Andersen Kurt - You cant spell America without me: the really tremendous inside story of my fantastic first year as president, Donald J. Trump

For my fellow Americans, who deserve only the best, and now finally have it

the richest, smartest

&

most amazing president ever

I remember the day this all began, the journey to the presidency, as my daughter Ivanka calls it. It was a really, really fantastic day, one of the best days of my entire life. Ive had so many great daysthe day my mom finally made my father stop calling me the Grouchy Little Homo, the day my net worth got bigger than his, the day of my first 60 Minutes appearance (before CBS News was fake news), the day The Apprentice got 28.1 million viewers, the days each of my five children were born, including Tiffany. So many phenomenal, incredible days.

It was in January 1986, the day the space shuttle blew up, so tragic, but I was in a fabulous mood. My first casino in Atlantic City was doing unbelievably great, making so much money, and Id just made a great deal to take it over and make it more successful by renaming it Trump Plaza. I was in my thirties, and Id just met one of my future wives, Marla Maples, who was twenty-one, maybe twenty-two, and at that time a nine-plus in the looks department, to be perfectly frank. I was in Palm Beach, my wife Ivana was doing her thing, and I drove my Rolls-Royce over to The Breakers hotel to visit the legendary genius Roy Cohn, my extremely tough lawyer and personal friend. Roy kept a suite at The Breakers, which had recently refused to let me buy two penthouses and combine them, the morons, because theyd now be so valuable as historic residences. In the dozen years Id known Roy, he had taught me about the importance of maintaining a strong, great suntan all year long, but I remember that day he was very pale, I guess he was sick by then, AIDS, sad, so I decided to cheer him up by driving him down to Mar-a-Lago for a tour of the place.

Id just closed on Mar-a-Lagoit was such an amazing deal, one of the best deals I ever made, not the biggest but one of the most outstanding. I bought it for a fraction of what Id offered only a few months earlier, because I told the owners Id acquired the whole beach directly behind the house and could totally block their view with a new building, which basically meant selling to me or nobody. (That wasnt completely true, but they were weak and scaredto be perfectly honest, like so many people born into money who arent Trumps, and even some who are.) And one of the sellers, the B-list snob actress Dina Merrill, was such an unbelievable un-PC-word to me. In fact, by the way, since they were technically a foundation, letting me take them to the cleaners, even though I hadnt actually closed on the beachfront lot, people told me it was probably some kind of fiduciary crime on their part.

Anyway, there I was with Roy Cohn, who respected me greatly, at Mar-a-Lago, the most beautiful, amazing, prestigious home in Florida, one of the most beautiful and prestigious in the United States or the entire Western Hemisphere, probably in the whole world. Which I now owned, for almost nothing. It was totally empty, except for the Hispanics and the African Americansgreat people scrubbing off the mold and hatcheting the lizards and so forth.

My Xanadu, right? I said. Roy understood I meant William Randolph Hearsts house in my favorite movie, Citizen Kane, because like me, Roy was very smart, Ivy League but not a phony. He mentioned that Marjorie Merriweather Post, the Shredded Wheat and Honey Bunches of Oats heiress who built Mar-a-Lago, had meant it to be used by American presidents as a Winter White House. Most presidents, then just like now, couldnt afford extremely nice homes of their own, not even to rent.

YOU KNOW WHAT, ROY? I said. We were standing on one of the beautiful marble verandasits covered in fifteenth-century Spanish tiles, thats the 1400s, when Spain and those people were on top, each tile now worth $25,000, half a million pesos apieceand I was looking out at the ocean, not in a sad way, but more kind of a wise way. Its really a shame that Donald Trump cant ever be president, I said. Not that Id necessarily want to be. My life is better than a presidents in a lot of ways, much better. In most ways. Did you know Reagan only makes two hundred grand a year? But what I hate is that because of that one law I cant be president, only because of that stupid, ridiculous law.

Roy was rubbing one of the carved stone griffins, the weird little gay royal dragon things all around Mar-a-Lago. What law? You mean the problem with that punk in Atlantic City? Dont worry about him. Forget him. Hes gone. He doesnt exist. Literally.

No, no, I said, because of my mom. Because shes from Scotland.

Roy explained that all these years Id had it wronga foreign parent doesnt mean you cant become president. Article something, clause whatever.