The Making of Donald Trump (4 page)

For more than an hour, Trump let fly one four-letter expletive
after another. He had no prepared text, much less a rehearsed presentation.
He ripped into the location and functionality of the Denver International Airport. The rambling remarks were rich with denunciations of former wives and former business associates. In vilifying a former employee, saying she had been disloyal, Trump gratuitously
described her as “ugly as a dog.”

“I have to tell you about losers,” Trump told the audience. “I
love losers because they make me feel so good about myself.” Had Loveland’s Bixpo 2005 conference invited a loser to speak, he assured the crowd, the fee would have been
three dollars rather than the “freaking fortune” paid to Trump. However large the speaking fee had been, it did not motivate Trump to show enough respect for the paying audience to prepare even a simple outline. Many in the crowd said afterward that none of his talk was useful and certainly not uplifting.

However, within Trump’s inchoate vitriol, some in the audience did identify two recommendations on how to succeed in life and business:

First, Trump advised, trust no one, especially good employees. “Be paranoid,” he said, “
because they are gonna try to fleece you.” It was strange advice, as some in the audience told local reporters afterward, because trust is central to market capitalism. Businesspeople known for being trustworthy attract better workers, who in turn make their businesses run better. Trustworthy entrepreneurs make the economy more efficient by reducing friction in business deals. Business owners who are prudent about making promises and are known for honoring their word often go through life without a single lawsuit.
Trump has been a party in more than 3,500 lawsuits, some of them accusing him of civil fraud (an issue we will examine in another chapter).

Second, Trump recommended revenge as business policy. “Get even,” he said. “If somebody screws you, you screw ‘em back ten times over. At least you can feel good about it.
Boy, do I feel good.”

Two years after the Loveland speech, Trump released
Think Big
, his twelfth book.
Think Big
was coauthored by Bill Zanker, founder of The Learning Annex, which runs classes on everything from pole dancing and making your own soap to writing business plans. Chapter 6 of
Think Big
is titled “Revenge.”

“I always get even,” Trump writes in the opening line of that chapter. He then launches into an attack on the same woman he had denounced in Colorado. Trump recruited the unnamed woman “from her government job where she was making peanuts”; her career going nowhere. “I decided to make her somebody. I gave her a great job at the Trump Organization, and over time she became powerful in real estate. She bought a beautiful home.”

When Trump was in financial trouble in the early 1990s, “I asked her to make a phone call to an extremely close friend of hers who held a powerful position at a big bank and who would have done what she asked. She said, ‘Donald, I can’t do that.’ ” Instead of accepting that the woman felt such a call would be improper, Trump fired her. She started her own business. Trump writes that her business failed. “I was really happy when I found that out,” he says.

In Trump’s telling, the story of an employee declining to do something unseemly is really the story of a rebellion to be crushed.

Trump devotes another several pages to actress
Rosie O’Donnell, who described him as “a snake-oil salesman” in 2006. A few months later, at Zanker’s 2007 Learning Annex Real Estate & Wealth Expo, Trump called O’Donnell “a pig,” “a degenerate,” “a slob,”
and later (on television) “disgusting inside and out.”
He made disparaging remarks about her looks, weight, and sexuality and said on national television that O’Donnell’s emotional health would improve if she never looked in a mirror.

In
Think Big
, Trump calls O’Donnell a bully: “
You’ve got to hit a bully really hard really strongly, right between the eyes … [I] hit that horrible woman right smack in the middle of the eyes. It’s true … some people would have ignored her insults. I decided to fight back and make her regret the day she decided to unload on me!”

At the end of the chapter, Trump writes, “I love getting even when I get screwed by someone—yes, it is true … Always get even. When you are in business you need to get even with people who screw you. You need to screw them back fifteen times harder … go for the jugular,
attack them in spades!”

Trump’s words take on more significance when read in the context of his campaign statement, “
No one reads the Bible more than I do.” He says
The Art of the Deal
is the greatest book ever written except for the Bible.
He has never been able to recite a biblical verse.

Among the many biblical verses warning against vengeance is Romans 12:19, which in one modern translation states, “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.”

Just before the New York State primary election in April 2016,
Trump told Bob Lonsberry, a radio host in Rochester, New York, that he was religious. “Is there a favorite Bible verse or favorite story that has informed your thinking or character?” Lonsberry asked.

“Well,
I think many,” Trump replied. “I mean, when we get into the Bible, I think many, so many. And some people—look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that. That’s not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what’s happening to our country, I mean, when you see what’s going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us … we have to be firm and have to be very strong. And we can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you.”

His invocation of “an eye for an eye” alludes to Exodus 21:24. But Trump, who made a show of attending Presbyterian services once during the campaign, seemed unaware that, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus repudiated this Old Testament verse, saying in one modern translation:

Sixteen pages of
Think Big
are devoted to revenge. All of them run directly contrary to this basic biblical teaching. Trump leaves no room for doubt that revenge is a guiding principle of his life—“
My motto is: Always get even. When someone screws you, get them back in spades”—but that guiding principle stands in direct opposition to both Christian and Jewish theology.

On another page of
Think Big
, Trump acknowledges that “this is not your typical advice, get even, but this is real-life advice.
If you don’t get even, you are just a schmuck! I really mean it, too.” It will come as no surprise that Trump’s views on revenge were not limited to employees he considered disloyal, people he had done deals with, or even petty insults by an actress. In fact, in the year 2000, Trump turned his revenge on his own family.

T
wo
of Donald Trump’s mottos, “Always get even” and “Hit back harder than you were hit,” came into play shortly after his father died in 1999 at the age of ninety-three. More than six hundred people filled Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, far from the outer boroughs where Fred Sr. had lived and owned apartments. Among those speaking was his namesake grandson, Fred Trump III, Donald’s nephew, son of Fred Jr. He described his grandfather as a generous man who always took care of others. The next day, Fred III’s wife, Lisa, who had been among the mourners, went into labor.

Less than forty-eight hours after William Trump was born, he began having seizures. In the months ahead, he would stop breathing twice. The medical bills that followed ran to nearly a third of a million dollars. Soon after the medical problems arose, Donald’s younger brother, Robert, called his nephew and said not to worry, all the medical bills would be covered. For decades, Fred Trump Sr. had provided every family
member with medical insurance through his company, Apartment Management Associates.

A letter from a Trump family lawyer instructed Precise, the Trump family medical plan that was part of the Trump business empire, to cover “all costs related to baby William’s care, not withstanding any plan limits (percentage, number of visits, or maximum dollar amount)… whether or not they are deemed by Precise to be medically necessary … This directive shall remain in effect until further notice.” The instruction was dated July 19, 1999, just twenty-four days after Fred Sr. died.

Soon after that, Fred Sr.’s will was filed in probate court. Infant William’s father and the other descendants of Fred Jr. discovered that they were not collecting their anticipated share of the estate.

News reports valued Fred Sr.’s estate at somewhere between $100 million and $300 million. Its real value was no doubt more. Wealthy people contemplating the end of their lives routinely organize ownership of their assets so that tax authorities will accept values far below market rates. Generally, this is achieved by complicating the ownership structure, supposedly making it hard for individual inheritors to cash out. That can lower estate values for tax purposes by two-thirds.

Fred Trump Sr. had executed a will in 1984 after Fred Jr., his eldest son, died. That will left the bulk of his fortune to his other four children, Donald, Maryanne, Robert, and Elizabeth. His final will, which was executed in 1991—well before Fred Sr. was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1993—also split most of the money among those four. Little if any of the late Fred Jr.’s presumptive fifth of the fortune was left to his line; Fred III and his sister Mary (who was named for Fred Sr.’s
wife) received only $200,000, the same amount given to all the other grandchildren.

Fred Sr.’s lawyer had drawn attention to the potential for litigation over the estate if the namesake son’s line was cut out of the bulk of the Trump fortune. “Given the size of your estate,” he wrote, leaving Fred Jr.’s children such a relatively small sum “is tantamount to disinheriting them. You may wish to increase their participation in your estate to avoid ill will in the future.”
The lawyer asked Fred Sr. to fill out a routine estate planning form that described his intentions. It included two boxes indicating whether he wanted to leave more money to Fred Jr.’s children, Fred III and Mary. Fred Sr. did not check those boxes.

When Fred III, Mary, and their mother, Linda, learned about the will, they filed a lawsuit—confirming the lawyer’s anticipation of trouble. The lawsuit asserted that Fred Sr. was not of sound mind and that his signature on the will dated September 18, 1991, had been “procured by fraud and undue influence” by Donald and the other surviving siblings. It asked that Fred Jr.’s descendants inherit a fifth of the fortune.

Donald Trump’s reaction was swift and vengeful. On March 30, 2000, one week after the lawsuit was filed, Fred III received a certified letter stating that all medical benefits would cease on May 1. For little William, that was a potential death sentence.

Lisa Trump told Heidi Evans of the
New York Daily News
that
she “burst out into tears” on learning her sickly son was in jeopardy. The devastated parents filed a new lawsuit. They went to court not in Queens—where the Trump family’s influence was substantial—but in Nassau County on Long Island. A
judge signed an order directing that the medical coverage continue until the matter could be resolved.

Fred III said, “You have to be tough in this family. I guess I had what my father [Fred Jr.] didn’t have. I will stick to my guns. I think it was just wrong.” He also observed of his paternal aunts and uncles: “These are not warm and fuzzy people. They never even came to see William in the hospital. Our family puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional.”

Mary said that the issue was money, of course, which was central to Fred Sr. and his four surviving children. “Given this family, it would be utterly naïve to say it has nothing to do with money,” she said. “But for both me and my brother, it has much more to do with that our father [Fred Jr.] be recognized. He existed, he lived, he was their oldest son. And William is my father’s grandson. He is as much a part of that family as anybody else. He desperately needs extra care.”

Also speaking with Evans at the
New York Daily News
, Mary Trump said, “My aunts and uncles should be ashamed of themselves. I’m sure they are not.”

Evans asked Donald Trump about this. He said that when he learned of the lawsuit over the will, his reaction was, “Why should we give him medical coverage?”

Pressed about whether it could appear coldhearted to withdraw the medical insurance of a sickly child, Trump did not waver. “I can’t help that. It’s cold when someone sues my father,” he replied. He then added a revealing comment about the position of power that he was in compared to his nephew and his desperately ill grandnephew. Referring to Fred III, Donald said, “Had he come to see me, things could very possibly have been much different for them.… It’s sort of disappointing. They sued my father, essentially. I’m not thrilled when someone sues my father.”

Donald said he was doing nothing but carrying out the wishes of his father. “I have helped Fred [III] over the years,”
he said. “That was the will of my father. He had four children left, and that’s who he wanted to leave his estate to.”