The Trump Family Confronts New Frontiers | Full Documentary | Biography

[Music] This American Carnage stops right here and stops right now. His presidency and the lead-up to his presidency will be studied for the rest of American History. Donald Trump is a street fighter. When you think of how he started in 2015, he understood where America was going to some degree before America did. Over the years, I've surprised a lot of people. The biggest surprise is yet to come. I used to think that Donald Trump really understood the Zeitgeist of the nation. You're fired. You're fired. You're fired. Now I realized he is the Zeitgeist. There

was virtually not a person on the planet who didn't know who Donald Trump was. To listen to this, it's just so ridiculous. There's a toughness to him. I mean, he can take a lot of bullets. He can catch bullets in his teeth. Donald Trump is a Survivor. He comes as advertised. It can be disgusting, but there is a genius to it. I don't think people change. I'm a very big believer in the fact that when you are a certain way, that's the way you are. I love to fight. I always love to fight. My father

was a very tough man. Try and blow all the candles out with one breath. Okay, okay, whenever you're ready. There's a clear through line that's passed down from generation to generation. If you become a power broker in Manhattan, you are the man. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. His name is his power. Do whatever you have to do, say whatever you have to say. Winning is Everything. I think that to understand Donald Trump, you really have to go back to the beginning. This is called topping out, right? This is called topping out, right? See how much

I know about a handshake? Sure, they can live in Houston, they can live in Paris, they can live anywhere in the world. Many of these very wealthy people have chosen Trump Tower, and I think it's a very important step for New York. I think it's a vital step for New York. Trump Tower is nothing if not a symbol that Winning is Everything. Trump Tower was really the thing that put him on the map in so many ways. It won him recognition and even honor, and brought him to a level that he thought had not been

possible for his family to date. By the way, he is a chip off the old block. This is my father, right? He was able to surpass his very demanding father, leaving behind Brooklyn and Queens and taking over New York. But this was not the beginning. The Trump family Saga starts much earlier on. All right, so you know I'm trying to march you through your life. I'm not in the past. I'm a person that thinks to the future. That's, that's the thing is I just don't like wasting time on the past. Other people do. You have

to know about how you got here. I'm never in the past, right? I know, I know. It's in 2014 I did four sit-down interviews with Donald Trump. I wanted to know how was it that this kid from Queens turned himself into the character that became the Donald Trump we know. But let me see if I can. I don't like talking about the past. Past is over. No, I don't want to think about it. I don't like to think too much of the past. All right, well other than other than this is very important. I learned

from the past. Donald's grandfather Friedrich Trump came to the United States in 1885. He was 16. He came from a wine-producing small village in Germany but wasn't content to stay there. In the middle of the night, he writes a letter and leaves it for his mom. And in the morning, he's gone. For Friedrich, the goal was to really become a wealthy man. Railroads are advertising every day. Buy a ticket to fortune. Buy a ticket West. Frederick took off for the Northwest, the last part of the Physical Frontier where things were wide open and a young

man with a lot of energy might be able to do very well. Word began to circulate of a mining town just getting going Northeast of Seattle called Monte Cristo, being bankrolled of all things by John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller is, of course, this living emblem of success in America, and so if John D. Rockefeller says "My Engineers have discovered this great vein of silver ore", well off you go. All you had to do to stake a claim was declare that you have struck silver on a piece of land, and it was yours to work and no

one else could have it. In Friedrich's case, he announced that he had found something when he hadn't even dug a single hole. He had no intention of Mining, and he in fact, instead built a hotel. He looked at the world that he had come into and figured out where there was an opening and figured out how to do it. He was very savvy about that. He set himself up to mine the miners, providing food, fine dining, and there is a wonderful euphemism called rooms for ladies, pretty much of a code word for prostitutes. There were

prostitutes hanging out in the bar, and any man who wanted to take the hook up upstairs, there were rooms available. Friedrich was supremely ambitious, was willing to do whatever it took in order to get ahead. In 1897, a ship came into Seattle laden with gold from the gold fields of the Yukon. These men stagger off onto dry land, but they can barely walk down the gangplank because of their sacks and bags of gold. And that set off the Yukon Gold Rush. Friederick thought, "I want a share of the action." Frederick makes his way to the

Yukon like everybody else. It's by foot. It's an astonishing journey up mountain passes single file. It was an extremely arduous, difficult, life-threatening [Music] situation - the White Pass Trail. You could have horses on it and horses could pull the loads over, but these miners had no idea what that, in fact, involved. The horses were completely unsuitable for the absolutely grim conditions, and they died on the trail or they fell and broke their legs, or their owners simply shot them because they couldn't go any further. There was a terrifying piece of that trail called the Dead

Horse Gulch, which was packed solid with dead horse flesh. In fact, one of the miners who went up that trail said that you could have just laid all the horses end to end and you would have been walking over dead horse flesh for 50 miles. But for Friederick, it was an opportunity. He had tent restaurants along the way and where would you get fresh meat? What do these people need? They need food. So, he uses those dead horses and serves up horse burgers, serves up horse steaks. Friederick arrives in Bennett with all of his guile

and all of his resourcefulness, and he's ready to go into business. Bennett was a newly built town that was thrown up by people on the way to the goldfields. Bennett was a very savvy place to be because all the miners had to come through Bennett, so there was always going to be traffic. He establishes himself, builds his hotel restaurant. It's filled, it's bustling, and apparently the best restaurant in town - and that's what the press accounts said. But he hears there's a railway being built to a place further down the river called White Horse, which

at that stage was barely more than a couple of buildings. Friederick notes that Bennett will be bypassed. Now, what's his response to [Music] this? It is to put his restaurant and hotel on a raft and float it down the river to White [Music] Horse. By the time the train arrived there, he had a restaurant and a hotel there. Of course, that means that he's in on the ground floor and makes a fortune really fast. I don't think given Friederick's character anything else is going to happen - this is a guy of consummate ambition and he

must have led a wild life, 'cause you can imagine he owned one little hotel and he'd moved the hotel. He'd take it down, oh yeah, and float it on a barge, and move it to a better area and then serve more than food. They, right, right, right, right - you could satisfy all your appetites. He must have led some wild life. Booze, beds, and women. Oh yeah - and but he got rich. It had to be, but he did well. Yeah, and he was a great guy from what I hear. I mean, he must have

been terrific. In his early thirties, Friederick goes back to Germany and he has a few things on his mind. One is to find a wife. He's looking for a lovely German woman to marry and he discovers Elizabeth. The two fall in love and were eventually [Music] married in 1905. They returned to New York. She's carrying her son, Donald's father, Frederick. Friederick is not going to operate a saloon, restaurant, house of ill repute. He's going to become a businessman and his business is going to be real estate. Friederick is looking out on the world that is

New York City and searching for a frontier just as there was a railroad being built to White Horse in the Yukon, he sees that the place to be is Queens - the frontier is going to be reached by the Queensboro Bridge. This is a mighty edifice that is going to literally open up to the crush of people interested in the suburbs. The people need homes and he decides it's a wonderful opportunity for the real estate man on the [Music] make. In the spring of 1918, young Fred, Donald's father, is 12 years old. He went out

for a walk with his father. As they're walking along, his father says he's not feeling well and within hours, he's died. Eventually, it becomes clear that what's killed him was the influenza epidemic that's sweeping the country in 1918 and has claimed millions of lives. You can imagine the sense of siege and worry about how you were going to survive. Fred was the oldest son and as the oldest son, he had to step into this role and take care of things. Of course, their lives were drastically changed. Fred Trump senior's experience was, in some ways, a

classic uh borrow ethnic story. His childhood was foreshortened, so he worked hard. And that kind of an upbringing can make you or can break you - it made him. My father was the greatest 'cause he taught me everything. He was very knowledgeable, he was a very smart guy, who's a very good negotiator, and he taught me a lot and I learned a lot from my father. From Friederick, at the age of 17, Fried built his first home. He took the profits from that to build another and the profits from that for another and pretty soon

the family business was taking off. At the height of the depression in 1934, with a good deal of homelessness, the federal government is trying to address this issue by creating the federal housing administration. The Congress has made it easier for private capital to build modest homes and low rental dwellings by seeding all this money by backing all these loans. The FHA creates this whirlwind of development. This was the beginning of the Trump Empire. FHA would be responsible for the funding of some of Fred's biggest projects. Without the FHA, there is no Fred Trump. From the

beginning of the FHA until the end of the 1930s, he built thousands of homes. He was touted as the Henry Ford of Home Building at one point, because he had figured out how to do this as economically as possible. Donald Trump grew up in a part of Queens called Jamaica Estates, which is not what we generally think of when we think of the boroughs of New York City. Donald's house, the first time I saw it in Jamaica Estates, was huge. It had six giant white two-story pillars, an underground garage, 23 rooms, and even a kind

of coat of arms over the door. I was incredibly blown away. Today, I could say it was a mega mansion. Donald Trump is the middle of three boys in a family of five children, and his older brother, Freddy, was kind of his hero. He was the sibling that Donald Trump looked up to the most. He was such an amazing guy, the best personality, best-looking guy you'll ever see. He was smart, he had everything, but he was a very handsome guy, a guy with a great sense of humor, always fun to be around. We went to

the Trump house often, but we never went through the front door. We always went through the garage because Mr. Trump would rather not have us around. I think he just thought that Fred was wasting his time with friends and should be doing more serious things. In the 1950s, the Trumps were one of the wealthiest families in America. Fred senior set the standards, set the expectations, and they were very high. This was not a "let's go out in the backyard and play catch" kind of dad. This was a "do as I say," tough, old-fashioned father. Donald

Trump was taught that life is a competition, you must win, you must be tough. Fred Trump saw the world as one of winners and losers, a very binary approach to life, and he impressed upon his children the idea that they simply had to be winners. His father was a brutal man. I think that Donald got used to being treated in a totally business-like and transactional way. He himself describes the relationship with his father as businesslike. To the boys, he says "You are killers and you are kings." Fred means kings by divine right. There is a

sense in the Trump family that they are genetically superior. I think you have a natural ability for things, I'm a big believer in, in nature. No, I'm not nature, I'm a big believer in natural ability, genetically. Some people can handle pressure better than others. I knew numerous people that committed suicide. So, the one thing I learned about myself is that I have a very unique ability to handle pressure. Honestly, in my opinion, that's a genetic thing. People don't know about me, I have very low blood pressure. You know, I have the blood pressure of a

great athlete. I have very low blood pressure. There is a real belief that the Trumps are destined to rule, and they got the message, and the message was that you were supposed to prevail at all costs. For Trump Jr., he would talk about wanting to go into the family business because of his admiration for his father and was very, very clear that he wanted to be the next head of the company. Donald was not the young man destined to fulfill the job of running the Trump organization, but he refused to be ignored. He was the

kid that the family had to pay attention to, only because he was an enormous discipline problem. Donald and I were cut-ups in school. We used to throw spitballs at each other and play bumper chairs in class, pull girls' hair, and that's how we got detentions, which I politely nicknamed as DTS (detentions for Donnie Trump). He was someone who acted out at school, at birthday parties he would grab the cake and throw it around, he was angry, he would glue his brothers' and sisters' blocks together. He was disliked by many of his teachers, threw erasers around,

actually hit his teacher under the eye with one. He took pride in being this tough guy who would push back against other kids or against teachers who were trying to tell him what to do. He was, in short, a terror. I was a very rebellious kind of person, I don't like to talk about it actually, but I was a very rebellious person and very set in my ways. I don't like that guy, love to fight, I always loved to fight. All types of fights, any kind of fight, I loved it, including physical, and I was

always the best athlete, something that nobody knew about me. During this period, "West Side Story" was big on Broadway and was soon to become a movie. The Sharks and the Jets were in the imaginations of kids in New York City. As Donald tells the story, after he had seen "West Side Story," he and his buddy bought themselves some switchblades. Donald wants everyone to believe that he's a tough guy, he promoted this image of himself. "I'm going to play with knives, I'm going to do things that nobody else does." He was impossible to control, then his

dad found the switchblades, and that was the last straw. Fred Trump was a man who kept score, he kept score every time the school called, every time a letter came home, every time he found something, like the knife collection that Donald acquired. He saw it as a reflection on him, something must be done about it. His solution was going to be [Music] extreme. At the end of seventh grade, I went away to Camp Donald went away to do whatever Donald did. And when I came back in September with all my friends, I noticed a seat

in homeroom that was not occupied where Donald usually sat. I asked the homeroom teacher, "Where's Donnie?" Against his will, Donald Trump is sent to military school by his father in 1959. He arrives at New York Military Academy about an hour north of New York City. He's 13 years old. I think that had to be the most miserable existence Donald Trump could imagine for himself. He has to wear a uniform, he no longer is driven around by the family's chauffeur. He is in the dorms with everyone else in the barracks. When I got here it was

hello, good morning. Now you're in military school and your life has changed. All these normal things that go on in normal kids' life, they came to a screeching halt. Your first year, you were the low man on the totem pole and you were responsible for learning new guy rules. There was mental hazing, there was physical hazing. You had to throw yourself against a wall if an upperclassman came by and apologize for being in his way. You might get hit with a broomstick, a couple of right hooks on your shoulder. Two or three upperclassmen screaming in

your face for 15 minutes. Before you know it, you're beat up. Donald went through new guy rules with Major Ted DeBias, a tough guy who was part of the Allied invasion of Italy. At the end of the war, he saw Mussolini swinging from a lamppost. They used to come here, they were flunkies, and they grew up to be somebody. Donald ran up against Major DeBias like running into a stone wall. It's not flexible, and if Major DeBias would see an attitude, that attitude ended very, very quickly. He was a rough guy, physically rough and mentally

rough. And in those days, it was smack the hell out of you, really getting in your face. I mean, like big league. He said things like "stand up," and I went, and this guy came at you, you would never believe it. These were guys that didn't take, you can go two ways, you can fight the system. You're not going to win, see, you're not going to beat guys like this, right? Or you can acclimate and deal with the system and evolve in the system. And I did that. Theodore DeBias was a taskmaster far beyond anything

that Donald had seen from Fred Trump. And yet, he kind of takes to it. He liked the discipline, he enjoys the hierarchy. He didn't like being bossed around, he never had, but he liked the idea that the kids who were on the receiving end of all of that aggression would, in fairly short order, get to deliver it themselves. For Donald, the idea was to play the game and win the game, turn around and set the terms yourself. He literally bowed and scraped before Ted DeBias in order to win his favor, and he discovered that it

worked. It was Donald who wound up an officer. I went in there as a wise guy, you were little, you were 13 years old, 13, but I went in as a wise guy. That was a little difficult. By the time I graduated, I was like top of the military [Music] heap. Every year, we would send a certain number of cadets down to New York to march in the Columbus Street parade. So, on Columbus Day 1963, Donald Trump led the parade. When Trump's mind, this return to the city and having clearly a position of authority, this

is a bit of a retort to his father, and it a chance to say, father, look what I've become. You thought that you needed to send me away because I wasn't heading down the right road. Look what I've become, look what I can do, look how I can lead, look how I can be that winner that you demanded. It was a way of taking that step into Manhattan, of going where his father would not go. He was determined to show that he could take the family and its legacy to a new, tougher, higher place. One

of the tactical officers at the time was a man named Colonel Anthony B. Castellano. As they were walking up the street, Donald looked over and he goes, "You know, Ace, I'd really like to own some of this property someday." My father was a very good builder and he really did a good job. He would build a building and next door, they'd build a building. And my father's houses were better, and he'd build them cheaper. So he'd spend less money building a better house and he'd sell it for more. In the mid-1960s, Fred Trump starts to

think at this point about moving beyond more modestly sized projects and build on a scale unlike anything Fred Trump has built before named Trump [Music] Village. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, Trump Village, a middle-income co-op in Coney Island housing 2,800 families. Trump Village Apartments. How do you get in here? Is it worth waiting? Yes, my mother lives in a terrible apartment. They say it would take six or seven years or maybe eight. Well, I'll take the chance. This is a project that ends up being far greater in scope

than anything he's done before. His previous projects, the buildings were at most five-six stories and here, he really sets his sights much higher, literally. It's also the first time that Fred Trump labels a project clearly with the family name. Trump Village would emerge as one of Fred Trump's greatest public successes, but ironically, it also was going to be the source of one of the greatest public humiliations. In 1966, New York state began probing into what was going on at Trump Village. Fred Trump is hauled in for questioning for misusing funds, overbilling the government for equipment,

for services related to Trump Village. It includes him charging the state about $8,000 a piece for tile scrapers that normally cost $500. More glaringly, he overcharges the state for about $6.6 million in fees. The net result is it's very clear Fred Trump is gouging the state of New York and New York residents to line his own pockets. One of the Commissioners finally says, "Is there any way we can prevent someone like this from ever getting a state contract again?" Here he is, the patriarch of the family, somebody they looked up to. To have him being

publicly called out like that was extremely embarrassing to them. Neighbors, schoolmates, people were asking questions. That they were seen as unpatriotic, possibly criminal. The 1966 State investigation really had a devastating impact on Fred Trump. Trump Village really becomes the last significant project that he builds. Fred spent three decades building his company and he was now looking for an heir who he felt was worthy of inheriting that mantle and moving the company forward. But when Donald graduates from college, the expectation is that he's going to join the family business, to work first for his father and

then eventually for his brother, Fred, who's considered the heir apparent. I think that what Fred expected of Fred Jr. was something that was almost a classical King's approach to raising sons. If this son is worthy of me, he can rise to the throne. Not every son is going to thrive in that kind of environment. There was a nervous quality about Fred. He was always on. I wondered, in retrospect, whether some of his anxiety was caused by the constant pressure of trying to please his father. The point of no return in his relationship with his father

was the attempted development of property in Coney Island. I remember Steeplechase vividly. It had a face with a big smile, with lots of teeth showing. It was a happy place, a playground, and it was a reminder that Coney Island was this haven for people in New York. Off the subways came streaming a million people on a weekend, a million people coming to Coney Island, and many of them were coming to Steeplechase. By the '60s, Coney Island is in decline, so Fred Trump buys Steeplechase very quickly, largely under the radar of the folks in Coney Island.

He wants to build housing there. The problem is Fred Trump fails to get the necessary zoning change that would enable him to build this housing. Walk right by the business community in Coney Island is desperate to have Steeplechase preserved. Fred Trump knew that if it got landmarked, there was nothing much more he could do with this site. Fred got Fred Jr. involved in accelerating their demolition of this property before they had permission to build on it. Fred Jr. is trying his hardest to work with his father, to demonstrate that he's as tough and as smart

as his father. So Fred Trump organizes a wrecking party of sorts to celebrate the development of apartments along the seashore and the success of the Trump organization. He invites all these people to come and basically hurl bricks through the great glass windows, through the enormous painting on the glass of the great smiling face of Steeplechase. The thought that you would encourage people to throw bricks to destroy that smile, that face that was such an integral part of growing up in Coney Island, I mean it's unbelievable. In the end, it was a public relations nightmare for

the Trumps. Fred Jr. could never do the political work and the other logistical work that was required to make the development real, and the property even today is not the site of any housing. After the fiasco at Steeplechase, it was clear to all of the Trumps that Fred Jr. was not going to fulfill his father's expectations. Early in life, Donald looked up to Fred Jr. as the big brother. He was a very charming, very caring young man, and yet Donald became very competitive with Fred Jr. and really showed him no mercy. If I were going

to make a movie of this, I would see the younger brother trying to get primacy in a family. This became an increasingly terrible situation. Fred Trump would belittle Fred Jr. in meetings. He would sadistically attack him, saying, "What do you know?" In the early 1970s, Fred senior takes the fateful move. He makes Donald president of the Trump organization. What Fred senior is communicating here is unmistakable: Donald has made it, he is the future. Fred Jr. has not made it, and he's never going to make it. He had talked so much about working for his dad

and taking over the company. Well, I think that the father at some point decided that Fred was a loser. I've got to believe that Fred took that rejection very hard. Fred essentially drove his son, Fred Jr., out of the family, and I think Fred ended up a lost soul. He had his own dream to be a commercial airline pilot. In the end, Fred left the Trump organization and went off to train as a pilot. He was having a tremendous hard time, and he started drinking and he got hooked on alcohol. He became a very... Serious

alcoholic, and it was rough for [Music] him. I've thought uh long and hard about Fred's life and uh wonder how much of a role that uh rejection from his father may have played in his sad [Music] life. I like to learn from other people's mistakes; I like to learn from my mistakes, but I like to learn more from other people's mistakes 'cause why should I have to make a mistake if I can learn from somebody else? I've learned so many lessons by watching other people make mistakes, some fatal and some not fatal and some not

even near fatal, but I study other people's mistakes. Fred Jr. did not do much of anything the way that his father expected; his whole approach to life was contrary to the old man's, and Donald observed Fred senior's impatience with Fred junior, identified by him as a sign of Fred's weakness. Donald's takeaway from this is that it's an example of what he should never do in his own life, and he sees here is this big opportunity for me that my brother squandered. When I was growing up, the signs on the Belt Parkway didn't say to Manhattan;

they said to New York City, so you had a very strong sense that Manhattan was New York City and you were not; you in the outer boroughs. You grew up with this chip on your shoulder, the city so nice they had to name it twice. Well, New York, New York is Manhattan; it's the lake in the park, it's the skyline after dark, it's the Empire State, it's the Monument of World Peace, the UN, and if you become a power broker in Manhattan, you are the man. From an early age, Donald Trump knew there was more

than Queens; he felt constricted by uh his father's world of the outer boroughs. Imagine a young Donald Trump; he leaves this mansion that he lives in with his parents in Jamaica Estates and every morning makes his way down south along Belt Parkway to Avenue Z in Brooklyn, not far from the waste treatment plant, and into the shabby offices of the Trump organization. He was trying so hard to get away from being the son of a developer from Coney Island, a father who operated out of a very modest, almost trailer-like affair filled with cigar store Indians.

Donald Trump hated going to that job; he was there to collect rents, he was there to process the paperwork, he was there to check in and keep an eye on the contractors. This was not where he wanted to be. You're a young guy, right? This is early '70s, you're barely 30 years old when you start this. Younger, younger, 28, yeah. What do you thinking? What are you thinking? I really got to get into Manhattan. I worked in Brooklyn for my father, you know, I did very well, I did a lot, but I always wanted to

be in Manhattan. My father was a very good builder M, but he built on his territory, he felt comfortable in Brooklyn and Queens, he never wanted to enter Manhattan, he didn't think it was his place. For Donald Trump, Manhattan, it's like Oz, he's staring across the East River at Oz, and he wants a piece of [Music] that, and he gets a one-room studio and he moves in Manhattan, he's going to become a player. He had his Cadillac convertible with personalized license plate DJT, and he would go bing up and down the avenues looking for properties

to buy, thinking, you know, if I could just start small doing in Manhattan what his father had done in the outer boroughs, real estate prices were going down, and so it was open territory for a real estate developer who was eager to make his mark. He was generating and grooming this image of himself as a playboy millionaire, and so he would go out to the clubs that were hot at that moment. The club was a place where you would roll up to the bar hoping to meet a model so you could see that a Donald

Trump would be attracted to that kind of scene, I was one of the very first female members of the club, and it was glamorous and fun and they played fabulous music. It was the hottest place in town, it had a very intimate dance floor, all the women were chic and well-dressed, and the men were handsome wearing either suits or tuxedos, and you could really fall in love with anybody in this place, and I remember one night I went over to the maitre d' and I said, who is that man? He said he's a new member,

his name is Donald Trump, I thought he was extremely handsome, he had a way about him that just caught my eye immediately. You went to Liang CL, the greatest I've ever been, the level of beauty was late, love to me was the greatest love that I've ever been associated in the world, I've been to every I've been everywhere. Trump would hang out there in order to be noticed, but also to get to know the movers and shakers of this new world of Manhattan that he was diving into. Donald very much set his sights on becoming

a player in the hierarchy of New York real estate, but before he could make his move in Manhattan, a problem arrived on the doorstep of his father. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the Trump organization alleging that they had discriminated against black and Latin families wanting to live in the buildings that his father had built. This was a big problem that could jeopardize any deal. The 1973 lawsuit alleges rampant discrimination on the part of the Trump organization. We're not talking about discrimination here and there; we're Talking about systemic structural discrimination, this is a kitchen.

Here I was contacted and asked to be a tester for the Beach Haven Apartments, which were owned by Trump Management. There was a sign outside that said "apartment for in" and this articulate, well-dressed black man had applied for the apartment. The superintendent said to the man, "I'm sorry, but the apartment is taken." As I remember, it was a gentleman and he said, "I have none to sure because there's nothing vacant right now." Right after I left, they sent a white person. The super greeted me with open arms like he was just waiting for me and

he handed me the lease. And I just ran. When I got outside, I met up with the commissioner, and we walked back into the building. At this point, the superintendent all he could say was, "Well, I'm just doing what my boss told me to do." You feel outraged, you feel insulted. I'm a young black man who has been to college, who has a job, so you do feel a sense of anger at the fact that society still allows this sort of thing to happen in 1973. I went out to Trump Village and tried to interview

as many people as I could. We found out that if a person of color did apply to live at Trump Village, they on their application would be handwritten "W.R." & a big "C" for colored. Those applications would then be put in a separate pile, and those people would be offered either no apartment or they'd be offered a lesser apartment and a lesser property. The Justice Department comes after Donald Trump and his father Fred, accusing them of racial discrimination. Everyone around him, including his father, is saying, "Just settle, Donald. Nobody beats the federal government." As Donald

Trump was deciding whether to settle the racial bias case on behalf of the company and his father, he goes into the club. He walks in, and there's a man at the table, and that man is Roy Cohn. The meeting between Roy Cohn and Donald Trump began one of the most important relationships in Trump's life. "This fight I have absolute total confidence is going to be one and one completely and totally." To this day, Roy Cohn is one of the most controversial and hated people in America. Mention his name and people will throw things at you.

To Donald Trump, Roy Cohn is exactly what his father had called a killer. Donald Trump had two mentors, his dad, who taught him there are killers and losers, and Roy Cohn who said, "Even when you lose, you win. Doesn't matter if it looks bad; you can say it's a win when it's a loss." Roy Cohn, as a young man, was Chief Counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy was the rabble-rousing senator from Wisconsin who rose to power on a lie. "All Senator McCarthy has been trying to do is expose the Communists." The lie was that there

were hundreds of people in the government who were Communists. It was all fake. Roy helped Senator McCarthy invent things out of whole cloth. Invent, you know, communist conspiracies and communists in the State Department and all that. Roy pushed that through. "Are you now or have you ever been a member of..." "Wait a minute, let me ask a question." "Asking me to violate the Constitution, not violate the Constitution." "Answer the question." Years before Twitter, years before cable news, Roy knew that he'd get headlines. He could make allegations that would stick. You do good work, but McCarthy

and Roy Cohn were driven out of Washington in an utter state of disgrace when they were belittled by Joseph Welch in a beautiful moment of American theater when he said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" When Roy came to New York, he played it like a win, and he rose to become one of the most powerful fixers in New York of the 20th century. Roy and Trump met at the club, which was in those days the place to be, and Don proceeds to tell him

that the US Justice Department is going after the Trump family really hard for discriminating against people in the housing they own, and everybody's telling Trump just to settle it. Roy is the first one who says to Trump, "What are you talking about? Go after the Justice Department. Counterattack. You can win this." Roy Cohn was a great lawyer. You talk about a controversial guy, I mean, he was a guy. But if he was your friend, he would fight to the death. "Did you know his reputation?" "Yeah, I did." "But his reputation was tough." "I needed a

tough lawyer. You know, I was dealing with tough people." "And Roy was very good." "And Roy, for me, did a great job." Donald and Fred Trump, along with Roy Cohn, called a press conference. He did something preposterous, which is they said that they were suing the Justice Department for defamation. Donald says, "This isn't about racism. I don't want them in there because they're all welfare recipients." Nothing could be further from the truth. It was just a made-up story. He knew it was an effective public statement to make to spin the public debate in a different

way. This is all Roy Cohn. It's Roy Cohn who's got Trump at his knee telling him how the world works. Roy understood how to generate news and how the media worked, and he understood the interplay between public events and media coverage. Trump marveled at Cohn's understanding of how to sell an idea, both his legal tactics and the coverage of the matters in which he was involved. "I remember the first." Big argument in court. Roy Cohen speaks uninterrupted for 45 minutes. Donald Trump was very flippant and one of his comments during one of the breaks was,

"You know you don't want to live with them either." Roy assures Donald that they can go into the this and win. They don't they lose. They have to settle with the federal government, the Trump organization. They say, "We didn't admit guilt. We didn't say that we did anything wrong. We settled with the justice department just to make it go away." To this day, you know you ask Donald Trump about that and he says, "Well, we won that of course." That's not true. It was a big victory for the justice department. I think that case, you

know to this day is in Trump's mind. He hated being accused of discrimination. He hated the idea that the government went after him and his father and he holds animosity towards the government to this day. Standard and Poor's bond rating service said today, "It is absolutely certain that New York City will default on its debt." President Ford has been against Federal help for New York saying it would establish a costly precedent. Default if you must but don't expect help from the federal government. People were fleeing the city and that was when Ford said, "Dro dead,"

the famous article. You know it wasn't like that competitive. I was wanting to come in and other people were afraid to touch. The was on the sidelines, they all gone or bust and the city was doing terribly, crime was through the roof. I didn't think about it because I was counter to the market. I was very counterintuitive. I've always been counterintuitive. The Manhattan that Donald Trump crossed the bridge to fulfill his dreams was a Manhattan in pretty sorry shape. Crime was at record height, people were afraid, the city was near bankruptcy. I wrote the column

for the Daily News writing about New York. The attitude in New York was a depressing attitude, it was a feeling that "Oh, my God the city is really in danger." Other news, the Penn Central which has been running in the red for a long time now decided today to sell off some Choice real estate, including 10 blocks in downtown Manhattan. They hope to bring in about a billion dollars in the deal. Penn Central most people Thought of it as two railroad companies but it was really a landowning company that happened to have some railroads. Rail

Yards were on the market, Grand Central was on the market and even Hotel companies. It was more or less a fire sale. Donald Trump stumbles upon an announcement in the press that the Commodore Hotel, one of the grand old hotel properties of Manhattan, is sitting there unwanted. So it was a big deal when Donald said he was going to restore a cruddy Hotel on 42nd Street at a time when New Yorkers were reeling, we insecure, we frightened. Here's Donald Trump on the scene bold, optimistic. He was kind of a rare ray of light in a

in a pretty dark scene. He began to play all the players against each other to get the property. He went to Penn Central and said, "Hey look, I have the agreement of Hyatt and they're going to make this a Hyatt Hotel so you should give it to me, I'll renovate it." He didn't have the agreement of Hyatt but he said he did. Then he went to Hyatt and said, "Hey I'm the one with the control of the property from Penn Central," which he didn't have. They each bought the story. So now, he had both the

land and the name Hyatt and their cooperation. Now he needed money, goes to the bank and says, "Hey, I've got this tax abatement from the government." He didn't have it at that point but he persuaded the bank that he did. In the ultimate showman kind of way. He was being a hard operator, hard Savvy businessman. Donald Trump came in to see me and he wanted me to exempt his hotel from real estate taxes, which I had the power to do, but I said no because I did not believe and do not believe that a Hyatt

Hotel on 42nd Street would not earn enough money to pay taxes. When I said no he was extremely unpleasant. Donald got very angry and threatened to have him fired. He told me what to do to myself. I told him he better get out I'd have him arrested. I think he was worried. He needs every little bit of help that he can get. Donald didn't have a lot but he did have one thing, his father. So he went to his father to help him out. His father was very close to both the governor and to the

mayor and so he had entree when he wanted to put forward this idea of getting a big tax break. And so thanks to his political connections, he was able to get the support of both the city and the state-controlled offices. They closely and supported the renovation of the commodore hotel and reconstruction of the hotel s. I'm not sure whether we're making the wisest decision in the world. I know that there is no other decision before us to make and may feels that this is the best, possible proposal that the city could get at this time

vote. Donald Trump, through a complicated series of absolute Moxy Maneuvers, managed to get a huge, huge tax break. It's been a long hard fight. How do you feel? Well, I'm very happy and I think the city of New York is going to be very happy. We're going to do something now which is going to be a great stride forward for New York City. Donald Trump is a street fighter, and Donald Trump wants to win. He is the consumate negotiator. People asked me how come "how is it that you got 40 years of tax abatement" and

I'd always say, "because I didn't ask for 50, but there was more work to be done." Donald Trump, upon the city's demand, was required to submit the contract that indicated he had permission from the Penn Central Railroad. So Donald said, "here's my contract with Penn Central." No one actually looked at the last page to notice it had never been signed. So he moved forward on a project of immense scale, guaranteeing the city that he had the legal authority to do it, and he did not have the authority, and nobody noticed. Nobody noticed. They just said,

"could we see your contract?" So I sent them a contract, it was signed by me and nobody else, and nobody ever, nobody said, nobody ever signed the other. "All if they had said, 'hey, what's going on, would you have coped to it?' Would you have said, 'well you didn't tell me?' I don't know what I would have done." And I went through all of that stuff to get the tax abatements that had never been given in the history of New York. Because the city was in trouble. Right? Where did you hear that story? I got

my sources. It's really the model that sets up everything that follows. The idea of playing one player against the other. A very bit of husterism mixed with some business savvy to create the buzz, the PR. All of that sense of Trump as a force comes out of the Hyatt deal. Amid a lot of fanfare, the Grand Hyatt held its grand opening today. The mayor and the governor of New York were among those on hand for the ribbon County. Hyatt Regency is now an architectural gem for all the world to see. Patt is a fantastic outfit,

and all of this is going to combine to make probably the most successful Hotel, one of them in the country. We feel it was fabulous. He did it fast and he did it efficiently. It really gave him a sense of Pride and a sense that he knew exactly what he was doing. The Commodore was a stepping Stone to the Trump Tower. "Friend of mine in the real estate industry said, 'you have the greatest ability to get great locations of any human being I've ever seen.' It's true, no matter what it is if you look at

any of my projects I have the best locations." One day, so, The Story Goes, Donald is looking for an ideal location to put up what would become a signature project. He's crisscrossing Manhattan in his car looking for that ideal situation, suddenly reaching the corner of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street and noticing the bonwit teller building, an old art deco 10-story department store. Here is the opportunity Donald is looking for and it is at that corner that he decides, "this, this is where I'm going to stake my future." The finest piece of real estate considered to

be the finest piece of real estate in the world is at the corner of Fifth Avenue in 57th Street, that's the Tiffany corner of the world. The New York Times is reporting that Bon witz is being sold to Donald Trump, and that the store could be closed by July. Bonwit gives him a 6mon $25 million option to purchase the property, he was constantly borrowing money from his father during this period, and he had to get a partner, Equitable bank, because he can't do this alone, he just doesn't have the money to build his signature Tower.

So now he's got a mortgage, the interest clock is ticking, he's got a partner that's taking the bulk of the profits, he needs every little bit of help that he thinks he can get. So he again latched onto tax breaks. Donald Trump now faces the biggest Skirmish in his battle to build Trump Tower, he's going to come into conflict with the mayor of New York City. "The positions that I take are not ideological, they are reasonable, they are sensible and that's why people support me." Look, Ed Kotch was a totally overrated mayor, he was a

bad guy, you can quote me, Ed Kotch was a bad guy, he was a total bully. All Ed Kotch was concerned about was press, in other words, he wanted to make sure he looked good. "Ed, go yourself, you're a piece of that have particular duty." The city was offering tax breaks to developers, but they were not thinking that this is a kind of tax break they would give away for luxury apartments. This was a program that would be used to turn a vacant lot into an apartment building for the middle class. But here comes this

application from Donald Trump, and the city turns him down, he's outraged. Trump sues the city, so now he's at loggerheads with the Kotch administration, and that potentially meant a long battle that could go on for years. One of the beneficiaries of the abatements is real estate developer Donald Trump. "I was entitled to that abatement and I am, by law, entitled to that abatement." Councilman Henry Stern and councilman Robert Wagner Jr opposed it as an excessive gift of public funds. "I did a weekly show between Ruth Messenger who's a city council member who was very much

against giving any tax breaks to businessmen, particularly businessmen like him, Donald Trump, and Trump believed in tax breaks particularly for him." The program has become a corporate welfare program. "I really think before you make those statements on the air that you should go back and check your facts and figures." Donald, the statute says very specifically. That, in order to qualify, the site on which the residential building is going up is either vacant, predominantly vacant, or underutilized. You don't think a 10-story building is an underutilization when I'm building a 68-story building. Oh, I see. Okay, okay,

tell me about it. D, I had the grand time between these two. It was a night fight. Ruth, I'd like to ridiculous to listen to this. I mean, look at the end of the day, there's a toughness to him. I mean, this is a very tough guy. I mean, he can take a lot of bullets, he can catch bullets in his teeth, he can eat broken glass, a punch back sort of a person with an armadillo skin. This, it's just so ridiculous. You've asked me onto a program. I'm supposed to be and I listen to

this. That, it's a calling card, attack the person personally, don't give them a quarter, don't be nice, don't be reasonable, attack them. You have to destroy them because they're going to destroy you. If you spent the same time trying to clean up our Subways and clean up the city of crime, well, I don't know that you do if you do. You're certainly doing a very ineffective job. Sound familiar when Trump finally got all the permissions he needed and was ready to roll on the construction of Trump Tower, his pride and joy. He needed to get

someone who actually knows how to build a building. Donald and I sort of worked together, while I was working on the high, I was at a fundraiser with my husband, and he said to my husband, "I'm going to hire her, she's going to work for me, I'm going to double herself's", and that's how I learned about Trump Tower. She was the first woman to run the construction of a major skyscraper. Trump was always proud of the fact that he put a woman in that position and entrusted her with this project from beginning to end. Bararrest

had a very tough job. It was a culture of Macho men, a lot of these guys are chauvinistic pigs, you know, to be quite honest, there were no women in the construction, you could count him on one hand, even if you lost a few fingers. He said something to me, he said, "men are better than women, but a good woman is better than 10 good men", and he meant that as a compliment. Donald trusted me implicitly, and he respected people that told him things the way they were, and it was not easy to do that

because when you stood up to him, you got hammered. He said to me, "you know you're a killer", and I later learned that his father actually used that expression with him, that people should be Killers. I thought and I quickly confirmed that it was very inexperienced. He really didn't know much about construction at all. But I thought that he was intelligent, didn't have to tell him a hundred times, and with him, that was a good thing, 'cause he could only listen once, if you were lucky and you got him to listen to a whole story.

Once the project got the green light, Donald Trump confronted the next problem, which was how do we take down this 10-story department store? Most famously, that building had this facade of gorgeous sculptures that were the Hallmark of Bonwit Teller, one of the most prized architectural features on Fifth Avenue. These stone relief sculptures at the top of the building were very stylized, very naked dancers with long scarves. Trump made a deal to remove this piece of art carefully from the facade of the building and give it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and this would be

a compromise. The great Landmark art would be saved, and Trump would be able to go ahead and demolish the building. In order to get the demolition done cheaply, Donald Trump, as he often did, found the lowest bidding company he could. He hired a Polish demolition company, which turned out to employ immigrants who are undocumented. They were being paid essentially less than $5 an hour when they got cash. Some of them said they were being paid in vodka. They did the work 12 to 18 hour days, and it's dangerous, dirty work. You're dismantling, concrete debris falling

down on you. They had nowhere to live, they were sleeping on the floor of the Bonwit Teller store at night. And all of this was done at Breakneck pace. And then one afternoon, one of the directors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art gets a call in her office, and she's told Donald Trump is destroying the freeze. I got into a taxi, got into a classic New York City traffic jam, I was 9 months pregnant at the time, but I got out of the cab and I ran for 10 blocks. I'll never forget that run, got

down 56th Street, and we watched them being Jackhammers. I was Furious. The Trump organization could have asked the Met for help in taking the pieces down and removing them, they didn't. You were recently the object of a lot of controversy because you ordered destroyed some sculptures on the building that you bought that the Metropolitan Art Museum want. Why did you have those destroyed first of all and what happens to the look of a city as an art building or an art deco building it really was not worth very much, and we did take it down

and there was somewhat of an outcry. But I think that's generally subsided. He gets a bunch of bad publicity, but in his mind it's all good publicity because here he's seen as this force of progress, this guy who's bulling. His way through all this red tape and all these fussy artist types, in order to get his building built and to get the Commerce of New York moving again. Very carefully, Donald is putting all the pieces in place for this signature project. But he's also borrowing money all over the place. While he often portrays himself as

sort of a self-made man, the only money he had is what he borrowed from his father, Fred. Trump was nervous - he was co-signing all the loans. He was the one, it was his money. Fred Trump was involved in the Trump Tower project, that's how I met him. I remember, he didn't like me. Let's put it this way, he hated me. He hated the very notion that a woman would be working in construction, to begin with, and much less be in charge of a project that was his son's project. So, we were like. He would

say, "Oh no, that's all wrong. You don't know what you're doing." But I went to Donald, I said, "You've got to get your father off my back, he's driving me crazy." And he said to me, "Suck it up, baby," in so many words, because, you know, he was putting up with them too. Most buildings by the time that Trump Tower was built were using steel to put structures up. And what was unusual about Trump Tower was that it was largely built out of concrete. What we were doing was what's called a fast-track, which is, you

build it before it's completely designed. And it was a concrete building, which was great because you design it one day and you can pour it the next. Most of the Contracting, the construction industry in New York was controlled to a large extent by the mob, specifically the concrete business. Business that you could call Mafia Inc. They're said to run the most powerful crime families in New York. Federal investigators say the mob controls the concrete workers in the construction industry. My name is Michael Frances, and you can call me Michael, that's fine. And how do you

credential yourself? You know, former C regime in the Columbo crime family is a normal moniker for me. And, um, I guess for this purpose, is probably the best way to address it. Basically, the mob controlled all the concrete business in the city of New York. Because Trump Tower was a concrete building, you know, it was a big score for us guys. And I want to be clear, I'm not saying that Trump was in bed with the mob. I'm not saying that he was one of our guys. But he certainly had a deal with us. I

mean, he didn't have a choice. So in that regard, he did. In 1982, there was a major stoppage among all the concrete providers, everybody's worried, a lot of developers are in a bind. Now there's a delay in their construction. When it occurred, we were in the process of pouring concrete to get the main structure up, and every day that you lose that goes by is a day delayed, and it costs money. For Donald, they're not going to beat us. I mean, we can hold out as long as we want to hold out. So, you know,

eventually they have to come around. John Cody was a union boss who lived on the dividing line between the union and the mob. Cody was a guy who could make things go well for you or he could make things go poorly for you. It's an interesting question as to why when every other developer in New York can't get access to concrete, Donald Trump is still able to just move along swimmingly. One of the things that Cody was able to do for Trump was make sure that drivers continue to deliver concrete to the site. You have

to be able to deal with many different things to be able to be a successful developer. You have to be able to deal with the unions and concrete guys who are mobbed up. You have to get along with these people. You had no choice, there was nobody else to do it. Trump struck a deal with John Cody, and Mr. Cody was able to get an apartment for his mistress in Trump Tower. She was given a very prominent apartment on a high floor of Trump Tower, and she had one demand, and that was she wanted a

swimming pool in her apartment. Trump Tower did not come with a swimming pool, so Trump went in and had that part of the building reinforced so that it could hold the weight of a swimming pool and all the water in it. This is the world Trump operated in, and shortly before Trump Tower was finished, Cody was convicted of racketeering and sent to prison. I don't like getting close to people like that, but they respected me, and a lot of this is relationships, a lot of is rel well, a lot of life is relationship, a lot

of what I've done is a relationship, a lot of great things that have happened to me happened to me because of a relationship. Millionaire real estate developer Donald Trump will get a handsome tax break for his latest project on Fifth Avenue. In the case of Trump Tower, he engaged the city in a big battle over getting this deal, and in the end, there was a fair umpire in the Court of Appeals of New York State, and he won fair and square and got his tax abatement. Well, here we are on the top of the Trump

Towers, today is the topping off of this fabulous building. When they finally finished the Trump Tower, Donald took the opportunity to have a topping off golf party. This is the greatest skyline in the world. So, this is a great addition to New York skyline. What do you think about the view? It's pretty nice from up here, isn't it? I've always wanted to look down on General Motors. It was quite exciting being on the top of the building when they finished it off, put the last cornerstone in, and everybody was there with balloons, and it was

quite a fanfare. Trump Tower was the biggest moment in Donald's life 8 years ago. I must say, I was embarrassed to say I was in the real estate business in New York. Today, I can honestly say I'm proud of it, and it's the number one city in the world. And I say a large part of that is due to the tremendous abilities of Mayor Koch. I think he's done a tremendous job. Thank you very much. Yeah, all the media were there covering this and um, Koch gave a speech, which was so funny because they hated

each other, and may the windows of this building forever look out upon a place of peace and prosperity. Congratulations. Thank you. Very nice. Very, very nice. "Mr., what are your sentiments today regarding the whole celebration? Very happy day. The completion of the tallest concrete building in the city of New York. How are the sales going? Well, I have nothing to do with sales, but I hear they're going excellent, fantastic, unbelievable. I think Fred Trump was authentically proud of Donald's early successes in New York. He was amazed that his little boy had graduated from Queens into

a premier address in Manhattan and was able to build a landmark tower with the family name on it. I remember we were going up to New York on spring break, and I asked my son what he wanted to do in New York, what he wanted to see, and he said most of all, he wanted to go see the lobby of Trump Tower. And sure enough, we did it and we were all pretty impressed. I remember walking in and looking up and seeing this escalational and seeing the fountains and feeling that I was, you know, as

an outsider, as a bride, that this was the apotheosis of big glitzy, you know, vulgar, if you like, Americano, and I loved him because you know, that's what was fun about America was kind of the Liberace of buildings, really, if you like. Here is Donald being lauded for this great achievement, but obviously absent from celebration is Donald's elder brother Fred Jr. As a pilot, Fred Jr. continues to struggle with what in retrospect will be seen as a lifelong battle with alcohol and he falls out of grace with the airlines and cannot function as a pilot

anymore. By this time in his life, it's been communicated by his father and by his brother that they don't expect much from him. He winds up moving home and into the family mansion and is essentially a handyman for the Trump properties, ordered about by his father, asked to do menial tasks. He was intended to be heir to the throne of the Trump organization, but from this went on and he really did start to spiral downward more rapidly. Fred was a great guy, but you know, he had an alcohol problem, okay, and he was such an

amazing guy and the best personality, best looking guy you'll ever see and you know, ate a lot of things, but he had an alcohol problem. I never really thought of his having a problem with drinking really until the last time I saw him and that was in the hospital of Manhattan. He kept saying, "I've got to get off the sauce, I've got to get off the sauce." His passing is the first real loss in Donald's life, but Donald viewed Fred Jr's death as an example of weakness of what happens when you're not tough enough, when

you don't fight, when you don't strike back. It's just a fact of life that some people win and some people lose, and they may be brothers, but they're still winners and losers. What his father taught him that he was a killer turned out to be true. Donald Trump had made all of this happen. He was not yet 40 years old, and he was a force to be reckoned with on the island of Manhattan. There was no greater proof that could be offered by life of the excellence of the Trump method and the superiority of his

own talents than the completion of this grand project. By the way, he is a chip off the old block. This is my father, Fred, right? You were going to say something about your dad. You said he was very difficult to work with. Number one, he was a very tough man, but he was also a man that would never let anything go. He was a very strong man. He was a very detailed-oriented person, but it did great deals for him. In fact, he gave a statement to Business Week Magazine many, many years ago, "Everything Donald touches

turns to Gold." Donald Trump was never a man who was dying to settle down. He took us to our hotel and next day I got three dozens of the roses. Try and blow all the candles out with one breath. Okay, you want to hold it. The name Marla Maples came up shortly after that. No guy likes talking about affairs, by the way. It had sex, it had beauty, it had bazillions of bucks. It had everything. The attention he got in the media actually made him feel alive. Well, there's a lot of coverage of that. Then

gradually, of course, things got out of control. He was frightened. Trump was staring at destroying not. Only his own legacy, but his father's legacy as well. But you have said that if you ran for president, you'd win. I think I'd have a very good chance. I mean, I like to win. He's one of the greatest shows on Earth. You don't know what he's going to do next, and you can't stop watching.