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David Cay Johnston won a Pulitzer for his reporting for the NY Times. Today, he talks about his new best-seller, The Making of Donald Trump, and shares stories from his bulging files on The Donald.Johnston has known Trump since the late 1980’s, and we open with his description of a phone call he got from Trump in April, 2016, with threats to sue Johnston if Trump didn’t like what he wrote.
We learn about many interesting chapters in Trump’s life, including his work with mobsters and drug dealers, the illegal Polish workers who were paid $5 an hour to demolish the building where Trump Tower was built, and his bizarre connection of his moods to his shifting estimates of his net worth, which is far less than $10 billion.
We learn how Trump breaks the “great deals” that he negotiates with subcontractors, how he got caught trying to evade sales tax on luxury goods by sending empty boxes to another state, and many other interesting anecdotes. You will be shocked when you learn how he bought Mar a Lago for almost zero cash.
The Making of Donald Trump is out in hardcover, and an audio book is also available.