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This book is dedicated to my sister, Janet,
and to my nephew, Brandon Ricci.
Both solid patriots.
FOREWORD
MANHASSET, NEW YORK
VALENTINE’S DAY, 2019
DUSK
This book was a bear to write. Almost as difficult as Killing Jesus, which required methodical research to separate myth from reality. Same thing here—the Trump myth collided with the Trump reality, and getting to the truth was no easy matter.
That’s because much of what has been written and said about President Trump is false, stated through a prism of disdain and, on the other side, adulation. Either way, there is so much garbage floating around the Trump story, I felt more like a sanitation worker than a reporter.
But report I did, without fear or favor.
If you despise Donald Trump, this book may frustrate you. It tells the truth about the man, both good and bad. It is not pro- or anti-Trump. It is history.
I was in a good position to work on the project because I’ve known the president for more than thirty years. I attended one of his weddings, and I even double-dated with him. (I think you’ll enjoy that story.)
But I am not a close friend of his because he doesn’t have many of those, and there is a reason for this, which we’ll examine.
I once said on television that the election of Donald Trump to the presidency was the most stunning political story of my lifetime. I wasn’t pandering; what I said is absolutely true.
It is 2014, and Trump and I are sitting in Madison Square Garden watching the Knicks lose another one. We are talking about the news business when Donald suddenly turns to me and says, “I’m thinking about running for president.”
To which I reply, “Of what country?”
Now, Trump had flirted with a presidential run back in 2011. But that went nowhere. He shrugged off my wise-guy comment and went on to recite a litany of things that needed to be done in America. Some of his ideas were good, others less so. But I never delved into the most important question: Why does Donald Trump believe what he believes?
Hopefully, this book will explain the why behind the power. The why behind the bluster. The why behind the hatred he absorbs and sometimes dishes out. And most important, the key question: HOW ON EARTH did he get to the Oval Office?
To travel down that pathway, you have to ask another question: How exactly does President Trump see his country? As another business to be run? Or as a special place that should set a shining example for the rest of the world?
Luckily, I was able to speak with the president about America in a personal way. In truth, he did not want to have that conversation. But I badgered him until he finally gave in.
During the interview he was at times charming, distracted, transported back to another time, teed off.
Here’s one of my favorite exchanges, which came after we discussed the war in Vietnam:
PRESIDENT TRUMP: This is a lot of work.
O’REILLY: You want a break?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: It’s a lot of work. You know I want to give the perfect answer.
O’REILLY: It’s going to be a great book.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I’m doing this for you, Bill, I’m not doing this for me. I’m just saying as I’m answering these very intense questions that maybe I’ve never been asked before …
O’REILLY: They’re good, though.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Maybe that’s why you’re the best. But I’m saying it’s a lot of work … I’m doing this to make you happy. Well, let’s go forward. How much longer do you think it will be?
Thank God we were sitting on Air Force One so he couldn’t bolt out the door.
The reality is it was the president’s fault it was so much work. He’s a complicated man who is not prone to introspection, nostalgia, or patience.
* * *
THERE WILL BE no armchair psychoanalysis in this book. No cheap shots. No speculation. No anonymous sources—a fact that will crush the national media.
Also, this is not a policy book or an investigation into the Trump finances. My goal is simple because I am a simple man: show the president as a real person, not some caricature created by haters, phonies, or flatterers.
What there will be in this book is an honest narrative with the intent of finding out President Trump’s view of America—why he thinks what he thinks. After you read these pages, I hope you will understand more about the most powerful man on the planet and how he achieved that status.
If you don’t, I’m sorry. I tried my best. I tackled, almost literally, a very elusive subject.
And at least this time, I don’t kill anybody.
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE
FEBRUARY 1, 2019
5:15 PM
The president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is not happy. Sitting behind a large wooden desk in his spacious airborne office, he asks that his wife, Melania, be brought into the room immediately. In less than a minute, she appears, immaculately groomed and flashing her bright smile.
“Can you believe Bill?” the president says to his confused wife while nodding toward me. “He’s grilling me just like he used to do on television. I need to relax! All day I’ve been talking: CBS interview, meetings. My voice is shot!”
The First Lady says nothing. Just looks at us smiling. All of a sudden, she simply vanishes.
It is four days before the State of the Union address, and the Trumps are flying to their retreat in Palm Beach for some rest and relaxation. But an intruder is delaying that state of mind. For months, I have been trying to secure a sit-down with the president to talk with him. I want to know how Donald Trump’s view of America was formed and how it has changed since he became the most powerful person in the world.
Now, for a man who relishes competition and achievement, that kind of introspection is annoying. The only reason Donald Trump consented to the Q-and-A in the first place was legacy. He trusts that I will treat him fairly, which I always have. But clearly, flying over the East Coast of the United States, the president wants to get this over with.
“Can I get a few more questions in?” I say as he finishes his shrimp salad. Still wearing his suit jacket, he loosens his bright red tie. “I’d only do this for you, Bill. But you have to give me a break. These questions are so intense; let’s get it over with.”
And so, we did.
Interviewing Donald Trump on television is much easier than for print. On TV, he is hyperfocused, ready for rhetorical battle, locked into the moment. TV is action, immediate gratification, the high wire. The president loves TV.
And that’s my problem aboard Air Force One, the finest flying machine in the world. On the wall directly facing the president is a huge screen silently beaming Fox News into the room. This distracts Donald Trump, especially when the chyron indicates the discussion is about him.
“What do you think of Bret Baier?” the president asks me while handing his empty plate to an attendant.
“Nice pocket hankies,” I say, attempting to deep-six the topic. I’m trying to zero in on how the president has changed his opinion about his country since taking office. I’ve got to get him refocused.
I succeed. Somewhat. And you will read his musings in the upcoming chapters. The president’s words were sincere, I have never known him to be phony with me, and we’ve had hundreds of conversations. You might not like what Mr. Trump has to say, but it’s genuine, and there’s a fascinating history behind his thought process.
After I wrap up the questioning, the president relaxes and begins grilling me about his enemies and possible opponents in the upcoming election. I answer honestly, and he takes notes. Throughout my forty-five-year career in journalism, I have spoken off the record with some of the most powerful people on earth, and I always answer honestly because, as my first-grade teacher Sister Mary Lurana told me, “Honesty is the best policy.”
President Trump likes short answers with no nuance. Go longer than thirty seconds, and he’ll become impatient. He wants the point, not the posture. He is a man used to getting his way, and what he wants is action—even in conversation. When I brought him back to his childhood by asking how his view of America was formulated, he gave me a look that said, “Who cares?” He answered the question, but I know he hated the entire exercise.
However, it was important—that is, if you want to understand what motivates the president. If you simply want to hate him, you don’t care. But if you want some insight into the most unlikely political phenomenon in our lifetimes, you’ll get it here.
After Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, I said that the two most stunning political stories I had ever witnessed were the assassination of President Kennedy and the election of President Trump. I actually predicted on TV a few days before the vote that Trump would win. I came to that conclusion after analyzing Secretary Clinton’s failure to connect with working Americans on the campaign trail. Watching her work a Waffle House was brutal.
Incredibly, the billionaire mogul Trump did connect with the folks, and I know why (which we’ll also deal with in these pages). But I wanted to explore some history, so I sought to find out when and how he had formulated his view of our country, a view that convinced more than 60 million Americans to vote for him. That I did not know. Thus, I verbally tortured the president trying to find out.
As we are leaving the airborne office, I thank Donald Trump for the interview. I doubt he’ll ever do anything like this again, but he doesn’t seem to be annoyed anymore. The plane is descending into West Palm Beach, and soon the president will be socializing at his Mar-a-Lago resort; the next day, he is set to play golf with Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus. There will be action and competition on the links.
And that’s what Donald J. Trump lives for: action and competition. It is on his mind always. Because of his vast power, that mind-set directly affects the lives of individual Americans and the welfare of the entire world.
It does—whether we like it or not.
CHAPTER TWO
JAMAICA HOSPITAL
QUEENS, NEW YORK
JUNE 14, 1946
MIDDAY
Fred Trump has another mouth to feed, and little does he know how prominent that mouth will one day become. The forty-year-old house builder and his wife, Mary Anne, already have three young children, and baby Donald John Trump will make four.
The Trumps are an upper-middle-class family deeply embedded in the world of New York City real estate. In fact, Fred has been building small homes and apartments for white working-class people since 1925.
During World War II, Fred Trump escaped the draft because he was past age thirty-five, with children to support. But Fred was involved with wartime activities in private business, building barracks for naval personnel in Virginia and Pennsylvania. He then prospered after the war as American military people arrived home to get married and start families. The New York City boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn were teeming with recently arrived young adults.
They all needed housing.
But Fred Trump had a problem. He was of German descent, his father and mother born and raised in Kallstadt, a village in what is now southern Germany. Because many of Fred’s customers were Jewish, this was not optimal in 1946, when anti-German feeling in America still ran high. But Fred came up with a very simple solution: he said he was Swedish.
Many in Stockholm were stunned.
Baby Donald’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, had come a long way since arriving in America from Scotland in 1930, the year after the Great Depression shattered the world. She had two sisters in New York City, so at age nineteen, she made the journey from her small village of Tong to join them in the United States.
Before meeting Fred Trump at a dance, Mary Anne described herself as a maid. Now she is a homemaker and busy mother who will take her new baby to a nice house in Jamaica Estates, far from her cold and windy birthplace.
Built by Fred Trump, the family home at 85-15 Wareham Place is modest by today’s standards: a Tudor with small front and back lawns, and just a few yards separating it from neighboring houses on both sides.
Queens in 1946 is composed of segregated neighborhoods, the borough being mostly ethnic white with strong Irish, Italian, and German enclaves. There is a heavy Jewish component as well. Those in each group tend to cluster together.
Jamaica Estates is a safe neighborhood with easy access to Manhattan by train or car. Donald Trump will soon have plenty of playmates as the Baby Boom generation explodes and urchins are everywhere. The streets of Queens become vast playgrounds where children compete in sports and games. Few kids stay inside; outside is where life unfolds, mostly without parental supervision.
Although there is no record of it, Baby Donald is likely driven home from the hospital in his father’s luxury car. Fred Trump has been making good money for twenty years but is essentially a frugal man. His single luxury is a navy-blue Cadillac with a vanity license plate: FCT. He replaces the car every three years with a new Caddy in the same color.
Donald Trump’s childhood home in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens.
Five years later, in 1951, Fred and Mary Anne Trump have to move. They now have five children, and their house is too tight. Fred could have purchased a large home with acres of property in Nassau County, a few miles away, but he did not. Firmly planted in Queens, he moved the family exactly one block away, to a half-acre plot.
The new house is larger and will eventually have a pool, a tremendous status symbol in Queens. Fred and Mary Anne will live at 85-14 Midland Parkway for the rest of their lives.
* * *
AS THE YEARS pass, Donald and his four siblings don’t see much of their father, who works like a madman. Nevertheless, Donald idolizes him. Today in the Oval Office, a picture of Fred and Mary Anne Trump is prominently displayed on a side table near the Resolute desk.
Donald Trump’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, with baby Elizabeth.
But getting President Trump to speak about his childhood is tougher than getting him to compliment Senator Chuck Schumer, whom he loathes. The president sees little advantage in describing what happened in the 1950s at the Trump family dinner table.
“Were you a conservative family?” I ask.
“In those days, you didn’t even talk in terms of conservative or anything else. You talk more in terms of Republican or Democrat … but I would certainly say my parents had conservative values.”
“How did they impart those to you?”
“Only through osmosis. They didn’t say you should do this or you should do that.” The president takes a sip of diet soda, his eyes wandering to the TV screen.
Real estate mogul Fred Trump on the lawn of Trump Village in 1983.
“Who in the family was the political person?” I ask, trying to refocus the conversation.
�
�My mother was a very interesting woman. She loved ceremony. She came from Scotland, not a rich family, but she loved anything to do with the royal family. She always had an affection for the Queen, who I got to know recently. Spending time with the Queen was quite something. My father was political only as it pertained to his business, where he was doing his building. So, I wouldn’t say either was overtly political, but of the two, my mother loved the ceremony and my father loved the nitty-gritty.”
What Donald Trump is saying there is that his father supported local politicians who helped him get building permits and variances. Fred Trump apparently had little interest in party politics or individual politicians on a national level.
The same was true for my grandfather John O’Reilly, a New York City police officer who likely patrolled the same Brooklyn neighborhoods where Fred Trump was building homes in the 1930s. Pop, as I called him, considered most politicians corrupt nitwits. As a member of the “Lost Battalion” in World War I, John O’Reilly was as tough as the nails Fred Trump bought in buckets.
“So, you and your brothers and sisters are sitting at the dinner table in Queens in the 1950s,” I say. “Dwight Eisenhower was president. Did it ever come up in conversation that Dwight Eisenhower’s doing this or that?”
The president shakes his head. “You’re asking me to go back a long way, and it was certainly not anything that I was thinking about at the time. That was not a conversation that we would have very much.”
* * *
SITTING AT THAT dinner table, the young Donald Trump would converse with his sisters Maryanne, nine years his senior, and Elizabeth, four years older. His brother Fred Jr. was eight years ahead of Donald, leaving only baby brother Robert, younger by two years.
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