Donald Trump : Master Apprentice

by Gwenda Blair

• ISBN13: 9780743275101
• ISBN10: 0743275101
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-03-01
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

On the hugely successful hit reality TV show The Apprentice, Donald Trump tells his contenders that location and pricing are supremely significant. But in his own life, there have been other maxims: Do whatever it takes to win. Don't spare the c

Author Biography

Gwenda Blair teaches at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Table of Contents

Preface

Born to Compete

Manhattan Bound

From Brick Box to Glass Fantasy

The 28-Sided Building

Gambling on Atlantic City

The Tallest Building in the World

Spinning out of Control

Pulling Back from the Brink

Trump

The Legacy

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Preface On a warm fall afternoon, the world's most famous businessman sat in a large showroom next to a pile of 12-inch-tall male dolls. If this were somewhere other than New York City -- the South American jungle, say, or ancient China -- they might have been mud-and-twig fetishes designed to ward off evil, or ceramic objects destined to accompany the man into the afterlife. But it was Times Square in September 2004, and Donald Trump was launching a sales campaign at Toys R Us for a plastic action figure made in his likeness -- more or less. Laser technology had provided the billionaire's pursed mouth and bushy eyebrows, but a shoe-polish-brown pompadour had replaced the famous orange comb-over and there were no genitals.No matter; despite its single-breasted suit and wing-tip shoes, the Apprentice Talking Donald Trump Doll is not really a replica, or even a toy. Instead it's a pint-sized, personal mentor for viewers of the hit reality television seriesThe Apprentice,on which fresh-faced young contestants compete for a job with the Trump Organization. Embedded in the doll's chest is a digital sound chip that allows it to declare, in Trump's own voice, "Have an ego," "Think big," and other pithy bits of advice similar to those Trump offers each week on the show.What the doll doesn't reveal are the sources of Donald Trump's own extraordinary success. These include a number of lucky breaks, among them his father's real estate wealth and political connections, his surname (changed by a prescient German ancestor from Drumpf to Trump), and his ex-wife Ivana's gift of a catchy nickname, "The Donald," which became instant newspaper fodder.Of equal importance are what we might call The Donald's Five Commandments: Do whatever it takes to win. Don't spare the chutzpah. Turn everything into an advertisement for yourself. No matter what happens, claim victory. And above all,alwaysuse the superlative. While he's heeded business basics like "Location, location, location," his own personal mantra is "Exaggerate, exaggerate, exaggerate."Following these guidelines, Donald Trump has carved out a career in self-aggrandizement that has netted him fortune, fame, and enthusiastic fans. Hundreds plunked down $26.99 for a doll and waited in line for hours for the one-time-only opportunity to have The Donald scrawl his autograph in metallic gold across the face of the box. They knew him fromThe Apprenticeas the archetypal boss: ready to pounce on mistakes, dismissive of excuses, and ever aware of the bottom line. What they didn't know was that behind this most recent claim to fame lay a life history with more twists and turns than any television producer could possibly imagine. Nor did they know that Donald himself had been a lifelong apprentice to a powerful man whom he had admired, rebelled against, studied, competed with, and eventually surpassed.Fifteen years earlier, that mentor had watched with a bewildered look as Donald sat in another Manhattan toy store, FAO Schwarz, and autographed a Monopoly-like board game with his name and face on it. The man was Donald's father, Fred Trump. Like his son, he was in real estate. Also like his son, he was immensely wealthy. But the father had made his money building ordinary homes for ordinary people, not by constructing super-luxury apartments, running casinos, engaging in financial manipulations, and turning himself into one of the most celebrated figures of the century. Whereas the erstwhile apprentice lived in the center of photographers' lenses, his master existed outside the media's glare. The two men's lives were vastly different -- as different as business in the middle of the twentieth century and at its end, as different as the America of the World War II era and what the country had become as the cold war drew to a close.This apprentice did not always follow his master's advice. When Donald ignored his father's old-fashioned a