Time to Get Tough (20 page)

Look, I love NBC. They were the ones who really understood how big
The Apprentice
was going to be. ABC made an offer too, but NBC had the vision. I give Bob Wright and Jeff Zucker tremendous credit. They wouldn't let Mark Burnett or me go anywhere else. They practically locked the doors at 30 Rock until we signed.

I also think Bob Greenblatt will do a fantastic job with prime time, but they need a lot of help. Steve Burke and Brian Roberts of Comcast are going to be amazing. I already see a big difference. So I love NBC. They are very special to me and I want to see them succeed. I'm sure they will—in spite of lightweights like Lawrence O'Donnell, Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd, and that goof Ed Schultz. I don't say that with mean-spiritedness. It's just that lackluster talent offends me. People like Matt Lauer and Jim Bell's
Today
show team are great. I hope NBC will be able to re-sign Lauer when his contract comes up so he will continue there for many years to come. I also think David Gregory is doing a fine job filling some awfully big shoes over at
Meet the Press
. David's been tough but fair—and that's all you can ask.

I do, however, think NBC made two big mistakes recently. One, they let CNN steal Erin Burnett away. I don't think Erin will be as successful on CNN, because it's very hard to do well in certain corporate cultures. Letting Erin get away was a big loss for NBC. Second, they named Brian Williams's new show
Rock Center
, a horrible name for a show—and names of shows really matter. Brian is fantastic. But
Rock Center
will never work, and if they get four or five million viewers a night it will be a lot. I hope it works out, but I think it's going to be a very long, hard road. Now, if they did it in Trump Tower and called it Trump Tower, it would, of course, be a smash hit!

One person who was very critical of me last spring but who hasn't spoken up lately is Karl Rove. I didn't know Rove, but he asked to see me quite some time ago, way before I talked about running for president. He came to my office and asked for money for his PAC. I think I gave him $100,000 or maybe more. When I was giving him money, he was a very
nice guy. “There's nobody like you, Mr. Trump,” he said. But then I decided—without consulting him, I guess—to consider a presidential run. I was quickly #1 in the polls, and Rove said something to the effect that mine was a clown candidacy. He already had a favorite candidate, so he felt he had to torpedo me because I was a threat. I really went after Rove. Since then, he's become nice and respectful. But I would say this: if he attacks me again I'll go after him like nobody has ever gone after him before. I didn't mind his statements about me, but I thought it was a terrible move after I gave him a six-figure donation. Life doesn't work that way—not in my world. Very stupid, very disloyal.

Plenty of media guys, like George Stephanopoulos, are big Obama fans. I like George a lot. But it was incredible to see how overprotective reporters got toward Obama when I simply said what everyone in America was thinking: “Where's the birth certificate?” I didn't actually bring up the whole birth certificate question at first—I wanted to talk about how China and OPEC are ripping us off and how we need to get tough on Iran, taxes, reckless spending, and repealing Obamacare. But when George brought it up during an interview on
Good Morning America
, he literally sprang out of his chair and started screaming at me for even questioning Obama. It was amazing. If the president were a Republican, the press wouldn't be so protective. But Obama? He must be guarded and treated with kid gloves.

I never understood why Obama would allow the question to hang around. Why not just produce the birth certificate and be done with it? Get it out there and move on. So I was very proud that I was able to finally get him to do something that no one else had been able to do. For the record, I'm not saying Obama wasn't born in the United States. However,
multiple questions still surround the hospital records, his grandmother's statement that he was born out of the country, and his family members' statements that they weren't sure which hospital he was born in. As for the birth certificate I got him to produce, some people have questioned whether it's authentic. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. That's for experts to determine. But if Obama's liberal media pals don't like my answer, stop asking the question.

Nothing irritates me more than a double standard, and yet that's what we see with liberal media types. Take Jon Stewart. I actually enjoy the guy, but when he did a segment mocking presidential candidate Herman Cain, and used a very racist and degrading tone that was insulting to the African American community, did he get booted off the air like Don Imus? No. Where was the Reverend Jesse Jackson? Where was the Reverend Al Sharpton? Where was Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd to provide hard-hitting journalistic “analysis”? Nowhere. Stewart should have lost his job—at least temporarily. But he didn't and he won't because liberals in the media always get a free pass, no matter how bad their behavior.

Disappointing behavior by people in the press occurs on both sides of the aisle. A conservative commentator on Fox News, Charles Krauthammer, was really hitting me hard last spring. He couldn't believe I was #1 in the polls and kept knocking me. Now, you have to understand, he didn't know me, he never met me. But one day on Bill O'Reilly's show, Krauthammer hit me so hard it was ridiculous. He said mine was a joke candidacy or something to that effect. So O'Reilly sent Jesse Watters to New Hampshire to get my response. I let Krauthammer have it. I was very tough, some would say vicious, but I was tough because Krauthammer had been tough to me.

The next day I turned on the show and they didn't air my response. I called O'Reilly and said, “Bill, what happened? Krauthammer can talk about me but I can't talk about him?” Bill gave me what I considered a weak reason as to why he wouldn't play my response and I left it at that. I think Bill O'Reilly is terrific, and I think Greta Van Susteren, Sean Hannity, and Neil Cavuto are as well. These are outstanding people who get big ratings and do a fantastic job. But in this case I thought Bill was wrong. I should have been allowed to rebut Krauthammer as a matter of fairness.

In any case, there's a reason Fox News has such high quality programs and phenomenal ratings. His name is Roger Ailes. Whether some people like it or not, Roger Ailes, the creator of Fox News, working together with Rupert Murdoch, is one of the great geniuses in television history. Roger can look at a person and instantly tell whether that individual will grab ratings. In addition to O'Reilly, Van Susteren, Hannity, and Cavuto, Roger has numerous others who do amazing work. People like Bret Baier. I also love the team on
Fox and Friends
with Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, and Brian Kilmeade. They're smart, quick, funny, and really know what's going on. The Fox morning show is a tremendous success due to its three talented hosts and the wonderful Roger Ailes. I really enjoy being on it.

Guys like Ailes understand that ratings rule. When I have friends with television shows that aren't doing well, they just can't understand why they're being canceled. I tell them this: I have learned that entertainment is a very simple business. You can be a horrible human being, you can be a truly terrible person, but if you get ratings, you are a king. If you don't get ratings, you are immediately canceled and nothing else will matter.

I happen to get ratings, and always have. Larry King used to tell me, “You get the highest ratings.” Everybody wants me to be on their show,
not because they like me, not because I'm handsome and have great hair, but because I get ratings. To tell you the truth, I'm not exactly sure why. I don't want to be provocative, and in many cases I try not to be provocative. But I think the reason millions of people follow my views on world events is because they know I understand that our country is being ripped off by OPEC, China, and other countries. They know America is in big trouble if we don't get back on the right track. And they know I'm not afraid to tell it like it is. It's not that they like or love me—it's that they respect what I have to say, believe the same thing themselves, and know that I'm right.

I'm also told that many people have a general interest in the details of my life and the people I work with in show business, particularly since they've seen all the amazing talent I've had on
Celebrity Apprentice
. It's always fun to see the kinds of questions people ask in the letters and emails my office receives. I enjoy working with stars and seeing their careers grow.

One of the most interesting and special people I've gotten to know is Lady Gaga. About five years ago, when she was a total unknown, Lady Gaga was the entertainment for the Miss Universe Pageant, which was held that year in Vietnam. I own the Miss Universe Pageant and have made it very, very successful. One day my people came to me and told me about a young woman they called Lady Gaga who nobody had ever heard of. We put her on as the entertainer in the middle of the pageant, which is broadcast internationally. I thought, “Wow, she is really, really good.” The next day, it was crazy. Everybody was talking about how good Lady Gaga was—“Who is she, where is she? She's going to be someone big, she's amazing!” Well, she became a big star and maybe she became a star because I put her on the Miss Universe Pageant. It's very possible, who knows what would have happened without it, because she caused a sensation.

A couple years later, she opened in New York and was hotter than ever at Radio City Music Hall. I was there and happened to be sitting with a large group of very major celebrities. I won't mention their names because I'm not looking to embarrass anybody. Gaga gave a fantastic performance and, after she was finished, her manager came and shouted, “Mr. Trump, Gaga wants to see you, but only you, nobody else can come.” Now, here you have major singers, musicians, and television personalities and the manager is shouting to me, “Mr. Trump, only you and nobody else.” I went back with my wife, Melania, and talked to Lady Gaga for about forty-five minutes. She's a fantastic person, solid as a rock, and I'm very proud of her success because I really believe I had at least something to do with it.

No matter if you're talking about media from the entertainment world or news shows, the media bookers all try to get me on their programs to help boost their ratings. Because I operate in both entertainment TV and current events shows, I have a keen understanding of how various moves affect ratings. For instance, I told Jeff Zucker, who previously ran NBC, “Jeff, don't move Jay Leno. He's #1 in the evening and when you are #1, you don't move. In fact, not only is he #1, he is a strong #1. Don't move Jay Leno—it is a terrible mistake.”

I warned them that it would be the first time in history somebody's going to be taken out of the #1 position and moved and told them it would turn Leno into the equivalent of a lame duck president. In any event, they did it and Conan went on. To put it mildly, it didn't work. Jay went back to his original time and has never been the same again. His show's ratings are way down from what they were—he has never fully recovered.

I was actually doing the
Jay Leno Show
the night he was told that this move was going to be made and, even though it wasn't going to take place for five years, I could see that he was devastated, confused, and didn't know
why they were doing it. I didn't either. It turned out to be possibly the greatest mistake in broadcast history.

Politics and television are nasty businesses. When the two collide, things get even nastier. As an example, Jay Leno—he knocks the hell out of me on the show but always wants me to be on. The interesting thing is, even the ones that really go after me want me on the show for one reason and one reason only: I am a ratings machine.

Still, no matter how good your ratings are, sometimes you can't stop the press from running stories that are totally false but that they know will grab viewers or readers. To show you how dishonest the press is, I recently sold a house for $7.15 million. It was a house I had built at my great Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles. The home is in a beautiful location fronting the Pacific Ocean with views of the course. This house was originally built for someone else who was unable to get financing from our country's wonderful banks and defaulted on $1.5 million. The house, which is one of seventy-five lots I own facing the ocean, cost me very little above that amount, so I had the house for almost nothing.

I listed the house for $12 million knowing I couldn't get anywhere near that but figuring it's a great way to negotiate. The buyer paid me $7.15 million, which was a substantial profit on that individual parcel.

The dishonest press smelled blood. Headlines raged that I had taken a major haircut on my home, as if I were selling my own
personal
house, not one of many in the development. In actuality, I had only been inside the house one time for five minutes to check it out. But it didn't matter. We tried to correct the newspapers, but the
Los Angeles Times
and others got the story totally wrong. In fact, one reporter told one of my lawyers that he knew we were right, that it wasn't my personal house, and that he knew the sale was almost all profit.
“So why did you write it that way?” my lawyer asked. “Because it doesn't make for a good story,” the reporter told him. That's how dishonest the press can be.

In all my years in business and participating in politics I've never seen the country as divided as it is right now—and I've seen bad times. Voters' hatred of both Democrats and Republicans is beyond anything I have ever witnessed. A great leader can bring America together. But unfortunately for us, Barack Obama is not a leader. So who can the country turn to?