The Big Lie
You have to hand it to Donald Trump, he has a habit of always aspiring to be at the top of whatever hill he chooses to climb. Of course, the more accurate way to characterize that would be to say that he always aspires to declare that he is at the top of whatever hill he chooses to say he has climbed. I’m sure the subtlety of what I’m differentiating there is not lost on you. Saying does not equal doing in the real world. That is a lesson that Donald Trump never learned in kindergarten. All of the most recent lessons we are learning about Donald Trump, or perhaps just confirming what we thought was the case with Donald Trump, are painting a very unavoidable picture of a man-child that has, for some reason, been able to stumble through life without ever facing a true and final comeuppance. I’ve read enough books and articles about his history to have a factual foundation to understand this, but I also lived my entire adult life in the very place where he operated and in various business circles that included him very directly. While I am hardly the most experienced or intimate student of Donald Trump, compared to the other 332 million Americans, I am guessing that I am in the top 5,000 people who can claim to “know” or “have known” the man over a significant period of time (45 years in my case).
In 1990, John Guare wrote the Pulitzer-nominated play, Six Degrees of Separation. In 1993, this was made into a movie starring Will Smith and that all popularized the notion that we are all connected to one another by no more than six degrees of separation. In fact, to sort of prove that point on a personal level, in 1997 I got connected to John Guare through what I would say is two degrees of separation. He and I were involved in an HBO movie project called Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground that was produced by Rosie Perez. This was a compilation of ten stories about the NYC subway. The project started with an ad in the New Yorker that I noticed that was an open call contest for people to submit real subway stories. I was at the early stage of my writing career but I had such a story, which I called Financial Litterbug. I submitted the story and was eventually notified by registered mail that I “might have won” the contest and had to submit a full release for use of the story for Rosie’s use in order to find out for sure. Without much to lose, I did just that and eventually and through concerted efforts on my part (a story onto itself) learned that I was one of ten winners who’s stories were being made into vignettes for the movie. As a side note, my winnings were a year’s worth of tokens, which came in the form of a check for $1,095 ($1.50 x 2 x 365). Rosie took the ten winning stories and hired well-known screenwriters and directors to turn them into mini-movies with dialogue. My story, The 5:24 (by the way, I wrote it about the 5:14 train, but I guess 5:24 must be a more appealing time…go figure), was screen written by Lynn Grossman, but another one, The Red Shoes, was screen written by John Guare. Before release of the movie, the producers did a press blitz and asked me to come and give interviews with journalists from the New York Times, The New York Post and Entertainment Weekly. I was the only story writer asked to do that since both the Times and Post rated The 5:24 the best of the ten stories (EW rated it third best). I presume Guare was asked to talk to them since he was the most noteworthy screenwriter involved. He and I both knew Rosie so we were two degrees separated.
And as far as me and Donald Trump are involved, I would argue that I had two two-degree separations and, indeed have only one degree of separation now. I was first involved with Trump in 1992 during the first of his four business bankruptcy filings. My bank, Bankers Trust, was a lead banker for his real estate business and our Chief Credit Officer, Joe Manganello (rest his soul) was handling the negotiations. I had worked for Joe and was meeting with him on some issue and was introduced to Donald in passing on the executive floor. Then, the next year when I took over the private banking business of Bankers Trust, Trump called me (having gotten my number from Joe) to ask if I we would consider banking him. I remember Joe and I having a good laugh about that one since Joe had been the guy who approved giving Donald a $400,000 per month “allowance” after his first BK to help retain some collateral value by supporting the Trump brand by letting him keep his luxurious lifestyle. I even met him again in 1995 at Mar-a-Lago. I was invited to some sort of Private Banking party there in January and met him at 2am while he was dancing on the disco floor with his baby daughter Tiffany in his arms (who knows what that was about?). I doubt he would remember that moment. But there was no way in hell my private banking business would remotely consider banking the man. We knew who he was and wanted no part of doing business with him. I found it strange when I heard that Deutsche Bank private bank had chosen to bank him. You see, in 1999 when Bankers trust was acquired by Deutsche, I ceded my private banking reins to my counterpart from Frankfurt. Somewhere between then the following ten years, the business I had run decided that they could and would bank Trump. I know things change in business, and perhaps his purported $450 million in earnings from his Apprentice franchise was the basis of that change.
But then, during those same years I found myself running a distressed NYC real estate developer with 22 trophy properties worth some $3 billion. In June, 2009, Jared Kushner’s New York Observer published its New York real estate Power 100 Rankings. Donald Trump showed at #16, having risen from #38 the prior year (note that Jared and Ivanka were wed in October, 2009, which might have had something to do with his rise in the rankings that year). The funnier thing was that I appeared as #67 in that ranking, the first and only time I was even listed or considered to my knowledge. During 2009 I had reason to meet on several occasions with Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump about some business issues. He and I were both selling upscale condos in Manhattan, he at Trump Soho and me at 20 Pine, 88 Leonard, and the Apthorpe. What I learned was that whenever I turned down a bulk sale for cash from some Russian thug, those sketchy buyers (I had spent many years pursuing an anti-money-laundering path as a private banker) would end up going to Trump Soho and invariably getting a bulk deal done, probably with no questions asked.
I also had several buildings I was trying to convert to hotels or condos like the Times Square Building (a building eventually sold to Jared Kushner), the Clock Tower at Madison Square and others and we met with the Trump Organization about partnerships and/or branding. But even then, the brand was getting tarnished and was grossly overvalued by Trump (Ivanka was the one pitching that to us). My insurance broker at the time was also Trump’s broker and I attended more than one gathering where a Trump was at the table. Kim still recalls a dinner spent next to Don Jr., who she found quite pleasant on that particular occasion (her views changed when she saw the big game hunting photos of him with Eric and their trophy kills).
So here is my point, what the press has called “the big lie” referring to Trump’s claim of having won the 2020 election despite all the evidence and adjudications to the contrary, is not the really big lie. The really big lie is finally getting unmasked this week by the NY State civil case against Trump (I have read the full 220-page civil complaint and it is an amazing recitation of outrageous actions by Trump) and what was well understood in the New York business community and especially the New York real estate community, for years. I’ve certainly known it myself for almost thirty years. Donald Trump has always been more flash and less substance. His lifestyle post-bankruptcy was a sham. His brand was anything but powerful. His business practices were suspect for years. His wealth statistics and valuations were debunked first by Forbes and now by a New York State Supreme Court judge who has given summary judgement to the OAG stating that Trump’s business had a long pattern of fraudulent behavior and was thus incontestable.
Whether or not any of this will matter to Trump voters is hard to predict. MAGA Republican extremists, Trump and truthful reality are rarely synonymous these days. The Big Lie, whether it means who Trump really is or who wins an election will be up to voters in 2024. Today I heard Howard Dean say that when it comes to elections, the electorate is the boss and that the boss is always the boss in a democracy. Let’s end all of these big lies at the ballot box.