Time to Get Tough (21 page)

I have been saying for a long time that it is very hard for a truly successful person to run for political office. Your rivals and the press will take every deal you've ever made, even the best of them, and make them look bad. You could have built a $7 billion+ net worth, but it doesn't make any difference, because they will make you look as foolish as possible. A guy like Obama has it much easier. He had never done a deal before except for the purchase of his house which, in my opinion, was not an honest transaction. A smart investigative reporter should definitely look into that because any objective examination of the facts reveals there was definitely something fishy going on. But that was the only deal Obama ever did. He hasn't done hundreds of deals like very successful people do, where we employ thousands of people and have to manage numerous complex enterprises. So he had an easier go of it.

Mark Burnett, my good friend, partner, and the best producer in television, really wanted me to continue with
The Apprentice
and not run for president. Mark's big shows are
The Apprentice
,
Survivor
, and now the hit show
The Voice
. He said, “Donald, I think you would be an incredible
president, but you are far too successful to run. You've done too many deals and too many things. They'll go after every single deal you've ever done and, even on the best of them, will try to make you look bad.”

So essentially, Mark was voicing what I had been saying for the last two years—that a very successful person cannot run for political office (especially the presidency) and isn't that sad, because that's the kind of person and thinking we need to bring the country back.

Either way, when I was leading in the polls, I committed an unforced error. I was asked by a friend to make a speech in Las Vegas in front of a small group. I agreed. A couple hundred people were expected, mostly Republican women, and it was no big deal. Or so I thought. But when they announced that I was going to speak, thousands of people showed up. The owner of the hotel, a great man named Phil Ruffin, one of the smartest investors around, told me it was the most people they had ever packed into the ballroom at the hotel. The place was mobbed. Everybody was happy. They were thrilled, and in the room you had lots of good, tough Las Vegas people who I can't believe will ever vote for Obama, especially after he told people not to go to Las Vegas.

We had thousands of people there, it turned out to be wild, and I made a mistake. I catered to that crowd. They absolutely loved the speech and I used some foul language which, with that crowd, went over phenomenally well. But unfortunately they had cameras in the room, which I didn't see, and only those parts of the speech where I used strong language ended up being shown through our nation.

I wish I hadn't done it. It got a lot of press but some people were turned off by it. I'm not a big curser but it did take place, and I will say the people in the room loved that speech, because we're not living in a baby world.
It's a rough, mean world where everybody's out to get everybody else and where other countries are out to get the United States, and they are doing a pretty good job of it. So I got fired up and the crowd did too.

Of course, Joe Biden dropped the f-word in front of the entire media on a stage with the president. But Biden gets a pass because he's with Obama, and as we all know, Obama can do no wrong in the media's eyes.

In my opinion, our president is totally overrated both as a person and as a campaigner. The press has given a false impression of him as a brilliant student (which he was not), a brilliant leader (which he is not), and a campaigner the likes of which we have not seen in many years. Yet now many Democrats are suffering buyer's remorse and wish they had elected Hillary Clinton instead.

Regardless, the Republicans are going to have a very tough race. Obama is harnessing all of the negativity he created and flipping it back on the people—a very smart, if cynical, strategy. I've never seen anything like it. The guy is willing to rip the country in half to win. Sadly, it may prove to be a winning strategy. If I were doing as badly as he is, I would realize it is my only road to victory.

I love my life and businesses, so I would rather not run for president. When people say I should run as an Independent, I remind them that it's very hard for an Independent to win, though perhaps easier than ever before. Still, if the economy continues to be bad (which I think it will, due to incompetent leadership) and Republicans pick the wrong candidate (which I hope they won't), I can't completely rule out a run. Most people have never heard of a very stupid law—called equal time—that prevents
someone with a major television show from running for political office. So Obama is allowed to go on television every day and can fly around the country any time he wants at taxpayer expense, but I'm not allowed to do
The Apprentice
and run for office at the same time. You tell me, is that right? Were it not for that ridiculous law I would probably be running for president right now and having a good time doing it—because America has tremendous potential, unbelievable potential, and it is being wasted.

I distinctly remember when I made my decision to sign for another season of
The Apprentice
, which put my run for the presidency on hold. It was a Friday about 7:00 p.m., and Melania was watching
Entertainment Tonight
,
Access Hollywood
,
Extra
, or one of the various entertainment shows she enjoys and frankly so do I. I sat down at the dinner table with the television blaring and watched as some of the biggest actors and actresses in Hollywood were hoping that their networks would pick up their show for another season. You see, the following Monday, NBC was having its big “Upfront” where they and the other networks announce their schedules for the year. So this was a tough time for actors because they wanted to know if their shows were going to be renewed.

As Melania and I were watching, I'm seeing these big stars saying, “I hope they renew our show, our show is so great, our cast is so amazing, the ratings are okay.” Everything was, “I hope, I hope, I hope,” and I'm watching these major actors almost begging. That's when I said to my wife, “You know, baby, it's amazing. I have a show that is a big success and I have the president of the network calling me all day long saying, ‘Donald, Donald, we want you, we love you.'” In addition to that, I had a great guy named
Steve Burke at Comcast saying to me something like, “Donald, we'd like you to renew, we'd like you to go for another season or whatever you want, please renew.” So I am saying to myself, here these network executives are calling me on an hourly basis wanting me to renew my contract for another season of a two-hour hit show on primetime Sunday, and I am telling them no and yet I come home and I watch the entertainment shows and all of these big name actors and actresses are hoping beyond hope that they are going to be renewed. At that precise moment I got a call from Steve Burke reiterating the fact that they would love to have me sign the contract. Right then and there I said to my wife, “Baby, you know what? This is ridiculous. I'm going to sign the contract with NBC.”

My wife, Melania, who is considered by many, including me, to be one of the most beautiful women in the world, has amazing instincts. For years I would ask her whether or not I could run and win. And she would say, “Donald, people love you, but they wouldn't vote for you for president.” When I asked her why, she said, “You're a little wild and a little too controversial. They respect you, they think you're really smart—the smartest of all—but enough people just wouldn't vote for you.”

So she told me this for a long period of time and then recently, as she's watching political news on television and seeing all the things that are wrong with our country, she looks at me and says, “Darling, you know you'd win if you ran, don't you?” I said, “What do you mean? You always told me I couldn't win.” She said, “But now you could win, and maybe even easily. People really want you. I see it on the streets. People want you and they really need you.”

This was a great compliment coming from a very smart woman.

Some people have yet to realize how serious I was and am about running for the White House. In fact I was so close that I had already prepared the Public Financial Disclosure Report required of a presidential candidate. That's a big deal because the Trump Organization is a private company, and people don't know what I'm really worth. So I had the independent firm Predictive, which is used by government agencies and top companies like GM, Visa, Pfizer, and others, prepare valuations on branding, and we filled out the other areas of the long and complex presidential Public Financial Disclosure Report. So my forms were already completed when I told NBC I'd renew. I was ready to sign and submit the papers, which were completed in strict compliance with the instructions. Rather than waste the forms (and who knows, I may be filing them sometime later), I thought I would share the most important three pages with you in this book. These are three of the many pages of the completed submittal. The third summary page is probably the most important.

My primary reason for running for the presidency would be to straighten out the mess Obama has made of our country. I have built a truly great company, one with unbelievable assets and locations that I believe are about as good as it gets. We have great asset value, cash flow, and very little debt. I want the American people to see this, because ultimately our country is, in a certain way, the exact
opposite
of my company. And whether it's me or someone else, we need the kind of thinking that can produce this kind of success. For the sophisticated financial people who already know me, these numbers come as no surprise. For the miserable, petty, jealous wannabes who knowingly fabricate stories about me, maybe this will shut them up.

 

Executive Branch Personnel PUBLIC FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE REPORT

 

By the way, in the spirit of transparency, these forms were completed
before
the very public purchase of the late billionaire John Kluge's winery, which became embroiled in controversy and tens of millions of dollars of debt after his divorce. Now called the Trump Vineyard Estates, the winery is located in one of the best areas in the United States, Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump Vineyard Estates is more than 1,000 acres and has already received a great amount of publicity in the Washington and Virginia press and was featured on the cover of
Town & Country
magazine. Originally, it cost around $150 million to build and assemble. I bought it at auction for $6.2 million in cash. I pride myself on being liquid when few others are. That's one of the reasons I was able to buy the Kluge estate for such a terrific price—cash. There were many people at the foreclosure auction who knew what an amazing asset it was, but they didn't have the cash or would need bank financing at a much higher amount to close the deal. By the way, the reason I have so much cash is that, among other things, I've made some of the best branding deals around, especially recently. If our government were as wise with our nation's cash, we wouldn't be in the big mess we are in today.