Trump: What's The Deal? Full Documentary (1991)

some years ago we made a documentary about donald trump it wasn't flattering trump screamed and shouted and threatened lawsuits and it was never broadcast but now we think it's time for you to see it because the new trump and the old trump are the same trump [Applause] [Music] i never thought i'd be doing this i have to tell you so just everybody have a good time enjoy yourselves and for many years enjoy the trump shuttle it seems hard to believe but that triumphant ride on the trump shuttle was barely three years ago it feels like so much longer nothing marked the end of the 1980s the decade of greed more than the downfall of donald trump but who is this man who rose so high and fell so fast presents himself marvelously but the donald trump that i saw in real life was very different i believe that donald trump um would be a very unhappy man if no one paid any attention to him he skirts the law in the sense that he goes right up to the edge and sometimes over it he talks a good game but he lacks character i mean it's the american dream gone berserk really is what it is but it wasn't only trump's sometime friends and long time critics who told us about his flaws trump himself unknowingly predicted his own fate i think one of the most important aspects of the book is i trying to find people that don't have it because most people don't have it and that's the sad part and they want to have it and they go out and they lose their money they lose their families they lose everything and it's a sad situation but you see it a lot with these hucksters that are on television selling deal books and selling you know records and they never made 10 cents in their lives but now they become wealthy selling the records although most of them if you've read have gone bankrupt over the last year so i guess they didn't sell as many records as they thought but you know they sell and these people put up their 500 and worse than that then they go out and they borrow money against some leveraged house and this and that things that can't work and i feel very sad for those people donald trump hasn't had time to feel sorry for anyone in the last year he's been too busy trying to save himself it's so different now from his heyday when he only had to want something to get it on an empty street [Music] gotta find of my me [Music] i want it on it is easy to see that trump is in trouble now his ego is bruised his empire reeling but to find out why you must turn back the clock to look for the clues we begin our story in the fall of 1988 with donald trump at the top of his game here he is at a political dinner honoring andrew stein president of the new york city council trump is a hustler if a big guy a rich guy puts his arm around a politician often that's better than money because the politicians are in love with anybody who has money trump puts more than his arm around politicians he's a frequent and generous campaign contributor to the council president he is explaining to stein that the contributions of some of his new jersey associates are in violation of the new campaign laws he's going to take them back and fix the problem one guy from new jersey if you don't mind i'll take a pass and get him corrected you don't mind he doesn't miss a beat doing it nor does he miss a camera turned in his direction there's a lot of coverage tonight he was the best known businessman in america compared to lee iacocca he was schwarzenegger he was stallone maybe he was even elvis look how i'm making him a star look at this he gets more headlines for what he doesn't do that what he does because he's news just by showing up here he is at a charity event it's at the plaza hotel then his newest toy his wife ivana had just had some very appealing cosmetic surgery don johnson and melanie griffith were along for the ride not surprisingly the press forgot all about the charity it was a time when celebrities dominated the news and thanks to their press agents the rich were celebrities in the 1980s trump in particular no matter what he said or did no one asked the hard questions in merchandising the apartments in trump tower he would plant articles in the newspaper suggesting that the prince of wales was going to take an apartment uh sofia lauren was going to take an apartment and would it be wonderful to see sofia sitting in her bathtub overlooking central park and all kinds of wonderful stories it's a 58 story building although if you ask mr trump how tall it is it's actually 68. he skipped 10 floors in the numbering system because it's much more exciting to live on the 55th floor than it is on the 45th floor it drove the fire department absolutely crazy because they lost 10 floors in the building that they couldn't find this is salesmanship and trump knows how to do it better than anybody it's as you and i were discussing it's become the number one attraction in new york trump tower the best hotel casino anywhere in the world the biggest gross in the history of the gaming business said to be the greatest yacht in the world the finest transportation operation anywhere in this country the largest building privately financed ever built in the world the biggest selling book or one of them of the decade the best apartments in the world this has really turned out to be almost mystical it's been great no area of the news was immune from the trump hype when gorbachev came to new york for a summit in 1988 trump saw a chance for a pr bonanza the week before he arrived all the television stations in new york said that gorbachev was planning a visit to trump tower some of them even printed in the in the paper that this was going to happen at no time was trump tower even tentatively scheduled as a place for gorbachev to visit it's almost a textbook example of a publicity stunt which worked and which has worked on many other occasions for him trump also considered himself immune from criticism even by a pulitzer prize-winning architectural critic i mean you have an idiot like paul goldberger who has probably the worst taste i've ever seen any time he gives a good i get scared when he gives me a good review because most of the time when he gets good reviews they're not successful buildings but you have a guy like paul goldberger who comes in he's going to fight this job why because i said bad things about him on my book because i said he suffers from a lack of taste which he does just take a look at the way he dresses trump is possibly the only developer who has sued an architecture critic for a bad review it was paul gap the critic of the chicago tribune it was a nuisance lawsuit it was done just to harass paul gap in the chicago tribune ultimately it went nowhere which is where it deserved to go by this time it seemed trump could say almost anything about almost anybody you mind if i sit back a little bit because your breath is very bad it really is has this ever been told you before no huh okay then i won't bother no actually that's how you get the edge who cared about trump's abrasive behavior everybody loved his toys for me a fantasy fulfilled to leave donald trump the money mogul with the midas touch asking who's been sitting in my chair who's been drinking my champagne and who's been sleeping in my bed why that little old channel 10 news reporter me that's who sheila ellen stevens no matter what happened then everybody remembered one thing donald trump had done donald you performed a great public service that was on november 13 1986 when trump completed the reconstruction of the public ice skating rink in new york central park for five years the rink had been closed as the city spent 12 million dollars trying to fix it then donald trump stepped in he said he'd fix it fast and on budget and he did people even thought he'd done it for nothing i think it was a level of competence and we drive and we push and we get things done trump got paid in full some of his contractors didn't and that's a story that didn't get told i want you to work he says but there's one caveat and that is that the work has to be pro bono and i said well pro bono i mean my goodness i'm italian american bono has to be italian i'll go for it well little did i know that pro bono meant for free for the public good but in reality what what he was asking us to do was to supply the services for the rink and uh to dispense with any profits or expenses back then donald trump was no ordinary rich man he was the people's billionaire you like him i'm telling you why didn't your daughter bring him home across the street from the skating rink was the saint maritz hotel trump bought it a year earlier he called it a brilliant deal no one bothered to look below the surface he said he paid 31 million dollars the real price was 70 million in 1988 he sold the hotel to alan bond the australian donald trump bond paid a whopping 180 million dollars that said trump gave him a 100 million dollar profit conveniently he forgot to subtract his costs so conveniently did the press when trump bought stock the financial press listened and the financial press wrote and people read and people bought and trump sold and trump made money then came the crash of 1987 and trump boasted i got out whole i didn't lose a dime and the financial press wrote but like everyone else trump lost resorts alexander's mca he owned them all and there were others even when trump flaunted his marital infidelity editors covered his tracks for him a professional photographer took these pictures of trump his wife ivana and his close and personal friend marla maples in aspen over christmas 1989. he tried to sell them but for six weeks he couldn't find the buyer during the eighties the uh the cult of um of the rich and of great wealth and of great ostentatiousness was very much in he met a need for the press the press needed a poster boy for the 80s an emblem a shorthand way of telling people what was happening in the culture but as the new decade began the poster boy of the 80s woke up to find himself on the media's 10 most wanted list although no one had raced to be first with the story of the trump divorce there was an olympic-sized competition not to be last the devastating thing about the marla flapp is that it opened trump to ridicule for the first time and uh that is very deflating it's not only deflating but it turns the publicity machine around all the lovable quirks on the way up look very foolish if not stupid on the way down and it's going to be very hard for him to come back from this kind of ridicule overnight it seems america turned from a fascination with what trump has to what he could lose do you wish we'd all go away absolutely in the old days that is just a few months earlier trump had the power to dismiss the press to make reporters accept his claims as facts now the press wouldn't go away and though the stories were about numbers it was easy to see the numbers were working against him look at this chart which is based on a report from the new jersey casino control commission by the middle of 1990 only three of trump's 22 assets were profitable trump wasn't rich his net worth was minus 294 million dollars at the present market value he owed one bank alone 993 million dollars only slightly less than the bank had loaned to the entire country of venezuela there's nothing the press loves more than bringing down the person it built up yesterday once he had been on the cover of time when his new book came out it was reviewed on the back page and the review was scathing inside every fat ego it starts there must be a thin self-revealing book struggling to get out the review didn't spare his wife either was ivana's plastic surgeon under the impression that she was entering the witness protection program it asked but the press alone couldn't slay the media monster it created for a moment the book shot to the top of the best seller list before disappearing like judge crater in the world beyond new york he's donald trump self-made billionaire but in brooklyn he's still fred trump's son and in brooklyn they remember it was fred trump who built the family fortune fred trump would be here most every day and he had his sons here and he was teaching them the business from the ground up that donald was one of my nice customers who have a hot dog almost every day a few occasions he would say to me that this must be a good business and i'd say i it's a good business i'm making a living but i think yours is a little better when fred trump started out he built wood shingle houses during world war ii he constructed homes for the military when the war ended using his political connections and little of his own money he turned his attention to giant developments in new york's outer boroughs today he still owns them it was decent but never good the service and the the bad answer they give you here at maintenance is this is not manhattan you get brooklyn service here whatever that means i have no idea what that means but walls have to fall down before you get any kind of services i'm just fortunate enough to be a senior citizen here that's where they get absolutely not no service at all nothing because if they move out from their 150 a month apartments the rent will grow up to six seven hundred but they're they're afraid see senior citizens they're they're between a rock and a hard but they're afraid to complain fred trump taught his son how to be tough and from childhood on donald had his own builder's vision he used to build the most beautiful buildings with building equipment everything he was great even when he was a little guy donald was one of five children and while he was adored at home he was a behavior problem at school i was sent to a military academy because i was really a problem i was a very difficult guy for my parents then at fordham and the wharton school of business he missed the turbulent sixties in 1969 when when most other people in their early 20s who were from upper middle class backgrounds at ivy league colleges were marching and and uh storming the gates donald trump was re reading fha foreclosure notices in philadelphia pennsylvania looking for houses that he could take over and rebuild donald trump had learned that for many real estate developers lawsuits are just part of the cost of doing business fred trump was charged twice with making windfall profits on government-financed brooklyn developments after the completion of trump village he was forced to return 1.2 million dollars in overestimates but not before he built a private shopping center on his property there were more fortunes to be made in brooklyn but brooklyn was comfortable brooklyn was boring and most of all brooklyn was his father's turf one way to think about donald trump is john travolta in saturday night fever he's the guy from ocean parkway in his mind though he grew up with a father who had a lot of money he grew up in a very middle-class way in his own mind and certainly crossing the bridge was a huge thing for him to do and something his father never wanted to do [Music] okay [Music] huh new york was facing bankruptcy when donald trump crossed the bridge to some it looked like twilight for the city but what donald trump saw was a bright new dawn donald was the young man who the second generation boy who was going to conquer manhattan and he stood with me once in this park after we'd have had a tense negotiation in which we fought and as we often did and he pointed to all these buildings around just about here and he said to me i'm going to be bigger than helmsley in five years trump made his first move for two large sites a few miles apart and bordering on the hudson river they were owned by the penn central railroad but the railroad was bankrupt and the properties were up for sale as donald trump saw it the opportunity was ready made the railroad was looking for a developer who was politically connected i knew that right away that he didn't fit the standard mold and that the all the people who would have to pass on this all of them right up the line would be troubled if i put it bluntly who the hell is donald trump and why are we contracting what was what could be 100 million dollars worth of real estate with this unknown young man the 28 year old trump would solve the problem brilliantly as he would in the years ahead no money down juggle the facts when necessary and use your political connections he took eichler to meet then-mayor abraham beam the mayor put his arm around after i took a few minutes to tell the mayor why i was there and he put his arm around donald's father and he said to me whatever mr trump wants in this town he gets he had a very good father who knew how to get things done and he learned a lot fred trump and a beam had been childhood friends and beam benefited from large trump campaign contributions so did governor hugh carey who would help donald trump again and again another close advisor was trump's lawyer the notorious roy cohn whether he could have done these things without his father's influence or his father's resources i don't know i don't think you'd get an ordinary 28 year old getting options on three such a magnificent piece of real estate trump was his father's son he tried to build federally financed housing on one of the sites when that failed he found a new way to get money from the government with a little help from his friends trump got the city's huge new convention center built on his land i'll give up my 4.4 million dollar brokerage fee he said if the city will name the convention center for my father everyone thought that was unusually public spirited until it was discovered that trump was only entitled to a fee of less than six hundred thousand dollars the convention center was named for u.s senator jacob javits but the penn central also owned the run-down commodore hotel right next to grand central station i wouldn't have taken the comment or if you gave it to me and i didn't know anybody in new york would take it if you gave it to them but one day he looked at me and he said i'm gonna buy the commodore for 10 million dollars i'm going to get jay pritzker at hyatt to manage it turn it into a hyatt and i'm going to get equitable to provide 75 million dollars to re to rehabilitate to the point where it's almost like new construction i'm going to tear it down to the to the skeleton and then redo it and i said you have really gone crazy there was more exaggeration than truth in the way trump lined up his partners for this project by suggesting he already had the option on the hotel when he didn't years later he patent tactics like this calling them truthful hyperbole trump's men went to work obtaining necessary approvals and huge tax breaks designed for construction of hospitals and low-income housing lawyer roy cohn was on the job as was stanley friedman a deputy mayor who would soon join cohn's firm years later in an unrelated matter friedman went to jail for his part in one of the city's worst corruption scandals back then the project was approved on the last day of the beam administration trump and his upscale hotel walked off with one of the largest tax breaks in city history worth an estimated 200 million dollars i got everything i wanted 40 years of tax abatement people say how did you get 40 years i said because i didn't ask for 50. that was the it was so easy i don't blame donald trump for asking for whatever he could he's a private developer in business to make money he had no obligation to the city in fact he was being helpful because without him the site might not have been developed it's up to the city to the board of estimate to the mayor to stand fast and to negotiate a deal which not only allowed the property to be developed but was in the best financial interest of the taxpayers uh for that time and for the future that the city failed to do trump was no longer a kid from brooklyn he was an established developer and something else he was the king of tax abatements in the 1980s other developers would follow his lead until building luxury housing with tax abatements became almost as popular as junk bonds and yellow ties there's nothing more pleasing to a developer than the words no money down at the commodore hotel trump saw firsthand the incredible lightness of leverage so he tried it again no run down neighborhood to build up this time though it was literally a tiffany location adjacent to the famed store on fifth avenue in the heart of manhattan here he would build an edifice to himself a retail atrium all marble and bronze 13 floors of offices the rest expensive apartments trump tower donald called me up one day in my office at about quarter to 12 said meet me at bond with teller in 15 minutes naturally i dropped everything i was doing and came right over here the first thing donald said isn't this the greatest location in the world we're gonna we're gonna build the most exciting building in the world here if the hyatt had been a term paper in doing business in new york the tower was a doctoral thesis here's how it worked again get someone to finance it equitable had been in on the hyatt and owned the land under bandwidts for a fifty percent interest equitable would pay him to build then get the players who can deal with the city state and community again roy cohn came on board finally find a way to get approval to replace a seven-story building with a 58-story tower trump was determined to have every square foot he could have and so the battle began and it took us 15 months with a lot of shivers up our backs never knowing whether we were going to win or not win but trump is a brilliant task master at maneuvering behind the scenes politically as well as uh in the real estate world and he succeeded once again trump got millions in tax abatements by finding a loophole in a law designed to promote middle-income housing to neutralize the opposition in future battles he soon hired the city's housing chief who had opposed him on those tax abatements in 1986 after the building had been completed trump broke one of his cardinal rules he bought out his partner equitable and that cost him money no matter it would seem then if the hyatt had made him a player in new york trump tower had made him a player in the world trump tower was reagan-era beauty come true for everyone trump was praised for his work even by the critic he loved to hate i've never minded the atrium that much as a work of design a lot of people find it too glitzy that sort of rosy pink apricot whatever you call it peach-colored marble i always found kind of neat actually it's uh it's sensual it's almost sexy it's one of the few cases in which somebody who's managed to make glitz aesthetically convincing i like very much the the trump tower because especially the lobby because it says exactly what is intended to say which is spend spend spend as you've never spent before what about the apartments at one million dollars for two bedrooms they're some of the most expensive in the city trump boasts they are the best the molding the base molding is the cheapest it's what housing projects get the the kitchens if i was in a housing project i would have had a better build kitchen than what donald trump put into trump tower the kitchens were i've never seen more sloppily installed and more cheaply built kitchen cabinets all of my clients you know rip them out the tower was also home to trump and his family their 36 room suite had three floors a waterfall a hundred foot living room and a lavishly decorated ceiling he once compared to the sistine chapel ross mctaggart was the second designer brought in to manage this remarkable apartment i was once in christie's furniture and we were looking at some pieces there and he focused on some louis the 16th pieces superb i mean incredible quality but he didn't understand the price they were estimated to be at 80 to 120 000 sale which wasn't bad really you know for 200 year old furniture that's superb quality and blaine trump who works at christie's happened to be there his um sister-in-law and he said well why is this furniture going to be so expensive you know just because it's old and she said well well no it's it's it's the quality it's it's it's incredible it's got a history and he turned to me he said well my stuff is better than this that i'm having made i said well actually no i have a little bit of problem with the furniture that's been selected it's not it's not this kind of quality he said well no it's going to be he said it's cost a lot of money it's going to be it's going to be better than this and we started battling and he said it's going to be better he just insisted and then blaine sort of shook her head he looked at her and he said i can get better than this can't i and she shook her head and said donald you're just never going to understand are you workmen pounded away on trump's apartment for three years his downstairs neighbors stopped making her monthly payments lawsuits flew in both directions i wanted to move in here because i thought it was going to be a great building with fantastic views and also a bigger apartment than what i used to have however i never expected to have all these run-ins with my neighbor who is donald trump who lives above me and since i moved in he has done nothing else but construction the building of trump tower was the true art of the deal saving money was the key chapter one hire the cheapest demolition contractor you can find even though he has little experience trump hired william casicki whose principal business was window washing kasich in turn hired what became known as the polish brigade more than two hundred immigrants with no working papers who were paid one-third the union rate and worked under difficult conditions years later deny you ever knew they were there even though you visited the site they were sleeping in the building they had no protective equipment all the osha requirements were being ignored they had no masks they had no gloves they were stripping wires with their bare hands hot electrical wires chapter two don't tell anyone that the building contains asbestos the reason asbestos is costly to remove and dispose of trump says he isn't legally responsible the law says he is a lot of construction it was covered with asbestos chapter three hire a waste hauler who doesn't care what he carts and knows how not to leave tracks trump's demolition contractor got eddie garafolo identified by law enforcement officials as mob connected in august of 1990 while reportedly cooperating with federal authorities investigating racketeering in the construction trades garafola was shot to death gangland style in his driveway in the dead man's pocket a wad of cash and a high rated comp card for the trump taj mahal chapter 4 when the demolition begins appear to be public spirited promise artifacts from the building to the metropolitan museum of art chapter five jackhammer the artifacts when you learn the cost of saving them the demolition contractor allegedly said that it was going to take a long time or a longer time to take those heavy panels down before anybody could make a decision trump apparently gave the orders to have them demolished chapter six threaten the lawyer that the polish illegals hire after your cheap contractor defaults on paying them make sure that the threats aren't traceable in case the guy isn't scared off mr barron had told me in the one telephone conversation that he i had with him that donald trump was upset because i was ruining his credit reputation by filing the mechanics liens and that mr trump was thinking of filing a a personal lawsuit against me for a hundred million dollars for defaming his uh reputation it turned out that mr barron was donald trump's favorite alias when this was revealed trump said what of it ernest hemingway used a pen name didn't he chapter 7 manage to stay out of trouble when your contractor is tried found guilty and fined for not paying his polish illegals at any moment this should have fell out of bed now the people you got to ask the questions for is over in newark new jersey in the department of justice where interestingly enough donald's sister worked she was the number three person in the office the assistant u.s attorney said don't mention the name trump in inside here if you want to talk about trump just say let's go outside and take a walk at the time trump's sister was an assistant in the u.s attorney's office in newark today she's a federal judge chapter 8 have daniel sullivan make peace between the union and non-union workers on the tower in late july july 27 donald called me and asked me please come to new york because he had a major problem the employees he represented on the demolition the bond with tele building were going to hang one of his vice presidents tom mccary off the building prevent the hanging but a decade later face legal charges that you defrauded the union pension and welfare fund chapter nine to build the largest concrete structure in new york city turn again to roy cohn cohn is also the lawyer for the new york crime boss who controls the concrete business payoffs from contractors are dropped off at cohn's office so he may get paid twice for his services here but then you get who you pay for conclusion in every respect the building was pure trump behind every facade another facade when you're going to spend the kind of money that we've spent on a building where we spend for the finest marble for the finest bronze for the finest everything else you have to be careful to be perfectly honest because it really does add to your risk and we decided to go absolutely first class all the way and it's something we're very happy that we did he calls it trump tower is money power that'll get you up where you want to be around the corner from trump tower was another golden opportunity for trump he found two neighboring buildings on central park south and bought them one was a hotel the other was a problem it was an apartment house and it was occupied in 1981 a group of tenants from 100 central park south came to interview me and discuss a problem they had apparently donald trump had bought the building and started spreading rumors immediately they intended to evict all of the tenants and demolish the building and build a tower this man walks in makes a blanket statement you're all evicted i'm donald trump get out of our building he hired one of the worst companies in new york who was specialists in basically emptying buildings previously censured by the attorney general's office they have a record there this long and uh that firm went to work on us and we were told by the uh superintendent that they were going to begin looking into our sex lives are drinking our is anyone a homosexual or a lesbian and and what are all these where are the weak spots of the tenants and they were going to find them tenants were being approached and told that you better move out because if you don't move out now or you don't allow us to put you somewhere else now you'll be a victim and you'll have nothing you'll be turned to the street and a woman knocking on the door and saying i've got to come in and help you we're going to look for a place for you because tomorrow you're going to be out you're going to be out services were immediately discontinued there were all kinds of problems from they wouldn't repair anything they wouldn't paint elevators out lack of water problems with the electrical he brought many eviction cases against tenants in the building uh and he brought the case to evict every tenant in the building in addition as i indicated who brought a lawsuit against attorneys representing the tenants in the building i can't think of any other lawsuits he could have brought he took six people and told them that they were going to be evicted this was a christmas day lawsuit rebuild your walls which have been taken down for 30 years now within 10 days or you will be in violation of a substantial provision of your lease the tenants here say that trump's harassment has taken on many forms for example they say a couple of years ago trump offered the vacant apartments in this building to the city's homeless i'm willing to give them heated beautiful apartments with services and medical services if necessary i wanted set up cops in this conference room well i'll tell you because right here i don't have the room over there i do new york state it basically brought its power to bear on donald trump and said you can't do this they conducted 10 and a half months of hearings to find out whether they have probable cause for a violation and found out yes trump had harassed us that we were able to also gain access to the media to the the the public and interest there for the state in our in our problems was only a fortuitous event since we are not nearly as skilled at public relations as donald this was trump's first major defeat in new york but he hasn't left the tenants with much to celebrate it hasn't stopped the present is what i'm really concerned about now because even though we signed an agreement it wasn't supposed to be the end of harassment donald trump and his people are still trying to evict tenants in this building he wants the world but what he wants primarily is manhattan to be turned into a donald trump mecca for the super rich no room for anyone else [Applause] if donald trump had tried to capture the money crowd with trump tower nothing made him more of a people's billionaire than his entrance into the world of professional sports the united states football league was playing an autumn sport in the spring when donald trump bought the new jersey general's franchise it was a team with no players anyone would call the best or the greatest trump quickly set about changing all that obtaining doug flutie and other stars and promoting them and himself quite frankly he loved it because the united states football league in general and the the the generals team in particular uh started donald toward his celebrity status what he really wanted was a national football league franchise and he quickly provoked the confrontation by pushing the other usfl owners into going head-to-head with the nfl playing in the fall meant big money and fame his withdrawal would have killed the league and donald was aware of that and donald used that magnificently well uh donald never came right out and said if you guys don't go to the fall i'm going to take my football and go home but it was implied enough so that you can put two and two together and get four donald was hell-bent to get into the nfl either via an accommodation or a merger or a court case which in my opinion he hoped would lead to a merger it would take a lawsuit and lawsuits were one of donald trump's favorite sports he pressured the other owners into joining him the results were disastrous i believe that donald felt that he could single-handedly win the trial if you talk to donald today i'm sure he'll tell you that that was not a defeat but the key is whether the usfl won and that's one in quotes won the trial or not the fact is that the usfl is not playing today boxing for a time brought trump the fame he was seeking when trump landed the tyson sphinx championship fight he and the other atlantic city casino operators realized their greatest gaming jackpots ever but that wasn't enough for trump he wanted to own mike tyson first he tried to join forces with bill caton tyson's manager trump was rebuffed in his efforts to become caton's partner so he set about trying to steal the fighter at a celebrity cocktail party he'd come over to the table where i was sitting with my family and friends put his arm around me and told all people at the table how wonderful i was how much he loved me how much he appreciated and respected me for putting together this fight he said only you could have kept it on track bill we owe you for getting this fight on but then two days later i found out he was working with the women against my interests when tyson's marriage to robin given set up a three-cornered power fight with gibbons and her mother ruth roper in one corner caton in another and promoted don king in a third trump saw the answer to everything or so he thought trump had to be involved directly or indirectly into into this into this new scenario for tyson when he got the lawyers we got the publicist trump had to be behind that trump used givens and roper against caton he even moved them into an apartment in trump tower but givens and tyson didn't stay married when tyson lost the women trump lost the power because trump's ticket to tyson were the women though trump made the wrong bet he didn't lose entirely iron mike may have skipped to another corner but trump still gets some of his fights and some of the money [Applause] [Music] thanks and congratulations because this is really good congratulations good luck everybody thank you very much it looked too good to be true and it was she was a mother a wife a casino executive a fashion plate no wonder she talked so fast what's good for for atlantic city it's good for trump as a trump because it's nicer the city is going to become and as more visitors we are going to bring in not only a trump but atlantic city is going to benefit from like everything else in trump's story the facts his publicity machine ground out about ivana were just the point of departure born in czechoslovakia she made a marriage of convenience to an austrian allowing her to leave and join her lover in montreal there she was a runway model not a top fashion model as trump and his publicist said she was an accomplished skier but not an olympic skier as publicized donald and ivana met in a new york singles bar they were married in 1977 by the reverend norman vincent peale the exponent of the power of positive thinking the trumps had three children but ivana wanted more i was a girl and i was young and i was supposed to be at home i'm supposed to be maybe collecting the art i wasn't supposed to be in their domain i wasn't supposed to be running hotel and casino which was a totally male oriented business now she started at the top promoting the trumpian vision as the titular president of trump's atlantic city castle but as she helped her husband she also established herself she became in a sense a competitor for media attention there is competition in certain marriages this one since the marriage seemed to be played out more in the tabloid press and in the broadsheet newspapers of new york rather than in in a private household that there is a competitiveness there for for headlines for attention but for all the smiles and the glittering entrances at society events this marriage was not as harmonious as it seemed if you're good to him he's incredible to you if you bet at him you're dead someone told me once who was involved in trump organization worked there that everyone that works for donald spends 50 percent of their time worrying about incurring donald's wrath except for one person vonna trump he said he she spends 90 of her time trying to worry about how not to get donald to yell at her and now how not to incur his wrath but even as she worried she stood up to her husband it may have been donald who coveted the biggest yacht in the world it was ivana who used it it may have been donald who bragged about his palm beach house it was ivana who loved it she has her own little spa there and i know barbara walters i hear is coming so she has many wonderful friends who are in business who are workers i guess she's quite a chore worker herself i have to ask ivana to stand up because if we had this dinner here a year ago it would not have been the same believe me she's done a great job when trump bought the plaza hotel he made her president her salary he said would be one dollar a year and all the dresses she could buy a way of complimenting her and putting her in her place at the same time it was also a convenience his romance with marla maples was blossoming he wanted to install her in atlantic city and to do that he had to bring ivana back to new york in 1989 an event that telegraphed the stress in her life ivana underwent a physical transformation was it to save her marriage if so it didn't work by now donald had marla when the trumps finally reached the divorce settlement after reams of gossip column speculation it looked just like the pre-nuptial agreement they had all along but ivana left with something extra she became a trumpian star in her own right with a seven-figure book deal a career as an advertising model with a daughter and the freedom to enjoy the glittering social life her husband so often said he hated as for donald the art of the deal with marla was to stay in the headlines but not necessarily close the transaction [Music] there's old money there's new money and there's trump money the kind of money that buys the biggest most famous house in town mar-a-lago other people wanted to buy mar-a-lago many many other people but they had different ideas they wanted to condo it they wanted to make it into a hotel they wanted to do all of in my opinion the wrong things with mar-a-lago this is a treasure this is a u.s treasure and it had to be preserved trump's original idea wasn't that high-minded he wanted to subdivide the property and create 14 luxury homes the city turned him down and that was just the beginning of trump's quarrels with palm beach [Music] everybody in real estate and all the residents of the city of palm beach know that that huge house the post foundation home is in the direct flight path of west palm beach international airport so how mr trump overlooked this fact when he bought the house i don't know for donald trump to come down here like an invading bacteria like a carpet bagger and say uh those planes fly over my mansion mar-a-lago i don't like the noise palm beach county uh just i don't care how much money you've spent move your damn airport i would be shocked and amazed that anybody reasonable would expect to move a federal facility for their own personal convenience and interest in new york when trump had a problem there was always a politician with a sympathetic ear it wasn't so simple in palm beach people then perceived myself as being in the hands or in the pockets of donald trump wrongly perceived but they perceived that just the same and that resulted in a problem in terms of electability on election day trump's candidates lost socially trump lost as well when he flew in guests from new york they went home buzzing about the unfashionably early dinner hour and the room phones that were programmed to prevent expensive long-distance calls among the locals trump fared no better when he tried to get his tax assessment lowered he failed finally it turned out that this deal wasn't as artful as he claimed in his book the art of the deal trump said that he bought the house for eight million dollars paying 100 percent cash actually he spent 10 million of which only 2 000 was cash now mar-a-lago is on the market again and because trump can't find a buyer he's filed another plan to subdivide his national treasure then there's trump plaza of the palm beaches beautiful to look at from palm beach but actually in west palm beach across the water and in a definitely down scale neighborhood trump bought these condos out of bankruptcy and put his name on them when they didn't sell he offered prospective buyers rides on the trump princess now the bank that held the mortgage on these towers has auctioned the apartments at fire sale prices there's an underground passage from trump's house to the bath and tennis club other owners have been able to use it palm beach veterans say trump never will and they're not shy about telling trump why he hasn't made it here we fear change like here like we'd hear tigers we're terrified of change we've just had to landmark the bridges because they wanted to make huge high span bridges we don't want change here at all what's irked some people about trump is that he hasn't really become a part of the charity thing if if he really wanted to be a part of this town then perhaps they feel he should give money toward those causes could help us with money money money for charities he he could lend his and lend his name lend his house and and contribute to a lot of things anybody can buy your way into a charity ball you give me 500 you're in you donate 20 000 maybe you can be one of the co-chair people well what is that that's nothing as far as getting into the to the parties and into the people's homes you can't buy your way in they like you they will invite you or they won't the criteria still is the the old family name the vanderbilts the whitneys the muns the fips and to them nouveau riche is just another thing he couldn't get into palm beach was his yacht the harbor was too small so while it was there the trump princess had to be moored in fort lauderdale next to a best western motel i don't think he has the making of being a real farm beacher once the public caught on to trump's games trump bashing became a popular sport but right up to the moment his infidelities were revealed he could do no wrong it's very sexy very handsome very powerful he cares about america he cares about new york city and he's doing something trying to help new york city some thought he should run for president trump considered it would you really like to take over and run and run the country as you have run your organization i would much prefer that somebody else do it i just don't know if somebody else is there i don't know if we have the kind of advocate that you need we need major surgery this country needs major services i think i do a fantastic job he doesn't give a good rat's hoot about poor people who might be living on sidewalks outside his building he talks a good game but he lacks character those who have worked closely with trump have seen a more personal side of this most public man he has a loner quality there's no question about it and there for all the sense of donald trump as someone who's out and around all the time there are dozens if not hundreds of times that i have spoken to him at 9 30 or 10 30 or 8 o'clock at night on a weekday when the only thing between me and him interfering is the remote control changer changing the channels he presents himself marvelously but the donald trump that i saw in real life was very different than the donald that i saw on tv or on some sort of video or a talk show or something and that fascinated me and that's when i realized how much a performance it was he can be extremely articulate and very well mannered and he has this marvelous sort of boyishness that projects i think rather successfully on camera in person you see a hostility and an anger i've known him to say after a meeting where he'll freak out screaming people that he'll walk out and say some performance wasn't it um but a lot of times it's not a performance and he'll claim it is because then it again it maintains his image that he's always in control he's often out of control he treats people i've seen people treated horribly including his own family by him extraordinary verbal assaults [Music] he doesn't define himself from within he doesn't define himself through relationships or through some spiritual interests and concerns he does not have close friends outside of his family but i don't think and he himself has said that friendship in the way that other people might think it's important is as high a priority for him you expect employees to speak well of the boss but some of trump's associates seem to genuinely love him one in particular was this man john beninov vice president of trump plaza hotel and casino we have a great leader in mr trump and in mr hyde and they care about their people and that's the difference at trump plaza they truly care about their employees we don't like to overwork four months after this interview beninov stephen hyde and mark edis another key atlantic city executive were killed in a helicopter accident a stunned trump publicly mourned their loss nine months later in an interview in the new york times trump attacked the three dead men blaming many of his financial problems in atlantic city on their mismanagement the comments enraged some trump employees trump later denied he made the criticism but the reporter who wrote the story told us trump couldn't have been more explicit when you work for trump you know you're working for the best there's i think it's human nature when people say where do you work when you're working for the number one place there's a lot of pride behind that he's a crap game operator why do you say that well he runs most of his money comes from crap games in jersey i mean if that takes a genius to get money out of a crap game come on there's been geniuses in this city for a hundred years that's what gambling is all about you win some and lose some but it's really a trap they were giving you a thousand dollar bills and that's how you you ran to the casinos you wanted the breaking up of your heart and there's a feeling of a different kind of life i must sound like a baby up here i haven't smoked i haven't drank and i don't take drugs okay well i have other problems but i can't tell you about them trump has an addiction all his own cash flow and to satisfy his craving for cash he went where the money was to atlantic city atlantic city liked the fact that trump seemed to have a clean image with no prior ties to the gambling industry donald's problem is a simple one he wanted to become a super citizen he wanted to get to be the beneficiary of a privilege granted by the state of new jersey namely gaming license and therefore you have to it's like going to confession you have to prove that you are an absolute first class citizen that was a little hard to do considering his connection to daniel sullivan to the teamsters union sullivan was a reformer to the law he was a man with a criminal record to donald trump though he was an asset on his construction jobs and he was also co-owner of the land on which trump wanted to build his first casino one of sullivan's partners on that land had links to nikki scarfo the crime boss of atlantic city currently in jail sullivan and his partners had bought the land just one week before they sold it to trump trump owned the land but he said he wouldn't build until he had a casino license the casino control commission granted it to him in record time he had almost everything he did not have the financing for the trump plaza and at that time you know he was in the process of building the the trump tower in new york and he was under construction with the hyatt new york trump soon found a partner with deep pockets this time it was harrah's for half ownership harris put up 50 million dollars and for that trump had to take second billing he'd soon buy harrah's out and rename the casino trump plaza just like going to confession casino applications must be renewed every few years so casino owners must stay clear of associations like daniel sullivan that leads to questions about trump's relationship with this man joseph wexelbaum to donald trump he provided helicopter service to atlantic city to drug enforcement officials he was a sometime middleman between colombian cocaine suppliers and american drug dealers in 1985 he was indicted on drug and tax conspiracy charges and eventually served 18 months in jail trump proved to be a loyal friend after wexlebum had been indicted trump rented him one of his new york city apartments on a park cache part barter basis when wexlebum got out of jail he moved into a trump tower apartment owned by his girlfriend others wouldn't have trump's luck with the casino control commission when it came to investigating their ties with undesirables that's why baron hilton struck out the division of gaming enforcement then recommended licensing but the casino control commission said no accusing key executives and one of hilton's lawyers of being too close to organized crime the license was denied trump purchased the hotel and opened it as trump's castle [Music] everything's just bigger much bigger and frankly more expensive but it's something that when it's done if done right is a wonderful investment trump only saw the cash coming in early on a casino analyst named marvin rothman saw it pouring out while cash flow numbers sound very impressive it's very important to be able to cover your debt service because cash flow doesn't mean anything if you can't cover debt covering debt wasn't on trump's mind having it all was so trump's debt grew larger as he relied on the magic of junk bonds instead of partners to finance his habit but this was the mid-1980s trump was on top every hand was full of aces and he kept going trump began playing a new game weaken your competition first came haras his former partner he bought its stock and the company spent 30 million dollars buying him out with the profits he went after bally's there was litigation on both sides and in the end valley succumbed to his apparent green mail and paid him off he skirts the law in the sense that he goes right up to the edge and sometimes over it he uses his enormous economic clout instead of using his valley profits to pay down debt trump went after the biggest prize in town the unfinished taj mahal owned by resorts international he began buying resort stock the rest of the deal was pure trump within a matter of months he had convinced resorts board of directors to permit him to put into effect a management contract which was worth something like 60 million dollars to him nothing like this has ever happened before and in essence they were paying him to supervise his own investment in his own company everybody was just aghast because there would be nothing you know nothing left for the shareholders in return for the management contract trump was supposed to finance the completion of the taj mahal he never had any intention of doing that until he owned the company outright the contract bled the company dry stock prices fell but they weren't low enough yet for trump so he tried something else resorts hired bankruptcy council and mr trump walked them through the unfinished building within hours all of atlantic city and indeed the entire financial community knew that resorts had consulted bankruptcy council and the rumors were rampant that resorts was going into bankruptcy there's no doubt that this had a very intimidating effect on the casino control commission today donald trump sat in the audience as state officials considered his request to gobble up even more trump's next frontier the biggest of them all the resorts taj mahal still under construction you ask yourself why did the casino control commission approve it i think they were literally bowled over by donald trump and by the utter fear that they had that he would walk away from atlantic city that he would let this hotel under construction remain unfinished that it would be another blight on the atlantic city landscape to have new jersey's tallest building sitting there as a skeleton for everybody to see everyone was happy about the deal except the shareholders before trump's deal could be completed out of the west came what looked like a white knight it was the biggest high-stakes game on the boardwalk in years the players entertainer merv griffin and billionaire businessman donald trump the prize resorts international and the unfinished taj mahal the winner some might call it a tie griffin gets resorts trump the taj mahal i love that perception i won i won the one he is still you know a year later standing in new york i won i won i won he wants to make sure everybody in america knows he won and so i look at him and say donald you won now do you feel better now eat he had called me after he had negotiated to sell the property to merv griffin and he said didn't i do the best deal then i get the best of merv marvin and i said donald i think it was great that you sold the property but i think you made a mistake i think i think buying the taj mahal is is going to be a very bad thing for you well what do you mean i mean i think the taj mahal is going to be the greatest success ever i mean you just don't understand and i said well i i can't understand why you want to operate three different properties in atlantic city how do you differentiate the marketing and the taj is going to be such an expensive property to operate marvin you just don't have vision you just don't understand this thing is going to be a monster having won this battle trump thought he could do anything he plunged in and bought two more atlantic city properties now he really needed cash so he invested in another competitor hoping to get bought out at a profit again this time the casino control commission made him back down it threatened to take his licenses if he did it again that cut off his cash supply mr trump or for that matter any other casino operator may not use a subsequent sale or disposition to purge himself of the taint created by the purchase of an interest in a new jersey casino competitor or its holding or intermediary companies this was the turning point for trump but he didn't see his sites were set only on the opening of the taj mahal [Music] one step beyond your wildest imagination [Music] an eighth wonder wasn't enough trump needed a miracle a business that would throw off enough cash to pay his enormous debt the regulators were turned off the banks cried for blood trump gave it to them he personally guaranteed the loans and put his properties at risk trump saw only the upside marvin raufman saw it differently if the company doesn't generate the kind of wins it takes to pay 95 million dollar debt service to pay 125 million dollars to the payroll in payroll expenses if we got into a bad economy and all of a sudden the atlantic city markets stopped growing i think that would be catastrophic to to to an operation like the taj mahal that was so leveraged and dead trump went ballistic over a similar prediction in the wall street journal to appease him rothman's employers montgomery jenny scott fired him the analyst sued not only did he win the judge awarded him seven hundred thousand dollars in damages when the taj mahal opened in the spring of 1990 it didn't solve trump's problems it made them worse within six months the once invincible trump had to file for bankruptcy and give his bondholders a one-half ownership in his crown jewel by now trump was in danger of being washed out to sea on a wave of debt his castle was being held for ransom and trump plaza couldn't bail him out trump's addiction for cash had brought him to the brink i in a way get high from what i do okay in a way that's my and i look at it as a positive addiction because addiction can be positive the casinos are tough nut they're tough they're really tough i wish there was a chance of beating them i'll be the first in line but there isn't you gotta die broke with the game donald trump's failures in atlantic city might not have been so damaging to him if another of his grand designs hadn't failed on his home turf in new york this abandoned railroad yard on manhattan's west side was donald trump's field of dreams the largest undeveloped site of land in manhattan with magnificent views of the hudson river trump bought it for 93 million dollars and he planned to put up the world's tallest building there you can build two 75-story towers for less cost than you can build a single 150 story tower so the only reason you would want to build a 150-story tower is for status economically it's insane you know one of the reasons that i'm trying to get approval to build the world's tallest building it's the only lure i can see to get a major company to come to new york trump thought he could get nbc to leave rockefeller center and relocate in his project they didn't he also saw trump city as a gift to the west side but the people of that neighborhood rose up against him run out into the parking lot laughing actors writers political activists in no time at all they were fighting trump he's moving ahead full steam with the project trying to win approval for the plan as a matter of fact he's filed what's called an environmental impact statement i can show you to the ceiling is this correct to the ceiling in eis it goes to the ceiling this is a four volume 000 page technical document which is supposed to project the impact of the plan well you can claim all sorts of things if no one bothers to question you i don't know who the hell's going to read it i don't know how it's even possible to read west bride has a team of professionals top experts in environmental engineering law urban design and economics who are going through this whole thing with a fine-tooth comb i think new york but trump kept promoting his dreams is our biggest city and i think new york should have the world's tallest building um in all due respect here in new york we'd have always believed the biggest is best in the old days there were a tiny handful of skyscrapers in new york and they were thrilling to us especially when we could see them from a distance and they symbolize the greatness of new york city but when you pile one skyscraper next to another so the squirrels could leap from one top to the next pretty soon you're living in the bottom of a well psychologically you feel uneasy you're in shadow something is wrong you're trapped inside something which is way beyond the human scale and none of the things that we need like light and air and the sun on our skins is any longer present to us certainly he wants to build the tallest building in the world somewhere i mean he has a real edifice complex i mean he's got a problem it's got to have the biggest it's like the kid who has to have the biggest and best toy it's the american dream gone berserk really is what it is when you're allowed to dream as big as you want but if your dreams step on the lives of ordinary people and ruin the quality of their life and their neighborhood you have to be stopped for now donald trump's field of dreams lies empty and it has become another debtors field for him in interest and taxes it costs him 60 thousand dollars a day 1.8 million dollars a month 21 million dollars a year it took years but those numbers finally began to impress even trump and to the surprise of many the dictatorial developer turned into a conciliatory collaborator and all those people he used to fight with suddenly they were his best friends the tallest building in the world suddenly it was any building his opponents in the city would let him put up but like almost everything else in trump's life this project's future remains uncertain heard about trump's new deal what trump has a new game in the late 1980s smart players were paying down dead and protecting their equity donald trump went right on playing his game my new game is trump the game trump the game where you deal for everything you've ever wanted to own because it's not whether you win or lose it's whether you win all your life you grow up you go to the plaza you go to a ball you go and have dinner you see the plaza it represents something that's very special to new york the plaza was the ultimate trophy to him the crown jewel of his new york properties its price tag of 407 million dollars also made it one of the most expensive hotel purchases ever to get it he violated his own art of the deal rules he paid too much leveraged other properties and went deeper into debt but to the world he had won again few saw the reality he was now risking everything this is a characteristic of all self-made and in a sense donald is self-made in this way highly driven and there is lying behind it an idea i think an idea ultimately about immortality this thing about donald's going to be going to die and and success there's the gambler's analogy you got to keep rolling the dice and you got to keep rolling bigger back in 1989 most people thought trump was one of the richest men in the world when we started asking questions about his wealth trump gave us this letter from his accounting firm it said he had 700 million dollars in cash the letter made it look as if trump could write a check for that amount on the spot he forgot to mention that most of the money was tied up in credit lines from his banks his next gamble was the eastern shuttle with new york a hub for flights to boston and washington getting the shuttle all of my life i've flown on the eastern shuttle and to think of owning the eastern shuttle was beyond me i was just beyond imagination that it was in a year the shuttle in the plaza had cost him three-quarters of a billion dollars mostly borrowed and trump wasn't finished buying desperate for cash he next made a bid for american airlines at the very least he hoped they'd buy him off he was easily rebuffed he lost more than money his aura of invincibility was shattered for generations men in trouble have fled to california and that's where trump looked next it would be a fresh start in every way a new base of operations with a new blonde he set his sights on the old ambassador hotel the city had been planning to build a high school there trump thought that was silly what the area really needed was the same thing he said new york needed the year before the world's tallest building la proved too much for the man i'm not telling tails out of school but the man is almost bankrupt trying to acquire all kinds of things and i don't know why he's bothering us in los angeles tell him to settle his problems in new york stay there and let us get on with the show the breakup of his marriage put him on the front page but he could no longer control the stories ivana asked for half of his assets and the press now asked half of what forbes magazine took him out of the billionaire class everyone now knew what his architect had told us a year earlier sometimes i think that when you hear a figure quoted by donald if you divide by two then divide by four you're probably closer to the real answer trump had built his empire on other people's money now he couldn't pay it back and that empire was on the verge of bankruptcy the banks who had relied on trump's math were in trouble too suddenly everything was for sale things got so bad trump tried to slip his private plane out of its hangar without paying the storage fee the state police were called clearly order had to be restored and for now some semblance of it has been even donald's father has helped out a three million dollar purchase of chips in one of his son's casinos went toward paying interest to bondholders pacifying some of them at least for a time today there are no new trump extravaganzas what sustains him perhaps the sense that even this low point is just the moment that it's all a game i do understand it's all basically a game we're all here to play the game and we're all hopefully going to play it well but some people obviously can't play it well for trump the game that made him its hero was over so this is a big hurdle and it's great and i'm happy and maybe you people can cover one of the millions of other people now and sort of leave trump alone are you selling anything officer they just might do what he wants and where would that leave him the only end to this road is sort of ultimate madness and you know living alone in an apartment complex in panama and growing your fingernails along and storing your urine and mason jars he he just there's no other way i mean that or taking over the world right one or the other it's either the most public life in the world or the most private at the end of this there's no in between he's not gonna you're not gonna catch him you know with a toro on a sunday afternoon cutting the lawn uh somewhere yeah uh it is it's gonna be something one extreme or another either the greatest bond villain of all time or howard hughes last week if you should forget that trump's his name you'll see it 553 times in the game now we know that donald is one rich guy so how come in every shot he wears the same shirt and tie if your deals turn out lucky and you're smart as a fox you could be like donald and end up on a box big bucks will never seem the same when you play trump [Music] [Music] it's funny [Music] that it's true you

Channel: Journeyman Pictures

Views: 883,842

Rating: 4.2918534 out of 5

Keywords: Journeyman, Journeyman Pictures, Trump, Donald Trump, documentary, film, trump business, Trump 1980s, trump real estate, trump history, trump new york, trump tower, election 2020

Id: wYU2FJxsSeE

Length: 82min 5sec (4925 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2020