Original subtitles

- Donald Trump was never a man wwho was dying to settle down.

[dramatic music]

- Ivana had other choices and she chose Donald.

- He was generating this image of himself

as a successful millionaire.

- You read about him on the front page.

He was a big deal.

- In Atlantic City,

Trump in quick succession opens Trump Plaza and Trump Castle.

- Okay, now is the time folks, all right?

♪

- Donald Trump believed that if he had three casinos,

he would dominate the city.

♪

- He had to borrow $675 million

at an interest rate of 14%.

- Here comes the war of the Trumps.

Ivana and the Donald are calling it quits.

- He was on the front page of the papers for 28 days.

I never saw anything like it in my life.

♪

- Donald's debts are piling up,

he was having trouble paying all of his bills.

- In what could be his final roll of the dice,

The Donald met late into the night with creditors

who want to get their money back.

- Trump was staring at destroying

not only his own legacy

but his father's legacy as well.

♪

[engines revving]

- I covered Trump so closely for a period of time

that he was routinely inviting me to fly with him

on his plane to Mar-a-Lago,

fly with him on his plane to Los Angeles.

These were long plane rides.

He liked to sit and watch movies

and he actually has interesting,

eclectic, strange taste in movies.

He likes everything from

Jean-Claude Van Damme action flicks

to Citizen Kane.

- I have money and property.

If I don't look after the interests

of the underprivileged, maybe somebody else will.

- And one of his favorite movies is "Sunset Boulevard"

and he and I watched "Sunset Boulevard" together

with a giant feed bag of potato chips.

[projector rolling]

One of the most memorable moments for me

was when William Holden and Gloria Swanson

are watching an old silent Norma Desmond movie.

She issues a warning to the Hollywood establishment.

- Oh, those idiot producers. Those imbeciles.

Haven't they got any eyes?

Have they forgotten what a star looks like?

I'll show them. I'll be up there again, so help me!

- Trump stopped and said to me, "Those are just amazing lines."

He loved Norma Desmond's statement

about celebrity revenge

and what I took from that was he knew what it was like

to be in the public eye, to be a big celebrity,

and anyone who thought that he had fallen out of favor,

would come to regret that later and that he'd be back.

[crowd clamoring]

[crowd continues clamoring]

- All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.

[jazzy music]

♪

- All right, this is the Alan Marcus interview,

take one, marker.

[clicking]

[suspenseful music]

- Thanks again, Alan, for doing this. We really appreciate it.

Why don't we jump to the time

that you started working with him.

[indistinct chattering]

♪

- Back in, uh, the early '90s,

Donald went through a terrible period of, uh, time.

- The for sale sign is going up

at one of Donald Trump's Atlantic City casinos

in hopes of reducing the company's

$1.7 billion debt.

- He overbought;

he bought the Plaza Hotel, paid too much money.

He bought the Trump Shuttle, paid too much money--

and the casino bankruptcies.

♪

[camera shutter clicking]

His divorce from Ivana,

his failures in other businesses,

he was not the fair-haired boy that he had been, uh,

when he was building Trump Tower.

He was in a steady decline,

maybe $4 billion of corporate debt.

The myth was broken.

Newspapers were now going after him

instead of just doing press releases on him.

Oh, it was very bad.

- Donald Trump can't come up with enough cash

to make a debt payment.

- Donald Trump owed $2 billion even.

- Will Trump's fragile financial house of cards

start to collapse?

- We were in real trouble.

[solemn music]

We were on the precipice

of not being able to make payroll.

We ended up borrowing a significant sum of money

from his father's estate trust.

There was a lot of nervousness and angst and a lot

of working with lawyers to protect the trust.

And I would walk into Donald's office,

for one reason or another. He'd be calm.

He would never even ask me about it.

- Rough.

- Why does that happen? Why--

- When he says that he's not stressed about it,

what he's really saying is that he didn't care.

If you're Donald Trump, what you care about most

is what people think of you and maintaining the image

of the consummately powerful, always in control man.

- Donald doesn't care about the facts.

He cares about how the facts appear.

It's not what they are; it's how they appear.

Donald would always say to me, "We never use the B word."

- They would say, "Oh, Trump went bankrupt."

I said I never went [bleep] bankrupt.

I never did a personal bankruptcy

or anything like that.

That's another falsehood.

Nobody has ever used the bankruptcy code

better than Donald Trump.

- Donald said there were no bankruptcies,

and that was always Donald's interpretation

of a prepackaged bankruptcy,

but a bankruptcy is a bankruptcy.

Donald knew that he had to show that

that was in his past,

that he had to talk about his comeback.

And so, he started by having a book penned.

"Trump: The Art Of The Comeback."

♪

- The business book is how to come back from adversity,

how to handle adversity,

and I think it's something that, really, people wanna read

as you can see by what you're seeing right now.

- It was the comeback of the year,

the comeback of the decade, the comeback of the century,

but he had to find new sources of revenue

because banks were no longer interested

in doing business with Donald Trump.

Sometimes you're forced into something

by the way nature takes you,

and it was the best thing that ever happened to Donald.

When it was becoming more difficult to finance,

the Trump name still had value.

You put Trump on a--on a-- on a building

and the resale value of the apartments

was actually pretty good and higher.

[suspenseful music]

There was a quality attributed to it

because Donald made it a quality.

Live like Trump, be like Trump,

make a comeback like Trump.

We were talking once about how many bathrobes get stolen

at the casinos,

these white, terry cloth robes,

and I jokingly said, "Well, why don't we sell them?"

I said, we could put that dumb Trump crest,

which looks like it's 300 years old

but it's about three days old.

And sure enough, the Trump crest went on the bathrobes,

they were selling them, I think, for $26 apiece.

They cost us three.

And before you knew it, it was Trump soap,

and it was Trump this, and it was Trump that.

♪

There was actually a Trump scent.

I was part of the Trump scent team.

I remember thinking,

"Does anybody really wanna smell like Donald Trump?"

- I fashion myself quite the ad Sherpa, guru, expert.

This is about the only guy

I wouldn't have to tell anything.

- A big and tasty for just a dollar?

I think you'll like it.

- Cause he--he gets it.

He--he is the living embodiment of his brand.

- The same luxury and comfort I demand in my hotels.

- Only at Macys. - This is a guy,

who in some animalistic, intuitive primal ways

knows how to keep this beast moving and growing

in every way, even when it's failing.

- May I have the last slice?

- Actually, you're only entitled to half.

- He was building a steady stream of revenue

through those means, but it wasn't anything huge.

So he was casting around for the next big thing,

and along came a TV producer named Mark Burnett.

- Mark Burnett had his incredibly

successful franchise with "Survivor"

and what he said was that reality TV was such a cash cow

because it was cheap to produce

and also it would keep producing itself.

You didn't need scripts.

So he hoped to do the same thing

with a still cheaper show, "The Apprentice."

[epic music]

- Who will be "The Apprentice"?

- Burnett saw Donald Trump as the master salesman

who could market anything.

When Burnett came up to the tower

and described what he had in mind,

this show that would showcase everything about Trump--

his helicopters would be in the show,

his hotels would be in the show,

his family would be in the show.

Suddenly, Donald Trump was quite interested in that.

- The whole show was an infomercial for Trump.

♪

- New York, my city.

- The opening to "The Apprentice"

is something like, "We're now in the real jungle."

- Manhattan is a tough place.

- "Here you can be top of the world and bottom of the world.

Careers are made and broken."

- If you're not careful,

it can chew you up and spit you out.

- Trump starts "The Apprentice" when he's on the skids.

- I was seriously in trouble.

I was billions of dollars in debt,

but I fought back and I won, big league.

- Trump says, "I've been up, I've been down,"

but he's not back on top.

He's engineering his supposed comeback on the show.

Donald Trump needs Mark Burnett

every bit as much as Mark Burnett needs him.

He's now going to try to trade on a new version

of his character, which is that he's a survivor.

♪

- I'm looking for the Apprentice.

- There are clouds over the Trump Castle here

in Atlantic City.

- Trump was going through

one of the worst patches in his career.

What "The Apprentice" brought him was not only

the prospect of even greater fame,

a chance to remake his image, but also a steady income.

[horns honking]

- I had no expectations for "The Apprentice,"

only that I was going to win.

Donald Trump was going to host us

and select one of us to be his heir apparent.

It was just a great narrative for any young entrepreneur.

My first memory of Donald Trump

is when we were all brought into the boardroom.

- Hey, Mr. Trump will see you now.

You can go in over there.

- We had to introduce ourselves to him.

I read everything I could find on Donald Trump,

on his parents, on his grandparents,

going back to Germany.

I've got genetic pool, big time, Mr. Trump,

just like you got from your father, Fred Trump,

and your mother, Mary Trump.

In my research, I found that he is a big fan

of the Asian form of greeting.

So, I bowed. I wanted to win.

It was the American dream on TV.

- The way the show was originally scripted,

Donald Trump's role was kind of minimal.

He was going to, uh, issue the ruling

at the very end of the show

and it would be kind of cut and dried.

♪

But in that first taping session,

Trump kind of went off script.

- When you're trying to be chosen,

you don't interrupt them and say let me finish.

You know, in terms of life.

We're talking about life, right, fellas?

- One of the first times they were filming a firing,

he said to one of the contestants, "You're fired."

- You're fired.

- And the producers of the show called that gesture

"The Cobra."

And it was Donald cobra-like striking

and getting rid of the incompetent contestant.

- You're fired.

[dramatic music]

- Probably two to three episodes in,

I started to get a sense

of the ratings we were receiving.

I started to feel people recognizing me

in the street in New York.

I started to have people come up to me

and do the whole "You're fired. You're fired."

It just started to snowball and snowball.

- Mark Burnett is clearly a genius.

His brilliant move was finding Donald Trump

to host this.

Donald Trump was the only person

that could host "The Apprentice."

- Do you think that's true? - Absolutely not.

- Kwame, what do you think?

- I think one, Omarosa did a great job.

- But you lost.

- He did a good job, actually, I think,

of kind of picking people apart

in the boardroom.

People would kind of just start to fold

because he would--he would prick and pry

and--and maybe that was the part that was good for ratings.

- Donald, right here! - Need a picture, Mr. Trump!

- I think the appeal of "The Apprentice"

is what it offered.

Power, money.

They wanted that, they wanted to be in the position to say,

"You're fired,"

or they wanted to be recognized by the man

who had the power and says,

"You're somebody who's gonna make it in America.

Just gotta learn to step on people."

- This quest to work hard,

to devise a concept, the best concept wins.

- It's the embodiment

of the American entrepreneurial ideal.

- It could become really sharky.

People could just go after each other.

You just had to really watch what you said in the boardroom

and you had to be keenly aware of how others were trying

to position you and tell your narrative

and make sure that that was connecting with Donald Trump.

- Sam, you're sort of a disaster.

I don't know what's going on.

Everyone hates you.

- I don't think they hate me, Mr. Trump.

- Yeah, pretty close. Some hate.

So far, you've got no respect from anybody.

Would you say that's a correct statement, Nick?

- I'd say that's correct.

- I think that was one of Trump's great strategies,

to create chaos and create situations

where people would essentially start to tell on each other.

- Do you guys think Sam's a leader?

- No, and we have to all, the rest of the team,

tell Sam, calm down.

That's not showing the sign of a good leader.

- You're fired.

I have no choice. You're fired, Sam.

- It was like I had been shot between the eyes.

I was devastated.

I was the only one who was clueless

as to the fact that I was going to be eliminated.

I believed that Trump and I had this special connection.

[dramatic music]

- A number of the firings really turned out to be nasty,

and they really are amazingly devastated.

- And that makes great, dramatic TV.

[suspenseful music]

- The funniest thing is if you ever watch, like,

the first segment ever of "Apprentice,"

it's like, "I'm Donald Trump.

I own real estate all over the place."

- My name's Donald Trump,

and I'm the largest real estate developer in New York.

I own buildings all over the place.

- Number one, he wasn't the biggest developer in New York.

- [laughing] It's--it's all bull[bleep].

He owned [bleep], he owns nothing.

Nobody bull[bleep] better than him.

- The Trump story is the Trump narrative.

It's how he sees the story, how he weaves the story.

How he decides what the story is gonna be,

which maybe had no relationship at all to the facts.

Whatever his message is,

that's what you're going to hear.

- He's reality a television performer.

He pretends to be a successful businessman,

that is essential.

He looks the part in a televisual sense.

- He's perfectly coiffed,

he's perfectly made-up, he's perfectly lit,

he's in the high-back chair.

He looks like a million dollars

and he's acting decisively.

- All of these tricks of art tell us

that he's a rich person beyond question,

you know, always and forever, amen,

but in the real world,

he's a person with enormous debt.

Donald Trump is not a successful businessman

any more than the guy who's playing the doctor

on "General Hospital" is actually a doctor.

- I'd been very successful.

And people are starting to find out

I've been much more successful

than people even admit.

Okay, people are starting to figure that out.

I'm much richer than people understand.

- Donald has known for a long time

that you can fool people

because they want to be fooled, they're lazy.

He got some of that from Roy Cohn, I believe.

I think he got some of that from his father.

I think he got some of that from his own intuitiveness.

- Well I didn't shape the image, he did.

There should be no mistake.

Nobody shaped the image. Donald shaped the image.

Did I help it along? Yeah.

Um, um, was I complicit in it? Yeah.

Uh, but--but the mastermind, the genius, was Donald.

[dram ♪ to

- One Saturday, Donald asked me to meet him

at his apartment in Trump Tower,

and we jumped into his Mercedes-Maybach

and drove from Manhattan out to Bedminster

and I was just firing various questions off

about how he felt about himself and life

and one of the questions was,

what do you dream about at night most often?

And without hesitation,

he said "[bleep], it's always [bleep]."

[chuckling]

[upbeat music]

♪

- I used to own a model agency.

It was the Week of Fashion.

We had our model agency party.

♪

The security told me, "Mr. Trump is arriving."

Mr. Trump was already considered a celebrity.

So of course he was a VIP guest.

So I said, "Donald, please,

we'd like you to sit here real fast."

And at the same table there was Melania.

Melania was one of my models.

- In 1998, after his second marriage had broken up,

Donald Trump was dating again and he was out

And he spied Melania Knauss.

- Melania was really different from many other models.

She was very, very professional.

Very elegant. Very classic.

She was very diligent about her work.

She had a great portfolio.

- We were both at the same party and that's how we met.

- I was actually supposed to meet somebody else

and there was this great supermodel.

I said forget about her,

who's the one on the left? And it was Melania.

- Two weeks later, I did a dinner for this designer,

Roberto Cavalli.

And they arrive together.

And I was really shocked.

But I saw some magic between them.

[soft music]

[crowd clamoring]

- He was proud of his relationship with her.

He felt having Melania on his arm

offered evidence that he was still sexually robust

and sexually attractive and a man about town.

- Did you like him right away?

- It was a great chemistry and energy.

We had, uh, you know, great time.

We start to talk and you know, it was--

something was there right away.

- Melania is not like so many arm candy, uh,

trophy wives, if you like, looking all the time

to how to promote Melania.

Melania's always made sure that Trump feels

that he is the focus of her interest.

One of her friends said to me,

"Ask not what the Donald could do for you

but what you can do for the Donald."

That was gonna be the mantra by which she lived.

Her role was to be brand enhancement.

- Donald Trump is on the phone.

- Oh! - Hi, Howard.

- Let me talk to that broad in your bed.

What is she wearing?

- I don't know, maybe I should get her--

do you want me to get her?

- Yeah, yeah, let me talk to her for a second.

- I think he has always chosen women as ornaments.

He's very about aesthetic and beauty.

- Hello? - Hey--hey.

- Hi, how are you? - You are so hot.

- Oh, thank you. - I see pictures of you,

I can't believe it, you're a dream.

- Oh!

- I think that Trump always felt

that being surrounded by beautiful women

was part of the aura he needed to develop.

- Are you in love with Trump?

- Yeah, we have a great time.

- You wanna marry him? - Uh, I'm not answering that.

[crowd clamoring]

[light music]

♪

- I went to the wedding because a big sort of callout

went out to have various media people invited,

and of course I couldn't resist that it was

at Mar-a-Lago.

Was it a fun intimate wedding where you felt in touch

with a certain amount of intimacy with a family

that was embracing a marriage?

No, this was a marketing event

and rather a well-done one actually.

[chuckling]

- It was my first time at Mar-a-Lago.

I never been to such a fabulous wedding

in my life.

There was a thousand people.

All VIPs.

I even met Hillary Clinton.

- We're so happy for both of you.

I know the third time's the charm

and, uh, we wish you the very best and much happiness

for many years to come.

- Thank you and make sure you watch

"The Apprentice" tonight, Katie.

- Oh, my God, do you ever quit? All right.

- At one point we're in the back of his limo,

and he was talking about his wedding

and he sort of randomly shared with me

that he was a little bit nervous.

And I asked, "Well, why? Why are you nervous?"

And he said, "Well, you know,

"it's one of those things-- the hunt is so enjoyable,

"but then once you get it, it can end up being

a little disappointing once you have it."

- Do you worry about women and him being attracted to them?

- No. I don't worry about that at all.

I know--I know who I am

and, um, if a man doesn't want to be with me

or I don't want to be with a man--so--

- Goodbye and good luck. - That's right.

- They get married in 2005 and about nine months later

the news breaks that Melania is pregnant.

- And Mr. and Mrs. Trump, [indistinct].

- Around the same time,

Donald, who's now a television celebrity,

is recorded on a hot-mic by a correspondent

for "Access Hollywood."

- [chuckling] - There is one event that defines sports entertainment.

- Welcome to WrestleMania!

[cheering]

[upbeat music]

- In 2007, Donald Trump is searching for other venues

to help him build his personal brand

and one part of that effort is to suddenly appear

in professional wrestling.

♪

- He had made a study of the ratings from "The Apprentice"

and he knew he was especially popular not on the coasts

but in the heartland-- white, middle-class voters,

and that's who was coming to WrestleMania.

Just as with "The Apprentice,"

WrestleMania was a crucial stepping stone

on Donald Trump's path to the Oval Office.

♪

- Donald Trump has a pretty long history

with professional wrestling.

In the 1980s, his properties were hosts for a variety

of pay-per-view and major cards

for what is now the WWE.

When Donald Trump arrives in the WWE in 2007,

he is arriving at a point where Vince McMahon

has developed a character.

- Mr. McMahon!

- He is the evil boss of the WWE.

The fans despise Mr. McMahon.

The problem is you need to find someone else who can step in

and make Mr. McMahon pay for what he is doing to the fans

and to the wrestlers.

- You laugh at me, huh?

[crowd yelling]

- You need someone who is popular and famous

and wealthy and powerful,

and Donald Trump is just perfect.

His first appearance,

it is supposed to be fan appreciation night

and the visage of Donald J. Trump

appears on the Titantron,

chastising Mr. McMahon.

- The audience really just doesn't like you.

- And then money is dropped from the rafters

of the arena in Dallas.

This is actual currency.

Trump will claim it was his money.

In reality, this was WWE money

that had been earmarked for this event,

and all of this is then going to lead up to the point

where they decide that they need to resolve this feud

that has developed between them.

- Donald Trump is gonna be in my world,

and when you're in my world, I rule.

[crowd groaning]

- WrestleMania was a perfect venue for Donald Trump.

It involved most of the major food groups of his life.

It's a game of enormous emotions, of trash-talking.

- Well, this is one deal

that Donald Trump is gonna be really sorry he's gonna sign.

- Clear lines between winners and losers.

The winner gets a trophy;

the loser is damaged, destroyed.

- Trump and Mr. McMahon agreed that the loser of the match

will have his head shaven after the match.

- Two billionaires hell-bent on shaving the other bald.

- This is a long lived wrestling storyline,

a Hair vs. Hair match, a real public humiliation.

[cheering]

- You might have some support from this audience,

but 95% of them are idiots.

[crowd booing]

- To me, they look like a very smart group of people.

[cheering]

- These were his people.

Not the glitzy people of 5th Avenue,

not the social club types who never took him seriously

but the plain, everyday, middle class Americans.

[cheering]

all: Donald, Donald, Donald! - [chuckling]

The Donald chant going there.

all: Donald, Donald!

- Trump believed that he brought to TV

a natural ability to connect with people

who were less educated, less wealthy, uh,

people who were perhaps sneered at by the elites.

He saw himself as someone who could break through that wall.

- Here's a guy,

he's a billionaire living in a tower on 5th Avenue

adjacent to the Tiffany's Jewelry Store.

He's meeting middle America

and he's bonding with these

many different types of people.

- He can talk to anybody,

cab drivers, waiters and waitresses, doormen.

He's a billionaire who's never lost his Queens roots.

[epic music]

The battle between Donald Trump and Vince McMahon

was fought by actual wrestlers who did the fight for them.

- Of course, it's all choreographed and scripted

and as per the method of Donald Trump

throughout his life, the fix is in.

- And--whoa! [explosion]

- What's going on over here?

- When order needs to be restored in the match,

Donald Trump is going to be outside the ring

and deliver a clothesline to Mr. McMahon.

- Hey, look at this!

Donald Trump! Donald Trump! Oh, my God!

- Much to Mr. McMahon's consternation,

these were legitimate blows

that Donald Trump was landing on his head

because Donald Trump hadn't quite perfected the technique

of fake punches that become sort of second nature

to actual professional wrestlers.

- Oh, my God!

Oh! Oh, my God!

[yelling indistinctly]

- And then Trump's guy won.

It was Trump who got to cut Vince McMahon's hair off,

which he did with great relish.

- [whimpering] No!

- Donald Trump's actually doing the honors himself.

- Once McMahon has been humiliated

with his head shaving, he will flee from the ring.

- I almost have empathy for Mr. McMahon.

- And then it was time for Stone Cold Steve Austin

to be part of the show

and Trump is literally facing off against an actual wrestler.

[cheering]

- Oh, Austin! Austin stomped the Donald!

- What?

-Even though he's down on the ground

in a loser position,

not a place Donald Trump would ever want himself to be...

[cheering]

He has made it with this group.

[cheering]

The crowd's sentiments have turned

and they're on the side of the billionaire.

These are his people.

- Do you have a stage persona?

- I don't think of myself as a performer.

You know what I think my biggest attribute is?

I'm a great builder.

I build the great--whether it's buildings

or golf courses or clubs or whatever,

I've always said that I build the best product

and people get that.

♪

- He was a living valuable brand,

but his bankruptcies have soured the American banks

from lending him any more money.

- The only major bank that's left in his corner

is Deutsche Bank, the biggest bank in Germany,

and there's always been this question of why.

- Why?

- Um, I'm not gonna answer that.

- Deutsche Bank,

the number one preferred bank by Russian oligarchs

for money laundering.

A bank that has spent over $600 million

paying fines for laundering money for Russians

in Cyprus, in Germany, and in New York City.

Deutsche Bank financed the Trump Tower Hotel

in downtown Chicago,

the fourth tallest building in America.

[suspenseful music]

♪

- And this was a beautiful relationship

that went wrong in 2008 because there was a financial crisis.

- Tonight, the growing housing crisis.

- A huge increase in foreclosures

across the country.

♪

- Trump was due to repay $40 million

and, um, he couldn't.

Then Trump did something very extraordinary:

he sued Deutsche Bank and said that Deutsche Bank

had co-created the financial crisis

and Deutsche Bank owed him $3 billion

and he wasn't gonna pay anything.

And then what happened was really weird.

The private wealth management wing of Deutsche Bank,

which deals with high net worth individuals,

lent money, another 2, $300 million,

to Donald Trump to pay off his debt

to the real estate division

that was now refusing to lend anymore of the money

to Donald Trump.

We've talked to sources inside the bank

who say they are bewildered by this,

and they find it suspicious.

They wonder whether actually the loans to Donald Trump

were underwritten by third parties,

by external actors by dot, dot, dot--maybe Russia,

maybe Russian state entities.

Today, the story of Donald Trump and Russia

is the biggest political story

and possibly scandal of--of our era.

♪

- What do you make of all this Russia money and collusion,

and everything?

- Do I think there was flat-out collusion? No.

But what I do think is--

is that he will use any advantage he can get.

- I mean, the big question here is,

what is the relationship

between Donald Trump and Russia,

particularly with regard to business?

And when did Trump's love affair with Russia start?

Actually, way back.

[crowd clamoring]

[suspenseful music]

♪

[yelling]

-Repeating once again our top story,

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev

has been removed from power.

♪

- I lived in the Soviet Union when this was happening

and even two months before,

nobody really believed it would happen.

[crowd clamoring]

- When the Soviet Union broke up,

there wasn't a lot of time

to sort out what property was going to belong to who.

It was just very often who was fastest

and who was the most ruthless.

[gunfire]

[crashing]

The kinds of people who emerge successfully

out of a situation like that,

those were the people who quickly rose to power

in the 1990s,

the oligarchs.

[suspenseful music]

- They become so wealthy so quickly,

they literally became millionaires,

even billionaires, overnight,

and so what do you do with that money?

You can't just keep it in a bank.

Russia is unstable.

You have to start looking outside of Russia.

♪

And that's exactly what happened.

♪

[upbeat music]

- In the 1990s,

Trump himself and his team came to realize

we're uniquely positioned in the world

to profit from this desperate need of oligarchs

to get money out of their home country.

♪

There's a ton of these increasingly rich Russian mafia

and new oligarch-type characters

who are in the New York area

and are amassing wealth through their connections

to the collapsed Soviet Union

and--and the corrupt oligarch economy.

And he's really pursuing them.

You know, he's putting on these Russian music shows

at his casinos,

he's going around letting it be known

that anyone can live in Trump Tower.

We won't even ask who you are.

We won't ask a single question.

- Donald Trump offered a very, very special amenity.

He allowed you to buy anonymously,

through shell companies, without using your name

in all-cash purchases.

He was one of the very first real estate people to do this.

-And Trump is not the only guy doing this,

but he's certainly the most prominent,

the biggest name doing this,

and doing this very aggressively.

♪

-I know the Russians better than anybody,

sold many apartments to Russians.

How many people are gonna buy $20 million apartments?

- It's a very, very limited market.

- So I'm sitting back and watching.

- He looked to Russia as a source, not in a sinister way--

he saw that as market development.

And then, like all things Trump,

it grows bigger than it was intended.

He--he can never say no.

He never leaves anything on his plate,

and he'll eat off yours.

- In 2007, Trump was able to strike a deal

with an American company owned by former Russians

that were gonna build a condominium hotel

in New York down in SoHo.

- During an episode of "The Apprentice,"

Trump held out an internship at the Trump SoHo

as the prize for one of the show's winners.

- The other project is in New York City's

trendiest neighborhood: SoHo.

When it's completed in 2008,

the Trump SoHo, the new $370 million work of art,

will be an awe-inspiring masterpiece.

[cheering]

[drilling]

- In the midst of construction,

I get a phone call, and it's from a Deep Throat,

somebody that wouldn't identify themselves.

And they started talking to me about a--a young man

that was involved with Donald Trump in this project,

Trump SoHo.

His name was Felix Sater.

♪

- Felix Sater's one of the most interesting guys

I've ever met.

You can make a half dozen Hollywood movies about him.

- It turns out that Felix Sater had a record.

- He had gone to jail

for taking a broken margarita glass

and grounding it into the face of someone at a bar.

Uh, he ended up needing about 100 stitches in his face.

Felix did some jail time for that.

After he got out of jail,

he and a group of Italian and Russian mobsters

ran an investment scam that took $40 million

or so from unsuspecting senior citizens.

- Pumping up prices of small stocks,

then dumping them on unsuspecting investors.

- They're defrauding hundreds of innocent victims.

[camera shutter clicking] [crowd clamoring]

- And when they were busted, he worked out a deal

where he would become a federal cooperator

and he ratted out others around him.

-And instead of going to jail, he goes to Bayrock.

Bayrock is a real estate company in Trump Tower.

-Sater has this sort of cloud over him,

and one day he goes up to Donald Trump's office,

says to the receptionist, "I have a real estate deal

I want to talk to Donald Trump about."

And he said within minutes,

he's sitting in Donald Trump's office.

- I basically, um, knocked on his door,

said, uh, I think we should become partners,

I have great real estate deals,

I'm gonna be a very successful developer

and you want to work with me.

- That's a very Trumpian move. - Um, I don't know.

I think it was a very Felixian move.

- Did you guys get along? - Yes.

- It was one big happy family.

They were going to be doing a string of deals.

[applause]

- Thank you very much to Bayrock.

The Trump SoHo is a very, very special building.

So we're honored by the partnership

and it's always really nice to have my children

working on a building with me.

[applause]

- As I learned about his background

and could document it,

I came to realize that everything my anonymous caller

was telling me was actually true.

I was flabbergasted that Mr. Trump was not careful

about who he got into bed with.

[applause]

- Bayrock has quite a crew, and they have ties

in one way or another to either the KGB

or the Russian mafia.

In Bayrock, you see money laundering happening

in two ways.

It's not just the sale of individual condominiums,

but you also see money coming in to finance

the actual development from Russian Mafia as well.

♪

- I came on Felix Sater

before anybody had ever heard of him

and I expected that my story

would blow up their relationship,

that they would be so embarrassed.

You know, what happens to your brand

when you become sullied by, uh, criminals?

♪

But it didn't seem to phase them.

In fact, their relationship continued.

♪

- Bagli's piece was like an earthquake inside Bayrock

and the Trump organization

and there was a lot of scrambling going on.

- But the Trump organization wanted to portray Trump SoHo

as a successful venture,

so Ivanka was quoted saying, "The bulk of the apartments

in the building had been sold,"

when, in fact, they hadn't been.

- Lying about that is a real violation.

It means that you are conning people out of their money.

- The Manhattan district attorney, uh, launched a probe.

But the Trump organization made a deal

with the condo buyers, who had sued,

that virtually all the money would be returned

as long as they didn't cooperate

with the Manhattan DA's office.

- Ultimately, the building's a failure,

and it's sold off in auction to another real estate company.

♪

-I really look at Trump SoHo as a transitional project.

It opens this new chapter overseas

in which Trump and the Trump organization

did a lot of business

with a lot of very questionable figures around the world.

Selling the Trump name as a brand on a hotel

or a residence or an office tower

is the chapter we actually know the least about,

but it's the most important chapter.

[cheering]

[dramatic music]

♪

- Our current president came out of nowhere,

came out of nowhere.

In fact, I'll go a step further.

The people that went to school with him,

they don't even know-- they never saw him,

they don't know who he is.

Crazy!

- There is a meme out there, a narrative,

that I sold Donald Trump on birtherism.

Nobody sells Donald Trump on anything.

- Nobody knew who the hell he was.

He's now our president, he's our president.

- Donald Trump chooses what he will say

and when he will say it.

Donald Trump became interested in the question

and circumstances of Barack Obama's birth,

and he decided to talk about it.

- Nobody trusts Obama.

There's nothing to trust about Obama.

If you look at his last few years,

everything's a lie, his background is a lie.

I mean, there's so much about him that's a lie,

it's incredible.

[upbeat music]

- Donald always needs a foil. He needs someone to attack,

and as you watch his career from the earliest time

until now, there is always an adversary.

- I wouldn't mind forgetting the issue,

but I'd like him to show that he has a birth certificate

because a certificate of birth,

you can get it with a telephone call.

- There is always somebody that he can punch, call names,

vilify, uh, because he thinks that by doing that,

he escalates his own persona.

- Donald Trump has never been afraid to say what he thought.

He almost embraces that he's willing to say things

that are off limits to most people.

I think he thinks that's part of the fascination with him,

part of his appeal.

- I want him to show his birth certificate.

- Why?

- There's something on that birth certificate

that he doesn't like.

- Oh, my God, that is just the worst thing...

[indistinct chattering]

- Darling, I love you. I'm telling you.

- Donald, I love you too.

I think that's the biggest pile of dog mess I've heard in ages.

[light suspenseful music]

- Donald Trump isn't the first person,

but he is by far the most famous person

who launches birtherism attacks

and then becomes the most sustained birther

in America holding out on it for years.

- The fact is that we have not seen his birth certificate.

He, I assume, I would hope he has a birth certificate,

I'm sure you do, I know I do.

It's all very important for one reason:

if you're not born in this country,

you can't be President.

- But you've never seen George W. Bush's birth certificate,

have you?

- No, I haven't but I'm sure he has one.

- So it's really about calling in question the legitimacy

and the validity of America's first black president.

- I did believe then, as I believe now,

that it did reflect, uh,

a very substantial body of thinking

on the American right.

In a free society, you're allowed to think what you want.

- It's a page out of the Roy Cohn playbook--

the creation of doubt in people's minds.

- I mean, in Hawaii... - Absolutely.

And they cannot believe what they're finding.

I've been told very recently, Anderson,

that the birth certificate is missing.

I've been told that it's not there

and it doesn't exist.

- What have they found?

- That's none of your business right now.

We're gonna see what happens.

- Have they found anything?

- We're gonna see what happens.

- He understands that politics isn't all about issues,

isn't always about legislation.

A lot of it is cultural.

- I've had a lot of friends of mine

that are very conservative, on the conservative side, say,

"Ah, skip that issue, Donald,

it's not a good issue for you, skip it."

And I say, "Why is that not a good issue?"

- For a long time, President Obama tried to ignore

the birther discussion,

maybe thinking it was beneath contempt--

certainly beneath the notice

of a President of the United States.

- And just to be clear, I know where my birth certificate is,

but a lot of people don't.

[crowd laughing]

- But it became apparent that this was catching on

to such an extent, that it needed to be addressed.

[epic music]

♪

- The White House Correspondents' Dinner

is this strange ritual.

All of the White House journalists come

and they bring, usually, celebrity guests

and then the President tells a lot of jokes.

There were a bunch of people who pitched jokes.

I was one of those people.

President Obama was kind of pushing us to, like,

be a little sharper, be a little edgier,

and there was this kind of open question of,

how are we gonna address the elephant in the room

where the elephant in the room is Donald Trump?

- This was going right into the heart of the beast.

These are the political and media elites

who never took his potential candidacy seriously

and therefore I would not have recommended

the White House Correspondents' dinner.

- Everyone in the room was waiting for,

when does Obama get to Trump?

That was really the big pregame suspense of the night,

and it had been the pregame suspense of the night,

at that point, for weeks.

- My fellow Americans.

[cheering]

- He started making jokes about Donald Trump.

- No one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter

to rest than the Donald.

[laughing]

- And the crowd started laughing more and more.

- And that's because he can finally get back to focusing

on the issues that matter.

Like, did we fake the moon landing,

and where are Biggie and Tupac?

[laughing]

- I was sitting behind Trump that evening,

and I watched his neck go from pale shrimp to deep beetroot

as he listened to Obama, very wittily and coolly,

making fun of him.

- He was relentless.

- What you had was this kind of sea of laughter

and then this just pure island of rage in the middle of it.

- It was the night of Barack Obama's revenge.

[applause]

[laughing]

- Donald Trump wanted to be taken seriously,

and this was an effort by the president,

and to a certain degree, I think,

the Washington establishment to say,

"Hey, look, New York and tabloids are one thing.

"This is the big leagues.

Go back home."

- Donald Trump left

the White House Correspondents' dinner early.

I don't think he decided in the car that he was going

to run for president and win.

I think he decided as he rose from his seat.

- And I sort of imagined in the back of his mind,

it was like Norma Desmond.

- Those imbeciles. Haven't they got any eyes?

Have they forgotten what a star looks like?

- Do they think I'm a has-been?

- I'll show them.

I'll be up there again, so help me.

- I'll show them what a star is.

[laughing, applause]

- You remember the famous interview,

when Obama was asked, "Donald Trump says,

'You're the worst president in American history.'"

What's your reaction?"

- At least I will go down as a President.

[cheering]

- Who got the last laugh on that one?

[dramatic tone]

- So, you are running for the Republican nomination

if you run? - Yes.

- Okay, you--you described yourself politically

as a conservative?

- I am a very conservative person.

- Very conservative person, but recently you said--

- With a big heart.

I'd like to say I'm conservative with a big heart.

- He was always amused by those in the mainstream media

who kept insisting that running for president

was all a publicity stunt to burnish the Trump brand.

Uh, that he's never really gonna run.

- Well, I think I have a lot of experience.

More than most people--

certainly more than most candidates.

- In 2012, I think he came very, very close to running,

but he ultimately decided not to make that race,

I think, largely based on the fact

that Obama was an incumbent.

[cheering]

- Thank you.

I have just called President Obama

to congratulate him on his victory.

- I think that Donald Trump was very disappointed

when Mitt Romney lost.

I think he immediately regretted not running himself.

- God bless these United States.

- He did tell me that right after the election,

he had trademarked the phrase Make America Great Again.

To me this was a sign of his seriousness.

I gave an interview very early

in which I said, in an off-handed manner,

well, I thought he should run in 2016

because it would probably be his last chance

given his age.

Boy, he chewed my ass about that.

- I'm Donald Trump

and this is the most important pageant in the world,

and I should know because I own it.

[upbeat music]

- Donald Trump had always loved the idea

of beauty pageants in his Atlantic City days

running casinos.

In 1996, along came an opportunity to buy

the Miss Universe Pageant.

A better match could not have been made.

- Look this way, Lisa.

♪

- He was very excited that he had a business

that would keep him in touch with very young women.

- He had felt the pageants had started to emphasize

women's minds and abilities too much

and what he said to me is,

"Nobody wants to watch one of these things

"and see a girl playing a violin.

They just want to know what she looks like."

He wanted to get it back to its roots.

[camera shutter clicking] [crowd clamoring]

- Donald Trump saw in the ability to own

the Miss Universe Pageant not only a chance

to hang out backstage,

but also, this was a way for Donald Trump

to get the Trump name and brand spread

to many more countries.

- I have a name that's the hottest name in the world.

When I'm doing deals, I'm buying this one,

I'm buying that one.

They really want Trump, 'cause Trump is a hot name.

It's the hottest name in the world.

- Donald Trump was an empire builder.

He was 1,000% committed

to the accumulation of wealth and power.

This was the lesson that he was taught as a child:

you never stop pushing, you never stop building.

[crowd clamoring]

♪

- At that time, the Trump Organization is doing business

with players in countries all over the world.

♪

- Trump comes up with this new model that--

it's almost amazing it took him so long to find it

because it's so perfect for who he is,

this model of just selling his name

and putting his name on a project

and Trump always had

a group of would-be deal-makers around him.

These often were people with shady pasts.

- Donald Trump ended up in Baku,

the capital of Azerbaijan,

where he had business connections with

another billionaire developer, a guy named Anar Mammadov.

- The Mammadov family was seen as unbelievably corrupt

and corrupt even for Azerbaijan,

which is a very corrupt country.

They were in business with a company that was

almost, without question, nothing more than a front

for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard...

[men chanting]

Which had created a global financial network

to fund terrorism, to acquire weapons of mass destruction--

true bad actors.

- Anyone who's done business with Donald Trump

knows that all you have to do is walk into the office

with a bag of cash and drop it on his desk,

and he'll do business with you.

If the money's there, he'll go for it.

He doesn't do due diligence.

[suspenseful music]

♪

[applause]

- In June of 2013,

Trump announced that he was gonna hold

the Miss Universe contest in Moscow.

- And really, we wanted Moscow all the way

and part of the reason we want it is

one of the great families in Russia is our partner

in this endeavor.

- He's paid by a Russian oligarch,

Aras Agalarov, to bring this contest to Moscow.

It's lucrative.

- It's going to be amazing.

- Aras Agalarov was a builder,

he was known as Putin's builder

because he had built so many projects for Putin

and the Russian state.

- The Agalarovs are a huge step up for Trump.

He had been in this frenzy from 2010, '11, '12,

just doing business with a whole bunch of characters

all over the former Soviet Union,

but these are third tier characters

and third tier countries,

and Moscow is a huge step up.

♪

- Moscow was, by 2013,

one of the most expensive cities in the world

and Moscow real estate

had become this hot, hot market.

- If you talk to people in the Miss Universe Organization,

they will tell you that holding the contest in Moscow

was really not the prime objective.

It was to open a pathway

to building a Trump Tower in Moscow.

- Trump gets obsessed with Russia

and clearly sees it as a place

where he's gonna make a mark, make a fortune,

where's he's gonna be a major player.

- For Trump, having a Trump Tower in Moscow,

I think, would have been the jewel on the crown.

- [speaking Russian]

[suspenseful music]

- Trump flies to Moscow November 8th, 2013.

He gets there in the middle of the day or so.

- And he is the arriving champion.

- There's my guy!

- The Miss Universe is the biggest thing going on.

- We're very happy and Moscow

and all of Russia is going wild.

- Now at this point in time,

Trump is obsessed with really one thing.

He's obsessed with Vladimir Putin.

As soon as Trump announces

that he's gonna hold Miss Universe in Moscow,

[ping] he's tweeting out,

will Vladimir Putin come to the event?

Will he be my new best friend?

- Meanwhile, Putin's already widely regarded

around the world as a thug.

He has repressed dissent in Russia.

There had been massive human rights abuses in Chechnya.

- Russian forces need to leave Georgia at once.

- If anyone thinks that they can come and kill us,

they should think what consequences such a policy

will have for them.

- Journalists and critics of the Russian state

have been killed,

but Trump is enamored with him.

[epic music]

- Trump rather nakedly and openly

had been courting Putin's favor for many years,

eagerly hoping to have a relationship with Putin

and to have business in Moscow.

- Trump Tower in Moscow was this kind of elusive thing

Trump's been trying to build for three decades

unsuccessfully.

- We know that real estate developer Trump

really cares about status.

And so, having the tallest building

and then your name on top of the tallest building

is like the symbol to show off how successful you are,

how rich you are.

- Trump is basically auditioning.

He comes to Moscow, hat in hand.

- I called it my weekend in Moscow,

but I was with the top-level people,

both oligarchs and generals

and top of the government people.

I can't go further than that, but I will tell you

that I met the top people.

- The heart of the matter is whether or not that trip

and what happened during that trip involved activities

or business deals that gave the Kremlin leverage over him.

[eerie music]

- The first day, there's a lunch held for Trump at Nobu.

This is the famous sushi restaurant,

and there are a bunch of Russian businessmen there,

bankers.

Later, Trump says all the oligarchs were there.

- I got to meet all of the leaders.

I got to meet all--

I mean, everybody was there.

- After the lunch, he goes to the theatre

where they're doing the final run-through

for the Miss Universe Pageant,

which is gonna be the next day.

[crowd clamoring]

And at night, there was a birthday party

for Aras Agalarov.

♪

And around 1:00 a.m.,

Donald Trump went back to the Ritz Carlton hotel

in downtown Moscow where Trump was staying.

- Keith Schiller, who was Trump's bodyguard,

says that Trump went into his room alone

and that he stood guard there for a little while

and then left.

[suspenseful music]

♪

There, of course, is a question

about what happened in his hotel room

the one night he stayed in the Russian capital.

♪

- The hotel where Trump stayed

is known to be completely bugged by the FSB.

That basically everything you do there is watched.

- The FSB, the spy agency

which Vladimir Putin once headed,

films people inside their flats,

in their bedrooms.

I know from personal experience.

When I was in Moscow with my wife and two small kids,

for three and a half years we were watched,

and the FSB let us know this because on one occasion,

uh, I came back from a family holiday in Berlin to discover

that the FSB had left a little present by the side

of the marital bed, a sex manual in Russian,

which they had bookmarked to a page on orgasms.

In--in essence, they were saying,

we were watching you having sex.

- The Russians collect this information.

It's called Kompromat, and they use it all the time.

- Kompromat is, um, an old term,

from, um, the Soviet era,

uh, that basically means compromising material

or blackmail.

- They will have videoed Donald Trump for sure,

and those--those tapes will still exist.

- Earlier in the day, someone came up to Keith Schiller

and said, would Mr. Trump like five women in his room tonight?

And Keith Schiller says that he told this person,

"We don't do that," and that was that.

- If you're thinking about 2013

and the Miss Universe Beauty Pageant,

you have to ask yourself this question:

did Donald Trump go to bed early

with a cup of hot chocolate and a 19th century novel,

or did Donald Trump

have a more exciting and exotic time?

Uh, I'll let you decide.

[suspenseful music]

♪

[upbeat music]

- The story next picks up early, early the next morning.

He had been asked to do a cameo appearance in a video

that was being shot for the son of Aras Agalarov,

Emin Agalarov.

Emin is a pop star.

oh, let's say, of modest repute.

- He actually makes this pop music video

with lots of contestants from Miss Universe.

- ♪ In another life

♪ We would be together

- And Trump has taken a liking to him,

and so he appears at that video shoot.

- Emin, wake up. Come on, you're fired.

♪

- The rest of the day,

he has lots of interviews and press conferences.

- We're thinking about doing a Trump Tower Moscow

so we're talking to a group of people about doing that.

- It was announced that he and Agalarov

were proceeding with the project.

- Now Trump has a partner that can help him

cut through the red tape,

that has a good relationship with Putin,

so the deal finally starts to move.

- Uh, Donald, do you have a relationship

with Vladimir Putin?

- I do have a relationship

and I can tell you that he's very interested

in what we're doing here today.

He's probably very interested in what you and I

are saying today.

- In one interview, he praises Putin.

- That, uh, Putin has done an amazing job

of showing certain leadership

that our people have not been able to match.

- He says Putin's watching very closely

what we're doing here.

You know, almost implying that Putin's gonna come

and he wants Putin to come.

[cheering, applause]

[cheering]

- He asks the people around him,

over and over and over again,

is Putin coming?

[cheering]

Will I be meeting with Putin?

Will I see him? Can I see him? Can I see him?

- This is the moment.

- They say, "We're waiting,"

and he gets anxious and anxious and anxious about this.

- So, Miss Universe, 2013 is Venezuela. Gabriela Isler!

- You're a rock star!

- Congratulations to you, Miss Venezuela!

Goodnight everybody from Moscow!

- Finally, the phone rings and it's Dmitry Peskov,

who is Putin's Chief Spokesman Strategist, and he says,

"I'm sorry, the President can't see you."

[dramatic music]

"His schedule won't permit it."

Trump, of course, is disappointed.

And at one point

he says to one of the Miss Universe officials,

"You know, we could tell people that Putin came.

No one would know the difference."

[chuckling]

[ping]

- After the Miss Universe pageant wraps up in Moscow

in the fall of 2013,

there's a memorandum of understanding

that is drafted between the Trump organization

and the Agalarov corporation,

which is Trump Tower in Moscow,

and the deal starts to actually move.

[gunfire] [yelling]

- But then Russia invades Ukraine and annexes Crimea,

and then immediately sanctions hit.

♪

And the sanctions kill the deal.

- Based on the executive order

that I signed in response to Russia's initial intervention

in Ukraine,

we're imposing sanctions on more senior officials

of the Russian government.

- From Trump's mind at the time,

I can imagine this being a key moment

where he sees Obama trying to kill his dream deal

that he's been working for--for, now, decades.

[light suspenseful music]

- A few weeks after the Miss Universe contest was over,

a woman shows up at the Miss Universe office

in New York City.

It's the daughter of Aras Agalarov.

She has a gift for Donald Trump.

- Putin didn't or wouldn't make time to see Donald Trump

and did arrange for Trump to be given a gift.

This is a black lacquered box.

- The box is delivered to Trump at Trump Tower.

[upbeat music]

Inside the box, there is an envelope.

And to this day no one knows--

at least no one in the public knows--

what was in that note.

- It might have just been, "Sorry I missed you."

It might have been something more,

but my guess is that whatever it was,

it was an indication that Putin knows how to play Donald Trump.

[applause] - Please welcome Donald Trump.

[cheering]

- Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.

I saw the other day on television

people just walking across the b--they're walking.

The military's standing there holding guns

and people just walking right in front,

coming into our country.

♪

- It's January 2015

and some of the people on Trump's staff,

including a guy named Sam Nunberg,

really believed in the power of illegal immigration

to galvanize Republican voters,

but the problem they had

is they couldn't keep Trump on message.

He would get up before these conservative groups and--

and he would wander, and so Nunberg came up with this idea.

He told Trump, "You ought to go out there and tell them

"that you're gonna build a wall to stop illegal immigrants

from coming into this country."

And, you know, initially Trump didn't seem too interested

in the idea, uh, but finally, at an Iowa event,

Trump tried out the line...

- We have to build a fence, and it's gotta be a beauty.

Who can build better than Trump?

I build. It's what I do.

[applause]

- The crowd just roared.

Trump, who's a very intuitive politician,

saw that this drew an enormous response from his audience.

- So I would say that if I run and if I win,

I would certainly start by building a very,

very powerful border.

[cheering]

[applause]

Thank you all very much. Thank you, thank you.

[applause]

- This was something that really galvanized

a lot of hard right, anti-immigrant voters,

who became, uh, the strength of his political base.

- Beautiful, thank you.

- Donald Trump wasn't gonna do nuance.

Americans didn't want nuance.

With the immigration thing,

one thing he said to me was, he goes,

"Sam, you write things that are too [bleep] complicated.

Who the [bleep] can understand this?"

And you know what? He was 100% right.

♪

- One way that Trump became convinced that this issue

had real power and salience with grassroots conservatives

was that when he tweeted about illegal immigration,

he would get hundreds and hundreds of retweets.

[pinging]

- I introduced him to Twitter with Roger Stone.

We're working for him and we're like, "What are we gonna do?

How are we gonna continue to get paid?"

And Roger says to me, "We're gonna work on his Twitter."

[epic music]

And we just started sending in suggested tweets.

- Donald Trump's political ideology

is called Donald Trump.

He's very malleable.

His gut instinct is to be a populist.

It's to be whatever's driving the American people crazy,

and so he has been open to, and susceptible to,

all kinds of conspiracy ideas.

♪

- Trump was using Twitter as a focus group

to hone the issues that he would later run on,

seeing what it was that would resonate with his followers

and what wouldn't.

- He'd be on the plane

and he'd have this big Samsung phone in his hand

and he'd be fat-fingering a tweet

and then, all the sudden, he's pressing "send"

and you're praying that there's no spelling mistakes

and then--boom!

We're watching satellite TV and it's up,

you know, the chyron's up, you know.

"Trump says blah-da-dee-blah-blah,"

you know and you're, like, laughing.

- I told him, "You gotta stop.

"Stop tweeting. You're creating headaches for yourself.

Stop tweeting."

And he's like, "Why should I stop tweeting

"when I can bypass the fake news companies in this country

and go directly to the American people?"

- I've got millions of people. - Right.

- Between Twitter and Facebook,

I'll be at five million people.

That's more than the biggest media company.

- You know how many people on Twitter every day ask me

to run for president?

"Please, Mr. Trump, run for president."

"Please Mr. Trump,

you're the only one who can save the country."

- Thanks to the internet,

and thanks especially to social media,

he's starting to connect on issues

that he thinks will speak to the emotional gap

in Americans' political experience.

That brought him into a world of people

who were outside the mainstream,

sometimes even beyond the mainstream of Fox News.

They included the folks who worked at Breitbart News,

where a lot of ideas about American nationalism,

about fighting back against multiculturalism,

were being built up by Steve Bannon,

a former Hollywood producer who had turned himself into,

kind of, the voice of Breitbart News.

- The center core of what we believe,

that we're a nation with an economy,

not an economy just in some global marketplace

with open borders, but we're a nation with a--a culture

and a, uh, and a reason for being,

and I think that's what unites us.

- Trump became a fan of Bannon's work,

and they bonded over the idea

that the United States was in deep, dark trouble.

- Bannon starts briefing Trump on politics.

Trump, who doesn't use computers,

isn't gonna read these articles on a phone

or on his computer,

so Trump's staff actually prints out

the Breitbart news articles on paper

and hands them to Trump in a manila folder.

- Breitbart didn't come off as academic and nerdy.

I couldn't get Trump to read something

from "The Wall Street Journal."

He's not gonna read something that he's not interested in.

But if Breitbart wrote something about it,

he would look at it.

- If you look at the issues that Breitbart news

is most concerned about,

it tends to be things like the idea

that immigrants from Mexico are marauding killers

and rapists who pose a dire threat

to the American citizenry.

- He started listening to a diet

of right wing conversation

that was not mainstream Republicanism

and bought into a series of conspiracy theories

that got wilder and wilder about immigrants coming in

and stealing American jobs.

- Bannon was in Trump's ear talking,

"We need to double down on these ideas.

This is really resonating with the Republican base."

[applause]

- We need strong borders. We need a wall.

- There's no doubt that as the years went by,

Trump got much more angry and much darker.

- The fact is, we're run by either very foolish

or very stupid people.

- He's really being indoctrinated with

the Breitbart worldview.

- You're gonna have people just flowing into

this country worse than it's ever been.

- Then when he gets glommed-onto, in a sense,

by, uh, the Breitbart right,

the kind of ideology found its angry man,

and the angry man found its ideology.

- They struck a chord with Donald Trump

because they appealed to his sense of himself

as the outsider sneered at by the elites,

who saw him as this caricature,

as this sort of clown, and he always resented that.

- Washington is totally broken, and it's not gonna get fixed

unless we put the right person in that top position.

- CPAC, give it up! Donald Trump!

- Thank you, thank you.

[applause]

- Is he serious this time or just selling something?

- The real estate mogul and reality TV star

has flirted with White House runs before.

- I love playing a tape on television and radio

where all of these people were laughing, "Run, Donald, run.

Please, you'll never win."

- Do it, do it. Look--look at me. Do it.

I will personally write you a campaign check now.

- Trump's running for president like...

- This is your worst nightmare.

- People think that Donald Trump is a clown.

- Does anybody seriously think that Donald Trump

is serious about running for president?

- He doesn't take on fights

that he doesn't think he can win.

Donald Trump wants to win at everything he does.

[crowd clamoring]

- I remember saying to myself,

what's gonna happen when "The Apprentice" goes off the air?

What's he gonna do? He can't go back

to just being a B-level developer.

It was about, I'm not gonna be a star anymore.

The focus is not gonna be on me.

How can I keep the cameras pointed at me?

Because he didn't want those lights to go out.

Well, we got the answer, didn't we?

[solemn music]

- When I write about people, I get to know them implicitly.

I'm trying to draw out of them their inner selves

in order to get at that essence.

We're driving up the interstate,

I'm taking notes, we're talking.

- I really was determined to answer this question

that was bugging me about what goes on

inside this person's being.

What is the nature of that private self?

And so I said, "What time do you wake up?"

I knew he didn't sleep much.

And he said, "You know, 5:30."

I said, "Okay, everyone's asleep, you're awake,

"you're in your bathroom, you're shaving,

"you're looking in the mirror--

what do you see?"

♪

And silence. He doesn't have an answer to the question.

And I said, "Well, are you looking in the mirror

and thinking, 'Gee, I'm Donald Trump?'"

And he still doesn't respond.

By the time I was done with him,

I was able to reach a conclusion

about his interior life,

and with Trump,

the essence was--was a vacuum.

- I think what has kept him going

is a need to feed an emptiness.

He had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury.

He lives like a king,

but for all the things that should give one pleasure,

there is something lacking in those pleasures,

and he's been trying to feed that emptiness.

There is an unfillable hole inside this person,

and I think that that is

his--his fear and his destiny both.

♪

- He wanted me there around 7:00.

I got there at 7:30 because I'm always late.

He's in a black suit

with the red tie and the white shirt,

and he says, "What do you think, should I change?"

I said, "I love it."

He goes, "No you're a [bleep] idiot.

I'm going to change."

And Melania comes down, Mrs. Trump,

and I'm, like, holy [bleep] Jesus,

look at that dress she's wearing.

You see her back, and God, is she gorgeous.

And here's something nobody is going to believe

even when I tell you this-- he prayed.

He went like this.

♪

And then he said, "Okay, let's go."

[upbeat music]

♪

- When everybody else was going crazy,

including a lot of my colleagues at Fox News

about Donald Trump may get into this race,

I remember saying, "I'll believe it when I see it."

[crowd clamoring]

Lo and behold, on a June morning in 2015,

he and Melania come down that escalator.

[applause]

- Ladies and gentlemen,

I am officially running...

[cheering]

For President of the United States.

And we are going to make our country great again.

all: Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump!

Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump!

- Donald Trump takes on 16 seasoned, powerful,

professional politicians

and one by one, he's knocking them out of the race.

He's re-written the rule book.

- They're killing us at the border

and they're killing us in trade.

The American dream is dead.

But we're fighting for you so what's good for me,

is good for you and I mean that totally 100%.

[cheering]

- But while this is going on, Trump was not done with Russia.

♪

- In 2015, Felix Sater,

Trump's business partner from Bayrock,

accidentally bumbles into the dream deal

of anybody in the Trump orbit.

♪

A friend of his lets him know

that he has some property in Moscow.

Felix instantly thinks, could that be a Trump Tower Moscow?

The thing that Trump has wanted more than anything forever.

- Felix Sater emails Michael Cohen,

Trump's personal lawyer,

and says I have secured financing

for Trump Tower Moscow from VTB Bank.

It's a Russian state bank.

♪

- VTB Bank is not really a bank in any traditional sense.

It's more like a tool of the Kremlin.

- Vladimirovich Putin.

- A tool of Putin and his cronies

to get money where they want.

It was also sanctioned after Russia annexed Crimea

as a way to punish specifically Putin and his cronies.

[suspenseful music]

- That didn't seem to put them off any.

There are no emails in which Michael Cohen says,

"Hey, we can't work with a sanctioned bank."

It's sorta like, "Well, you keep going, Felix."

- I approached Michael Cohen about the opportunity.

He was very excited. - Thanks very much.

- Donald Trump signed the letter of intent.

- This is not a secret from Trump.

Trump knows about this.

♪

Trump signs a letter of intent.

They get pretty far into the weeds.

How much money Trump would get up front--

$4 million just for moving ahead.

There would be a spa,

and the spa might even be called "Spa By Ivanka."

I mean, they're really getting into details.

Now there's a little bit of a problem here.

Trump's running for president.

- Here you have an American presidential candidate

doing a business deal with a bank in Russia

sanctioned by the U.S. government.

Does any American voter know about this?

No, it's a secret.

- I humbly and gratefully accept your nomination

for the presidency of the United States.

Russia, if you're listening,

I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails.

I have nothing to do with Russia.

Who's gonna pay for the wall?

all: Mexico - Who?

all: Mexico!

all: Lock her up!

- Honestly, she should be locked up.

You know what we're gonna do?

Even better, we're gonna beat her on November 8th.

With your help, we are going to win,

and we are going to win big.

- This is CNN breaking news.

- The American people have spoken.

Donald Trump will be the 45th President of the United States.

all: USA, USA, USA!

[dramatic music]

- All right, so you know I'm trying to march you

through your life.

- I know that.

- And you are in the present, you're always in the present.

- I'm--I'm never in the past.

- Right, I know, I know. It's hard for you.

- The problem that you have with me

is that I'm not in the past.

I'm--I'm a person that thinks to the future and the present.

[cheering]

[applause]

I don't think people change very much.

You may slow down, but honestly--

yeah, I don't think people change.

I think I'm a very big believer in the fact that

when you are a certain way,

pretty much that's the way you are.

[solemn music]

Now environmental situations change, conditions change,

wealth changes, both up and down.

♪

But I think basically our personality is set

from very close to the time of birth.

♪

I mean, if I look at myself in the 1st grade

and I look at myself now,

I don't think I'm that different.

Now I have vast experience, I have vast success.

Like, I've had these tremendous successes

and then I'm off to the next one.

I just don't like wasting time on the past.

I don't like to analyze myself

because I might not like what I see.

♪

- Mr. President, Mr. President...

- Mr. President, when was the last time

you discussed Trump-- when was the last--

when was the last time you discussed Trump Tower Russia?

[indistinct chattering]

♪

[hip-hop music]

♪