CONTENTS
I dont put on any airs, Donald J Trump once told a journalist, from behind his one-hundred per cent mahogany desk. Half the size of a squash court, and brightened up with a stuffed bald eagle, this desk sits amid shelves full of golf trophies and dozens of important awards with framed magazine covers all over the walls (no prizes for guessing whos on them). From the windows, one can see Central Park but the real spectacle is the lobby below: gold-plated, pink-marbled and perfumed, it contains chandeliers and a sixty-foot waterfall, plus guards in red jackets and furry black hats.
The buildings name, of course, is Trump Tower. As you can see from the huge sign outside.
Could it be that Donald does actually put on airs? That his light isnt completely hidden under a bushel? After all, ever since he burst onto the scene in a blaze of blondes, boasts and stunningly bad hair, the real estate mogul has given us the Trump World Tower and the Trump Castle. Plus Trump Palace, and a few Trump Hotels. Then theres the Trump Regency and the various Trump Taj Mahals, together with Trump Park Avenue and several Trump Plazas.
For a full picture of this mans personality, we should probably also factor in the Trump Marina and the seven Trump golf clubs, plus the Trump Winery and the many Trump restaurants. Americans can also dress like Donald, courtesy of the Donald J Trump Signature Collection, or smell like him, thanks to Donald Trump: The Fragrance.
And for just a few more dollars, they can think like him, too. On the shelves at the Trump Store, there sit no fewer than seventeen personally written books by Donald Trump on the subject of Trump. They have titles like Trump: The Way to the Top and Trump: Think Like a Champion. Resplendent with photos, of course.
And then there is Donalds latest volume, Crippled America, which boasts a sixteen-page About the Author section mostly concerned with what he plans to do once he lives in the White House.
Whether President Trump ever becomes a reality is not really the question, but just how he got so far is. Perhaps the answer is in this modest tome, The World According to Trump, which contains the decidedly immodest words of Donald Trump and reveals all you ever wanted to know about the man, and probably a great deal more.
I was always very much accepted by my father. He adored Donald Trump.
The son of Friedrich Drumpf, a German immigrant, Frederick Trump built tens of thousands of affordable houses in the low-income areas of Brooklyn and Queens. He had five children, a thriving real estate company and around $400 million at the time of his death.
When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, Im basically the same. The temperament is not that different.
According to his brother Robert, Donald was the child who would throw the cake at the birthday parties.
I felt like I was in the military in a true sense.
Trump was sent to military school at the age of fourteen. He thought he was Mr America and the world revolved around him, says his former instructor, Colonel Dobias.
I went to the Wharton School of Business. Im, like, a really smart person. I was a really good student at the best school in the country.
Trump did not graduate with honours of any kind, even though just about every profile ever written about him states that he graduated first in his class.
The first thing I did when I got out of college was to analyse the current economic climate and think about just what business I wanted to go into.
The second thing he did was go into his fathers business. My whole life really has been a no and I fought through it. It has not been easy for me, it has not been easy for me My father gave me a small loan of $1 million.
Im a builder; I know how to build. Nobody can build like I can build.
Trumps first big project, Trump Tower, was built with concrete from a company owned by Fat Tony Salerno and Big Paul Castellano, the heads of the Genovese and Gambino crime families.
There is no one my age who has accomplished more. Everyone cant be the best.
Trump reflecting on his achievements in 1987, at the age of 41.
Oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world, I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, Can you believe what I am getting?
He also accomplished a lot in the bedroom, according to Think Big: Make it happen in business and life.
I would never buy Ivana any decent jewels or pictures. Why give her negotiable assets?
On his first marriage, to fashion model Ivana Trump.
It ended a year later.
I only have one regret in the women department that I never had the opportunity to court Lady Diana Spencer.
According to UK TV presenter Selina Scott, Donald did court her. After Diana and Charles divorced in 1996, Trump bombarded Diana at Kensington Palace with massive bouquets of flowers, each worth hundreds of pounds, Scott wrote in the Sunday Times. What am I going to do? the princess supposedly asked Scott. He gives me the creeps.
I was bored when she was walking down the aisle. I kept thinking: What the hell am I doing here? I was so deep into my business stuff. I couldnt think of anything else.
On the promising start to his second marriage in 1993, which also ended in a nasty divorce.
Its certainly not groundbreaking news that the early victories by the women on