Trump: An American Dream (2017) s01e01 Episode Script
Manhattan
1
[inaudible dialogue]
[siren wails]
[siren wails]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[radio chatter continues]
[overlapping radio chatter]
Mr. Speaker,
the president of United States.
[cheering, applause]
[inaudible dialogue]
[seagulls cawing]
[ship horn blares]
[car horns honking]
The city was sort of like
very tense, you know.
[car horns honking]
This is my police academy photo.
I'm up there.
Top row, all the way in the back.
New York had on average
3,000 homicides a year.
[siren chirps]
-[man] Got the knife?
-That's my knife!
-Shut up!
-[glass shattering]
[Robert Utsey] Things were grim.
[male TV presenter] Some people
once called New York "Fun City."
Now the police in New York
are calling it "Fear City."
You have to be careful
and watch where you go now.
How late you stay out, and
It scares you.
[George Arzt]
The city was in dire, dire need.
I was excited because
I recognized there was something
to write about every day.
We got a man up there behind
[sirens wailing]
I was a political reporter
for the New York Post.
The business community thought that
politicians had ruined the city
that they didn't know how
to govern the city.
Politicians with money
are like kids with marijuana.
And you have to tell them, you know,
"This is all you've got."
[male reporter] New York, within
a matter of weeks, may be bankrupt
[clamoring]
'cause eight million people
have taken out far more
in social services and welfare
than they've contributed in taxation.
[Arzt]
They thought that they could overspend
and just roll over the debt to
the following year and the following year,
and the last mayor of the city
would be caught with it.
[male reporter]
New York's Mayor Abraham Beame
led a delegation up to Washington today,
seeking federal financial aid
for New York.
The City has done all it can.
[male reporter 2]
Thousands of City employees
have already been laid off.
Nineteen thousand municipal workers
lost their jobs today
Nineteen thousand. Yes. I was one of them.
[reporter 2] Pistols and badges
were turned in at the precinct houses
by the policemen who were laid off.
This is comparable
to laying off soldiers during a war.
I mean, that's how ridiculous it is.
It's a war out in the street.
[Utsey]
Everyone deals with stress differently.
[crowd clamoring]
[Utsey] Marriages dissolve
because of the stress.
I actually know, personally,
of two people that I worked with
who committed suicide during that time.
I lost all faith in the job.
How can you work when you don't know
whether you're gonna get paid on Friday?
Two weeks ago, they stopped the checks.
[male reporter 3] Three thousand
sanitation workers were laid off
[male reporter 4] There's about
30,000 tons of garbage sitting uncollected
on the streets of New York today
[male reporter 5] Mayor Abraham Beame
asked the city's largest banks for help.
Two weeks ago,
he asked President Ford for help.
Tuesday, he flew to Albany
to ask the state legislature for help.
-[sirens wailing]
-They've all said no.
[Arzt] It was a feeling of hopelessness,
that this is the way it is
and nothing will get better.
[woman] Hey, yo! Save that shit for me!
People were hoping that
out of this crisis would come change.
The great American Dream has always been
to become a millionaire
for the people who have nothing.
-Do you think that's a reality today?
-[background chatter]
Excuse me. I can hear all of you
over there and I can't concentrate,
so could all of you please disappear?
Is there anything you can't have?
Well, I believe if you think that you
can't have it, you probably won't have it.
They say that the human mind is only using
one percent of its potential,
but if you can get a little bit more
out of it than the 1%,
I think you're gonna be able to do
pretty much whatever you want to do,
if you have
the basic ingredients going in.
[woman] I keep hoping that
something will happen
so that we will be safe from this, uh
catastrophe.
[Donald Trump]
My father was very successful
and my father built homes
and apartment houses, and did very well.
And I was brought up in
the construction business, so to speak,
and I enjoyed it from day one.
-Are you like your dad?
-Well, I hope so.
I have a very wonderful father,
and I would hope
I'd be somewhat like him.
-What's he like?
-Strong, dynamic
[Ken Auletta] Fred Trump was stern.
And I think he was
a taskmaster to his son.
I was a, um
a baby journalist at that point.
My intent was to write about politics.
I was angry, I was a kid--
I was in my twenties,
and I was [chuckles] I was angry.
My parents were a working-class family
from Coney Island, Brooklyn,
and they lived in Trump Village.
That's where Fred Trump, the father,
made the money for the family.
Many working-class people lived in these
high rises with long, low dark guarders.
My father had
a little sporting goods store,
and he would often go around
the corner to Gargiulo's restaurant.
And Fred Trump was there every day
with his assistant having lunch.
And he would say, "Hi, Pat," my father--
That's how they knew each other,
just first name.
They didn't-- Never talked.
But I was a Daily News columnist
at the time with my picture in the paper,
so Fred Trump would whisper to his son,
who would often have lunch with his dad
"That guy over there, Pat, his son writes
for the Daily News."
And Trump said, "Oh, I know him.
I know him."
[commentator] The 24-second clock,
we're down to six seconds.
[Auletta] I'm a New York Knickerbocker
basketball fan and he was too,
he would go to games. And he sees me
one year at a Knick game
He says, "Hey, Kenny!"
I don't know anyone who calls me Kenny.
And he says, "Hey, Kenny, how's your pop?"
And I said, "Actually-- Oh, he died."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."
The next year at a Knick game,
"Hey, Kenny, how's your pop?"
I said, "Actually, he died." [laughs]
The third year he says,
"Hey, Kenny, how's your pop?"
I said the same
[laughs] and walked away.
[Nikki Haskell]
Could you bring me a mirror?
-[man] There you go, your mirror.
-Thanks, honey.
[Haskell] I met Donald in about '74.
I met him at a club called La Club,
which was a private club
in the Upper East Side.
I remember distinctly
the first time that I saw Donald
and I-- I spotted him immediately.
I thought he was extremely attractive.
My kind of guy.
He was about 6' 3", blond hair.
He had a captivating air about him.
And that's how
Donald and I became friends.
And I knew immediately
Donald had big dreams.
I always liked people that, you know,
think outside of the box
and think bigger than life.
His family was in the building business,
but not in Manhattan.
You wanna do something small,
you do it in Brooklyn.
You wanna do something big,
you do it in Manhattan.
There's no comparison.
[car horns honking]
[Arzt] For Donald,
it was important to become a
upscale version of his father.
A major builder,
but in Manhattan, with the big boys.
[railroad bell ringing]
[Utsey] I'm a positive person,
so I look for solutions, not for problems.
September of 1975, I saw
the listing for a chauffeur-bodyguard.
It seemed interesting, so I went out
to Mr. Trump's Brooklyn office
and I walked in,
and there was about six other, uh
Uh. Police officers in my situation
also waiting for an interview.
When I finally met him,
I came into his office
firm handshake,
he always had a firm handshake.
And one time he squeezed
my wife's hand too hard.
[laughs] And
we sat down and we talked, and he asked me
about my time in the police department,
asked me about my time in college.
He asked me about my time
as captain of my school karate team.
And, uh
And meanwhile, I'm just looking
at this office and saying,
"Wow, this guy got it going on."
I remember the plate number.
That was the car, "DJT."
And his father's car I think had "FT."
Yeah, it was 40 years ago. Wow, yes.
I was grateful for the job,
and I was curious about the things
that were going to happen.
[Arzt] He needed a footprint in Manhattan.
Everyone yearns to get close to the mayor.
They'd figured that's the way
to do business.
We didn't write about it.
Wayne Barrett of The Village Voice
wrote about it.
[Wayne Barrett] Donald, he was a rookie
and I was a rookie.
Donald was the face of Fred,
bringing the company into Manhattan.
Dark times are times
of great opportunity
-[indistinct shouting]
-for people of great stealth.
Desperation, it's the land they inherit.
Abe Beame, the mayor of New York,
was as close to Fred Trump
as you could possibly be.
-[inaudible dialogue]
-Abe Beame is waiting on the steps,
to say to Fred Trump and Donald Trump,
whatever they want, they get.
[male reporter]
Beame is New York City's 104th mayor.
He's also the shortest mayor
in New York history, five feet two inches.
Well, I liked him mainly because
he was the only guy
shorter than me in government. Uh
I hadn't heard of the Trump family.
The first time I had heard of it was when
I met Donald Trump for the first time.
If the City would gather around with us,
we can produce with a lease
guaranteed by the state of New York
I mean, he was extremely presentable,
full of good cheer, full of optimism.
It was very refreshing to see somebody
come in and have ideas
and try to move things forward.
Where it really started to gel was when he
came in with the Commodore Hotel project.
The Commodore Hotel,
once one of the finest in New York,
is closing its doors next Tuesday
because of financial losses.
I feel very bad. The-- The whole hotel
going down the drain.
-[man] Forty-five years of service!
-[man 2] showing 340 dollars.
If we could just stop playing around
and get the politicians,
the City officials, who have generally
[Utsey] His father's name opened
the doors for him.
[Donald] especially very good
for sales
[Utsey] The Commodore Hotel project.
I was there from the beginning.
I remember going to City Hall.
We had the easel to help carry in
You know, the big
cards that you take down one at a time.
This is the easel.
He walks into my office, unannounced,
and he has these boards with him
with renderings of the Commodore Hotel.
And he sits down and starts pitching me
as if I'm the mayor
and he's pitching me
on the Commodore Hotel.
And then after he gets me all excited
about what a great project this is,
and how it's going
to stave off a disaster,
'cause the Commodore was
just about to close,
he says, "But I can't do this project,"
because he needed 70 million dollars.
The bank would only lend him
30 million dollars and he said,
"Can you help? Can you figure out
any way of getting a tax break?"
And off the top of my head I said,
"Well, you can do this, this, and that.
We don't have this program,
but maybe that's the way to do it."
The Trump real estate interests are
willing to put up to 100 million dollars
to refurbish this hotel.
The question is, will the City grant
a 40-year tax abatement?
[Michael Bailkin]
He had never done a major project before.
It wasn't just his
father's credit and expertise,
this was really on Donald.
And if this fell through for any reason,
if the City rejected him,
this would've been
a horrible thing in his career.
His reputation was on the line.
Basically, he needed help.
[car engine starts]
[Barrett] One of the most striking things
about Donald's life is that,
-at the age of 28
-[dialogue inaudible]
he meets Roy Cohn.
And anybody else would be repulsed.
I knew Roy Cohn.
He was the most repulsive figure
I ever met in my life.
I would sit at lunches with Roy Cohn,
and feel like I was
in the presence of Satan.
[Utsey] Mostly, Donald would pick him up,
they would talk.
I just thought he was a member of that
upper circle. That's all I knew.
Remember, I'm--
I'm a cop from the Bronx.
This entire matter
-[reporter] In 1954 at 27
-[Cohn speaks in footage]
Cohn was chief council
on the Senate subcommittee
investigating communist infiltration
in the government.
He was considered a brilliant lawyer.
Exposing these communists, these traitors.
[male reporter] Today, the rich
and the powerful seek him out
for the biggest of big-money lawsuits.
[female reporter]
He defended reputed underworld figures.
[male reporter 2] He's been tried
three times on criminal charges,
but he was acquitted each time.
[indistinct dialogue]
[David Lloyd Marcus]
My father would not talk to cousin Roy.
So, I grew up kind of knowing
that I should hate Roy,
but being fascinated by him
in a sort of a
the way you're fascinated
maybe by seeing a car crash.
I said, "How do you get things
done in this city?" Like
He said, "I know how power works."
He was just this person
who had such a wide web.
Liberals, conservatives,
journalists, politicians, judges,
good people, bad people, Mafiosos.
He kept secrets about people
and traded secrets with other people.
Roy was always on the phone to reporters,
and, you know,
he would call me up, and he says,
"Georgy, baby."
And I said, "Hi, Roy." [laughs] You know?
And I would-- You know--
And then he would
tell me some negative things.
[Marcus] He discovered
something which, frankly,
I don't think anybody had discovered.
If you used the newspapers,
if you used publicity,
if you attacked your opponent,
if you blustered,
if you made threats,
you could get a lot done.
And yet it wasn't on brilliance.
It was just on pure bluster.
Young Donald Trump
meets this guy and says,
"I got to have him! I got to have him!"
[Marcus] He knew if you wanted to build
a hotel in New York in the '70s,
it helped to know people, it helped
to threaten, it helped to cajole.
[Utsey] Pick him up eight, eight-thirty.
He's in the car
and, uh, we're on a mission.
[car horns honking]
[Utsey] He was meeting with all these
City officials and government people
in order to get his project
off the ground.
They had to get approval from A,
approval from B, approval from C.
B was waiting to see if A approved it,
then C approved it,
and playing ping pong.
[gavel banging]
[board member] The proposed reconstruction
of the Commodore Hotel.
[Bailkin] There was
the Board of Estimate hearing itself
That was-- That was the key day.
We have been presented with a situation
with potentially disastrous consequences.
Right now, um, their commitment
to managing this particular lease
seems to us, from the brief presented
by the City, to be weak.
[Arzt] He was very worried.
He was very young.
[man] .is to know whether,
um, item one
[Arzt] I remember that morning
I was there because this was
a controversy,
in giving away all these tax benefits.
[man] How can there be a profit?
or cause their increase ten-fold,
as the number of rooms reduced
by 400 or 20 percent?
[board member] Sir?
Sir, I'll give you one opportunity to--
If you want to remain in this room,
you'll have to be seated.
[man] Gentlemen, what's the
[male reporter]
Trump, who had nervously paced the hall
outside the Board of Estimate chamber
during the daylong session,
sat as the vote droned on.
Some of the hesitation due to fears they
were about to vote someone a windfall,
because the new hotel won't pay city taxes
till 40 years after it reopens.
I'm not sure whether we're making
the wisest decision in the world.
[male reporter] Finally, shortly after
four this afternoon, the final vote came.
[interviewer] It's been a long,
hard fight. How do you feel?
I'm very happy,
and I think the city of New York
is going to be very happy.
We're gonna do something, Bill,
which is gonna be a great stride forward
for New York City.
Who was it that said,
"Never waste a good crisis"?
Yo, move your hand, bitch!
[woman]
Hey, yo! Save that shit for me!
[Bailkin] I started looking at Donald
as a savior of the city.
He was using us to get his tax abatement,
and we were using him to create
a new program and a new vehicle,
and a new sense
that things could happen in the city.
[applause]
The multi-million-dollar tax breaks is
expected to save him 160 million dollars
in city taxes over 40 years.
It was an outrage
and it was a political fix,
which I dutifully wrote about
[chuckles] in the Daily News
as a rip-off of-- of the taxpayers.
I think I would have written as
investment in the city.
He takes the risks, he gets the rewards.
[inaudible dialogue]
[Arzt] He talked in hyperbolic terms.
"Spectacular," "wonderful,"
"the best," "the greatest."
He was a born salesman.
[Donald] Tremendous demand
all throughout the country.
The new hotel,
which is going to be spectacular,
something New York has never seen,
with elevators on the outside and atriums
and the largest ballroom in the city.
We feel all of these are gonna combine
with really, potentially,
the best area in New York City,
and probably New York City's most
important area: The Grand Central area.
All of this is going to combine
to make probably the most successful hotel
in the country, we feel.
[interviewer]
Okay, when does the new hotel open?
About two-and-a-half years,
the total project, yes.
-[interviewer] Thanks.
-Thank you very much.
My friends, they asked me something ♪
[cheering, applause]
How my man and I keep
Lovin' every day ♪
But if we work so good
It just ain't nothing ♪
Across the country, there is severe heat,
drought, water shortages.
The temperature in New York City
reached 104.
[male reporter] One of the side effects
of rising temperatures is rising tempers.
I'm gonna kill some guy.
I'm gonna kill him.
I'm gonna kill him.
-[interviewer] How do you stay cool?
-Positive thinking. That's all.
Just think positive.
Think cool and you'll be cool.
I sit in front
of my refrigerator stark naked. [laughs]
-What about the beard?
-Beard doesn't bother me at all.
You wanna know how
I make it work good ♪
Well, he was an eligible bachelor
in New York City and he liked to date.
I got it, I give it ♪
He dated, uh, you know,
some beautiful women,
but, uh, I kept seeing Miss Ivana.
She checked all his boxes.
First of all, she had a college degree.
She was a model,
so she was a beautiful woman.
And she cooked.
I remember sometimes she would call
the office and she made this special dish
with chicken wings
and wine and stuff like that,
so I would go to the supermarket and get
her a package of chicken wings,
and make sure I give it to the doorman
to bring upstairs.
[female reporter] Ivana Zelnícková.
She grew up in Czechoslovakia.
She began modeling as a teenager.
[Haskell] I never saw him with
the same girl twice until he met Ivana,
and then it became
a very hot and heavy romance.
She loved being with me, because I told
her where to get her hair done,
what doctor to go to,
where to go--
I mean, I actually
filled in all the blanks for her.
She didn't live in New York and I became
her closest friend, her eyes and ears.
One of the great qualities is that
I can understand everything Ivana says,
which is more than most people can.
When I met Donald,
Donald naturally didn't want me
to continue with the modeling,
because I think, "How long can you do it?"
And I was working for eight years,
and I think it was enough,
and I was ready for a change.
So I said, "Give me anything."
[laughs] "I would like to do"
-[interviewer] "Give me a job!"
-"Give me a job! I'll do it!"
[inaudible]
[Haskell] I don't think he ever realized
what a huge asset
Ivana was going to be to him.
Ivana was involved in every angle,
every-- every aspect of building
the Commodore Hotel. From soup to nuts.
They redid all the ballrooms,
Ivana redid every hotel room,
she spotted every mistake.
[Ivana Trump]
I like to see the final product.
I don't care what kind of business
it is in, I just adore to work.
I can't sit home and look up at a ceiling,
it's just not enough for me.
[indistinct chatter]
[Haskell] They were a great team.
The best marriages are when
the husbands and wives work together.
Of course, you know what your husband
is doing and you get to be part and parcel
of building an empire.
[Utsey] He had picked the right one.
I drove them there when he married Ivana.
That was a good day too.
He had city royalty,
politicians were there.
It was at the Marble Collegiate Church,
that's his church.
[Haskell] It wasn't a very big wedding.
Her father walked her down the aisle.
Ivana looked very understated
and they had the party afterwards at 21.
[Utsey] His father's driver and I,
we went down the block
and we had dinner at a restaurant.
Then we came back
and we went inside. We had dessert.
It was, uh flaming crêpes Suzette,
I think it was. I'm not sure.
I think it was. Something was flaming.
[laughs]
Could have been cherries jubilee,
I'm not sure.
The mayor was there.
Donald told Mayor Beame that
I'm one of the cops that got laid off
through the mayor, and the mayor turns
around and says,
"Oh, I'm sorry about that." [chuckles]
You know.
But I just held my tongue
and just looked away.
[male reporter] So, now,
as New Yorkers get ready to vote,
Mayor Abraham Beame is in bad trouble.
The people of this city
know and understand
[crowd booing]
the tremendous problems we had
in the last three-and-a-half years.
-[crowd booing]
-I'm confident we can make this
We've got to have real strong men,
real strong leadership.
I'm tired of all kind
of leadership in this city!
Bringing people together isn't a matter
of telling them what they want to hear.
You can do it by telling
them what they need to know.
How many people here
are voting for Ed Koch?
[woman] I do!
-[man] Yeah!
-[Ed Koch] We got seven or eight?
I love you,
-because you love me. Thank you.
-I love you too.
[Auletta] Koch, surprisingly,
for someone who lived in Manhattan,
had much more of a feel
and a liking for people
in Coney Island, where I grew up,
or people in working-class districts
in Queens or the Bronx.
-I need your help. Am I gonna get it?
-[woman] Yes.
-Yes.
-[Koch] Thank you!
[Auletta] He could talk
to anyone on the street,
go anywhere, loved debate
A real New Yorker.
Just want to say hello,
and thank you for standing tall.
-[man] Let 'em have it, Ed!
-Good morning.
I became Mayor Koch's press secretary.
He was fierce about his views,
he was fierce about integrity
and hated corruption.
[cheering]
[Arzt] For Donald, the election of Ed Koch
meant that there would be no easy path
through this administration
and he did not have a friend.
[female reporter] Amid a lot of fanfare,
the Grand Hyatt held
its grand opening today.
The 100-million-dollar hotel has
1,400 rooms.
The mayor and the governor of New York
were among those on hand
for the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
[applause]
[Auletta] I'm looking at these people
and I see the governor,
and I see the mayor,
but I don't see Donald Trump.
is now an architectural gem
[Auletta]
Also, he didn't name it the Trump Hotel.
[Abraham Beame]
and gleaming facade
[Auletta]
And the reason was he wasn't known.
[Beame] brightens and livens
this entire
[Auletta] In the '70s,
he didn't leave a footprint
He was not a figure that electrified
attention, um and opinion. At all.
The best things in life are free ♪
But you can give them
To the birds and bees ♪
I want more money
That's what I want ♪
[Rona Barrett]
In 1980, I was a household name.
That's what I want ♪
Good evening. I'm Rona Barrett.
Tonight, I'm going to give you
a close, intimate look at the hopes,
fears, dreams, successes,
and even the failures
of America's new super rich.
Some of the people you'll be meeting
aren't exactly household names.
Donald Trump's most famous
accomplishment to date
is the Grand Hyatt Hotel on 42nd Street.
Some say the age of Trump has just begun.
[Barrett] He was a new face on the block.
We placed a call to his office
and he then called back and said,
"I would love to be on your show."
Donald, I think, called me at least twice
and wanted to make sure that this was
really the network show.
And I said yes, it was a network show,
and this would be
his first network interview.
[Auletta] There were only three networks.
If you're on a network in 1980,
your audience is huge.
Thirty million.
[Barrett] I spoke with Donald
in the living room
of his New York penthouse.
Do you think that the acquisition
of wealth is an absolute aphrodisiac?
No, not at all. In fact, I think
in many cases it really creates problems
that you normally wouldn't have.
Were you constantly taught
from day one,
"Donald, you must be a success
and travel down that road,
and never move to the left,
and never move to the right?"
We're a very highly motivated family,
but, again, I would never use
the word "ambition."
And, uh Because to me, "ambition's"
a bad word. It's not ambitious.
You know, when I see
When I see people saying,
"I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna do that,
and I'm so ambitious and I'm--"
It really sickens me to listen
to them talking. I think it's just
Donald was the kind of person,
you could tell right off the bat--
First of all,
he didn't like the word "ambition,"
but he had plenty of it.
I do understand it's all basically a game.
We're all here to play the game and we're
all hopefully gonna play it well,
but some obviously people
can't play it well.
The world is made up of people
with either killer instincts,
or without killer instincts.
And the people that seem to emerge are
the people that are competitive and driven
and with a certain instinct to win.
My sense of Donald was that he was
always confident in what he was doing,
the kind of confidence
above and beyond most people's reality.
[Barrett] If someone were
to make a movie of your life,
who would you see playing yourself?
Maybe, uh Maybe myself.
Do you wake up one day and you say,
"I want 30th Street on the West Side.
I want 42nd Street on the East Side"?
Well, it's a process, and it's something
that you maybe have an instinct for.
The finest piece of real estate in
the world is at the corner of 5th Avenue
and 57th Street,
that's the Tiffany corner.
The Bonwit Teller department store
on 5th Avenue and 57th Street
may soon be following some
other fashionable stores into oblivion.
[Donald] I tried to buy the block
and they said, "Forget it. Forget it."
One day I got a phone call
and they wanted to know
if we wanted to make a deal.
Nobody ever assumed that location
could possibly be purchased,
but all of a sudden, it was.
And maybe it was mind over matter again.
Maybe you just really believe
that someday you'll own that location,
and you end up owning that location.
And we proceeded to buy the air rights
over Tiffany, which is a zoning term
for "area and space" over Tiffany.
[Barrett]
I mean, no one had heard of buying air
over the space
of something that already existed.
That became a big story nationwide.
[female reporter]
An active imagination made everybody gasp.
Buy the best property in New York,
tear down the famous
Bonwit Teller building
There were gargoyles that were
on the side of these buildings
that the preservation society
was trying to find a way to take down.
And then Donald just blew it up.
That was it, next case.
You never can impede progress.
Even for a couple of gargoyles.
[applause]
[male presenter]
Number one, what is your name please?
My name is Barbara Res.
[presenter] Number two?
My name is Barbara Res.
[presenter] And number three?
My name is Barbara Res.
Where did you get this from?
[presenter]
"I, Barbara Res, am a graduate engineer."
Can you send this to me?
[presenter] "And currently project manager
of the newest edition
to the New York City skyline
known as the Trump Tower.
I am proud of the fact that I am the
first woman to have overall supervision
of the construction of a major skyscraper
in the New York metropolitan area."
I start the questioning with Soupy.
Yes. [clears throat] Number one,
how many men are under you?
Sometimes, you go all the way up to 700.
Number three, do you sit
on a sidewalk and go
-[wolf whistles] to the guys?
-[Barbara Res] Sure.
[Res] On a construction site,
I had the shit harassed out of me.
At the time, the number of women engineers
was one or two percent,
so when Trump met me,
I probably impressed him
by the fact that I was a woman
doing "a man's job."
[female reporter]
These people are not only looking
at construction workers pouring concrete.
They're looking at Sarah.
A twenty-four-foot-long pin up painted
on plywood wearing only a bikini
and a seductive smile.
Sarah was designed for the delight
of the construction workers inside.
The artist painted
a bathing suit on Sarah,
which will wash off when it rains.
She makes it kinda hard
to keep your mind on your work.
Make you feel young again.
I don't think they made them like that
when I was a young man. [laughs]
[Res] I was extremely ambitious.
I wanted to make a name for myself.
I liked the fact that
I was the only woman.
I was aggressive,
I didn't take shit from anybody.
Something came up, and the architect would
try to blame one of the subcontractors,
and I would say, "That's bullshit!"
And Trump loved that.
He absolutely loved that.
When he hired me finally,
he called me a "killer."
Number three,
what does Donald Trump look like?
I thought he was attractive, which is
[scoffs] I can't believe that I did.
Well, I didn't know that it
was going to be what it was,
which is a spectacular building.
It was cutting edge,
it was forward thinking.
The shape of it, the style of it,
the idea of it, the location of it,
the height of it
And the views were unparalleled.
I mean, you had an unobstructed view
of whatever it was you were looking at.
This was all very special stuff,
and he had come up with this himself.
He was a schemer and a dreamer
and I just wanted to be part of it.
[presenter] They're ringing that
bell again. That means time is up.
Now the votes are all in. Now,
will the real Barbara Res please stand up?
-[presenter] That's her.
-[applause]
[Res] As far as the public spaces were
concerned, it was very top-notch stuff,
but in the apartments,
there was a lot of crap.
[male reporter]
At $1 million for two bedrooms,
they're some of the most expensive
in the city.
Trump boasts they are the best.
[Donald] But instead of building
an average building,
we'll make it the finest building
in the world.
[Res] The floor was the absolute
cheapest wood floor you could get.
It's funny, 'cause I helped
write the offering plan.
It talked about parquetry, you know,
marquetry. You know, that kind of thing.
It was nonsense.
It was cheap tiles that are glued down.
The kitchens were garbage.
Can you imagine Formica counter tops?
Trump always looked to save money.
I went to him and said,
"You can't do this, this is shit!"
And we fought like cats and dogs.
But that was not a good thing
to take him on,
because you put him up against a wall
and he would come out and attack.
And he attacked two kinds of people.
He attacked weak people, because he found
their weakness and then just exploited it,
and he attacked people that attacked him,
and he came back at them harder.
He says that he did that and he does.
-[telephone ringing]
-[indistinct chatter]
Hello. Hi, how we doing?
[man] You know better about the holdings.
Yeah, shit. I think I may be
being played in this thing.
No.
When we were building the Trump Tower
uh, we were having a discussion
about difficulties
we were having with a contractor,
and Donald reached behind his desk
and pulled out a picture of Roy Cohn.
And he asked everybody in the room,
"Do you know who this is?"
"Yeah, it's Roy Cohn."
"Well, Roy is my attorney.
Nobody wants to face Roy Cohn."
[Barrett] The godfathers of all five
crime families were represented by him.
[male reporter]
Tony Solerno, recently indicted,
has long been one of Roy Cohn's clients.
They all met at his townhouse so that
the FBI couldn't wire the meetings.
Uh Did you do
any of those things anymore?
It's all false.
[Auletta] Donald Trump said, "If someone
threatens me, I will go to Roy Cohn.
It scares the hell out of them
and they back off.
So, it's a weapon for me.
Roy Cohn is a weapon for me."
[indistinct chatter]
[Artie Nusbaum] No one knows Trump Tower
is a unique structural building.
I spoke to the structural engineer
and said, "Could we do this whole building
in concrete?
It's cheaper, it's faster."
He said, "Absolutely, Artie."
In that period of time, the reality was
certain trades had mafia connections,
concrete in particular.
[male reporter] Conclusion: to build
the largest concrete structure
in New York City,
turn again to Roy Cohn.
Cohn is also the lawyer
for the New York crime boss
who controls the concrete business.
Payoffs from contractors
are dropped off at Cohn's office,
so he may get paid twice
for his services here.
But then, you get who you pay for.
As a matter of fact,
Fred got involved in the concrete buy.
[reporter]
How are the sales going?
Well, I have nothing to do with sales,
but I hear they're going excellent,
fantastic, unbelievable.
He was so annoying.
He was impossible to deal with.
He was just
"Oh, no, oh, no, that's all wrong.
You don't know what you're doing."
And he just I couldn't stand him.
And he hated the fact that I was a woman
in charge of construction
in this building.
It killed him, and the amount of money
I was being paid and all this stuff,
but when I complained about Fred
to Donald, he just said,
"Suck it up, baby.
Just put up with him because eventually,
he will not be involved."
Donald put up with his father,
he deferred to his father,
but there was no question in my mind,
everybody knew who was behind the project.
Nobody thought for a second it was Fred.
Fred was just something we had
to put up with for a short period of time.
This was Donald's project.
Here's the lady on the sales,
Louise Sunshine.
They just asked me one question,
"How are the sales going?"
I said, "I have nothing to do with sales."
We're 80 percent sold,
and we have the who's who
of the world moving into the tower.
It ought to be very interesting to wait
in the lobby for the elevator. [laughs]
Reggie? Hi, what's going on?
[Res] The buzz about this was all Trump.
Trump was his own PR agent.
He sold apartments for unheard-of prices.
He now has an apartment for sale,
11 million dollars.
Trump Tower is considered one
of the great buildings of the world.
People from all over are coming.
He even managed to get a cover
of Paris Vogue,
which had the silhouette of the building.
And then in life size,
part of the face of a woman kissing it.
We were famous.
I mean Trump did all of this.
He is without a doubt
the best PR person in the world.
How is your sound coming out? Okay?
Let them up and let them come up
and bring them back and everything else.
There was a story in the paper that
the queen of England was gonna leave
Buckingham Palace
and move into Trump Tower.
[audience laughs]
So they asked me if it was
true and I said, "No comment,"
and so they assumed it was true.
I mean, nobody could
From the top of Trump Tower,
it's The Nikki Haskell Show,
direct from New York.
[Haskell] The television show was
absolutely the greatest thing ever.
I always wanted to do something
with Donald, a TV show or something.
-Hi, Donald.
-Hi, Nikki.
I'm very proud of what you're doing,
changing the face of New York.
Well, we've known each other
for a long time, haven't we?
-Yes, and you always said you'd do it.
-I did.
Some people say they'll do things
and never do.
Okay, thank you, Nikki.
Well, here we are
on the top of the Trump Tower.
Today is the topping off
of this fabulous building
on the corner of 56th and 5th Avenue,
probably the most luxurious spot
in all of New York to live.
Donald Trump has invited us all
for a wonderful party,
and the mayor is here,
and I think you'll just enjoy seeing
the fabulous panorama view of New York.
[Res] I mean, talk about
having pride in something.
It was just great,
it was a great day for me.
I don't know. It's gonna be something
the press would love seeing,
so at ten after 12 you might want
to be on the sidewalk position.
We're gonna release 10,000 balloons,
so have a good time. Yes?
[Res] Yes, it was Trump's building,
and he conceived it, but I built it.
You know what a topping out party is?
When you reach the top,
you have a celebration for the workers.
That's what a topping out party is.
And the interesting thing
was Trump was kind of like,
"Do we have to have
all the workers at it?"
[Haskell]
It was great the mayor was there.
I don't think they were
that friendly at that time.
[man] Why weren't they?
I don't know. Politics, you know.
You know politics.
[Arzt] Trump Tower was entirely luxury.
It was a building,
a tower, for the very, very wealthy.
Mayor Koch believed he should deny
tax abatements for this project.
And now, uh, the toast.
May these walls withstand
the winters of endless years.
May all who dwell within
know only happiness,
and may the windows of this building
forever look out upon a place
of peace and prosperity.
[Donald]
Very nice. Thank you, sir. Very nice.
[Auletta] A visitor from another planet
seeing this interview would say,
"Gee, Koch and Trump are good friends."
Not true.
Koch hated him. I mean, with passion.
-[photographer] How 'bout a handshake?
-Sure.
Anytime. Anytime.
Anything else before we conclude?
[Auletta] His first year as mayor,
I'm doing this New Yorker profile
and I asked to be a fly on the wall
in his office.
Trump's name would come up
in our-- in our interview sessions,
and he would just lambast Trump
as a fraud, a phony,
self-aggrandizing person who tries to take
credit for things he doesn't deserve.
[reporter] the common guy
in New York City care
if you're topping off your tower
today or not?
You really think it's good for the city?
How does it filter down
to the common guy?
I'll tell you how it's filtered down.
We've employed 5,000 construction workers,
there'll be many people
running the building.
I think it's a vital step for New York.
The fact is that most people
aren't wealthy,
and yet we need the taxes that come
from those who work and those who invest
so as to make it possible
for the city of New York
to deliver essential services
to the poorest of the poor and to the
[Haskell] The Trump Tower opening
everybody in town wanted to go to that.
[security guard] Excuse me! You're not
supposed to be in here yet. Sir?
[Haskell] They had people on stilts.
People that sort of look like they came
from Buckingham Palace. And the doors
I shot it for my television show.
I even shot Roy Cohn
at the opening of the Trump Tower.
We've all known Donald for a long time.
I'm so proud of him, aren't you?
Yeah. When you think back, Nikki,
the way you and I knew Donald when,
and there's so many great events
in his life.
Tonight is the opening of probably
the most important building in the world.
Marble waterfalls
Sort of restores your faith
in the fact that progress, that, uh
free enterprise is not dead at all,
when something like this can be created.
[Haskell] I'm glad you're here.
I know we're both
in the right place at the right time.
Whenever we see each other,
I know something has to be right.
-Thank you, sweetheart.
-Okay, dear.
[male reporter] Trump Tower,
the centerpiece of the Trump empire.
Per square foot
the most expensive apartments,
shops and office space in Manhattan.
[woman] It's python and leather,
it's all hand-tooled in Switzerland,
and it's a theme of the '80s.
It's taken after Superman for kryptonite.
This is his kryptonite buckle.
[reporter 1] Priced at the mere £500,
its sales are meteoric.
Solid sterling-silver dog or cat bowls
with gold-plated interiors,
a £1,300 price tag.
[reporter 2]
Harry Winston at Trump Tower,
he's got jewel-encrusted gold
taxi whistles for Mother’s Day.
Buy two, and you and Mom can play
dueling taxi whistles all day Sunday
-for only $8,000!
-[whistles blowing]
[reporter 1] This gold and crystal model
of Manhattan at £170,000.
Well, I built Trump Tower thinking
I was going to get an abatement,
I should get an abatement, and I am
by law entitled to that abatement.
-[Ruth Messinger] That's not true.
-It is true.
-The City has--
-I think you really better check
-your facts and figures.
-I did.
I think you better, because
you'll find out I could've built
an as-of-right office building
77 stories tall.
[reporter] Ruth Messinger is a member
of the City Council
for Manhattan's Upper West Side.
She's been an outspoken critic
of the tax abatement program.
[Messinger] I was known for being willing
to challenge powers that be.
I think on Trump Tower, you know,
there was a piece of
the kind of muscle I'm looking for,
in which the City was saying,
"Wait. This is a discretionary benefit,
and we won't give it to you."
Why should a multi-millionaire like
yourself continue to reap these benefits?
Have you checked my books lately?
Do you know that I'm a multi-millionaire?
-I'm trying to--
-Are you denying that you are?
No, I'm not.
I went to the City, I said I'm willing
to invest a tremendous amount of money
in this city, in this location.
Now people such as Ruth Messinger
and others
are opposed to the tax abatement.
In my judgement, Dick,
the program has become
a corporate welfare program.
We are subsidizing
developers like Mr. Trump.
They make a huge profit.
You've gotten something close
to 160 million dollars in tax benefits.
Did you read that in the Times?
-I'd like to find out why--
-[Messinger] Times said 168.
Is that your source of information,
or have you done this on your own?
Have you read an article
and you've taken 160 million dollars--
No, I've gone through calculations.
I understand how
the abatement program works--
-[Donald] It's incorrect.
-[Messinger] There were lots of insults.
Just in that segment, he's trying to say
I haven't checked my facts,
I don't know it, I'm relying
on a New York Times article.
"Don't interrupt me, don't challenge me.
I know, and if you're disagreeing,
there's something the matter with you."
Ken?
Rather than quibbling about the past,
let me just ask you something,
just spin forward.
Is that me?
[Auletta in footage] Among the problems
here is that neither side
can really prove with objective truth
that abatements either help or hinder.
It's an elite core of developers who are
leaching out revenues that we need.
This is ridiculous.
To listen to this is just so ridiculous.
If you spent the same time trying
to clean up our subways
-and clean the city of crime--
-[Messinger] I do.
Well, I don't know that you do.
If you do, you're doing
a very ineffective job.
It's been a stimulating evening
and I thank you both for being here,
and speaking for New York and company.
I'm Dick Oliver. Good night.
[Auletta] That was kind of interesting.
Donald Trump suddenly
is coming on stage
as this combative figure.
He became another person. Um
He's cocky.
[Roy Cohn] I've been his lawyer
since he was 23 years old.
He can't stand losing.
Everyone told Donald not to do it,
he didn't stand a prayer.
He believes you can fight City Hall.
I believe you can fight City Hall.
And we both fought it together
and got a 74-million-dollar
Trump Tower tax abatement,
which the City refused to give us,
by going to the highest court
of the state,
which decided
seven to nothing in our favor.
Millionaire real estate developer
Donald Trump will get a handsome tax break
for his latest project on 5th Avenue
[Messinger] Trump won.
Ed Koch, he loved his own bravado
and his own showpersonship,
but he didn't particularly
like being challenged.
[Arzt] Koch was easy to read.
Ed always bled for the city.
Ed was very taken aback by the loss.
He really thought that
they would win the case.
Good afternoon, Trump Organization.
[male reporter]
Ambition, creativity, money.
This is where the action is.
I don't give a damn if he buys or not.
[reporter] His critics say he is one
of the culprits making New York
too much a city for the rich.
[Messinger] The powers that be,
being real estate interests, were like,
"Oh, this is a neighborhood where we
can get rid of all the poor people,
because rich people wanna live here."
[Utsey] That was what was going on
in the "have-not" part of the city.
It's what we call
"the tale of two cities."
[Res] Donald had so much press
for Trump Tower that, you know,
people thought of him as being
this big developer that did
the most important building in the city,
and that was the only building
he did in the city.
The Hyatt was a rehab.
So this was the first ground-up building
that he ever did,
and yet, he was a player instantaneously.
[indistinct chatter]
[Res] Personally, the couple,
the Trumps, I mean,
they were just everything
that you wanted to be.
They were gorgeous,
they were personable, they were rich,
they were you know, they had children.
When you make your wish, try and blow
all the candles out with one breath,
okay, honey? One breath.
[Res]
Ivana and he were the power couple.
Everybody wanted them at their party.
I mean, it was just-- So, it was
an incredibly heady time for him.
Nobody could question him
and he was very full of himself.
People ask 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."
[Arzt] On this, I don't see Donald
as being a representative of business,
but venturing forth into politics.
Remember the Wollman Skating Rink
in Central Park?
It was supposed to re-open
this weekend, finally,
but as has happened with
so many other scheduled re-openings,
this one's been postponed too.
Donald called me and said,
"I'm looking out my window,
and I'm looking for months
and these people can't do a rink."
[male reporter] The City spent the last
seven-and-a-half years
and 12 million dollars on an exotic plan
to remodel the rink.
[Arzt] Donald wrote to Mayor Koch.
"Dear Ed, for many years I have watched
with amazement as New York City
repeatedly failed on its promises
to complete and open
the Wollman Skating Rink.
I and the other New Yorkers are tired
of watching
the catastrophe of Wollman Rink.
The incompetence displayed
in this simple construction project
must be considered one of the greatest
embarrassments of your administration.
During this six-year period,
I have constructed major hotels,
apartment buildings, and Trump Tower.
Building the Wollman Rink,
which essentially involves
the pouring of a concrete slab,
should take no more
than four months' time.
Sincerely, Donald J. Trump."
[reporter] He didn't arrive
on a galloping white steed,
but developer Donald Trump
has offered to rescue
the troubled Wollman Skating Rink
in Central Park.
[cheering, applause]
[Haskell] Everything that you do in a city
like New York matters.
If you have a public area,
such as Wollman Skating Rink,
that nobody can fix makes him a hero.
Nobody just does anything just to do it,
and Donald did it just to do it.
It was more personal. It was more,
"I can do this and you guys can't."
[Donald]
You take the Wollman and Koch,
they were building it for seven years.
You know, it's a pretty sad situation,
but you have that all over,
and probably in every government.
[Arzt] He chose to try to embarrass
the mayor, and then Koch relented
and gave him the project.
Because of our success and my success
at the Hyatt and at Trump Towers
We expect to start next week,
and start
[Nusbaum] Donald walked into my office,
asked me to build a rink.
He made certain promises to me.
It would be publicity,
lots and lots of publicity.
First words he said to me was,
"Artie, you're going to get
so much publicity out of this."
-I want another generator.
-[man] I don't need
[Nusbaum] But our fee would be zero.
Bring another generator on the job.
Bring more soldiers on the job.
[reporter]
Trump did it, not in two years,
not even in the six months
he had estimated.
Nope, Trump has finished it
two months early and under budget.
[Nusbaum] He didn't finish it in four.
We finished it in four.
We're like the Marines,
and we get there, and we do it.
[applause]
You know, this morning
I placed a call to the great Almighty
and asked him if we could please have
some good weather.
And he said, "Dick,
don't call me, just call Donald."
[crowd laughs]
We owe a great debt of gratitude,
not only for this glorious weather,
but for this wonderful
re-opening of this
When the emcee said, "You now skate
courtesy of Donald J. Trump,"
we knew it was all over.
[applause]
[Nusbaum] He threw us under the bus.
"Built by Trump and HRH."
It interferes with
the rhythm of the words.
What's wrong with sharing the platform?
I don't mind that he's entitled
to the gold medal,
but I should at least have gotten
the silver and maybe the bronze.
[applause]
[Nusbaum] Wollman Rink represented
a way into the public eye.
"I built Wollman Rink!
Nobody else could do it."
Everybody in the city,
every paper in the city
took notice of what he had accomplished.
He's all about publicity.
"Trump, Trump, Trump,"
everywhere.
[cheering, applause]
[Messinger] He scored all the points
and then he's like,
"Okay, I can do anything better than you."
In Trump's mind, no difference between
fixing an ice skating rink
and building the largest thing
ever to be built.
New Yorkers want to have
the world's tallest building,
and frankly, so do I.
[Koch] Okay.
Last week, I released a letter
that I had written to Donald Trump.
In the letter, I told Mr. Trump
that I would not be granting him
the tax exemptions that he desired.
That letter aroused Mr. Trump's ire.
We have a gentleman in New York
who is very disloyal. Every time--
You're talking about
the mayor of New York, right?
I'm talking about
the mayor of New York, yes.
I regret that much
of the public discussion
has appeared
to be related to personalities.
I'm saying that Ed Koch could do everybody
a huge favor if he got out of office
and they started all over again.
All in all, it was bad politics
by by Trump,
with the world's tallest building.
Certainly, his father would have known
a much better way to do things.
I think Donald is a person who only
understands force and power
and making fun of people.
I would say he's got no talent
and only moderate intelligence.
You called the mayor a moron.
Is that any way to talk about a mayor,
about another person?
It's only expressing your feelings and
that's the way I feel. That's what I say.
What Mr. Trump wanted
was simply too expensive
[Messinger] The city was not
the same place it was in 1975.
I remember Koch just saying, like,
"This guy's not going to get his way
on everything he wants."
I know what I'm doing,
he doesn't need that kind of break.
[interviewer] What if you don't get this?
What will happen?
Then what I'll do is I'll wait for
a more progressive administration
and more importantly,
I'll wait for bad times.
When bad times come,
then I'll get whatever I want.
And if that happens, I'll bet he will.
[Donald] I really can say that thus far
in life, I've been quite lucky.
But I also understand life,
and life is a long-term investment,
and relatively speaking,
I guess I'm only mid-term or short term.
I can't really tell you
what's going to happen in the future,
but I do feel very positively
about the future.
If you lost your fortune today,
what would you do tomorrow?
Maybe I'd run for president.
I don't know.
No, I'm only kidding. When I say that,
I'm being somewhat facetious.
-Thank you.
-Thank you, Rona, very much.
Thank you.
[Barrett] Have we just about done it?
[man] Yes, that's all.
You are excellent, I have to tell you.
You are very, very good.
[inaudible dialogue]
[siren wails]
[siren wails]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[radio chatter continues]
[overlapping radio chatter]
Mr. Speaker,
the president of United States.
[cheering, applause]
[inaudible dialogue]
[seagulls cawing]
[ship horn blares]
[car horns honking]
The city was sort of like
very tense, you know.
[car horns honking]
This is my police academy photo.
I'm up there.
Top row, all the way in the back.
New York had on average
3,000 homicides a year.
[siren chirps]
-[man] Got the knife?
-That's my knife!
-Shut up!
-[glass shattering]
[Robert Utsey] Things were grim.
[male TV presenter] Some people
once called New York "Fun City."
Now the police in New York
are calling it "Fear City."
You have to be careful
and watch where you go now.
How late you stay out, and
It scares you.
[George Arzt]
The city was in dire, dire need.
I was excited because
I recognized there was something
to write about every day.
We got a man up there behind
[sirens wailing]
I was a political reporter
for the New York Post.
The business community thought that
politicians had ruined the city
that they didn't know how
to govern the city.
Politicians with money
are like kids with marijuana.
And you have to tell them, you know,
"This is all you've got."
[male reporter] New York, within
a matter of weeks, may be bankrupt
[clamoring]
'cause eight million people
have taken out far more
in social services and welfare
than they've contributed in taxation.
[Arzt]
They thought that they could overspend
and just roll over the debt to
the following year and the following year,
and the last mayor of the city
would be caught with it.
[male reporter]
New York's Mayor Abraham Beame
led a delegation up to Washington today,
seeking federal financial aid
for New York.
The City has done all it can.
[male reporter 2]
Thousands of City employees
have already been laid off.
Nineteen thousand municipal workers
lost their jobs today
Nineteen thousand. Yes. I was one of them.
[reporter 2] Pistols and badges
were turned in at the precinct houses
by the policemen who were laid off.
This is comparable
to laying off soldiers during a war.
I mean, that's how ridiculous it is.
It's a war out in the street.
[Utsey]
Everyone deals with stress differently.
[crowd clamoring]
[Utsey] Marriages dissolve
because of the stress.
I actually know, personally,
of two people that I worked with
who committed suicide during that time.
I lost all faith in the job.
How can you work when you don't know
whether you're gonna get paid on Friday?
Two weeks ago, they stopped the checks.
[male reporter 3] Three thousand
sanitation workers were laid off
[male reporter 4] There's about
30,000 tons of garbage sitting uncollected
on the streets of New York today
[male reporter 5] Mayor Abraham Beame
asked the city's largest banks for help.
Two weeks ago,
he asked President Ford for help.
Tuesday, he flew to Albany
to ask the state legislature for help.
-[sirens wailing]
-They've all said no.
[Arzt] It was a feeling of hopelessness,
that this is the way it is
and nothing will get better.
[woman] Hey, yo! Save that shit for me!
People were hoping that
out of this crisis would come change.
The great American Dream has always been
to become a millionaire
for the people who have nothing.
-Do you think that's a reality today?
-[background chatter]
Excuse me. I can hear all of you
over there and I can't concentrate,
so could all of you please disappear?
Is there anything you can't have?
Well, I believe if you think that you
can't have it, you probably won't have it.
They say that the human mind is only using
one percent of its potential,
but if you can get a little bit more
out of it than the 1%,
I think you're gonna be able to do
pretty much whatever you want to do,
if you have
the basic ingredients going in.
[woman] I keep hoping that
something will happen
so that we will be safe from this, uh
catastrophe.
[Donald Trump]
My father was very successful
and my father built homes
and apartment houses, and did very well.
And I was brought up in
the construction business, so to speak,
and I enjoyed it from day one.
-Are you like your dad?
-Well, I hope so.
I have a very wonderful father,
and I would hope
I'd be somewhat like him.
-What's he like?
-Strong, dynamic
[Ken Auletta] Fred Trump was stern.
And I think he was
a taskmaster to his son.
I was a, um
a baby journalist at that point.
My intent was to write about politics.
I was angry, I was a kid--
I was in my twenties,
and I was [chuckles] I was angry.
My parents were a working-class family
from Coney Island, Brooklyn,
and they lived in Trump Village.
That's where Fred Trump, the father,
made the money for the family.
Many working-class people lived in these
high rises with long, low dark guarders.
My father had
a little sporting goods store,
and he would often go around
the corner to Gargiulo's restaurant.
And Fred Trump was there every day
with his assistant having lunch.
And he would say, "Hi, Pat," my father--
That's how they knew each other,
just first name.
They didn't-- Never talked.
But I was a Daily News columnist
at the time with my picture in the paper,
so Fred Trump would whisper to his son,
who would often have lunch with his dad
"That guy over there, Pat, his son writes
for the Daily News."
And Trump said, "Oh, I know him.
I know him."
[commentator] The 24-second clock,
we're down to six seconds.
[Auletta] I'm a New York Knickerbocker
basketball fan and he was too,
he would go to games. And he sees me
one year at a Knick game
He says, "Hey, Kenny!"
I don't know anyone who calls me Kenny.
And he says, "Hey, Kenny, how's your pop?"
And I said, "Actually-- Oh, he died."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."
The next year at a Knick game,
"Hey, Kenny, how's your pop?"
I said, "Actually, he died." [laughs]
The third year he says,
"Hey, Kenny, how's your pop?"
I said the same
[laughs] and walked away.
[Nikki Haskell]
Could you bring me a mirror?
-[man] There you go, your mirror.
-Thanks, honey.
[Haskell] I met Donald in about '74.
I met him at a club called La Club,
which was a private club
in the Upper East Side.
I remember distinctly
the first time that I saw Donald
and I-- I spotted him immediately.
I thought he was extremely attractive.
My kind of guy.
He was about 6' 3", blond hair.
He had a captivating air about him.
And that's how
Donald and I became friends.
And I knew immediately
Donald had big dreams.
I always liked people that, you know,
think outside of the box
and think bigger than life.
His family was in the building business,
but not in Manhattan.
You wanna do something small,
you do it in Brooklyn.
You wanna do something big,
you do it in Manhattan.
There's no comparison.
[car horns honking]
[Arzt] For Donald,
it was important to become a
upscale version of his father.
A major builder,
but in Manhattan, with the big boys.
[railroad bell ringing]
[Utsey] I'm a positive person,
so I look for solutions, not for problems.
September of 1975, I saw
the listing for a chauffeur-bodyguard.
It seemed interesting, so I went out
to Mr. Trump's Brooklyn office
and I walked in,
and there was about six other, uh
Uh. Police officers in my situation
also waiting for an interview.
When I finally met him,
I came into his office
firm handshake,
he always had a firm handshake.
And one time he squeezed
my wife's hand too hard.
[laughs] And
we sat down and we talked, and he asked me
about my time in the police department,
asked me about my time in college.
He asked me about my time
as captain of my school karate team.
And, uh
And meanwhile, I'm just looking
at this office and saying,
"Wow, this guy got it going on."
I remember the plate number.
That was the car, "DJT."
And his father's car I think had "FT."
Yeah, it was 40 years ago. Wow, yes.
I was grateful for the job,
and I was curious about the things
that were going to happen.
[Arzt] He needed a footprint in Manhattan.
Everyone yearns to get close to the mayor.
They'd figured that's the way
to do business.
We didn't write about it.
Wayne Barrett of The Village Voice
wrote about it.
[Wayne Barrett] Donald, he was a rookie
and I was a rookie.
Donald was the face of Fred,
bringing the company into Manhattan.
Dark times are times
of great opportunity
-[indistinct shouting]
-for people of great stealth.
Desperation, it's the land they inherit.
Abe Beame, the mayor of New York,
was as close to Fred Trump
as you could possibly be.
-[inaudible dialogue]
-Abe Beame is waiting on the steps,
to say to Fred Trump and Donald Trump,
whatever they want, they get.
[male reporter]
Beame is New York City's 104th mayor.
He's also the shortest mayor
in New York history, five feet two inches.
Well, I liked him mainly because
he was the only guy
shorter than me in government. Uh
I hadn't heard of the Trump family.
The first time I had heard of it was when
I met Donald Trump for the first time.
If the City would gather around with us,
we can produce with a lease
guaranteed by the state of New York
I mean, he was extremely presentable,
full of good cheer, full of optimism.
It was very refreshing to see somebody
come in and have ideas
and try to move things forward.
Where it really started to gel was when he
came in with the Commodore Hotel project.
The Commodore Hotel,
once one of the finest in New York,
is closing its doors next Tuesday
because of financial losses.
I feel very bad. The-- The whole hotel
going down the drain.
-[man] Forty-five years of service!
-[man 2] showing 340 dollars.
If we could just stop playing around
and get the politicians,
the City officials, who have generally
[Utsey] His father's name opened
the doors for him.
[Donald] especially very good
for sales
[Utsey] The Commodore Hotel project.
I was there from the beginning.
I remember going to City Hall.
We had the easel to help carry in
You know, the big
cards that you take down one at a time.
This is the easel.
He walks into my office, unannounced,
and he has these boards with him
with renderings of the Commodore Hotel.
And he sits down and starts pitching me
as if I'm the mayor
and he's pitching me
on the Commodore Hotel.
And then after he gets me all excited
about what a great project this is,
and how it's going
to stave off a disaster,
'cause the Commodore was
just about to close,
he says, "But I can't do this project,"
because he needed 70 million dollars.
The bank would only lend him
30 million dollars and he said,
"Can you help? Can you figure out
any way of getting a tax break?"
And off the top of my head I said,
"Well, you can do this, this, and that.
We don't have this program,
but maybe that's the way to do it."
The Trump real estate interests are
willing to put up to 100 million dollars
to refurbish this hotel.
The question is, will the City grant
a 40-year tax abatement?
[Michael Bailkin]
He had never done a major project before.
It wasn't just his
father's credit and expertise,
this was really on Donald.
And if this fell through for any reason,
if the City rejected him,
this would've been
a horrible thing in his career.
His reputation was on the line.
Basically, he needed help.
[car engine starts]
[Barrett] One of the most striking things
about Donald's life is that,
-at the age of 28
-[dialogue inaudible]
he meets Roy Cohn.
And anybody else would be repulsed.
I knew Roy Cohn.
He was the most repulsive figure
I ever met in my life.
I would sit at lunches with Roy Cohn,
and feel like I was
in the presence of Satan.
[Utsey] Mostly, Donald would pick him up,
they would talk.
I just thought he was a member of that
upper circle. That's all I knew.
Remember, I'm--
I'm a cop from the Bronx.
This entire matter
-[reporter] In 1954 at 27
-[Cohn speaks in footage]
Cohn was chief council
on the Senate subcommittee
investigating communist infiltration
in the government.
He was considered a brilliant lawyer.
Exposing these communists, these traitors.
[male reporter] Today, the rich
and the powerful seek him out
for the biggest of big-money lawsuits.
[female reporter]
He defended reputed underworld figures.
[male reporter 2] He's been tried
three times on criminal charges,
but he was acquitted each time.
[indistinct dialogue]
[David Lloyd Marcus]
My father would not talk to cousin Roy.
So, I grew up kind of knowing
that I should hate Roy,
but being fascinated by him
in a sort of a
the way you're fascinated
maybe by seeing a car crash.
I said, "How do you get things
done in this city?" Like
He said, "I know how power works."
He was just this person
who had such a wide web.
Liberals, conservatives,
journalists, politicians, judges,
good people, bad people, Mafiosos.
He kept secrets about people
and traded secrets with other people.
Roy was always on the phone to reporters,
and, you know,
he would call me up, and he says,
"Georgy, baby."
And I said, "Hi, Roy." [laughs] You know?
And I would-- You know--
And then he would
tell me some negative things.
[Marcus] He discovered
something which, frankly,
I don't think anybody had discovered.
If you used the newspapers,
if you used publicity,
if you attacked your opponent,
if you blustered,
if you made threats,
you could get a lot done.
And yet it wasn't on brilliance.
It was just on pure bluster.
Young Donald Trump
meets this guy and says,
"I got to have him! I got to have him!"
[Marcus] He knew if you wanted to build
a hotel in New York in the '70s,
it helped to know people, it helped
to threaten, it helped to cajole.
[Utsey] Pick him up eight, eight-thirty.
He's in the car
and, uh, we're on a mission.
[car horns honking]
[Utsey] He was meeting with all these
City officials and government people
in order to get his project
off the ground.
They had to get approval from A,
approval from B, approval from C.
B was waiting to see if A approved it,
then C approved it,
and playing ping pong.
[gavel banging]
[board member] The proposed reconstruction
of the Commodore Hotel.
[Bailkin] There was
the Board of Estimate hearing itself
That was-- That was the key day.
We have been presented with a situation
with potentially disastrous consequences.
Right now, um, their commitment
to managing this particular lease
seems to us, from the brief presented
by the City, to be weak.
[Arzt] He was very worried.
He was very young.
[man] .is to know whether,
um, item one
[Arzt] I remember that morning
I was there because this was
a controversy,
in giving away all these tax benefits.
[man] How can there be a profit?
or cause their increase ten-fold,
as the number of rooms reduced
by 400 or 20 percent?
[board member] Sir?
Sir, I'll give you one opportunity to--
If you want to remain in this room,
you'll have to be seated.
[man] Gentlemen, what's the
[male reporter]
Trump, who had nervously paced the hall
outside the Board of Estimate chamber
during the daylong session,
sat as the vote droned on.
Some of the hesitation due to fears they
were about to vote someone a windfall,
because the new hotel won't pay city taxes
till 40 years after it reopens.
I'm not sure whether we're making
the wisest decision in the world.
[male reporter] Finally, shortly after
four this afternoon, the final vote came.
[interviewer] It's been a long,
hard fight. How do you feel?
I'm very happy,
and I think the city of New York
is going to be very happy.
We're gonna do something, Bill,
which is gonna be a great stride forward
for New York City.
Who was it that said,
"Never waste a good crisis"?
Yo, move your hand, bitch!
[woman]
Hey, yo! Save that shit for me!
[Bailkin] I started looking at Donald
as a savior of the city.
He was using us to get his tax abatement,
and we were using him to create
a new program and a new vehicle,
and a new sense
that things could happen in the city.
[applause]
The multi-million-dollar tax breaks is
expected to save him 160 million dollars
in city taxes over 40 years.
It was an outrage
and it was a political fix,
which I dutifully wrote about
[chuckles] in the Daily News
as a rip-off of-- of the taxpayers.
I think I would have written as
investment in the city.
He takes the risks, he gets the rewards.
[inaudible dialogue]
[Arzt] He talked in hyperbolic terms.
"Spectacular," "wonderful,"
"the best," "the greatest."
He was a born salesman.
[Donald] Tremendous demand
all throughout the country.
The new hotel,
which is going to be spectacular,
something New York has never seen,
with elevators on the outside and atriums
and the largest ballroom in the city.
We feel all of these are gonna combine
with really, potentially,
the best area in New York City,
and probably New York City's most
important area: The Grand Central area.
All of this is going to combine
to make probably the most successful hotel
in the country, we feel.
[interviewer]
Okay, when does the new hotel open?
About two-and-a-half years,
the total project, yes.
-[interviewer] Thanks.
-Thank you very much.
My friends, they asked me something ♪
[cheering, applause]
How my man and I keep
Lovin' every day ♪
But if we work so good
It just ain't nothing ♪
Across the country, there is severe heat,
drought, water shortages.
The temperature in New York City
reached 104.
[male reporter] One of the side effects
of rising temperatures is rising tempers.
I'm gonna kill some guy.
I'm gonna kill him.
I'm gonna kill him.
-[interviewer] How do you stay cool?
-Positive thinking. That's all.
Just think positive.
Think cool and you'll be cool.
I sit in front
of my refrigerator stark naked. [laughs]
-What about the beard?
-Beard doesn't bother me at all.
You wanna know how
I make it work good ♪
Well, he was an eligible bachelor
in New York City and he liked to date.
I got it, I give it ♪
He dated, uh, you know,
some beautiful women,
but, uh, I kept seeing Miss Ivana.
She checked all his boxes.
First of all, she had a college degree.
She was a model,
so she was a beautiful woman.
And she cooked.
I remember sometimes she would call
the office and she made this special dish
with chicken wings
and wine and stuff like that,
so I would go to the supermarket and get
her a package of chicken wings,
and make sure I give it to the doorman
to bring upstairs.
[female reporter] Ivana Zelnícková.
She grew up in Czechoslovakia.
She began modeling as a teenager.
[Haskell] I never saw him with
the same girl twice until he met Ivana,
and then it became
a very hot and heavy romance.
She loved being with me, because I told
her where to get her hair done,
what doctor to go to,
where to go--
I mean, I actually
filled in all the blanks for her.
She didn't live in New York and I became
her closest friend, her eyes and ears.
One of the great qualities is that
I can understand everything Ivana says,
which is more than most people can.
When I met Donald,
Donald naturally didn't want me
to continue with the modeling,
because I think, "How long can you do it?"
And I was working for eight years,
and I think it was enough,
and I was ready for a change.
So I said, "Give me anything."
[laughs] "I would like to do"
-[interviewer] "Give me a job!"
-"Give me a job! I'll do it!"
[inaudible]
[Haskell] I don't think he ever realized
what a huge asset
Ivana was going to be to him.
Ivana was involved in every angle,
every-- every aspect of building
the Commodore Hotel. From soup to nuts.
They redid all the ballrooms,
Ivana redid every hotel room,
she spotted every mistake.
[Ivana Trump]
I like to see the final product.
I don't care what kind of business
it is in, I just adore to work.
I can't sit home and look up at a ceiling,
it's just not enough for me.
[indistinct chatter]
[Haskell] They were a great team.
The best marriages are when
the husbands and wives work together.
Of course, you know what your husband
is doing and you get to be part and parcel
of building an empire.
[Utsey] He had picked the right one.
I drove them there when he married Ivana.
That was a good day too.
He had city royalty,
politicians were there.
It was at the Marble Collegiate Church,
that's his church.
[Haskell] It wasn't a very big wedding.
Her father walked her down the aisle.
Ivana looked very understated
and they had the party afterwards at 21.
[Utsey] His father's driver and I,
we went down the block
and we had dinner at a restaurant.
Then we came back
and we went inside. We had dessert.
It was, uh flaming crêpes Suzette,
I think it was. I'm not sure.
I think it was. Something was flaming.
[laughs]
Could have been cherries jubilee,
I'm not sure.
The mayor was there.
Donald told Mayor Beame that
I'm one of the cops that got laid off
through the mayor, and the mayor turns
around and says,
"Oh, I'm sorry about that." [chuckles]
You know.
But I just held my tongue
and just looked away.
[male reporter] So, now,
as New Yorkers get ready to vote,
Mayor Abraham Beame is in bad trouble.
The people of this city
know and understand
[crowd booing]
the tremendous problems we had
in the last three-and-a-half years.
-[crowd booing]
-I'm confident we can make this
We've got to have real strong men,
real strong leadership.
I'm tired of all kind
of leadership in this city!
Bringing people together isn't a matter
of telling them what they want to hear.
You can do it by telling
them what they need to know.
How many people here
are voting for Ed Koch?
[woman] I do!
-[man] Yeah!
-[Ed Koch] We got seven or eight?
I love you,
-because you love me. Thank you.
-I love you too.
[Auletta] Koch, surprisingly,
for someone who lived in Manhattan,
had much more of a feel
and a liking for people
in Coney Island, where I grew up,
or people in working-class districts
in Queens or the Bronx.
-I need your help. Am I gonna get it?
-[woman] Yes.
-Yes.
-[Koch] Thank you!
[Auletta] He could talk
to anyone on the street,
go anywhere, loved debate
A real New Yorker.
Just want to say hello,
and thank you for standing tall.
-[man] Let 'em have it, Ed!
-Good morning.
I became Mayor Koch's press secretary.
He was fierce about his views,
he was fierce about integrity
and hated corruption.
[cheering]
[Arzt] For Donald, the election of Ed Koch
meant that there would be no easy path
through this administration
and he did not have a friend.
[female reporter] Amid a lot of fanfare,
the Grand Hyatt held
its grand opening today.
The 100-million-dollar hotel has
1,400 rooms.
The mayor and the governor of New York
were among those on hand
for the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
[applause]
[Auletta] I'm looking at these people
and I see the governor,
and I see the mayor,
but I don't see Donald Trump.
is now an architectural gem
[Auletta]
Also, he didn't name it the Trump Hotel.
[Abraham Beame]
and gleaming facade
[Auletta]
And the reason was he wasn't known.
[Beame] brightens and livens
this entire
[Auletta] In the '70s,
he didn't leave a footprint
He was not a figure that electrified
attention, um and opinion. At all.
The best things in life are free ♪
But you can give them
To the birds and bees ♪
I want more money
That's what I want ♪
[Rona Barrett]
In 1980, I was a household name.
That's what I want ♪
Good evening. I'm Rona Barrett.
Tonight, I'm going to give you
a close, intimate look at the hopes,
fears, dreams, successes,
and even the failures
of America's new super rich.
Some of the people you'll be meeting
aren't exactly household names.
Donald Trump's most famous
accomplishment to date
is the Grand Hyatt Hotel on 42nd Street.
Some say the age of Trump has just begun.
[Barrett] He was a new face on the block.
We placed a call to his office
and he then called back and said,
"I would love to be on your show."
Donald, I think, called me at least twice
and wanted to make sure that this was
really the network show.
And I said yes, it was a network show,
and this would be
his first network interview.
[Auletta] There were only three networks.
If you're on a network in 1980,
your audience is huge.
Thirty million.
[Barrett] I spoke with Donald
in the living room
of his New York penthouse.
Do you think that the acquisition
of wealth is an absolute aphrodisiac?
No, not at all. In fact, I think
in many cases it really creates problems
that you normally wouldn't have.
Were you constantly taught
from day one,
"Donald, you must be a success
and travel down that road,
and never move to the left,
and never move to the right?"
We're a very highly motivated family,
but, again, I would never use
the word "ambition."
And, uh Because to me, "ambition's"
a bad word. It's not ambitious.
You know, when I see
When I see people saying,
"I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna do that,
and I'm so ambitious and I'm--"
It really sickens me to listen
to them talking. I think it's just
Donald was the kind of person,
you could tell right off the bat--
First of all,
he didn't like the word "ambition,"
but he had plenty of it.
I do understand it's all basically a game.
We're all here to play the game and we're
all hopefully gonna play it well,
but some obviously people
can't play it well.
The world is made up of people
with either killer instincts,
or without killer instincts.
And the people that seem to emerge are
the people that are competitive and driven
and with a certain instinct to win.
My sense of Donald was that he was
always confident in what he was doing,
the kind of confidence
above and beyond most people's reality.
[Barrett] If someone were
to make a movie of your life,
who would you see playing yourself?
Maybe, uh Maybe myself.
Do you wake up one day and you say,
"I want 30th Street on the West Side.
I want 42nd Street on the East Side"?
Well, it's a process, and it's something
that you maybe have an instinct for.
The finest piece of real estate in
the world is at the corner of 5th Avenue
and 57th Street,
that's the Tiffany corner.
The Bonwit Teller department store
on 5th Avenue and 57th Street
may soon be following some
other fashionable stores into oblivion.
[Donald] I tried to buy the block
and they said, "Forget it. Forget it."
One day I got a phone call
and they wanted to know
if we wanted to make a deal.
Nobody ever assumed that location
could possibly be purchased,
but all of a sudden, it was.
And maybe it was mind over matter again.
Maybe you just really believe
that someday you'll own that location,
and you end up owning that location.
And we proceeded to buy the air rights
over Tiffany, which is a zoning term
for "area and space" over Tiffany.
[Barrett]
I mean, no one had heard of buying air
over the space
of something that already existed.
That became a big story nationwide.
[female reporter]
An active imagination made everybody gasp.
Buy the best property in New York,
tear down the famous
Bonwit Teller building
There were gargoyles that were
on the side of these buildings
that the preservation society
was trying to find a way to take down.
And then Donald just blew it up.
That was it, next case.
You never can impede progress.
Even for a couple of gargoyles.
[applause]
[male presenter]
Number one, what is your name please?
My name is Barbara Res.
[presenter] Number two?
My name is Barbara Res.
[presenter] And number three?
My name is Barbara Res.
Where did you get this from?
[presenter]
"I, Barbara Res, am a graduate engineer."
Can you send this to me?
[presenter] "And currently project manager
of the newest edition
to the New York City skyline
known as the Trump Tower.
I am proud of the fact that I am the
first woman to have overall supervision
of the construction of a major skyscraper
in the New York metropolitan area."
I start the questioning with Soupy.
Yes. [clears throat] Number one,
how many men are under you?
Sometimes, you go all the way up to 700.
Number three, do you sit
on a sidewalk and go
-[wolf whistles] to the guys?
-[Barbara Res] Sure.
[Res] On a construction site,
I had the shit harassed out of me.
At the time, the number of women engineers
was one or two percent,
so when Trump met me,
I probably impressed him
by the fact that I was a woman
doing "a man's job."
[female reporter]
These people are not only looking
at construction workers pouring concrete.
They're looking at Sarah.
A twenty-four-foot-long pin up painted
on plywood wearing only a bikini
and a seductive smile.
Sarah was designed for the delight
of the construction workers inside.
The artist painted
a bathing suit on Sarah,
which will wash off when it rains.
She makes it kinda hard
to keep your mind on your work.
Make you feel young again.
I don't think they made them like that
when I was a young man. [laughs]
[Res] I was extremely ambitious.
I wanted to make a name for myself.
I liked the fact that
I was the only woman.
I was aggressive,
I didn't take shit from anybody.
Something came up, and the architect would
try to blame one of the subcontractors,
and I would say, "That's bullshit!"
And Trump loved that.
He absolutely loved that.
When he hired me finally,
he called me a "killer."
Number three,
what does Donald Trump look like?
I thought he was attractive, which is
[scoffs] I can't believe that I did.
Well, I didn't know that it
was going to be what it was,
which is a spectacular building.
It was cutting edge,
it was forward thinking.
The shape of it, the style of it,
the idea of it, the location of it,
the height of it
And the views were unparalleled.
I mean, you had an unobstructed view
of whatever it was you were looking at.
This was all very special stuff,
and he had come up with this himself.
He was a schemer and a dreamer
and I just wanted to be part of it.
[presenter] They're ringing that
bell again. That means time is up.
Now the votes are all in. Now,
will the real Barbara Res please stand up?
-[presenter] That's her.
-[applause]
[Res] As far as the public spaces were
concerned, it was very top-notch stuff,
but in the apartments,
there was a lot of crap.
[male reporter]
At $1 million for two bedrooms,
they're some of the most expensive
in the city.
Trump boasts they are the best.
[Donald] But instead of building
an average building,
we'll make it the finest building
in the world.
[Res] The floor was the absolute
cheapest wood floor you could get.
It's funny, 'cause I helped
write the offering plan.
It talked about parquetry, you know,
marquetry. You know, that kind of thing.
It was nonsense.
It was cheap tiles that are glued down.
The kitchens were garbage.
Can you imagine Formica counter tops?
Trump always looked to save money.
I went to him and said,
"You can't do this, this is shit!"
And we fought like cats and dogs.
But that was not a good thing
to take him on,
because you put him up against a wall
and he would come out and attack.
And he attacked two kinds of people.
He attacked weak people, because he found
their weakness and then just exploited it,
and he attacked people that attacked him,
and he came back at them harder.
He says that he did that and he does.
-[telephone ringing]
-[indistinct chatter]
Hello. Hi, how we doing?
[man] You know better about the holdings.
Yeah, shit. I think I may be
being played in this thing.
No.
When we were building the Trump Tower
uh, we were having a discussion
about difficulties
we were having with a contractor,
and Donald reached behind his desk
and pulled out a picture of Roy Cohn.
And he asked everybody in the room,
"Do you know who this is?"
"Yeah, it's Roy Cohn."
"Well, Roy is my attorney.
Nobody wants to face Roy Cohn."
[Barrett] The godfathers of all five
crime families were represented by him.
[male reporter]
Tony Solerno, recently indicted,
has long been one of Roy Cohn's clients.
They all met at his townhouse so that
the FBI couldn't wire the meetings.
Uh Did you do
any of those things anymore?
It's all false.
[Auletta] Donald Trump said, "If someone
threatens me, I will go to Roy Cohn.
It scares the hell out of them
and they back off.
So, it's a weapon for me.
Roy Cohn is a weapon for me."
[indistinct chatter]
[Artie Nusbaum] No one knows Trump Tower
is a unique structural building.
I spoke to the structural engineer
and said, "Could we do this whole building
in concrete?
It's cheaper, it's faster."
He said, "Absolutely, Artie."
In that period of time, the reality was
certain trades had mafia connections,
concrete in particular.
[male reporter] Conclusion: to build
the largest concrete structure
in New York City,
turn again to Roy Cohn.
Cohn is also the lawyer
for the New York crime boss
who controls the concrete business.
Payoffs from contractors
are dropped off at Cohn's office,
so he may get paid twice
for his services here.
But then, you get who you pay for.
As a matter of fact,
Fred got involved in the concrete buy.
[reporter]
How are the sales going?
Well, I have nothing to do with sales,
but I hear they're going excellent,
fantastic, unbelievable.
He was so annoying.
He was impossible to deal with.
He was just
"Oh, no, oh, no, that's all wrong.
You don't know what you're doing."
And he just I couldn't stand him.
And he hated the fact that I was a woman
in charge of construction
in this building.
It killed him, and the amount of money
I was being paid and all this stuff,
but when I complained about Fred
to Donald, he just said,
"Suck it up, baby.
Just put up with him because eventually,
he will not be involved."
Donald put up with his father,
he deferred to his father,
but there was no question in my mind,
everybody knew who was behind the project.
Nobody thought for a second it was Fred.
Fred was just something we had
to put up with for a short period of time.
This was Donald's project.
Here's the lady on the sales,
Louise Sunshine.
They just asked me one question,
"How are the sales going?"
I said, "I have nothing to do with sales."
We're 80 percent sold,
and we have the who's who
of the world moving into the tower.
It ought to be very interesting to wait
in the lobby for the elevator. [laughs]
Reggie? Hi, what's going on?
[Res] The buzz about this was all Trump.
Trump was his own PR agent.
He sold apartments for unheard-of prices.
He now has an apartment for sale,
11 million dollars.
Trump Tower is considered one
of the great buildings of the world.
People from all over are coming.
He even managed to get a cover
of Paris Vogue,
which had the silhouette of the building.
And then in life size,
part of the face of a woman kissing it.
We were famous.
I mean Trump did all of this.
He is without a doubt
the best PR person in the world.
How is your sound coming out? Okay?
Let them up and let them come up
and bring them back and everything else.
There was a story in the paper that
the queen of England was gonna leave
Buckingham Palace
and move into Trump Tower.
[audience laughs]
So they asked me if it was
true and I said, "No comment,"
and so they assumed it was true.
I mean, nobody could
From the top of Trump Tower,
it's The Nikki Haskell Show,
direct from New York.
[Haskell] The television show was
absolutely the greatest thing ever.
I always wanted to do something
with Donald, a TV show or something.
-Hi, Donald.
-Hi, Nikki.
I'm very proud of what you're doing,
changing the face of New York.
Well, we've known each other
for a long time, haven't we?
-Yes, and you always said you'd do it.
-I did.
Some people say they'll do things
and never do.
Okay, thank you, Nikki.
Well, here we are
on the top of the Trump Tower.
Today is the topping off
of this fabulous building
on the corner of 56th and 5th Avenue,
probably the most luxurious spot
in all of New York to live.
Donald Trump has invited us all
for a wonderful party,
and the mayor is here,
and I think you'll just enjoy seeing
the fabulous panorama view of New York.
[Res] I mean, talk about
having pride in something.
It was just great,
it was a great day for me.
I don't know. It's gonna be something
the press would love seeing,
so at ten after 12 you might want
to be on the sidewalk position.
We're gonna release 10,000 balloons,
so have a good time. Yes?
[Res] Yes, it was Trump's building,
and he conceived it, but I built it.
You know what a topping out party is?
When you reach the top,
you have a celebration for the workers.
That's what a topping out party is.
And the interesting thing
was Trump was kind of like,
"Do we have to have
all the workers at it?"
[Haskell]
It was great the mayor was there.
I don't think they were
that friendly at that time.
[man] Why weren't they?
I don't know. Politics, you know.
You know politics.
[Arzt] Trump Tower was entirely luxury.
It was a building,
a tower, for the very, very wealthy.
Mayor Koch believed he should deny
tax abatements for this project.
And now, uh, the toast.
May these walls withstand
the winters of endless years.
May all who dwell within
know only happiness,
and may the windows of this building
forever look out upon a place
of peace and prosperity.
[Donald]
Very nice. Thank you, sir. Very nice.
[Auletta] A visitor from another planet
seeing this interview would say,
"Gee, Koch and Trump are good friends."
Not true.
Koch hated him. I mean, with passion.
-[photographer] How 'bout a handshake?
-Sure.
Anytime. Anytime.
Anything else before we conclude?
[Auletta] His first year as mayor,
I'm doing this New Yorker profile
and I asked to be a fly on the wall
in his office.
Trump's name would come up
in our-- in our interview sessions,
and he would just lambast Trump
as a fraud, a phony,
self-aggrandizing person who tries to take
credit for things he doesn't deserve.
[reporter] the common guy
in New York City care
if you're topping off your tower
today or not?
You really think it's good for the city?
How does it filter down
to the common guy?
I'll tell you how it's filtered down.
We've employed 5,000 construction workers,
there'll be many people
running the building.
I think it's a vital step for New York.
The fact is that most people
aren't wealthy,
and yet we need the taxes that come
from those who work and those who invest
so as to make it possible
for the city of New York
to deliver essential services
to the poorest of the poor and to the
[Haskell] The Trump Tower opening
everybody in town wanted to go to that.
[security guard] Excuse me! You're not
supposed to be in here yet. Sir?
[Haskell] They had people on stilts.
People that sort of look like they came
from Buckingham Palace. And the doors
I shot it for my television show.
I even shot Roy Cohn
at the opening of the Trump Tower.
We've all known Donald for a long time.
I'm so proud of him, aren't you?
Yeah. When you think back, Nikki,
the way you and I knew Donald when,
and there's so many great events
in his life.
Tonight is the opening of probably
the most important building in the world.
Marble waterfalls
Sort of restores your faith
in the fact that progress, that, uh
free enterprise is not dead at all,
when something like this can be created.
[Haskell] I'm glad you're here.
I know we're both
in the right place at the right time.
Whenever we see each other,
I know something has to be right.
-Thank you, sweetheart.
-Okay, dear.
[male reporter] Trump Tower,
the centerpiece of the Trump empire.
Per square foot
the most expensive apartments,
shops and office space in Manhattan.
[woman] It's python and leather,
it's all hand-tooled in Switzerland,
and it's a theme of the '80s.
It's taken after Superman for kryptonite.
This is his kryptonite buckle.
[reporter 1] Priced at the mere £500,
its sales are meteoric.
Solid sterling-silver dog or cat bowls
with gold-plated interiors,
a £1,300 price tag.
[reporter 2]
Harry Winston at Trump Tower,
he's got jewel-encrusted gold
taxi whistles for Mother’s Day.
Buy two, and you and Mom can play
dueling taxi whistles all day Sunday
-for only $8,000!
-[whistles blowing]
[reporter 1] This gold and crystal model
of Manhattan at £170,000.
Well, I built Trump Tower thinking
I was going to get an abatement,
I should get an abatement, and I am
by law entitled to that abatement.
-[Ruth Messinger] That's not true.
-It is true.
-The City has--
-I think you really better check
-your facts and figures.
-I did.
I think you better, because
you'll find out I could've built
an as-of-right office building
77 stories tall.
[reporter] Ruth Messinger is a member
of the City Council
for Manhattan's Upper West Side.
She's been an outspoken critic
of the tax abatement program.
[Messinger] I was known for being willing
to challenge powers that be.
I think on Trump Tower, you know,
there was a piece of
the kind of muscle I'm looking for,
in which the City was saying,
"Wait. This is a discretionary benefit,
and we won't give it to you."
Why should a multi-millionaire like
yourself continue to reap these benefits?
Have you checked my books lately?
Do you know that I'm a multi-millionaire?
-I'm trying to--
-Are you denying that you are?
No, I'm not.
I went to the City, I said I'm willing
to invest a tremendous amount of money
in this city, in this location.
Now people such as Ruth Messinger
and others
are opposed to the tax abatement.
In my judgement, Dick,
the program has become
a corporate welfare program.
We are subsidizing
developers like Mr. Trump.
They make a huge profit.
You've gotten something close
to 160 million dollars in tax benefits.
Did you read that in the Times?
-I'd like to find out why--
-[Messinger] Times said 168.
Is that your source of information,
or have you done this on your own?
Have you read an article
and you've taken 160 million dollars--
No, I've gone through calculations.
I understand how
the abatement program works--
-[Donald] It's incorrect.
-[Messinger] There were lots of insults.
Just in that segment, he's trying to say
I haven't checked my facts,
I don't know it, I'm relying
on a New York Times article.
"Don't interrupt me, don't challenge me.
I know, and if you're disagreeing,
there's something the matter with you."
Ken?
Rather than quibbling about the past,
let me just ask you something,
just spin forward.
Is that me?
[Auletta in footage] Among the problems
here is that neither side
can really prove with objective truth
that abatements either help or hinder.
It's an elite core of developers who are
leaching out revenues that we need.
This is ridiculous.
To listen to this is just so ridiculous.
If you spent the same time trying
to clean up our subways
-and clean the city of crime--
-[Messinger] I do.
Well, I don't know that you do.
If you do, you're doing
a very ineffective job.
It's been a stimulating evening
and I thank you both for being here,
and speaking for New York and company.
I'm Dick Oliver. Good night.
[Auletta] That was kind of interesting.
Donald Trump suddenly
is coming on stage
as this combative figure.
He became another person. Um
He's cocky.
[Roy Cohn] I've been his lawyer
since he was 23 years old.
He can't stand losing.
Everyone told Donald not to do it,
he didn't stand a prayer.
He believes you can fight City Hall.
I believe you can fight City Hall.
And we both fought it together
and got a 74-million-dollar
Trump Tower tax abatement,
which the City refused to give us,
by going to the highest court
of the state,
which decided
seven to nothing in our favor.
Millionaire real estate developer
Donald Trump will get a handsome tax break
for his latest project on 5th Avenue
[Messinger] Trump won.
Ed Koch, he loved his own bravado
and his own showpersonship,
but he didn't particularly
like being challenged.
[Arzt] Koch was easy to read.
Ed always bled for the city.
Ed was very taken aback by the loss.
He really thought that
they would win the case.
Good afternoon, Trump Organization.
[male reporter]
Ambition, creativity, money.
This is where the action is.
I don't give a damn if he buys or not.
[reporter] His critics say he is one
of the culprits making New York
too much a city for the rich.
[Messinger] The powers that be,
being real estate interests, were like,
"Oh, this is a neighborhood where we
can get rid of all the poor people,
because rich people wanna live here."
[Utsey] That was what was going on
in the "have-not" part of the city.
It's what we call
"the tale of two cities."
[Res] Donald had so much press
for Trump Tower that, you know,
people thought of him as being
this big developer that did
the most important building in the city,
and that was the only building
he did in the city.
The Hyatt was a rehab.
So this was the first ground-up building
that he ever did,
and yet, he was a player instantaneously.
[indistinct chatter]
[Res] Personally, the couple,
the Trumps, I mean,
they were just everything
that you wanted to be.
They were gorgeous,
they were personable, they were rich,
they were you know, they had children.
When you make your wish, try and blow
all the candles out with one breath,
okay, honey? One breath.
[Res]
Ivana and he were the power couple.
Everybody wanted them at their party.
I mean, it was just-- So, it was
an incredibly heady time for him.
Nobody could question him
and he was very full of himself.
People ask 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."
[Arzt] On this, I don't see Donald
as being a representative of business,
but venturing forth into politics.
Remember the Wollman Skating Rink
in Central Park?
It was supposed to re-open
this weekend, finally,
but as has happened with
so many other scheduled re-openings,
this one's been postponed too.
Donald called me and said,
"I'm looking out my window,
and I'm looking for months
and these people can't do a rink."
[male reporter] The City spent the last
seven-and-a-half years
and 12 million dollars on an exotic plan
to remodel the rink.
[Arzt] Donald wrote to Mayor Koch.
"Dear Ed, for many years I have watched
with amazement as New York City
repeatedly failed on its promises
to complete and open
the Wollman Skating Rink.
I and the other New Yorkers are tired
of watching
the catastrophe of Wollman Rink.
The incompetence displayed
in this simple construction project
must be considered one of the greatest
embarrassments of your administration.
During this six-year period,
I have constructed major hotels,
apartment buildings, and Trump Tower.
Building the Wollman Rink,
which essentially involves
the pouring of a concrete slab,
should take no more
than four months' time.
Sincerely, Donald J. Trump."
[reporter] He didn't arrive
on a galloping white steed,
but developer Donald Trump
has offered to rescue
the troubled Wollman Skating Rink
in Central Park.
[cheering, applause]
[Haskell] Everything that you do in a city
like New York matters.
If you have a public area,
such as Wollman Skating Rink,
that nobody can fix makes him a hero.
Nobody just does anything just to do it,
and Donald did it just to do it.
It was more personal. It was more,
"I can do this and you guys can't."
[Donald]
You take the Wollman and Koch,
they were building it for seven years.
You know, it's a pretty sad situation,
but you have that all over,
and probably in every government.
[Arzt] He chose to try to embarrass
the mayor, and then Koch relented
and gave him the project.
Because of our success and my success
at the Hyatt and at Trump Towers
We expect to start next week,
and start
[Nusbaum] Donald walked into my office,
asked me to build a rink.
He made certain promises to me.
It would be publicity,
lots and lots of publicity.
First words he said to me was,
"Artie, you're going to get
so much publicity out of this."
-I want another generator.
-[man] I don't need
[Nusbaum] But our fee would be zero.
Bring another generator on the job.
Bring more soldiers on the job.
[reporter]
Trump did it, not in two years,
not even in the six months
he had estimated.
Nope, Trump has finished it
two months early and under budget.
[Nusbaum] He didn't finish it in four.
We finished it in four.
We're like the Marines,
and we get there, and we do it.
[applause]
You know, this morning
I placed a call to the great Almighty
and asked him if we could please have
some good weather.
And he said, "Dick,
don't call me, just call Donald."
[crowd laughs]
We owe a great debt of gratitude,
not only for this glorious weather,
but for this wonderful
re-opening of this
When the emcee said, "You now skate
courtesy of Donald J. Trump,"
we knew it was all over.
[applause]
[Nusbaum] He threw us under the bus.
"Built by Trump and HRH."
It interferes with
the rhythm of the words.
What's wrong with sharing the platform?
I don't mind that he's entitled
to the gold medal,
but I should at least have gotten
the silver and maybe the bronze.
[applause]
[Nusbaum] Wollman Rink represented
a way into the public eye.
"I built Wollman Rink!
Nobody else could do it."
Everybody in the city,
every paper in the city
took notice of what he had accomplished.
He's all about publicity.
"Trump, Trump, Trump,"
everywhere.
[cheering, applause]
[Messinger] He scored all the points
and then he's like,
"Okay, I can do anything better than you."
In Trump's mind, no difference between
fixing an ice skating rink
and building the largest thing
ever to be built.
New Yorkers want to have
the world's tallest building,
and frankly, so do I.
[Koch] Okay.
Last week, I released a letter
that I had written to Donald Trump.
In the letter, I told Mr. Trump
that I would not be granting him
the tax exemptions that he desired.
That letter aroused Mr. Trump's ire.
We have a gentleman in New York
who is very disloyal. Every time--
You're talking about
the mayor of New York, right?
I'm talking about
the mayor of New York, yes.
I regret that much
of the public discussion
has appeared
to be related to personalities.
I'm saying that Ed Koch could do everybody
a huge favor if he got out of office
and they started all over again.
All in all, it was bad politics
by by Trump,
with the world's tallest building.
Certainly, his father would have known
a much better way to do things.
I think Donald is a person who only
understands force and power
and making fun of people.
I would say he's got no talent
and only moderate intelligence.
You called the mayor a moron.
Is that any way to talk about a mayor,
about another person?
It's only expressing your feelings and
that's the way I feel. That's what I say.
What Mr. Trump wanted
was simply too expensive
[Messinger] The city was not
the same place it was in 1975.
I remember Koch just saying, like,
"This guy's not going to get his way
on everything he wants."
I know what I'm doing,
he doesn't need that kind of break.
[interviewer] What if you don't get this?
What will happen?
Then what I'll do is I'll wait for
a more progressive administration
and more importantly,
I'll wait for bad times.
When bad times come,
then I'll get whatever I want.
And if that happens, I'll bet he will.
[Donald] I really can say that thus far
in life, I've been quite lucky.
But I also understand life,
and life is a long-term investment,
and relatively speaking,
I guess I'm only mid-term or short term.
I can't really tell you
what's going to happen in the future,
but I do feel very positively
about the future.
If you lost your fortune today,
what would you do tomorrow?
Maybe I'd run for president.
I don't know.
No, I'm only kidding. When I say that,
I'm being somewhat facetious.
-Thank you.
-Thank you, Rona, very much.
Thank you.
[Barrett] Have we just about done it?
[man] Yes, that's all.
You are excellent, I have to tell you.
You are very, very good.