown Manhattan. They hope to bring in about $1 billion in the deal. ♪ - Penn Central--most people thought of it as two railroad companies, but it was really a landowning company that happened to have some railroads. - Railyards were on the market. Grand Central was on the market, and even hotel companies. It was more or less a fire sale. ♪ - Donald Trump stumbles upon an announcement in the press that the Commodore Hotel, one of the grand old hotel properties of Manhattan, is sitting there, unwanted. - So it was a big deal when Donald said he was gonna restore a cruddy hotel on 42nd Street. - At a time when New Yorkers were reeling, were insecure, were frightened, here's Donald Trump on the scene, bold, optimistic. He was kind of a rare ray of light in a--in a pretty dark scene. ♪ - He began to play all the players against each other. To get the property, he went to Penn Central and said, "Hey, look, I have the agreement of Hyatt, "and they're gonna make this a Hyatt hotel, so you should give it to me. I'll renovate it." He didn't have the agreement of Hyatt, but he said he did. Then he went to Hyatt and said, "Hey, I'm the one with the control of the property from Penn Central," which he didn't have. They each bought the story, so now he had both the land and the name Hyatt and their cooperation. ♪ Now he needed money. He goes to the bank and says, "Hey, I've got this tax abatement from the government." He didn't have it at that point, but he persuaded the bank that he did, in the ultimate showman kind of way. He was being part operator, part savvy businessman. ♪ - Donald Trump came in to see me, and he wanted me to exempt his hotel from real estate taxes, which I had the power to do, but I said no, because I did not believe, and do not believe, that a Hyatt hotel on 42nd Street would not earn enough money to pay taxes. When I said no, he was extremely unpleasant. - Donald got very angry, and threatened to have him fired. - He told me what to do to myself. I told him he'd better get out, or I'd have him arrested. - I think he was worried. He needs every little bit of help that he can get. Donald didn't have a lot, but he did have one thing: his father, so he went to his father to help him out. His father was very close to both the governor and to the mayor, and so he had entrée when he wanted to put forward this idea of getting a big tax break, and so, thanks to his political connections, he was able to get the support of both the city and the state. - Controller? - Donald Trump, through a complicated series of absolute moxie maneuvers, managed to get a huge, huge tax break. - It's been a long, hard fight. How do you feel? - Well, I'm very happy, and I think the city of New York is going to be very happy. We're gonna do something now which is going to be a great stride forward for New York City. - Donald Trump is a street fighter, and Donald Trump wants to win. He is the consummate, constant, negotiator. - People asked me, "How come? How is it that you got 40 years of tax abatement?" and I'd always say, "Because I didn't ask for 50." - But there was more work to be done. ♪ Donald Trump, upon the city's demand, was required to submit the contract that indicated he had permission from the Penn Central railroad, so Donald said, "Here's my contract for the Penn Central." No one actually looked at the last page to notice it had never been signed. ♪ So he moved forward on a project of immense scale, guaranteeing the city that he had the legal authority to do it, and he did not have the authority. ♪ - And nobody noticed. - And nobody noticed? - Nobody noticed. They just said, "Could we see your contract?" so I sent them a contract that was signed by me and nobody else, and nobody ever--nobody said, "Nobody ever signed the other..." - All right, if they had said, "Hey, what--what's going on?" would you have copped to it? Would you have said, "Well, you didn't tell me--" - I don't know what I would've done, and I went through all of that stuff to get the tax abatements that had never been given in the history of New York 'cause the city was in trouble, right? Where did you hear that story? - I... got my in--sources. ♪ - It's really the model that sets up everything that follows, the idea of playing one player against the other, a fair bit of hucksterism mixed with some business savvy to create the buzz, the PR. All of that sense of Trump as a force comes out of the Hyatt deal. ♪ - Amid a lot of fanfare, the Grand Hyatt held its grand opening today. The mayor and the governor of New York were among those on hand for the ribbon-cutting. [cheers and applause] - Hyatt Regency is now an architectural gem for all the world to see. - Hyatt is a fantastic outfit, and all of this is going to combine to make probably the most successful hotel-- one of them--in the country, we feel. - It was fabulous. He did it fast and he did it efficient. ♪ It really gave him a sense of pride and a sense that he knew exactly what he was doing. The Commodore was the stepping stone to the Trump Tower. ♪ - Friend of mine in the real estate industry said "You have the greatest ability "to get great locations of any human being I've ever seen." It's true. No matter what it is, if you look at any of my projects, I have the best locations. ♪ - One day, so the story goes, Donald is looking for an ideal location to put up what would become a signature project. He's criss-crossing Manhattan in his car, looking for that ideal situation. ♪ - Suddenly, reaching the corner of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, and noticing the Bonwit Teller building, an old Art Deco ten-story department store. Here is the opportunity Donald is looking for, and it is at that corner that he decides "This is where I'm going to stake my future." ♪ - The finest piece of real estate, considered to be the finest piece of real estate in the world, is at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. That's the Tiffany corner of the world. - "The New York Times" is reporting that Bonwit's is being sold to Donald Trump, and that the store could be closed by July. ♪ - Bonwit gives him a six-month $25 million--the option to purchase the property. He was constantly borrowing money from his father during this period and he had to get a partner Equitable bank, because he can't do this alone. ♪ He just doesn't have the money to build his signature tower. ♪ So now he's got a mortgage, the interest clock is ticking, he's got a partner that's taking the bulk of the profits. He needs every little bit of help that he thinks he can get, so he, again, latched onto tax breaks. ♪ - Donald Trump now faces the biggest skirmish in his battle to build Trump Tower. He's going to come into conflict with the mayor of New York City. - The positions that I take are not ideological. They are reasonable, they are sensible, and that's why people support me. - Look, Ed Koch was a totally overrated mayor. He was a bad guy-- - A few times, you said-- - And you can quote me. - Right. - Ed Koch was a bad guy. He was a total bully. All Ed Koch was concerned about was press. In other words, he wanted to make sure he looked good. Ed, go [bleep] yourself. You're a piece of [bleep]. ♪ - The city was offering tax breaks to developers, but they were not thinking that this is the kind of tax break they would give away for luxury apartments. - This was a program that would be used to turn a vacant lot into an apartment building for the middle class. - But here comes this application from Donald Trump, and the city turns him down. He's outraged. Trump sues the city, so now he's at loggerheads with the Koch administration, and that potentially meant a long battle that could go on for years. ♪ - One of the beneficiaries of the abatements is real estate developer Donald Trump. - I was entitled to that abatement, and I am by law entitled to that abatement. - Councilman Henry Stern and Councilman Robert Wagner Jr. opposed it as an excessive gift of public funds. ♪ I did a weekly show between Ruth Messenger, who's the city council member who was very much against giving any tax breaks to businessmen, particularly businessmen like him, Donald Trump, and Trump believed in tax breaks, particularly for him. - The program has become a corporate welfare program. - I really think, before you make those statements on the air, that you should go back and check your facts and figures. - Donald, the statute says very specifically that in order to qualify, the site on which the residential building is going up is either vacant, predominantly vacant, or underutilized. The site on which-- - You don't think a ten-story building is an underutilization when I'm building a 68-story building? - Absolutely not. - Oh, I see. Okay, okay. - Correct. Tell me about it, dear. - I had the grand time between these two. It was a knife fight. - Ruth, I'd like you to-- - We deny the benefit. - This ridiculous. To listen to this is just-- - I mean, look, at the end of the day, there's a toughness to him. I mean, this is a very tough guy. I mean, he can take a lot of bullets. He can catch bullets in his teeth. He can eat broken glass. A punch-back sort of a person with a armadillo skin. - This is just so ridiculous. You've asked me onto a program I'm supposed to be, and I listen to this, that-- - It's a calling card. Attack the person personally. Don't give them a quarter. Don't be nice. Don't be reasonable. Attack them. You have to destroy them, because they're gonna destroy you. - If you spent the same time trying to clean up our subways and clean up the city of crime-- - I do. - Well, I don't know that you do, or if you do, you're certainly doing a very ineffective job. ♪ - Sound familiar? ♪ - When Trump finally got all the permissions he needed and was ready to roll on the construction of Trump Tower, his pride and joy, he needed to get someone who actually knows how to build a building. - Donald and I sort of worked together while I was working on the Hyatt. I was at a fundraiser with my husband, and he said to my husband, uh, "I'm gonna hire her. She's gonna work for me. I'm gonna double her salary," [laughs] and that's how I learned about Trump Tower. ♪ - She was the first woman to run the construction of a major skyscraper. Trump was always proud of the fact that he'd put a woman in that position and entrusted her with this project from beginning to end. ♪ - Barbara Res had a very tough job. It was a culture of macho men. A lot of these guys are chauvinistic pigs, you know, to be quite honest. - There were no women in the construction industry. You could count them on one hand, er, and even if you lost a few fingers. ♪ He said something to me. He said, "Men are better than women, "but a good woman is better than ten good men," and he meant that as a compliment. ♪ Donald trusted me implicitly, and he respected people that told him things the way they were, and it was not easy to do that, because when you stood up to him, you got--you got hammered. ♪ He said to me, "You know, you're a killer," and--[laughs] I later learned that his father actually used that expression with him, that people should be killers. ♪ I thought, and I quickly confirmed it-- he was very inexperienced. He really didn't know much about construction at all, but I thought that he was intelligent. Didn't have to tell him a hundred times, and with him, that was a good thing, 'cause he could only listen once, if you were lucky, and you got him to listen to a whole story. ♪ - Once the project got the green light, Donald Trump confronted the next problem, which was, "How do we take down this ten-story department store?" - Most famously, that building had this facade of gorgeous sculptures that were the hallmark of Bonwit Teller, one of the most prized architectural features on Fifth Avenue. - These stone relief sculptures at the top of the building were very stylized, very naked, dancers with long scarves. ♪ - Trump made a deal to remove this piece of art carefully from the façade of the building and give it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and this would be a compromise. The--the great landmark art would be saved, and Trump would be able to go ahead and demolish the building. ♪ In order to get the demolition done cheaply, Donald Trump, as he often did, found the lowest-bidding company he could. - He hired a Polish demolition company which turned out to employ immigrants who were undocumented. - They were being paid, essentially, less than $5 an hour, when they got cash, 'cause some of them said they were being paid in vodka. ♪ They did the work-- 12- to 18-hour days. - And it's dangerous, dirty work. You're dismantling concrete, debris falling down on you. - They had nowhere to live. They were sleeping on the floor of the Bonwit Teller store at night. - And all of this was done at breakneck pace. ♪ - And then one afternoon, one of the directors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art gets a call at her office, and she's told Donald Trump is destroying the frieze. ♪ - I got into a taxi, got into a classic New York City traffic jam. I was nine months pregnant at the time... ♪ But I got out of the cab and I ran for ten blocks. I'll never forget that run. Got out on 56th Street. ♪ [debris clattering] ♪ And we watched them being jackhammered. ♪ I was furious. [laughs] ♪ The Trump Organization could've asked the Met for help in taking the pieces down and removing them... ♪ And they didn't. ♪ - You were recently the object of a lot of controversy because you ordered destroyed some sculptures on the-- a building that you bought that the Metropolitan Art Museum wanted. Why did you have those destroyed, first of all, and what happens to the look of the city? - As an art building, or an Art Deco building, it really was not worth very much, and we did take it down, and there was somewhat of an outcry, but I think that's generally subsided. ♪ - He gets a bunch of bad publicity, but in his mind, it's all good publicity, because here he's seen as this force of progress, this guy who's bulling his way through all this red tape and all these fussy artist types in order to get his building built, and to k--get the commerce of New York moving again. - Very carefully, Donald is putting all the pieces in place for this signature project, but he's also borrowing money all over the place. While he often portrays himself as sort of a self-made man, the only money he had is what he borrowed from his father. - Fred Trump was nervous. He was co-signing all the loans. He was the one. It was his money. ♪ - Fred Trump was involved in the Trump Tower project. That's how I met him. I remember, he was-- he didn't like me. I'm--let's put this way. He hated me. He hated the very notion that a woman would be working in construction to begin with, and much less be in charge of a project that was his son's project, so, uh, we were like, "Ah! Ah!" He would say, "Oh, no, that's all wrong. You don't know what you're doing." But I went to Donald. I said, "You've got to get your fathr off of my back. He's driving me crazy," and he--he said to me, "Suck it up, baby," in so many words, because, you know, he was putting up with him, too. ♪ - Most buildings, by the time the Trump Tower was built, were using steel to put structures up, and what was unusual about Trump Tower was that it was largely built out of concrete. ♪ - What we were doing was what's called a fast track, which is you build it before it's completely designed, and it was a concrete building, which was great, because you design it one day, and you can pour it the next. ♪ - Most of the contracting in the construction industry in New York was controlled, to a large extent, by the mob, specifically the concrete business. - Business that you could call Mafia, Inc. - They are said to run the most powerful crime families in New York. - Federal investigators say the mob controls the concrete workers in the construction industry. ♪ - My name is Michael Franzese, and, uh, you can call me Michael. That's fine. - You know, former caporegime in the Colombo crime family is, uh, a normal moniker for me, and, uh, I guess for this purpose, it's probably the best way to address it. ♪ Basically, the mob controlled all the concrete business in the city of New York. ♪ Because Trump Tower was a concrete building, you know, it was a big score for us guys. ♪ You know, and I want to be clear. I'm not saying that, you know, Trump was in bed with the mob. I'm not saying that he was one of our guys, but he certainly had a deal with us. I mean, he didn't have a choice, so in that regard, he did. ♪ - In 1982, there was a major stoppage among all the concrete providers. - Everybody's worried. A lot of developers are in a bind now. There's a delay in their construction. - When it occurred, we were in the process of pouring concrete to get the main structure up, and every day that you lose that goes by is a day delayed, and, uh, it costs money for Donald, - They're not gonna beat us. I mean, we can hold out as long as we wanna hold out, so, you know, eventually, they have to come around. ♪ - John Cody was a union boss who lived on the dividing line between the union and the mob. Cody was a guy who could make things go well for you, or he could make things go poorly for you. ♪ - It's an interesting questin as to why, when every other developer in New York can't get access to concrete, Donald Trump is still able to just move along swimmingly. ♪ - One of the things that Cody was able to do for Trump was make sure that drivers continued to deliver concrete to the site. ♪ - You have to be able to deal with many different things to be able to be a successful developer. You have to be able to deal with the unions. - And concrete guys who are mobbed-up. - You have to get-- you get along with these people. You had no choice. There's nobody else to do it. ♪ - Trump struck a deal with John Cody, and Mr. Cody was able to get an apartment for his mistress in Trump Tower. ♪ - She was given a very prominent apartment on a high floor of Trump Tower, and she had one demand, and that was she wanted a swimming pool in her apartment. Trump Tower did not come with a swimming pool. ♪ So Trump went in and had that part of the building reinforced so that it could hold the weight of a swimming pool and all the water in it. ♪ - This is the world Trump operated in... ♪ And shortly before Trump Tower was finished, Cody was convicted of racketeering and sent to prison. ♪ - I don't like getting close to people like that, but they respected me. - And a lot of this is relationships. - A lot of it is re-- well, a lot of life is relationship--a lot of what I've done is relationship. A lot of great things that have happened to me happened to me because of relationship. - Millionaire real estate developer Donald Trump will get a handsome tax break for his latest project on Fifth Avenue. - In the case of Trump Tower, he engaged the city in a big battle over getting this deal, and in the end, there was a fair umpire in the Court of Appeals of New York State, and he won, fair and square, and got his tax abatement. ♪ - Well, here we are on the top of the Trump Tower. Today is the topping-off of this fabulous building. - When they finally finished the Trump Tower, Donald took the opportunity to have a topping-off party. - This is the greatest skyline in the world, so this is a great addition to New York skyline. - What do you think about the view? It's pretty nice from up here, isn't it? - I've always wanted to look down on General Motors, and the-- - [laughs] It was quite exciting, being on the top of the building when they finished it off, put the last cornerstone in, and everybody was there with balloons, and it was quite a fanfare. Trump Tower was the biggest moment in Donald's life. ♪ - Eight years ago, I must say, I was embarrassed to say I was in the real estate business in New York. Today, I can honestly say I'm proud of it, and it's the number one city in the world, and I say a large part of that is due to the tremendous abilities of Mayor Koch. I think he's done a tremendous job. - Thank you. - Thank you very much. - Yeah, all the media were there covering this, and, um, Ed Koch gave a speech, which was so funny, because they hated each other. - And may the windows of this building forever look out upon a place of peace and prosperity. - Very nice. Thank you, sir. Very nice. Very good--nice. Very... - Mr. Trump, what are your sentiments today regarding the whole celebration? - A very happy day. The com--the completion of the tallest concrete building in the city of New York. - How are the sales going? - Uh, well, I have nothing to do with sales, but they--I hear they're going excellent. Fantastic. Unbelievable. - I think Fred Trump was authentically proud of Donald's early successes in New York. He was amazed that his little boy had graduated from Queens into a premiere address in Manhattan and was able to build a landmark tower with the family name on it. ♪ - I remember we were going up to New York on spring break and I asked my son what he wanted to do in New York, what he wanted to see, and he said, most of all, he wanted to go see the lobby of Trump Tower, and sure enough, we did it, and we were all pretty impressed. - I remember walking in and looking up, and seeing this escalator and seeing the fountains, and feeling that I was, you know, as an outsider, as a--as a Brit, that this was the apotheosis of big, glitzy, you know, vulgar, if you like, Americana, and I loved it... ♪ Because, you know, that's what was fun about America. ♪ It was kind of the Liberace of buildings, really, if you like. [laughs] - Here is Donald being lauded for this great achievement, but obviously, absent from the celebration is Donald's elder brother, Fred Jr. ♪ As a pilot, Fred Jr. continues to struggle with what, in retrospect, will be seen as a lifelong battle with alcohol, and he falls out of grace with the airlines and cannot function as a pilot anymore. By this time in his life, it's been communicated by his father and by his brother that they don't expect much from him. He winds up moving home and into the family mansion and is essentially a handyman for the Trump properties, ordered about by his father, asked to do menial tasks. - He was intended to be the heir to the throne of the Trump Organization, but from this point on, he really did start to spiral downward more rapidly. ♪ - Fred was a great guy, but, you know, he had an alcohol problem. - Yeah. - Okay. And he was such an amazing guy, and the best personality-- best-looking guy you'll ever see, and you know, he had a lot of things, but he had an alcohol problem. - I never really thought of his having a problem with drinking really until the last time I saw him, and that was in the hospital of Manhattan. He kept saying, "I've got to get off the sauce. I've got to get off the sauce." ♪ - His passing is the first real loss in Donald's life, but Donald viewed Fred Jr.'s death as an example of weakness, of what happens when you're not tough enough, when you don't fight, when you don't strike back. It's just a fact of life that some people win and some people lose, and they may be brothers, but they're still winners and losers. What his father taught him, that he was a killer, turned out to be true. Donald Trump had made all of this happen. He was not yet 40 years old, and he was a force to be reckoned with on the island of Manhattan. There was no greater proof that could be offered by life of the excellence of the Trump method and the superiority of his own talents than the completion of this grand project. - By the way, uh, he is a chip off the old block. This is-- - My father, Fred Trump. - Right. - You were gonna say somethig about your dad. You said-- - He was very difficult to work with. Number one, he was a very tough man, but he was also a--a man that would never let anything go. He was a very strong man. He was a very detail-oriented perso, but I did great deals for him. In fact, he gave a statement to "BusinessWeek" magazine many, many years ago. "Everything Donald touches turns to gold." ♪ - Donald Trump was never a man who was dying to settle down. ♪ - The name Marla Maples came up shortly after that. No guy likes talking about affairs, by the way. [laughs] - It had sex, it had beauty, it had bazillions of bucks. It had everything. - The attention he got in the media actually made him feel alive. ♪ - Boy, there's a lot of coverage there. - Then gradually, of course, things got out of control. ♪ - He was frightened. Trump was staring at destroying not only his own legacy, but his father's legacy as well. - But you have said that if you ran for president, you'd win. - I think I'd have a very good chance. I mean, I like to win. - He's one of the greatest shows on Earth, you don't know what he's going to do next, and you can't stop watching.

Info

Channel: Biography

Views: 1,209,660

Rating: undefined out of 5

Keywords: bio, biography, life story, documentary, history, historical figure, celebrity, famous, full documentary on biography, biography documentary, biography full documentary, full episode biography, trump, donald trump, donald trump documentary, donald trump on biography, donald trump biography, trump biography, trump full documentary, trump full episode biography, trump tower documentary, trump tower, trump bio, trump family, trump family scandal, trump family biography

Id: L17q1lgJBac

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 86min 4sec (5164 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2023