{"id":664,"date":"2026-06-24T13:08:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T13:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=664"},"modified":"2026-06-24T13:08:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T13:08:22","slug":"trump-solo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=664","title":{"rendered":"Trump Solo"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One morning last week, Donald Trump, who under routine circumstances tolerates publicity no more grudgingly than an infant tolerates a few daily feedings, sat in his office on the twenty-sixth floor of Trump Tower, his mood rather subdued. As could be expected, given the fact that his three-and-a-half-year-old marriage to Marla Maples was ending, paparazzi were staking out the exits of Trump Tower, while all weekend helicopters had been hovering over Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach. And what would come of it? \u201cI think the thing I\u2019m worst at is managing the press,\u201d he said. \u201cThe thing I\u2019m best at is business and conceiving. The press portrays me as a wild flamethrower. In actuality, I think I\u2019m much different from that. I think I\u2019m totally inaccurately portrayed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more What Do Career Women Turned Full-Time Moms Do All Day?<\/a><\/p>\n

So, though he\u2019d agreed to a conversation at this decisive moment, it called for wariness, the usual quota of prefatory \u201coff-the-record\u201ds and then some. He wore a navy-blue suit, white shirt, black-onyx-and-gold links, and a crimson print necktie. Every strand of his interesting hair\u2014its gravity-defying ducktails and dry pompadour, its telltale absence of gray\u2014was where he wanted it to be. He was working his way through his daily gallon of Diet Coke and trying out a few diversionary maneuvers. Yes, it was true, the end of a marriage was a sad thing. Meanwhile, was I aware of what a success he\u2019d had with the Nation\u2019s Parade, the Veterans Day celebration he\u2019d been very supportive of back in 1995? Well, here was a little something he wanted to show me, a nice certificate signed by both Joseph Orlando, president, and Harry Feinberg, secretary-treasurer, of the New York chapter of the 4th Armored Division Association, acknowledging Trump\u2019s participation as an associate grand marshal. A million four hundred thousand people had turned out for the celebration, he said, handing me some press clippings. \u201cO.K., I see this story says a half million spectators. But, trust me, I heard a million four.\u201d Here was another clipping, from the Times<\/em>, just the other day, confirming that rents on Fifth Avenue were the highest in the world. \u201cAnd who owns more of Fifth Avenue than I do?\u201d Or how about the new building across from the United Nations Secretariat, where he planned a \u201cvery luxurious hotel-condominium project, a major project.\u201d Who would finance it? \u201cAny one of twenty-five different groups. They all want to finance it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Months earlier, I\u2019d asked Trump whom he customarily confided in during moments of tribulation. \u201cNobody,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just not my thing\u201d\u2014a reply that didn\u2019t surprise me a bit. Salesmen, and Trump is nothing if not a brilliant salesman, specialize in simulated intimacy rather than the real thing. His modus operandi had a sharp focus: fly the flag, never budge from the premise that the universe revolves around you, and, above all, stay in character. The Trump tour de force\u2014his evolution from rough-edged rich kid with Brooklyn and Queens political-clubhouse connections to an international name-brand commodity\u2014remains, unmistakably, the most rewarding accomplishment of his ingenious career. The patented Trump palaver, a gaseous blather of \u201cfantastic\u201ds and \u201camazing\u201ds and \u201cterrific\u201ds and \u201cincredible\u201ds and various synonyms for \u201cbiggest,\u201d is an indispensable ingredient of the name brand. In addition to connoting a certain quality of construction, service, and security\u2014perhaps only Trump can explicate the meaningful distinctions between \u201csuper luxury\u201d and \u201csuper super luxury\u201d\u2014his eponym subliminally suggests that a building belongs<\/em> to him even after it\u2019s been sold off as condominiums.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Everywhere inside the Trump Organization headquarters, the walls were lined with framed magazine covers, each a shot of Trump or someone who looked an awful lot like him. The profusion of these images\u2014of a man who possessed unusual skills, though not, evidently, a gene for irony\u2014seemed the sum of his appetite for self-reflection. His unique talent\u2014being \u201cTrump\u201d or, as he often referred to himself, \u201cthe Trumpster,\u201d looming ubiquitous by reducing himself to a persona\u2014exempted him from introspection.<\/p>\n

If the gossips hinted that he\u2019d been cuckolded, they had it all wrong; untying the marital knot was based upon straightforward economics. He had a prenuptial agreement, because \u201cif you\u2019re a person of wealth you have to have one.\u201d In the words of his attorney, Jay Goldberg, the agreement was \u201cas solid as concrete.\u201d It would reportedly pay Marla a million dollars, plus some form of child support and alimony, and the time to do a deal was sooner rather than later. A year from now, she would become entitled to a percentage of his net worth. And, as a source very close<\/em> to Trump made plain, \u201cIf it goes from a fixed amount to what could be a very enormous amount\u2014even a small percentage of two and a half billion dollars or whatever is a lot of money\u2014we\u2019re talking about very huge things. The numbers are much bigger than people understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

The long-term matrimonial odds had never been terrifically auspicious. What was Marla Maples, after all, but a tabloid cartoon of the Other Woman, an alliteration you could throw the clich\u00e9 manual at: a leggy, curvaceous blond-bombshell beauty-pageant-winning actress-model-whatever? After a couple of years of deftly choreographed love spats, Donald and Marla produced a love child, whom they could not resist naming Tiffany. A few months before they went legit, Marla told a television interviewer that the contemplation of marriage tended to induce in Donald the occasional \u201clittle freak-out\u201d or visit from the \u201cfear monster.\u201d Her role, she explained, was \u201cto work with him and help him get over that fear monster.\u201d Whenever they travelled, she said, she took along her wedding dress. (\u201cMight as well. You\u2019ve got to be prepared.\u201d) The ceremony, at the Plaza Hotel, right before Christmas, 1993, drew an audience of a thousand but, judging by the heavy turnout of Atlantic City high rollers, one not deemed A-list. The Trump Taj Mahal casino commemorated the occasion by issuing a Donald-and-Marla five-dollar gambling chip.<\/p>\n

The last time around, splitting with Ivana, he\u2019d lost the P.R. battle from the git-go. After falling an entire news cycle behind Ivana\u2019s spinmeisters, he never managed to catch up. In one ill-advised eruption, he told Liz Smith that his wife reminded him of his b\u00eate noire Leona Helmsley, and the columnist chided, \u201cShame on you, Donald! How dare you say that about the mother of your children?\u201d His only moment of unadulterated, so to speak, gratification occurred when an acquaintance of Marla\u2019s blabbed about his swordsmanship. The screamer \u201cbest sex i\u2019ve ever had<\/em>\u201d\u2014an instant classic\u2014is widely regarded as the most libel-proof headline ever published by the Post<\/em>. On the surface, the coincidence of his first marital breakup with the fact that he owed a few billion he couldn\u2019t exactly pay back seemed extraordinarily unpropitious. In retrospect, his timing was excellent<\/em>. Ivana had hoped to nullify a postnuptial agreement whose provenance could be traced to Donald\u2019s late friend and preceptor the lawyer-fixer and humanitarian Roy Cohn. Though the agreement entitled her to fourteen million dollars plus a forty-six-room house in Connecticut, she and her counsel decided to ask for half of everything Trump owned; extrapolating from Donald\u2019s blustery pronouncements over the years, they pegged her share at two and a half billion. In the end, she was forced to settle for the terms stipulated in the agreement because Donald, at that juncture, conveniently appeared to be broke.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Now, of course, according to Trump, things were much different. Business was stronger than ever. And, of course, he wanted to be fair to Marla. Only a million bucks? Hey, a deal was a deal. He meant \u201cfair\u201d in a larger sense: \u201cI think it\u2019s very unfair to Marla, or, for that matter, anyone\u2014while there are many positive things, like life style, which is at the highest level\u2014 I think it\u2019s unfair to Marla always to be subjected to somebody who enjoys his business and does it at a very high level and does it on a big scale. There are lots of compensating balances. You live in the Mar-a-Lagos of the world, you live in the best apartment. But, I think you understand, I don\u2019t have very much time. I just don\u2019t have very much time. There\u2019s nothing I can do about what I do other than stopping. And I just don\u2019t want to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

A securities analyst who has studied Trump\u2019s peregrinations for many years believes, \u201cDeep down, he wants to be Madonna.\u201d In other words, to ask how the gods could have permitted Trump\u2019s resurrection is to mistake profound superficiality for profundity, performance art for serious drama. A prime example of superficiality at its most rewarding: the Trump International Hotel & Tower, a fifty-two-story hotel-condominium conversion of the former Gulf & Western Building, on Columbus Circle, which opened last January. The Trump name on the skyscraper belies the fact that his ownership is limited to his penthouse apartment and a stake in the hotel\u2019s restaurant and garage, which he received as part of his development fee. During the grand-opening ceremonies, however, such details seemed not to matter as he gave this assessment: \u201cOne of the great buildings anywhere in New York, anywhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The festivities that day included a feng-shui ritual in the lobby, a gesture of respect to the building\u2019s high proportion of Asian buyers, who regard a Trump property as a good place to sink flight capital. An efficient schmoozer, Trump worked the room quickly\u2014a backslap and a wink, a finger on the lapels, no more than a minute with anyone who wasn\u2019t a police commissioner, a district attorney, or a mayoral candidate\u2014and then he was ready to go. His executive assistant, Norma Foerderer, and two other Trump Organization executives were waiting in a car to return to the office. Before it pulled away, he experienced a tug of noblesse oblige. \u201cHold on, just lemme say hello to these Kinney guys,\u201d he said, jumping out to greet a group of parking attendants. \u201cGood job, fellas. You\u2019re gonna be working here for years to come.\u201d It was a quintessential Trumpian gesture, of the sort that explains his popularity among people who barely dare to dream of living in one of his creations.<\/p>\n

Back at the office, a Times<\/em> reporter, Michael Gordon, was on the line, calling from Moscow. Gordon had just interviewed a Russian artist named Zurab Tsereteli, a man with a sense of grandiosity familiar to Trump. Was it true, Gordon asked, that Tsereteli and Trump had discussed erecting on the Hudson River a statue of Christopher Columbus that was six feet taller than the Statue of Liberty?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, it\u2019s already been made, from what I understand,\u201d said Trump, who had met Tsereteli a couple of months earlier, in Moscow. \u201cIt\u2019s got forty million dollars\u2019 worth of bronze in it, and Zurab would like it to be at my West Side Yards development\u201d\u2014a seventy-five-acre tract called Riverside South\u2014\u201cand we are working toward that end.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Trump, the head had arrived in America, the rest of the body was still in Moscow, and the whole thing was being donated by the Russian government. \u201cThe mayor of Moscow has written a letter to Rudy Giuliani stating that they would like to make a gift of this great work by Zurab. It would be my honor if we could work it out with the City of New York. I am absolutely favorably disposed toward it. Zurab is a very unusual guy. This man is major and legit.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Trump hung up and said to me, \u201cSee what I do? All this bullshit. Know what? After shaking five thousand hands, I think I\u2019ll go wash mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norma Foerderer, however, had some pressing business. A lecture agency in Canada was offering Trump a chance to give three speeches over three consecutive days, for seventy-five thousand dollars a pop. \u201cPlus,\u201d she said, \u201cthey provide a private jet, secretarial services, and a weekend at a ski resort.\u201d<\/p>\n

How did Trump feel about it?<\/p>\n

\u201cMy attitude is if somebody\u2019s willing to pay me two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to make a speech, it seems stupid not to show up. You know why I\u2019ll do it? Because I don\u2019t think anyone\u2019s ever been paid that much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Would it be fresh material?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll be fresh to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next item: Norma had drafted a letter to Mar-a-Lago members, inviting them to a dinner featuring a speech by George Pataki and entertainment by Marvin Hamlisch. \u201cOh, and speaking of the Governor, I just got a call. They\u2019re shooting a new \u2018I Love New York\u2019 video and they\u2019d like Libby Pataki to go up and down our escalator. I said fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Mar-a-Lago entertainment booker named Jim Grau called about a Carly Simon concert. Trump switched on his speakerphone: \u201cIs she gonna do it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, two things have to be done, Donald. No. 1, she\u2019d like to hear from you. And, No. 2, she\u2019d like to turn it in some degree into a benefit for Christopher Reeve.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not a bad idea,\u201d said Trump. \u201cIs Christopher Reeve gonna come? He can come down on my plane. So what do I have to do, call her?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to tell you how we got Carly on this because some of your friends are involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJim, I don\u2019t give a shit. Who the hell cares?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease, Donald. Remember when you had your yacht up there? You had Rose Styron aboard. And her husband wrote \u2018Sophie\u2019s Choice.\u2019 And it\u2019s through her good offices\u2014\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cO.K. Good. So thank \u2019em and maybe invite \u2019em.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of my problem,\u201d Trump said to me, \u201cis that I have to do a lot of things myself. It takes so much time. Julio Iglesias is coming to Mar-a-Lago, but I have to call<\/em> Julio, I have to have lunch<\/em> with Julio. I have Pavarotti coming. Pavarotti doesn\u2019t perform for anybody. He\u2019s the highest-paid performer in the world. A million dollars a performance. The hardest guy to get. If I call him, he\u2019ll do it\u2014for a huge<\/em> amount less. Why? Because they like me, they respect me, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

During Trump\u2019s ascendancy, in the nineteen-eighties, the essence of his performance art\u2014an opera-buffa parody of wealth\u2014accounted for his populist appeal as well as for the opprobrium of those who regard with distaste the spectacle of an unbridled id. Delineating his commercial aesthetic, he once told an interviewer, \u201cI have glitzy casinos because people expect it. . . . Glitz works in Atlantic City. . . . And in my residential buildings I sometimes use flash, which is a level below glitz.\u201d His first monument to himself, Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue at Fifty-sixth Street, which opened its doors in 1984, possessed many genuinely impressive elements\u2014a sixty-eight-story sawtoothed silhouette, a salmon-colored Italian-marble atrium equipped with an eighty-foot waterfall\u2014and became an instant tourist attraction. In Atlantic City, the idea was to slather on as much ornamentation as possible, the goal being (a) to titillate with the fantasy that a Trump-like life was a lifelike life and (b) to distract from the fact that he\u2019d lured you inside to pick your pocket.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At times, neither glitz nor flash could disguise financial reality. A story in the Times<\/em> three months ago contained a reference to his past \u201cbrush with bankruptcy,\u201d and Trump, though gratified that the Times<\/em> gave him play on the front page, took umbrage at that phrase. He \u201cnever went bankrupt,\u201d he wrote in a letter to the editor, nor did he \u201cever, at any time, come close.\u201d Having triumphed over adversity, Trump assumes the prerogative to write history.<\/p>\n

In fact, by 1990, he was not only at risk, he was, by any rational standard, hugely in the red. Excessively friendly bankers infected with the promiscuous optimism that made the eighties so memorable and so forgettable had financed Trump\u2019s acquisitive impulses to the tune of three billion seven hundred and fifty million dollars. The personally guaranteed portion\u2014almost a billion\u2014represented the value of Trump\u2019s good will, putative creditworthiness, and capacity for shame. A debt restructuring began in the spring of 1990 and continued for several years. In the process, six hundred or seven hundred or perhaps eight hundred million of his creditors\u2019 dollars vaporized and drifted wherever lost money goes. In America, there is no such thing as a debtors\u2019 prison, nor is there a tidy moral to this story.<\/p>\n

Several of Trump\u2019s trophies\u2014the Plaza Hotel and all three Atlantic City casinos\u2014were subjected to \u201cprepackaged bankruptcy,\u201d an efficiency maneuver that is less costly than the full-blown thing. Because the New Jersey Casino Control Act requires \u201cfinancial stability\u201d for a gaming license, it seems hard to avoid the inference that Trump\u2019s Atlantic City holdings were in serious jeopardy. Nevertheless, \u201cblip\u201d is the alternative \u201cb\u201d word he prefers, as in \u201cSo the market, as you know, turns lousy and I have this blip.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump began plotting his comeback before the rest of the world\u2014or, perhaps, even he\u2014fully grasped the direness of his situation. In April of 1990, he announced to the Wall Street Journal<\/em> a plan to sell certain assets and become the \u201cking of cash,\u201d a stratagem that would supposedly set the stage for a shrewd campaign of bargain hunting. That same month, he drew down the final twenty-five million dollars of an unsecured hundred-million-dollar personal line of credit from Bankers Trust. Within seven weeks, he failed to deliver a forty-three-million-dollar payment due to bondholders of the Trump Castle Casino, and he also missed a thirty-million-dollar interest payment to one of the estimated hundred and fifty banks that were concerned about his well-being. An army of bankruptcy lawyers began camping out in various boardrooms.<\/p>\n

Making the blip go away entailed, among other sacrifices, forfeiting management control of the Plaza and handing over the titles to the Trump Shuttle (the old Eastern Airlines Boston-New York-Washington route) and a twin-towered thirty-two-story condominium building near West Palm Beach, Florida. He also said goodbye to his two-hundred-and-eighty-two-foot yacht, the Trump Princess, and to his Boeing 727. Appraisers inventoried the contents of his Trump Tower homestead. Liens were attached to just about everything but his Brioni suits. Perhaps the ultimate indignity was having to agree to a personal spending cap of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It would have been tactically wise, to say nothing of tactful, if, as Trump\u2019s creditors wrote off large chunks of their portfolios, he could have curbed his breathtaking propensity for self-aggrandizement. The bravado diminished somewhat for a couple of years\u2014largely because the press stopped paying attention\u2014but by 1993 he was proclaiming, \u201cThis year has been the most successful year I\u2019ve had in business.\u201d Every year since, he\u2019s issued the same news flash. A spate of Trump-comeback articles appeared in 1996, including several timed to coincide with his fiftieth birthday.<\/p>\n

Then, last October, Trump came into possession of what a normal person would regard as real money. For a hundred and forty-two million dollars, he sold his half interest in the Grand Hyatt Hotel, on Forty-second Street, to the Pritzker family, of Chicago, his longtime, and long-estranged, partners in the property. Most of the proceeds weren\u2019t his to keep, but he walked away with more than twenty-five million dollars. The chief significance of the Grand Hyatt sale was that it enabled Trump to extinguish the remnants of his once monstrous personally guaranteed debt. When Forbes<\/em> published its annual list of the four hundred richest Americans, he sneaked on (three hundred and seventy-third position) with an estimated net worth of four hundred and fifty million. Trump, meanwhile, had compiled his own unaudited appraisal, one he was willing to share along with the amusing caveat \u201cI\u2019ve never shown this to a reporter before.\u201d According to his calculations, he was actually worth two and a quarter billion dollars\u2014Forbes<\/em> had lowballed him by eighty per cent. Still, he had officially rejoined the plutocracy, his first appearance since the blip.<\/p>\n

Jay Goldberg, who in addition to handling Trump\u2019s matrimonial legal matters also represented him in the Grand Hyatt deal, told me that, after it closed, his client confessed that the novelty of being unencumbered had him lying awake nights. When I asked Trump about this, he said, \u201cLeverage is an amazing phenomenon. I love leverage. Plus, I\u2019ve never been a huge sleeper.\u201d Trump doesn\u2019t drink or smoke, claims he\u2019s never even had a cup of coffee. He functions, evidently, according to inverse logic and metabolism. What most people would find unpleasantly stimulating\u2014owing vastly more than you should to lenders who, figuratively, at least, can carve you into small pieces\u2014somehow engenders in him a soothing narcotic effect. That, in any event, is the impression Trump seeks to convey, though the point is now moot. Bankers, typically not the most perspicacious species on earth, from time to time get religion, and there aren\u2019t many who will soon be lining up to thrust fresh bazillions at him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When I met with Trump for the first time, several months ago, he set out to acquaint me with facts that, to his consternation, had remained stubbornly hidden from the public. Several times, he uttered the phrase \u201coff the record, but you can use it.\u201d I understood the implication\u2014I was his tool\u2014but failed to see the purpose. \u201cIf you have me saying these things, even though they\u2019re true, I sound like a schmuck,\u201d he explained. How to account, then, for the bombast of the previous two decades? Alair Townsend, a former deputy mayor in the Koch administration, once quipped, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized.\u201d In time, this bon mot became misattributed to Leona Helmsley, who was only too happy to claim authorship. Last fall, after Evander Holyfield upset Mike Tyson in a heavyweight title fight, Trump snookered the News<\/em> into reporting that he\u2019d collected twenty million bucks by betting a million on the underdog. This prompted the Post<\/em> to make calls to some Las Vegas bookies, who confirmed\u2014shockingly!\u2014that nobody had been handling that kind of action or laying odds close to 20-1. Trump never blinked, just moved on to the next bright idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think people know how big my business is,\u201d Trump told me. \u201cSomehow, they know Trump the celebrity. But I\u2019m the biggest developer in New York. And I\u2019m the biggest there is in the casino business. And that\u2019s pretty good to be the biggest in both. So that\u2019s a lot of stuff.\u201d He talked about 40 Wall Street\u2014\u201ctruly one of the most beautiful buildings in New York\u201d\u2014a seventy-two-story landmark that he was renovating. He said he owned the new Niketown store, tucked under Trump Tower; there was a deal to convert the Mayfair Hotel, at Sixty-fifth and Park, into \u201csuper-super-luxury apartments . . . but that\u2019s like a small one.\u201d He owned the land under the Ritz-Carlton, on Central Park South. (\u201cThat\u2019s a little thing. Nobody knows that I own that. In that way, I\u2019m not really understood.\u201d) With CBS, he now owned the Miss U.S.A., Miss Teen U.S.A., and Miss Universe beauty pageants. He pointed to a stack of papers on his desk, closing documents for the Trump International Hotel & Tower. \u201cLook at these contracts. I get these to sign every day. I\u2019ve signed hundreds of these. Here\u2019s a contract for two-point-two million dollars. It\u2019s a building that isn\u2019t even opened yet. It\u2019s eighty-three per cent sold, and nobody even knows it\u2019s there. For each contract, I need to sign twenty-two times, and if you think that\u2019s easy . . . You know, all the buyers want my signature. I had someone else who works for me signing, and at the closings the buyers got angry. I told myself, \u2018You know, these people are paying a million eight, a million seven, two million nine, four million one\u2014for those kinds of numbers, I\u2019ll sign the fucking contract.\u2019 I understand. Fuck it. It\u2019s just more work.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a real-estate impresario, Trump certainly has no peer. His assertion that he is the biggest real-estate developer<\/em> in New York, however, presumes an elastic definition of that term. Several active developers\u2014among them the Rudins, the Roses, the Milsteins\u2014have added more residential and commercial space to the Manhattan market and have historically held on to what they built. When the outer boroughs figure in the tally\u2014and if Donald isn\u2019t allowed to claim credit for the middle-income high-rise rental projects that generated the fortune amassed by his ninety-one-year-old father, Fred\u2014he slips further in the rankings. But if one\u2019s standard of comparison is simply the number of buildings that bear the developer\u2019s name, Donald dominates the field. Trump\u2019s vaunted art of the deal has given way to the art of \u201cimage ownership.\u201d By appearing to exert control over assets that aren\u2019t necessarily his\u2014at least not in ways that his pronouncements suggest\u2014he exercises his real talent: using his name as a form of leverage. \u201cIt\u2019s German in derivation,\u201d he has said. \u201cNobody really knows where it came from. It\u2019s very unusual, but it just is a good name to have.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the Trump International Hotel & Tower makeover, his role is, in effect, that of broker-promoter rather than risktaker. In 1993, the General Electric Pension Trust, which took over the building in a foreclosure, hired the Galbreath Company, an international real-estate management firm, to recommend how to salvage its mortgage on a nearly empty skyscraper that had an annoying tendency to sway in the wind. Along came Trump, proposing a three-way joint venture. G.E. would put up all the money\u2014two hundred and seventy-five million dollars\u2014and Trump and Galbreath would provide expertise. The market timing proved remarkably favorable. When Trump totted up the profits and calculated that his share came to more than forty million bucks, self-restraint eluded him, and he took out advertisements announcing \u201cThe Most Successful Condominium Tower Ever Built in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

A minor specimen of his image ownership is his ballyhooed \u201chalf interest\u201d in the Empire State Building, which he acquired in 1994. Trump\u2019s initial investment\u2014not a dime\u2014matches his apparent return thus far. His partners, the illegitimate daughter and disreputable son-in-law of an even more disreputable Japanese billionaire named Hideki Yokoi, seem to have paid forty million dollars for the building, though their title, even on a sunny day, is somewhat clouded. Under the terms of leases executed in 1961, the building is operated by a partnership controlled by Peter Malkin and the estate of the late Harry Helmsley. The lessees receive almost ninety million dollars a year from the building\u2019s tenants but are required to pay the lessors (Trump\u2019s partners) only about a million nine hundred thousand. Trump himself doesn\u2019t share in these proceeds, and the leases don\u2019t expire until 2076. Only if he can devise a way to break the leases will his \u201cownership\u201d acquire any value. His strategy\u2014suing the Malkin-Helmsley group for a hundred million dollars, alleging, among other things, that they\u2019ve violated the leases by allowing the building to become a \u201crodent infested\u201d commercial slum\u2014has proved fruitless. In February, when an armed madman on the eighty-sixth-floor observation deck killed a sightseer and wounded six others before shooting himself, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Trump, ever vigilant, would exploit the tragedy, and he did not disappoint. \u201cLeona Helmsley should be ashamed of herself,\u201d he told the Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

One day, when I was in Trump\u2019s office, he took a phone call from an investment banker, an opaque conversation that, after he hung up, I asked him to elucidate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever complicates the world more I do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Come again?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always good to do things nice and complicated so that nobody can figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Case in point: The widely held perception is that Trump is the sole visionary and master builder of Riverside South, the mega-development planned for the former Penn Central Yards, on the West Side. Trump began pawing at the property in 1974, obtained a formal option in 1977, allowed it to lapse in 1979, and re\u00ebntered the picture in 1984, when Chase Manhattan lent him eighty-four million dollars for land-purchase and development expenses. In the years that followed, he trotted out several elephantine proposals, diverse and invariably overly dense residential and commercial mixtures. \u201cZoning for me is a life process,\u201d Trump told me. \u201cZoning is something I have done and ultimately always get because people appreciate what I\u2019m asking for and they know it\u2019s going to be the highest quality.\u201d In fact, the consensus among the West Side neighbors who studied Trump\u2019s designs was that they did not appreciate what he was asking for. An exotically banal hundred-and-fifty-story phallus\u2014\u201cThe World\u2019s Tallest Building\u201d\u2014provided the centerpiece of his most vilified scheme.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The oddest passage in this byzantine history began in the late eighties, when an assortment of high-minded civic groups united to oppose Trump, enlisted their own architects, and drafted a greatly scaled-back alternative plan. The civic groups hoped to persuade Chase Manhattan, which held Trump\u2019s mortgage, to help them entice a developer who could wrest the property from their nemesis. To their dismay, and sheepish amazement, they discovered that one developer was willing to pursue their design: Trump. Over time, the so-called \u201ccivic alternative\u201d has become, in the public mind, thanks to Trump\u2019s drumbeating, his<\/em> proposal; he has appropriated conceptual ownership.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, a syndicate of Asian investors, led by Henry Cheng, of Hong Kong\u2019s New World Development Company, assumed the task of arranging construction financing. This transaction altered Trump\u2019s involvement to a glorified form of sweat equity; for a fee paid by the investment syndicate, Trump Organization staff people would collaborate with a team from New World, monitoring the construction already under way and working on designs, zoning, and planning for the phases to come. Only when New World has recovered its investment, plus interest, will Trump begin to see any real profit\u2014twenty-five years, at least, after he first cast his covetous eye at the Penn Central rail yards. According to Trump\u2019s unaudited net-worth statement, which identifies Riverside South as \u201cTrump Boulevard,\u201d he \u201cowns 30-50% of the project, depending on performance.\u201d This \u201cownership,\u201d however, is a potential profit share rather than actual equity. Six hundred million dollars is the value Trump imputes to this highly provisional asset.<\/p>\n

Of course, the \u201ccomeback\u201d Trump is much the same as the Trump of the eighties; there is no \u201cnew\u201d Trump, just as there was never a \u201cnew\u201d Nixon. Rather, all along there have been several Trumps: the hyperbole addict who prevaricates for fun and profit; the knowledgeable builder whose associates profess awe at his attention to detail; the narcissist whose self-absorption doesn\u2019t account for his dead-on ability to exploit other people\u2019s weaknesses; the perpetual seventeen-year-old who lives in a zero-sum world of winners and \u201ctotal losers,\u201d loyal friends and \u201ccomplete scumbags\u201d; the insatiable publicity hound who courts the press on a daily basis and, when he doesn\u2019t like what he reads, attacks the messengers as \u201chuman garbage\u201d; the chairman and largest stockholder of a billion-dollar public corporation who seems unable to resist heralding overly optimistic earnings projections, which then fail to materialize, thereby eroding the value of his investment\u2014in sum, a fellow both slippery and na\u00efve, artfully calculating and recklessly heedless of consequences.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s most caustic detractors in New York real-estate circles disparage him as \u201ca casino operator in New Jersey,\u201d as if to say, \u201cHe\u2019s not really even one of us.\u201d Such derision is rooted in resentment that his rescue from oblivion\u2014his strategy for remaining the marketable real-estate commodity \u201cTrump\u201d\u2014hinged upon his ability to pump cash out of Atlantic City. The Trump image is nowhere more concentrated than in Atlantic City, and it is there, of late, that the Trump alchemy\u2014transforming other people\u2019s money into his own wealth\u2014has been most strenuously tested.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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To bail himself out with the banks, Trump converted his casinos to public ownership, despite the fact that the constraints inherent in answering to shareholders do not come to him naturally. Inside the Trump Organization, for instance, there is talk of \u201cthe Donald factor,\u201d the three to five dollars per share that Wall Street presumably discounts Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts by allowing for his braggadocio and unpredictability. The initial public offering, in June, 1995, raised a hundred and forty million dollars, at fourteen dollars a share. Less than a year later, a secondary offering, at thirty-one dollars per share, brought in an additional three hundred and eighty million dollars. Trump\u2019s personal stake in the company now stands at close to forty per cent. As chairman, Donald had an excellent year in 1996, drawing a million-dollar salary, another million for miscellaneous \u201cservices,\u201d and a bonus of five million. As a shareholder, however, he did considerably less well. A year ago, the stock traded at thirty-five dollars; it now sells for around ten.<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding Trump\u2019s insistence that things have never been better, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts has to cope with several thorny liabilities, starting with a junk-bond debt load of a billion seven hundred million dollars. In 1996, the company\u2019s losses amounted to three dollars and twenty-seven cents per share\u2014attributable, in part, to extraordinary expenses but also to the fact that the Atlantic City gaming industry has all but stopped growing. And, most glaringly, there was the burden of the Trump Castle, which experienced a ten-per-cent revenue decline, the worst of any casino in Atlantic City.<\/p>\n

Last October, the Castle, a heavily leveraged consistent money loser that had been wholly owned by Trump, was bought into Trump Hotels, a transaction that gave him five million eight hundred and thirty-seven thousand shares of stock. Within two weeks\u2014helped along by a reduced earnings estimate from a leading analyst\u2014the stock price, which had been eroding since the spring, began to slide more precipitously, triggering a shareholder lawsuit that accused Trump of self-dealing and a \u201cgross breach of his fiduciary duties.\u201d At which point he began looking for a partner. The deal Trump came up with called for Colony Capital, a sharp real-estate outfit from Los Angeles, to buy fifty-one per cent of the Castle for a price that seemed to vindicate the terms under which he\u2019d unloaded it on the public company. Closer inspection revealed, however, that Colony\u2019s capital injection would give it high-yield preferred, rather than common, stock\u2014in other words, less an investment than a loan. Trump-l\u2019oeil: Instead of trying to persuade the world that he owned something that wasn\u2019t his, he was trying to convey the impression that he would part with an onerous asset that, as a practical matter, he would still be stuck with. In any event, in March the entire deal fell apart. Trump, in character, claimed that he, not Colony, had called it off.<\/p>\n

The short-term attempt to solve the Castle\u2019s problems is a four-million-dollar cosmetic overhaul. This so-called \u201cre-theming\u201d will culminate in June, when the casino acquires a new name: Trump Marina. One day this winter, I accompanied Trump when he buzzed into Atlantic City for a re-theming meeting with Nicholas Ribis, the president and chief executive officer of Trump Hotels, and several Castle executives. The discussion ranged from the size of the lettering on the outside of the building to the sparkling gray granite in the lobby to potential future renderings, including a version with an as yet unbuilt hotel tower and a permanently docked yacht to be called Miss Universe. Why the boat? \u201cIt\u2019s just an attraction,\u201d Trump said. \u201cYou understand, this would be part of a phase-two or phase-three expansion. It\u2019s going to be the largest yacht in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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From the re-theming meeting, we headed for the casino, and along the way Trump received warm salutations. A white-haired woman wearing a pink warmup suit and carrying a bucket of quarters said, \u201cMr. Trump, I just love you, darling.\u201d He replied, \u201cThank you. I love you, too,\u201d then turned to me and said, \u201cYou see, they\u2019re good people. And I like people. You\u2019ve gotta be nice. They\u2019re like friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Castle had two thousand two hundred and thirty-nine slot machines, including, in a far corner, thirteen brand-new and slightly terrifying \u201cWheel of Fortune\u201d-theme contraptions, which were about to be officially unveiled. On hand were representatives of International Game Technology (the machines\u2019 manufacturer), a press entourage worthy of a military briefing in the wake of a Grenada-calibre invasion, and a couple of hundred onlookers\u2014all drawn by the prospect of a personal appearance by Vanna White, the doyenne of \u201cWheel of Fortune.\u201d Trump\u2019s arrival generated satisfying expressions of awe from the rubberneckers, though not the spontaneous burst of applause that greeted Vanna, who had been conscripted for what was described as \u201cthe ceremonial first pull.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Trump spoke, he told the gathering, \u201cThis is the beginning of a new generation of machine.\u201d Vanna pulled the crank, but the crush of reporters made it impossible to tell what was going on or even what denomination of currency had been sacrificed. The demographics of the crowd suggested that the most efficient machine would be one that permitted direct deposit of a Social Security check. After a delay that featured a digital musical cacophony, the machine spat back a few coins. Trump said, \u201cLadies and gentlemen, it took a little while. We hope it doesn\u2019t take you as long. And we just want to thank you for being our friends.\u201d And then we were out of there. \u201cThis is what we do. What can I tell you?\u201d Trump said, as we made our way through the casino.<\/p>\n

Read more Secrets of the Magus<\/a><\/p>\n

Vanna White was scheduled to join us for the helicopter flight back to New York, and later, as we swung over Long Island City, heading for a heliport on the East Side, Trump gave Vanna a little hug and, not for the first time, praised her star turn at the Castle. \u201cFor the opening of thirteen slot machines, I\u2019d say we did all right today,\u201d he said, and then they slapped high fives.<\/p>\n

In a 1990 Playboy<\/em> interview, Trump said that the yacht, the glitzy casinos, the gleaming bronze of Trump Tower were all \u201cprops for the show,\u201d adding that \u201cthe show is \u2018Trump\u2019 and it is sold-out performances everywhere.\u201d In 1985, the show moved to Palm Beach. For ten million dollars, Trump bought Mar-a-Lago, a hundred-and-eighteen-room Hispano-Moorish-Venetian castle built in the twenties by Marjorie Merriweather Post and E. F. Hutton, set on seventeen and a half acres extending from the ocean to Lake Worth. Ever since, his meticulous restoration and literal regilding of the property have been a work in progress. The winter of 1995-96 was Mar-a-Lago\u2019s first full season as a commercial venture, a private club with a twenty-five-thousand-dollar initiation fee (which later rose to fifty thousand and is now quoted at seventy-five thousand). The combination of the Post-Hutton pedigree and Trump\u2019s stewardship offered a paradigm of how an aggressively enterprising devotion to Good Taste inevitably transmutes to Bad Taste\u2014but might nevertheless pay for itself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Only Trump and certain of his minions know who among Mar-a-Lago\u2019s more than three hundred listed members has actually forked over initiation fees and who\u2019s paid how much for the privilege. Across the years, there have been routine leaks by a mysterious unnamed spokesman within the Trump Organization to the effect that this or that member of the British Royal Family was planning to buy a pied-\u00e0-terre in Trump Tower. It therefore came as no surprise when, during early recruiting efforts at Mar-a-Lago, Trump announced that the Prince and Princess of Wales, their mutual antipathy notwithstanding, had signed up. Was there any documentation? Well, um, Chuck and Di were honorary<\/em> members. Among the honorary members who have yet to pass through Mar-a-Lago\u2019s portals are Henry Kissinger and Elizabeth Taylor.<\/p>\n

The most direct but not exactly most serene way to travel to Mar-a-Lago, I discovered one weekend not long ago, is aboard Trump\u2019s 727, the same aircraft he gave up during the blip and, after an almost decent interval, bought back. My fellow-passengers included Eric Javits, a lawyer and nephew of the late Senator Jacob Javits, bumming a ride; Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the late publishing tycoon and inadequate swimmer Robert Maxwell, also bumming a ride; Matthew Calamari, a telephone-booth-size bodyguard who is the head of security for the entire Trump Organization; and Eric Trump, Donald\u2019s thirteen-year-old son.<\/p>\n

The solid-gold fixtures and hardware (sinks, seat-belt clasps, door hinges, screws), well-stocked bar and larder, queen-size bed, and bidet (easily outfitted with a leather-cushioned cover in case of sudden turbulence) implied hedonistic possibilities\u2014the plane often ferried high rollers to Atlantic City\u2014but I witnessed only good clean fun. We hadn\u2019t been airborne long when Trump decided to watch a movie. He\u2019d brought along \u201cMichael,\u201d a recent release, but twenty minutes after popping it into the VCR he got bored and switched to an old favorite, a Jean Claude Van Damme slugfest called \u201cBloodsport,\u201d which he pronounced \u201can incredible, fantastic movie.\u201d By assigning to his son the task of fast-forwarding through all the plot exposition\u2014Trump\u2019s goal being \u201cto get this two-hour movie down to forty-five minutes\u201d\u2014he eliminated any lulls between the nose hammering, kidney tenderizing, and shin whacking. When a beefy bad guy who was about to squish a normal-sized good guy received a crippling blow to the scrotum, I laughed. \u201cAdmit it, you\u2019re laughing!\u201d Trump shouted. \u201cYou want to write that Donald Trump was loving this ridiculous Jean Claude Van Damme movie, but are you willing to put in there that you were loving it, too?\u201d<\/p>\n

A small convoy of limousines greeted us on the runway in Palm Beach, and during the ten-minute drive to Mar-a-Lago Trump waxed enthusiastic about a \u201cspectacular, world-class\u201d golf course he was planning to build on county-owned land directly opposite the airport. Trump, by the way, is a skilled golfer. A source extremely close to him\u2014by which I mean off the record, but I can use it\u2014told me that Claude Harmon, a former winner of the Masters tournament and for thirty-three years the club pro at Winged Foot, in Mamaroneck, New York, once described Donald as \u201cthe best weekend player\u201d he\u2019d ever seen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The only formal event on Trump\u2019s agenda had already got under way. Annually, the publisher of Forbes<\/em> invites eleven corporate potentates to Florida, where they spend a couple of nights aboard the company yacht, the Highlander, and, during the day, adroitly palpate each other\u2019s brains and size up each other\u2019s short games. A supplementary group of capital-gains-tax skeptics had been invited to a Friday-night banquet in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom. Trump arrived between the roast-duck appetizer and the roasted-portabello-mushroom salad and took his seat next to Malcolm S. (Steve) Forbes, Jr., the erstwhile Presidential candidate and the chief executive of Forbes<\/em>, at a table that also included les grands fromages<\/em> of Hertz, Merrill Lynch, the C.I.T. Group, and Countrywide Credit Industries. At an adjacent table, Marla Maples Trump, who had just returned from Shreveport, Louisiana, where she was rehearsing her role as co-host of the Miss U.S.A. pageant, discussed global politics and the sleeping habits of three-year-old Tiffany with the corporate chiefs and chief spouses of A.T. & T., Sprint, and Office Depot. During coffee, Donald assured everyone present that they were \u201cvery special\u201d to him, that he wanted them to think of Mar-a-Lago as home, and that they were all welcome to drop by the spa the next day for a freebie.<\/p>\n

Tony Senecal, a former mayor of Martinsburg, West Virginia, who now doubles as Trump\u2019s butler and Mar-a-Lago\u2019s resident historian, told me, \u201cSome of the restoration work that\u2019s being done here is so subtle it\u2019s almost not Trump-like.\u201d Subtlety, however, is not the dominant motif. Weary from handling Trump\u2019s legal work, Jay Goldberg used to retreat with his wife to Mar-a-Lago for a week each year. Never mind the tapestries, murals, frescoes, winged statuary, life-size portrait of Trump (titled \u201cThe Visionary\u201d), bathtub-size flower-filled samovars, vaulted Corinthian colonnade, thirty-four-foot ceilings, blinding chandeliers, marquetry, overstuffed and gold-leaf-stamped everything else, Goldberg told me; what nudged him around the bend was a small piece of fruit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were surrounded by a staff of twenty people,\u201d he said, \u201cincluding a footman. I didn\u2019t even know what that was. I thought maybe a chiropodist. Anyway, wherever I turned there was always a bowl of fresh fruit. So there I am, in our room, and I decide to step into the bathroom to take a leak. And on the way I grab a kumquat and eat it. Well, by the time I come out of the bathroom the kumquat has been replaced<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the Mar-a-Lago spa, aerobic exercise is an activity Trump indulges in \u201cas little as possible,\u201d and he\u2019s therefore chosen not to micromanage its daily affairs. Instead, he brought in a Texas outfit called the Greenhouse Spa, proven specialists in mud wraps, manual lymphatic drainage, reflexology, shiatsu and Hawaiian hot-rock massage, loofah polishes, sea-salt rubs, aromatherapy, acupuncture, peat baths, and Japanese steeping-tub protocol. Evidently, Trump\u2019s philosophy of wellness is rooted in a belief that prolonged exposure to exceptionally attractive young female spa attendants will instill in the male clientele a will to live. Accordingly, he limits his role to a pocket veto of key hiring decisions. While giving me a tour of the main exercise room, where Tony Bennett, who does a couple of gigs at Mar-a-Lago each season and has been designated an \u201cartist-in-residence,\u201d was taking a brisk walk on a treadmill, Trump introduced me to \u201cour resident physician, Dr. Ginger Lea Southall\u201d\u2014a recent chiropractic-college graduate. As Dr. Ginger, out of earshot, manipulated the sore back of a grateful member, I asked Trump where she had done her training. \u201cI\u2019m not sure,\u201d he said. \u201cBaywatch Medical School? Does that sound right? I\u2019ll tell you the truth. Once I saw Dr. Ginger\u2019s photograph, I didn\u2019t really need to look at her r\u00e9sum\u00e9 or anyone else\u2019s. Are you asking, \u2018Did we hire her because she\u2019d trained at Mount Sinai for fifteen years?\u2019 The answer is no. And I\u2019ll tell you why: because by the time she\u2019s spent fifteen years at Mount Sinai, we don\u2019t want to look at her.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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My visit happened to coincide with the coldest weather of the winter, and this gave me a convenient excuse, at frequent intervals, to retreat to my thousand-dollar-a-night suite and huddle under the bedcovers in fetal position. Which is where I was around ten-thirty Saturday night, when I got a call from Tony Senecal, summoning me to the ballroom. The furnishings had been altered since the Forbes<\/em> banquet the previous evening. Now there was just a row of armchairs in the center of the room and a couple of low tables, an arrangement that meant Donald and Marla were getting ready for a late dinner in front of the TV. They\u2019d already been out to a movie with Eric and Tiffany and some friends and bodyguards, and now a theatre-size screen had descended from the ceiling so that they could watch a pay-per-view telecast of a junior-welterweight-championship boxing match between Oscar de la Hoya and Miguel Angel Gonzalez.<\/p>\n

Marla was eating something green, while Donald had ordered his favorite, meat loaf and mashed potatoes. \u201cWe have a chef who makes the greatest meat loaf in the world,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s so great I told him to put it on the menu. So whenever we have it, half the people order it. But then afterward, if you ask them what they ate, they always deny it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump is not only a boxing fan but an occasional promoter, and big bouts are regularly staged at his hotels in Atlantic City. Whenever he shows up in person, he drops by to wish the fighters luck beforehand and is always accorded a warm welcome, with the exception of a chilly reception not long ago from the idiosyncratic Polish head-butter and rabbit-puncher Andrew Golota. This was just before Golota went out and pounded Riddick Bowe into retirement, only to get himself disqualified for a series of low blows that would\u2019ve been perfectly legal in \u201cBloodsport.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGolota\u2019s a killer,\u201d Trump said admiringly. \u201cA stone-cold killer.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I asked Marla how she felt about boxing, she said, \u201cI enjoy it a lot, just as long as nobody gets hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

When a call came a while back from Aleksandr Ivanovich Lebed, the retired general, amateur boxer, and restless pretender to the Presidency of Russia, explaining that he was headed to New York and wanted to arrange a meeting, Trump was pleased but not surprised. The list of superpower leaders and geopolitical strategists with whom Trump has engaged in frank and fruitful exchanges of viewpoints includes Mikhail Gorbachev, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff. (He\u2019s also pals with Sylvester Stallone and Clint Eastwood, men\u2019s men who enjoy international reputations for racking up massive body counts.) In 1987, fresh from his grandest public-relations coup\u2014repairing in three and a half months, under budget and for no fee, the Wollman skating rink, in Central Park, a job that the city of New York had spent six years and twelve million dollars bungling\u2014Trump contemplated how, in a larger sphere, he could advertise himself as a doer and dealmaker. One stunt involved orchestrating an \u201cinvitation\u201d from the federal government to examine the Williamsburg Bridge, which was falling apart. Trump had no real interest in the job, but by putting on a hard hat and taking a stroll on the bridge for the cameras he stoked the fantasy that he could rebuild the city\u2019s entire infrastructure. From there it was only a short leap to saving the planet. What if, say, a troublemaker like Muammar Qaddafi got his hands on a nuclear arsenal? Well, Trump declared, he stood ready to work with the leaders of the then Soviet Union to co\u00f6rdinate a formula for coping with Armageddon-minded lunatics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The clear purpose of Lebed\u2019s trip to America, an unofficial visit that coincided with the second Clinton Inaugural, was to add some reassuring human texture to his image as a plainspoken tough guy. Simultaneously, his domestic political prospects could be enhanced if voters back home got the message that Western capitalists felt comfortable with him. Somewhere in Lebed\u2019s calculations was the understanding that, to the nouveau entrepreneurs of the freebooter\u2019s paradise that is now Russia, Trump looked and smelled like very old money.<\/p>\n

Their rendezvous was scheduled for midmorning. Having enlisted as an interpreter Inga Bogutska, a receptionist whose father, by coincidence, was a Russian general, Trump decided to greet his visitor in the lobby. When it turned out that Lebed, en route from an audience with a group of Times<\/em> editors and reporters, was running late, Trump occupied himself by practicing his golf swing and surveying the female pedestrians in the atrium. Finally, Lebed arrived, a middle-aged but ageless fellow with a weathered, fleshy face and hooded eyes, wearing a gray business suit and an impassive expression. After posing for a Times<\/em> photographer, they rode an elevator to the twenty-sixth floor, and along the way Trump asked, \u201cSo, how is everything in New York?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it\u2019s hard to give an assessment, but I think it is brilliant,\u201d Lebed replied. He had a deep, bullfroggy voice, and his entourage of a half-dozen men included an interpreter, who rendered Inga Bogutska superfluous.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, it\u2019s been doing very well,\u201d Trump agreed. \u201cNew York is on a very strong up. And we\u2019ve been reading a lot of great things about this gentleman and his country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inside his office, Trump immediately began sharing with Lebed some of his treasured possessions. \u201cThis is a shoe that was given to me by Shaquille O\u2019Neal,\u201d he said. \u201cBasketball. Shaquille O\u2019Neal<\/em>. Seven feet three inches, I guess. This is his sneaker, the actual sneaker. In fact, he gave this to me after a game.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always said,\u201d Lebed sagely observed, \u201cthat after size 45, which I wear, then you start wearing trunks on your feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d said Trump. He moved on to a replica of a Mike Tyson heavyweight-championship belt, followed by an Evander Holyfield glove. \u201cHe gave me this on my fiftieth birthday. And then he beat Tyson. I didn\u2019t know who to root for. And then, again, here is Shaquille O\u2019Neal\u2019s shirt. Here, you might want to see this. This was part of an advertisement for Versace, the fashion designer. These are photographs of Madonna on the stairs at Mar-a-Lago, my house in Florida. And this photograph shows something that we just finished and are very proud of. It\u2019s a big hotel called Trump International. And it\u2019s been very successful. So we\u2019ve had a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump introduced Lebed to Howard Lorber, who had accompanied him a few months earlier on his journey to Moscow, where they looked at properties to which the Trump moniker might be appended. \u201cHoward has major investments in Russia,\u201d he told Lebed, but when Lorber itemized various ventures none seemed to ring a bell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cSee, they don\u2019t know you,\u201d Trump told Lorber. \u201cWith all that investment, they don\u2019t know you. Trump they know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some \u201cpoisonous people\u201d at the Times<\/em>, Lebed informed Trump, were \u201cspreading some funny rumors that you are going to cram Moscow with casinos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laughing, Trump said, \u201cIs that right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI told them that I know you build skyscrapers in New York. High-quality skyscrapers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are actually looking at something in Moscow right now, and it would be skyscrapers and hotels, not casinos. Only quality stuff. But thank you for defending me. I\u2019ll soon be going again to Moscow. We\u2019re looking at the Moskva Hotel. We\u2019re also looking at the Rossiya. That\u2019s a very big project; I think it\u2019s the largest hotel in the world. And we\u2019re working with the local government, the mayor of Moscow and the mayor\u2019s people. So far, they\u2019ve been very responsive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lebed: \u201cYou must be a very confident person. You are building straight into the center.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump: \u201cI always go into the center.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lebed: \u201cI hope I\u2019m not offending by saying this, but I think you are a litmus testing paper. You are at the end of the edge. If Trump goes to Moscow, I think America will follow. So I consider these projects of yours to be very important. And I\u2019d like to help you as best I can in putting your projects into life. I want to create a canal or riverbed for capital flow. I want to minimize the risks and get rid of situations where the entrepreneur has to try to hide his head between his shoulders. I told the New York Times<\/em> I was talking to you because you are a professional\u2014a high-level professional\u2014and if you invest, you invest in real stuff. Serious, high-quality projects. And you deal with serious people. And I deem you to be a very serious person. That\u2019s why I\u2019m meeting you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump: \u201cWell, that\u2019s very nice. Thank you very much. I have something for you. This is a little token of my respect. I hope you like it. This is a book called \u2018The Art of the Deal,\u2019 which a lot of people have read. And if you read this book you\u2019ll know the art of the deal better than I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conversation turned to Lebed\u2019s lunch arrangements and travel logistics\u2014\u201cIt\u2019s very tiring to meet so many people,\u201d he confessed\u2014and the dialogue began to feel stilted, as if Trump\u2019s limitations as a Kremlinologist had exhausted the potential topics. There was, however, one more subject he wanted to cover.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, you were a boxer, right?\u201d he said. \u201cWe have a lot of big matches at my hotels. We just had a match between Riddick Bowe and Andrew Golota, from Poland, who won the fight but was disqualified. He\u2019s actually a great fighter if he can ever get through a match without being disqualified. And, to me, you look tougher than Andrew Golota.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, Lebed pressed an index finger to his nose, or what was left of it, and flattened it against his face.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYou do look seriously tough,\u201d Trump continued. \u201cWere you an Olympic boxer?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I had a rather modest career.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cReally? The newspapers said you had a great career.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a certain point, my company leader put the question straight: either you do the sports or you do the military service. And I selected the military.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou made the right decision,\u201d Trump agreed, as if putting to rest any notion he might have entertained about promoting a Lebed exhibition bout in Atlantic City.<\/p>\n

Norma Foerderer came in with a camera to snap a few shots for the Trump archives and to congratulate the general for his fancy footwork in Chechnya. Phone numbers were exchanged, and Lebed, before departing, offered Trump a benediction: \u201cYou leave on the earth a very good trace for centuries. We\u2019re all mortal, but the things you build will stay forever. You\u2019ve already proven wrong the assertion that the higher the attic, the more trash there is.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Trump returned from escorting Lebed to the elevator, I asked him his impressions.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all, you wouldn\u2019t want to play nuclear weapons with this fucker,\u201d he said. \u201cDoes he look as tough and cold as you\u2019ve ever seen? This is not like your average real-estate guy who\u2019s rough and mean. This guy\u2019s beyond that. You see it in the eyes. This guy is a killer. How about when I asked, \u2018Were you a boxer?\u2019 Whoa\u2014that nose is a piece of rubber. But me he liked. When we went out to the elevator, he was grabbing me, holding me, he felt very good. And he liked what I do. You know what? I think I did a good job for the country today.\u201d<\/p>\n

The phone rang\u2014Jesse Jackson calling about some office space Trump had promised to help the Rainbow Coalition lease at 40 Wall Street. (\u201cHello, Jesse. How ya doin\u2019? You were on Rosie\u2019s show? She\u2019s terrific, right? Yeah, I think she is. . . . Okay-y-y, how are you<\/em>?\u201d) Trump hung up, sat forward, his eyebrows arched, smiling a smile that contained equal measures of surprise and self-satisfaction. \u201cYou gotta say, I cover the gamut. Does the kid cover the gamut? Boy, it never ends. I mean, people have no idea. Cool life. You know, it\u2019s sort of a cool life.\u201d<\/p>\n

One Saturday this winter, Trump and I had an appointment at Trump Tower. After I\u2019d waited ten minutes, the concierge directed me to the penthouse. When I emerged from the elevator, there Donald stood, wearing a black cashmere topcoat, navy suit, blue-and-white pin-striped shirt, and maroon necktie. \u201cI thought you might like to see my apartment,\u201d he said, and as I squinted against the glare of gilt and mirrors in the entrance corridor he added, \u201cI don\u2019t really do this.\u201d That we both knew this to be a transparent fib\u2014photo spreads of the fifty-three-room triplex and its rooftop park had appeared in several magazines, and it had been featured on \u201cLifestyles of the Rich and Famous\u201d\u2014in no way undermined my enjoyment of the visual and aural assault that followed: the twenty-nine-foot-high living room with its erupting fountain and vaulted ceiling decorated with neo-Romantic frescoes; the two-story dining room with its carved ivory frieze (\u201cI admit that the ivory\u2019s kind of a no-no\u201d); the onyx columns with marble capitals that had come from \u201ca castle in Italy\u201d; the chandelier that originally hung in \u201ca castle in Austria\u201d; the African blue-onyx lavatory. As we admired the view of Central Park, to the north, he said, \u201cThis is the greatest apartment ever built. There\u2019s never been anything like it. There\u2019s no apartment like this anywhere. It was harder to build this apartment than the rest of the building. A lot of it I did just to see if it could be done. All the very wealthy people who think they know great apartments come here and they say, \u2018Donald, forget it. This is the greatest.\u2019 \u201d Very few touches suggested that real people actually lived there\u2014where was it, exactly, that Trump sat around in his boxers, eating roast-beef sandwiches, channel surfing, and scratching where it itched? Where was it that Marla threw her jogging clothes?\u2014but no matter. \u201cCome here, I\u2019ll show you how life works,\u201d he said, and we turned a couple of corners and wound up in a sitting room that had a Renoir on one wall and a view that extended beyond the Statue of Liberty. \u201cMy apartments that face the Park go for twice as much as the apartments that face south. But I consider this<\/em> view to be more beautiful than that<\/em> view, especially at night. As a cityscape, it can\u2019t be beat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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We then drove down to 40 Wall Street, where members of a German television crew were waiting for Trump to show them around. (\u201cThis will be the finest office building anywhere in New York. Not just downtown\u2014anywhere in New York.\u201d) Along the way, we stopped for a light at Forty-second Street and First Avenue. The driver of a panel truck in the next lane began waving, then rolled down his window and burbled, \u201cI never see you in person!\u201d He was fortyish, wore a blue watch cap, and spoke with a Hispanic inflection. \u201cBut I see you a lot on TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGood,\u201d said Trump. \u201cThank you. I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere\u2019s Marla?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s in Louisiana, getting ready to host the Miss U.S.A. pageant. You better watch it. O.K.?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cO.K., I promise,\u201d said the man in the truck. \u201cHave a nice day, Mr. Trump. And have a profitable<\/em> day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, Trump said to me, \u201cYou want to know what total recognition is? I\u2019ll tell you how you know you\u2019ve got it. When the Nigerians on the street corners who don\u2019t speak a word of English, who have no clue, who\u2019re selling watches for some guy in New Jersey\u2014when you walk by and those guys say, \u2018Trump! Trump!\u2019 That\u2019s total recognition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next, we headed north, to Mount Kisco, in Westchester County\u2014specifically to Seven Springs, a fifty-five-room limestone-and-granite Georgian splendor completed in 1917 by Eugene Meyer, the father of Katharine Graham. If things proceeded according to plan, within a year and a half the house would become the centerpiece of the Trump Mansion at Seven Springs, a golf club where anyone willing to part with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars could tee up. As we approached, Trump made certain I paid attention to the walls lining the driveway. \u201cLook at the quality of this granite. Because I\u2019m like, you know, into quality. Look at the quality of that wall. Hand-carved granite, and the same with the house.\u201d Entering a room where two men were replastering a ceiling, Trump exulted, \u201cWe\u2019ve got the pros here! You don\u2019t see too many plasterers anymore. I take a union plasterer from New York and bring him up here. You know why? Because he\u2019s the best.\u201d We canvassed the upper floors and then the basement, where Trump sized up the bowling alley as a potential spa. \u201cThis is very much Mar-a-Lago all over again,\u201d he said. \u201cA great building, great land, great location. Then the question is what to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the rear terrace, Trump mapped out some holes of the golf course: an elevated tee above a par three, across a ravine filled with laurel and dogwood; a couple of parallel par fours above the slope that led to a reservoir. Then he turned to me and said, \u201cI bought this whole thing for seven and a half million dollars. People ask, \u2018How\u2019d you do that?\u2019 I said, \u2018I don\u2019t know.\u2019 Does that make sense?\u201d Not really, nor did his next utterance: \u201cYou know, nobody\u2019s ever seen a granite house before.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Granite? Nobody? Never? In the history of humankind? Impressive.<\/p>\n

A few months ago, Marla Maples Trump, with a straight face, told an interviewer about life with hubby: \u201cHe really has the desire to have me be more of the traditional wife. He definitely wants his dinner promptly served at seven. And if he\u2019s home at six-thirty it should be ready by six-thirty.\u201d Oh well, so much for that.<\/p>\n

In Trump\u2019s office the other morning, I asked whether, in light of his domestic shuffle, he planned to change his living arrangements. He smiled for the first time that day and said, \u201cWhere am I going to live? That might be the most difficult question you\u2019ve asked so far. I want to finish the work on my apartment at Trump International. That should take a few months, maybe two, maybe six. And then I think I\u2019ll live there for maybe six months. Let\u2019s just say, for a period of time. The buildings always work better when I\u2019m living there.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about the Trump Tower apartment? Would that sit empty?<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I wouldn\u2019t sell that. And, of course, there\u2019s no one who would ever build an apartment like that. The penthouse at Trump International isn\u2019t nearly as big. It\u2019s maybe seven thousand square feet. But it\u2019s got a living room that is the most spectacular residential room in New York. A twenty-five-foot ceiling. I\u2019m telling you, the best room anywhere. Do you understand?\u201d<\/p>\n

I think I did: the only apartment with a better view than the best apartment in the world was the same apartment. Except for the one across the Park, which had the most spectacular living room in the world. No one had ever seen a granite house before. And, most important, every square inch belonged to Trump, who had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul. \u201cTrump\u201d\u2014a fellow with universal recognition but with a suspicion that an interior life was an intolerable inconvenience, a creature everywhere and nowhere, uniquely capable of inhabiting it all at once, all alone. \u2666<\/p>\n

Read more The A.I.-Design Aesthetic That\u2019s Taking Over the Internet<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Singer on Donald Trump and his divorce from Marla Maples.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-profiles"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump Solo - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=664\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump Solo - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mark Singer on Donald Trump and his divorce from Marla Maples.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=664\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-24T13:08:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"56 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=664#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=664\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"headline\":\"Trump Solo\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-24T13:08:22+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=664\"},\"wordCount\":11271,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=664#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/eefff6443c0278e19d238fda759fe76b.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Profiles\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=664#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=664\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=664\",\"name\":\"Trump Solo - 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