Trump: How to Get Rich

I always enjoy being with George Steinbrenner. Quite honestly, there’s no one like him, and he hasn’t been appreciated to the extent he should be. I remember the Yankees when they couldn’t win a game, when nobody went to Yankee Stadium, and the team was a total disaster. George puts a championship team on the field every year and does what it takes to win, whether people like him for it or not.

When we were taping The Apprentice, I told NBC that I would love to get George to give the candidates a lecture on winning. They looked at me and thought I was crazy, because the scene had to be shot that day and the World Series was beginning the following day. Knowing what a good friend George was, I was sure he would do it, and when I called him at Yankee Stadium he immediately picked up the phone and agreed. We were at Yankee Stadium thirty minutes later, and even the top people at NBC were impressed. The kids walked into this legendary office with its pictures of Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and many other Yankee greats on the walls, and their eyes were wide open, as though they’d never seen anything like it before. George was incredibly nice. He sat with the kids for a long time, until I finally had to be the one to say, George, you’re busy as hell—let me get them out of here. He’s really a great guy. People will appreciate George Steinbrenner only when they no longer have him, and when the Yankees are wallowing in last place.

Another sports owner who is one of the great winners is Bob Kraft, who helped lead the New England Patriots to a second Super Bowl victory. I’ve gotten to know Bob over the last two years, and there is no finer gentleman. He and his wife, Myra, are totally unassuming. With his sons, Bob has methodically and brilliantly built a strong franchise in New England that was a total disaster before Kraft’s ascent.Tom Brady is the best quarterback in football. There are other quarterbacks with impressive stats, but when you need someone to throw four or five completions in the final minutes of a game, there is nobody better than Tom. With all of their upcoming draft choices and the great players they already have, this team is only going to get better over the next few years.

Two other terrific team owners are Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and Bob Tisch, owner of the New York Giants. Tisch has done so well in every capacity, whether it’s business or sports. He’s in his seventies, but he’s got the attitude of someone in his twenties, thirties, or forties.

Larry Silverstein,the developer of the new World Trade Center complex, is a good friend of mine, but I really hate what’s being designed for the site. It resembles a skeleton, and I can’t believe Larry really wanted to evoke that image. In actuality, Larry is being forced to do certain things that he would not do under normal circumstances, but he has to go with the flow. Nevertheless, I’m sure he’ll do a terrific job.

Finally, since Page Six often takes a few digs at people, here are mine:

Dan Ratheris not one of my favorite people. A few years ago, he wanted to profile me for 60 Minutes. As we toured Mar-a-Lago and Trump International Golf Club in Florida, he couldn’t have been nicer or more respectful. I was sure the interview would be a total home run.

When the interview aired, it couldn’t have been nastier. He showed me giving a speech to an empty room at a poorly planned event, when the day before I’d given the same speech to a standing-room-only crowd. But 60 Minutes didn’t air that speech. They just wanted me to look as bad as possible.

Dan Rather is an enigma to me. He’s got absolutely no talent or charisma or personality, yet year after year, CBS apologizes for his terrible ratings. I could take the average guy on the street and have him read the news on CBS and that guy would draw bigger ratings than Dan Rather does. When I see Rather at Yankee games, I stay away from him. However, I will say one nice thing about him: Recently, he was the emcee at a Police Athletic League dinner for District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, one of the great men in the history of New York City. Dan called me and told me he felt very uncomfortable being the emcee of a dinner for which I was the chairman. I told him I appreciated the call and that it would be fine with me if he was the emcee. He did a nice job, but I’ll never forget what he did to me on 60 Minutes. People don’t change their stripes.

I’ll conclude this with a story about Howard Cosell, a spectacular sportscaster who I got to know during the last ten years of his life. People either loved Howard or hated him—there was no in between—but he was really the best at what he did. As Howard grew older, though, he became nastier, even toward the people who loved him and had helped make him a success. He always felt that being a sportscaster was beneath him. He longed to run for the U.S. Senate.

Howard could sit on a dais with sports figures he hadn’t seen for thirty years and quote their exact statistics. His memory was amazing. Then he wrote his final book and knocked almost everyone he knew, from Roone Arledge to Frank Gifford, one of the finest people around. It did a lot of damage to him, because all of his friends turned against him. I remember saying to him, Howard, you can knock twenty percent of the people, maybe twenty-five percent or thirty percent of the people, but you can’t knock everybody. You didn’t say anything nice about anybody in the book. It was the wrong thing to do. I believe in knocking people, but you can’t knock everybody.

That’s a rule I try to follow, in this book and in my life.

A Week in the Life

In The Art of the Deal and in my other two memoirs, I included a chapter about a typical week in my life. When I met Mark Burnett, the creator of The Apprentice, he told me it was his favorite chapter in the book, and a lot of other readers have told me the same thing. So, back by popular demand, here’s an example of what an average eventful week was like in the fall of 2003.

This chapter doesn’t have any specific advice on how to get rich, but it will show you how I have fun, and I doubt I’d be as successful as I am if I weren’t having such a good time.

MONDAY

9:00 A.M. I have a meeting with architect Costas Kondylis, an elegant way to start the week. Costas and I have worked on several very successful projects together, including the Trump World Tower at the United Nations Plaza, Trump Park Avenue (at Fifty-ninth Street and Park Avenue, just completed), and, together with Philip Johnson and Skidmore Owings and Merrill, Trump Place, my sixteen-building development along the Hudson River. Some of you might remember that site as the West Side yards, which I have been involved with since 1974, when I first secured the option to purchase them from the Penn Central Railroad. That was my first major deal in Manhattan. Close to thirty years later, here we are discussing the fifth and sixth buildings under construction. (Never give up.)

My eldest son, Don Jr., is also at the meeting. We are on schedule with construction, and the first three condominium buildings have proven to be very successful. However, neither Costas nor myself is likely to ever rest on his laurels, and we are troubleshooting, going over every detail. If Costas hadn’t been an architect, he’d have made a very good surgeon—he’s just that meticulous. We get along famously, and I’d put him up there with Philip Johnson as one of our most outstanding architects.

We are also discussing the reaction to the city park I developed and donated to the city, which is on the West Side yards property. I hate to disappoint people, but my detractors were not pleased about this twenty-five- acre gift. What can I say? Except that you can’t be all things to all people, no matter how hard you try.

I look over some kitchen and bathroom fixtures, and we decide to go with the top of the line. My name and work have become synonymous with quality, and there’s a reason for it. We don’t skimp on anything, ever or anywhere. Don Jr. mentions looking forward to the topping-out party for Building #4. That’s a big day for builders, and it’s a celebration when the frame of the building, the superstructure, is completed, and everyone involved meets at the top for a party.

9:30 A.M. Norma comes in to tell me that Oscar de la Renta is on the line, and Costas and I decide to meet again in a couple of weeks. Our new Miss Universe, Amelia Vega, is from Santo Domingo, which is also the birthplace of Oscar de la Renta. He wants to meet her, and I don’t blame him. She’s a beauty, all six feet of her. We’re proud not only of her, but of the Miss Universe contest, which has become extremely successful since I bought it seven years ago. We beat out the competition in television ratings and we are highly regarded internationally as well. Ecuador has paid millions of dollars to host the 2004 contest, and we’re looking forward to a