Original subtitles

♪

[shutter snapping]

- This American carnage stops

right here

and stops right now.

- His presidency, and the lead-up

to his presidency, will be studied

for the rest of American history.

Donald Trump is a street fighter.

♪

- When you think of how we started in 2015,

he understood where America was going

to some degree before America did.

- Over the years, I've surprised

a lot of people. The biggest surprise

is yet to come.

- I used to think that Donald Trump

really understood the zeitgeist of the nation.

- You're fired. You're fired.

You're fired. - Now I realized

he is the zeitgeist.

♪

- There was virtually not a person on the planet

who didn't know who Donald Trump was.

- To listen to this-- it's just so ridiculous.

- There's a toughness to him.

I mean, he can take a lot of bullets.

He can catch bullets in his teeth.

- Donald Trump is a survivor.

- He comes as advertised.

It can be disgusting,

but there is a genius to it.

- I don't think people change.

I'm a very big believer in the fact

that when you are a certain way,

that's the way you are.

I love to fight.

I always loved to fight.

My father was a very tough man.

♪

- Okay?

Whenever you're ready.

♪

- There's a clear through line

that's passed down

from generation to generation.

- If you become a power broker in Manhattan,

you are the man.

- Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.

His name is his power.

- Do whatever you have to do.

You say whatever you have to say.

Winning is everything.

♪

- I think that to understand Donald Trump,

you really have to go back to the beginning.

♪

[metal creaking]

♪

- Please watch your step.

♪

Okay. - [laughs]

- This is called, uh, "topping out," right?

- This is called topping out.

- I--see how much I know?

[laughs] - Let's grab a handshake.

- Sure. How you doing, Don?

- Good.

[somber music]

They can live in Houston, they can live in Paris,

they can live anywhere in the world.

Many of these very wealthy people

have chosen Trump Tower, and I think

it's a very important step for New York.

I think it's a vital step for New York.

[applause]

♪

- Trump Tower is nothing

if not a symbol

that winning is everything.

♪

- Trump Tower was really

the thing that put him on the map in so many ways.

It won him recognition

and even honor

and brought him to a level

that he thought had not been possible

for his family to date.

- And by the way, uh, he is a chip

off the old block.

- This is my father, Fred Trump.

- Right.

- He was able to surpass

his very demanding father,

leaving behind Brooklyn and Queens

and taking over New York.

♪

But this was not the beginning.

The Trump family saga

starts much earlier on.

- All right, so you know I'm trying

to march you through your life.

- I'm not in the past. - Yeah.

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

- That's--that's the thing, is--

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

♪

- Other people do have to know

about how you got here.

- I'm never in the past.

- Right, I know, I know.

- In 2014,

I did four sit-down interviews

with Donald Trump.

♪

I wanted to know

how was it that this kid from Queens

turned himself into the character

that became the Donald Trump we know?

Uh, let me see if I can--

- I don't like talking about the past.

Past is over.

No, I don't want to think about it.

I don't like to think too much of the past...

- All right, well-- - Other than--

other than-- this is very important--

I learn from the past.

♪

- Donald's grandfather, Friedrich Trump,

came to the United States in 1885.

He was 16.

He came from a wine-producing small village in Germany,

but wasn't content to stay there.

- In the middle of the night,

he writes a letter and leaves it for his mom,

and in the morning, he is gone.

♪

- For Friedrich,

the goal was to really become

a wealthy man.

- Railroads were advertising every day,

"Buy a ticket to fortune.

Buy a ticket west."

- Friedrich took off for the Northwest,

the last part of the physical frontier,

where things were wide open,

and a young man with a lot of energy

might be able to do very well.

♪

Word began to circulate

of a mining town

just getting going

northeast of Seattle,

called Monte Cristo,

being bankrolled, of all things,

by John D. Rockefeller.

- Rockefeller is, of course,

this living emblem

of success in America,

and so, if John D. Rockefeller

says, "My engineers have discovered

there's this great vein of silver ore,"

well, off you go.

♪

All you had to do to stake a claim

was declare that you had struck silver

on a piece of land,

and it was yours to work,

and no one else could have it.

In Friedrichs's case,

he announced that he had found something

when he hadn't even dug a single hole.

- He had no intention of mining,

and he, in fact,

instead built a hotel.

He looked at the world that he had come into

and figured out where there was an opening

and figured out how to do it.

He was very savvy about that.

♪

He set himself up to mine the miners,

providing food, fine dining,

and...

- There is a wonderful euphemism

called "Rooms for ladies."

- Pretty much of a code word for prostitutes.

- There were prostitutes hanging out in the bar,

and, uh, any man

who wanted to take a hooker upstairs--

there were rooms available.

♪

[jaunty music]

- Friedrich was supremely ambitious,

was willing to do whatever it took

in order to get ahead.

♪

- In 1897,

a ship came into Seattle

laden with gold

from the gold fields of the Yukon.

- These men stagger off

onto dry land,

but they can barely walk down the gangplank

because of their sacks and bags of gold,

and that set off the Yukon gold rush.

Friedrich thought

"I want a share of the action."

♪

- Friedrich makes his way

to the Yukon.

Like everybody else,

it's by foot,

an astonishing journey

up mountain passes,

single file--

was an extremely arduous,

difficult, life-threatening situation.

♪

- The White Pass trail--

you could have horses on it,

and horses could pull loads over,

but these miners had no idea

what that, in fact, involved.

The horses were completely unsuitable

for the absolutely grim conditions,

and they died on the trail,

or they fell and broke their legs,

or their owners simply shot them

because they couldn't go any further.

There was a terrifying piece of that trail

called the Dead Horse Gulch,

which was packed solid

with dead horseflesh.

In fact, one of the miners who went up that trail said

that you could've just laid all the horses end-to-end,

and you would've been walking over dead horseflesh

for 50 miles.

- But for Friedrich,

it was an opportunity.

He had tent restaurants along the way,

and where would you get fresh meat?

What do these people need? They need food.

So he uses those dead horses,

and serves up horse burgers,

serves up horse steaks.

♪

- Friedrich arrives in Bennett

with all of his guile

and all of his resourcefulness intac,

and he is ready to go into business.

♪

- Bennett was a newly-built town

that was thrown up by people

on the way to the gold fields.

- Bennett was a very savvy place to be,

because all the miners had to come through Bennett,

so there was always gonna be traffic.

♪

- He establishes himself,

builds his hotel-restaurant.

♪

- It's filled, it's bustling,

and apparently, the best restaurant in town.

That's what the press accounts said.

♪

- But he hears there's a railway being built

to a place further down the river

called Whitehorse, which, at that stage,

was barely more than a couple of buildings.

♪

- Friedrich knows

that Bennett would be bypassed.

Now, what's his response to this?

♪

It is to put his restaurant and hotel on a raft

and float it down the river to Whitehorse.

♪

[train horn blows]

- By the time the train arrived there,

he had a restaurant, a hotel there.

Of course, that means

that he's in on the ground floor

and makes a fortune really fast.

- I don't think, given Friedrich's character,

anything else is going to happen.

This is a guy of consummate ambition.

♪

- And he must have led a wild life,

'cause you can imagine-- - Right.

- He owned a one-room hotel,

and he'd move the hotel. He'd take it down--

- Oh, yeah, and float it on a barge.

- And float it on a barge and then move it

to a better area. - And they served

more than food,

'cause-- - Right, right, right.

- You could satisfy all your appetites.

- He must have led some wild life.

- Booze, beds, and women.

- Right, and se-- - But he got rich.

- It had to be, uh-- but he did well.

- Yeah. - And he was--

he was a great guy, from what I hear.

I mean, he was--he was-- must have been terrific.

♪

- In his early '30s,

Friedrich goes back to Germany,

and he has a few things on his mind.

♪

One is to find a wife.

He's looking for a lovely German woman

to marry, and he discovers

Elizabeth Christ.

♪

The two fall in love

and were eventually married.

[somber music]

In 1905, they return to New York.

She's carrying her son,

Donald's father,

Fredrick.

Friedrich is not going to operate

a saloon-slash-restaurant- slash-house of ill repute.

He is going to become a businessman,

and his business is going to be real estate.

♪

Friedrich is looking out

on the world that is New York City

and searching for a frontier.

Just as there was a railroad being built to Whitehorse,

in the Yukon,

he sees that the place to be

is Queens.

The frontier is going to be reached

by the Queensboro Bridge.

This is a mighty edifice

that is going to literally open up

to the crush of people

interested in the suburbs.

The people need homes,

and he decides that it's a wonderful opportunity

for the real estate man on the make.

♪

♪

- In the spring of 1918,

young Fred, Donald's father, is 12 years old.

♪

He went out for a walk with his father.

As they're walking along,

his father says he's not feeling well...

♪

And within hours,

he's died.

♪

Eventually, it becomes clear

that what's killed him

was the influenza epidemic

that's sweeping the country in 1918

and has claimed millions of lives.

[desolate music]

- you can imagine the sense of siege

and worry

about how you were going to survive.

Fred--he was the oldest son, and as the oldest son,

he had to step into this role

and take care of things.

- Of course, their lives were drastically changed.

- Fred Trump Sr.'s experience

was in some ways, a classic, uh,

borough ethnic, uh, story.

His childhood was foreshortened,

so he worked hard,

and that kind of an upbringing

can make you, or it can break you.

It made him.

- My father was the greatest,

'cause he taught me everything.

He was very knowledgeable.

He was a very smart guy.

He was a very good negotiator,

and he taught me a lot,

and I learned a lot from my father, from Fred.

♪

- At the age of 17,

Fred built his first home.

He took the profits from that to build another,

and the profits from that for another,

and pretty soon, the family business

was taking off.

♪

- At the height of the Depression, 1934,

with a good deal of homelessness,

the federal government

is trying to address this issue by creating

the Federal Housing Administration.

- The Congress has made it easier

for private capital to build modest homes

and low-rental dwellings.

- By seeding all this money,

by backing all these loans,

the FHA creates this whirlwind of development.

♪

- This was the beginning

of the Trump empire.

- The FHA would be responsible

for the funding

of some of Fred's biggest projects.

♪

Without the FHA, there is no Fred Trump.

- From the beginning of the FHA

until the end of the 1930s,

he built thousands of homes.

He was touted as the Henry Ford

of home-building at one point,

because he had figured out how to do this

as economically as possible.

♪

- Donald Trump grew up in a part of Queens

called Jamaica Estates,

which is not what we generally think of

when we think of the boroughs in New York City.

♪

- Donald's house,

the first time I saw it in Jamaica Estates,

was huge.

♪

It had six giant, white, two-story pillars,

and had an under-the-house garage.

- 23 rooms

and even a kind of coat of arms over the doo.

- I was incredibly blown away.

Today, I could say

it was a mega-mansion.

♪

- Donald Trump is the middle of three boys

in a family of five children,

and his older brother, Freddy,

was kind of his hero.

He was the sibling that Donald Trump

looked up to the most.

- He was such an amazing guy,

and the best personality,

best-looking guy you'll ever see, and...

he was smart. - Yeah.

- He had everything, but he was

a very handsome guy.

- He was a guy with a great sense of humor,

always fun to be around.

♪

We went to the Trump house often,

but we never went through the front door.

We always went through the garage,

because Mr. Trump

would rather not have us around.

I think he just thought that, uh,

Fred was wasting his time with friends

and should be doing more serious things.

♪

- In the 1950s, the Trumps are one

of the wealthiest families in America.

Fred Sr. set the standard,

set the expectations,

and they were very high.

This was not a "let's go out in the backyard

and play catch" kind of dad.

This was a "do as I say,"

tough, old-fashioned father.

Donald Trump was taught

that life is a competition.

You must win. You must be tough.

♪

- Fred Trump saw the world

as one of winners and losers,

a very binary approach to life,

and he impressed upon his children

the idea that they simply had to be winners.

- His father was a brutal man.

I think that Donald

got used to being treated

in a totally businesslike

and transactional way.

He himself describes

the relationship with his father

as businesslike.

- To the boys, he says,

"You are killers and you are kings."

♪

Fred means "kings by divine right."

There is a sense in the Trump family

that we are genetically superior.

- I think you have a natural ability

at things. I'm a big believer in--in--

- Nature. - No, n-not nature.

I'm a big believer in natural ability.

Genetically, some people

can handle pressure better than others.

I knew numerous people that committed suicide.

So the one thing I learned about myself,

uh, is that I have a very unique ability

to handle pressure. Honestly, in my opinion,

that's a genetic thing. People don't know about me--

I have very low blood pressure.

I have the blood pressure of a great athlete.

I have very low blood pressure.

♪

- There is a real belief

that Trumps are destined to rule,

and they got the message,

and the message was that you were supposed to prevail

at all costs.

♪

- Fred Trump, Jr. would talk

about wanting to go into the family business

because of his admiration for his father,

and was very, very clear

that he wanted to be the next head of the company.

- Donald was not the young man

destined to fulfill

the job of running the Trump Organization.

- But he refused to be ignored.

He was the kid that the family

had to pay attention to,

if only because he was an enormous discipline problem.

♪

- Donald and I were cutups in school.

We used to throw spitballs at each other

and play bumper chairs in class,

pull girls' hair,

and that's how come we got detentions,

which I politely nicknamed

as DTs--

detentions for Donny Trump.

- He was someone who, uh, acted out at school.

- Birthday parties, he would grab the cake

and throw it around.

- He was angry. He would glue

his brothers' and sisters' blocks together.

- He was disliked by many of his teachers.

- Threw erasers around,

actually hit his teacher under the eye with one.

- He took pride in being, uh, this tough guy

who pushed back against other kids,

or against teachers who would try to tell him

what to do.

♪

- He was, in short,

a terror.

♪

- I was a very, um, rebellious kind of person.

I don't like to talk about it, actually,

but I was a very rebellious person,

and, um, very set in my ways.

- I don't like that guy.

♪

- Loved to fight.

I always loved to fight.

All types of fights.

Any kind of fight, I loved it,

including physical,

and I was always the best athlete,

some--something that nobody knew about me.

♪

- Okay, throw the ball.

- During this period, "West Side Story"

was big on Broadway,

and was soon to become a movie.

- All right!

♪

- The Sharks and the Jets

were in the imaginations of kids in New York City.

- As Donald tells the story,

after he had seen "West Side Story,"

he and his buddy

bought themselves some switchblades.

♪

- Donald wants everyone to believe

that he's a tough guy.

He promoted this image of himself.

"I'm gonna play with knives.

I'm gonna do things that nobody else does."

He was impossible to control.

♪

- Then his dad found the switchblades,

and that was the last straw.

♪

- Fred Trump was a man who kept score.

He kept score every time the school called,

every time a letter came home,

every time he found something--

the knife collection that Donald acquires.

He saw it as a reflection on him.

♪

Something must be done

about it,

and his solution

was going to be extreme.

♪

♪

- At the end of seventh grad, I went away to camp.

Donald went away to do whatever Donald did,

and when I came back in September

with all my friends, I noticed a seat

in homeroom that was not occupied

where Donald usually sat,

and I asked the homeroom teacher,

"Where's Donnie?"

♪

- Against his will, Donald Trump

is sent to military school by his father.

In 1959,

he arrives at New York Military Academy

about an hour north of New York City.

He's 13 years old.

- I think that had to be

the most miserable existence

Donald Trump could imagine for himself.

- He has to wear a uniform.

He no longer is driven around

by the family chauffeur.

He is in the dorms with everyone else,

in the barracks.

♪

- When I got here, it was "Hello. Good morning.

Now you're in military school, and your life has changed."

- All these normal things that go on

in a normal kid's life--

they came to a screeching halt.

- Your first year, you were the low man on the totem pole,

and you're responsible for learning new guy rules.

There was mental hazing.

There was physical hazing,

You had to throw yourself against a wall

if an upperclassman came by

and, you know, apologize for being in his way.

You might get, uh, a forearm to the chest.

You might get paddled.

You might get hit with a broomstick,

a couple of right hooks on your shoulder,

two or three upperclassmen

screaming in your face for 15 minutes.

- Before you know it, you're beat up.

♪

- Donald went through new guy rules

with Major Ted Dobias.

This is a tough guy.

- He was part of the Allied invasion of Italy,

and at the end of the war,

saw Mussolini swinging from a noose.

- They used to come here. They were

flunkies-- they call them flunkies--

and they grew up to be somebody.

♪

- Donald ran up against Major Dobias

like running into a stone wall.

It's not flexible,

and if Major Dobias would see an attitude,

that attitude ended very, very quickly.

- He was a rough guy,

physically rough and mentally rough.

In those days, they'd smack the hell out of you,

really getting in your face,

I mean, like, big-league.

He said things like "Stand up,"

and I'm going, "Heh,

give me a [bleep] break."

- [laughs] - And this guy came at me--

you would never believe it.

These were guys that didn't take [bleep].

♪

You could go two ways:

you can fight the system.

You're not gonna win,

'cause you're not gonna beat guys like this.

- Right. - Or you can acclimate

and deal with the system

and evolve in the system,

and I did that.

♪

- Theodore Dobias was a taskmaster

far beyond anything

that Donald had seen from Fred Trump,

and yet, he kind of takes to it.

He liked the discipline. He enjoys the hierarchy.

He didn't like being bossed around--

he never had--

but he liked the idea

that the kids who were on the receiving end

of all of that aggression

would, in fairly short order,

get to deliver it themselves.

- For Donald, the idea was to play the game

and win the game, turn around,

and set the terms yourself.

He literally bowed and scraped

before Ted Dobias

in order to win his favor,

and he discovered that it worked.

♪

It was Donald who wound up an officer.

♪

- You know, I went in there as a wise guy.

- You were little. You were 13 years old.

- 13, but I went in as a wise guy

that... was a little difficult.

By the time I graduated, I was, like,

top of the military heap.

♪

- Every year,

we would send a certain number of cadets

down to New York to march in the Columbus Day parade.

♪

- So on Columbus Day, 1963,

Donald Trump led the parade.

♪

- In Trump's mind, this return to the city

and having, clearly, a position of authority--

this is a bit of a retort to his father

and a chance to say to his father,

"Look what I've become.

"You thought that you needed to send me away

"because I wasn't heading down the right road.

"Look what I've become. Look what I can do.

"Look how I can lead. Look how I can be that winner

that you demanded."

♪

It was a way of taking that step

into Manhattan, of going where his father

would not go,

and he was determined to show

that he could take the family and its legacy

to a new, tougher, higher place.

♪

- One of the tactical offices at the time

was a man named Colonel Anthony "Ace" Castellano.

As they were walking up the street,

Donald looked over,

and he goes, "You know, Ace, I'd really like to own

some of this property someday."

♪

- My father was a very good builder...

- Mm-hmm.

- And he really did a good job.

He would build a building,

and next door, they'd build a building,

and my father's houses were better...

♪

And he'd build them cheaper,

so he'd spend less money building a better house,

and he'd sell it for more.

♪

- In the mid-1960s,

Fred Trump starts to think at this point,

about moving beyond

more modestly-sized projects

and build on a scale

unlike anything Fred Trump has built before,

named Trump Village.

♪

- Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Wait a minute. Hold it.

Trump Village, a middle-income co-op

in Coney Island, housing 2,800 families.

♪

- Trump Village Apartments.

How do you get in here?

- [indistinct] Move it. - Is it worth waiting?

- Yes. My mother lives

in a terrible apartment.

- They say it will take six or seven years,

or maybe eight.

- Well, I'll take that chance.

- This is a project that ends up

being far greater in scope

than anything he's done before.

His previous projects--

the buildings were, at most, five, six stories,

and here, he really sets his sights much higher,

literally...

♪

And it's also the first time

that Fred Trump

labels a project

clearly with the family name.

♪

- Trump Village would emerge

as one of Fred Trump's

greatest public successes,

but ironically,

it also was gonna be the source

of one of his greatest public humiliations.

♪

In 1966,

New York State began probing

into what was going on at Trump Village.

- Fred Trump is hauled in for questioning

for misusing funds,

over-billing the government

for equipment, for services,

related to Trump Village.

- It includes him charging the state

about $8,000 apiece for tile scrapers

that normally cost $500.

♪

More glaringly,

he overcharges the state

for about $6.6 million in fees.

The net result is it's very clear

Fred Trump is gouging

the state of New York

and New York residents

to line his own pockets.

One of the commissioners finally says,

"Is there any way

"we can prevent someone like this

from ever getting a state contract again?"

♪

- Here he is, the patriarch of the family,

somebody they looked up to.

To have him being publicly called out like that

was extremely embarrassing to them.

- Neighbors, schoolmates--

people were asking questions,

that they were seen

as unpatriotic, possibly criminal.

- The 1966 state investigation

really had a--

I would say a devastating impact

on Fred Trump.

♪

Trump Village really becomes

the last significant project

that he builds.

♪

- Fred spent three decades building his company,

and he was now looking for an heir

who he felt was worthy

of inheriting that mantle

and moving the company forward,

but when Donald graduates from college,

the expectation is that he's gonna join

the family business

to work first for his father,

and then, eventually,

for his brother Fred,

who is considered the heir apparent.

♪

- I think that what Fred expected

of Fred Jr.

was something, that it was--

it was almost a, um--

a classical king's approach

to raising sons.

"If this son is worthy of me,

he can rise to the throne."

Uh, not every son is going to thrive

in that kind of environment.

♪

- There was a nervous quality about Fred.

♪

He was always on.

♪

I wondered, in retrospect,

whether some of his anxiety

was, uh, caused

by the constant pressure

of trying to please his father.

- The point of no return

in his relationship with his father

was the attempted development

of property in Coney Island.

♪

- I remember Steeplechase vividly.

It had a--a face with a big smile,

with lots of teeth showing.

It was a happy place.

It was a playground,

and it was a reminder

that Coney Island was this haven

for people in New York.

Off the subways came streamig a million people

on a weekend.

A million people coming to Coney Island,

and many of them were coming to Steeplechase.

♪

- By the '60s,

Coney Island is in decline,

so Fred Trump buys the Steeplechase very quickl,

largely under the radar

of the folks in Coney Island.

He wants to build housing there.

Problem is, Fred Trump fails to get

the necessary zoning change

that would enable him to build this housing.

♪

The business community

in Coney Island

is desperate to have Steeplechase preserved.

Fred Trump knew that if it got landmarked,

uh, there was nothing much more he could do with the site.

♪

- Fred got Fred Jr. involved in accelerating

their demolition of this property

before they had permission to build on it.

Fred Jr. is trying his hardest

to work with his father

to demonstrate that he's

as tough and as smart

as his father.

♪

- So Fred Trump organizes

a wrecking party of sorts...

- To celebrate the development of apartments

along the seashore

and the success of the Trump Organization.

- Invites all these people to come

and basically hurl bricks

through the great glass windows,

through the enormous painting on the glass

of the great smiling face

of Steeplechase.

♪

- The thought that you would encourage people

to throw bricks, to destroy that smile,

that face that was such an integral part

of growing up in Coney Island--

I mean, it's unbelievable.

♪

In the end, it was a public relations nightmare

for the Trumps.

Fred Jr. could never do

the political work

and the other logistical work

that was required to make the development real,

and the property, even today,

is not the site of any housing.

♪

And after the fiasco at Steeplechase,

it was clear to all of the Trumps

that Fred Jr. was not going to fulfill

his father's expectations.

Early in life,

Donald looked up to Fred Jr.

as the big brother.

He was a very charming,

very caring young man...

♪

And yet, Donald became very competitive

with Fred Jr.

and really showed him no mercy.

♪

- If I were going to make a movie of this,

I would see a younger brother

trying to get primacy in a family.

♪

This became

an increasingly terrible situation.

♪

Fred Trump would belittle Fred Jr.

In meetings, he would sadistically attack him,

saying "What do you know?"

♪

- In the early 1970s,

Fred Sr. takes the fateful move.

He makes Donald president

of the Trump Organization.

What Fred Sr. is communicating here

is unmistakable.

Donald has made it.

He is the future.

Fred Jr. has not made it,

and he's never going to make it.

♪

He had talked so much

about working for his dad

and taking over the company.

I think that the father

at some point

decided that Fred

was... a loser.

♪

I've gotta believe

that, uh--

uh, Fred took that rejection

very hard.

♪

- Fred essentially drove his son, Fred Jr.,

out of the family,

and I think Fred ended up,

uh, a lost soul.

- He had his own dream:

to be a commercial airline pilot.

♪

In the end, Fred left the Trump Organization

and went off to train as a pilot.

♪

- He was having a tremendous hard time,

and he started drinking,

and he got hooked on alcohol...

♪

And he became

a very serious alcoholic,

and it was rough for him.

♪

- I've thought, uh,

long and hard about Fred's life,

and, uh, wonder how much of a role

that, uh, rejection from his father

may have played in his-- in his sad life.

♪

- I like to learn from other people's mistakes.

I like to learn from my mistakes,

but I like to learn more

from other people's mistakes,

because why should I have to make a mistake

if I can learn from somebody else?

I've learned so many lessons

by watching other people make mistakes--

some fatal and some not fatal,

and some not even near-fatal,

but I study other people's mistakes.

♪

- Fred Jr.

did not do much of anything

the way that his father expected.

His whole approach to life

was contrary to the old man's...

♪

And Donald observed Fred Sr.'s impatience

with Fred Jr.

♪

It's identified by him

as a sign of Fred's weakness.

Donald's takeaway from this

is that it's an example

of what he should never do in his own life,

and he sees, "Here is this big opportunity for me

that my brother squandered."

♪

♪

- When I was growing up,

the signs on the Belt Parkway

didn't say "To Manhattan."

They said "To New York City,"

so you had a very strong sense

that Manhattan

was New York City,

and you were not.

You're in the outer boroughs.

You grew up with this chip on your shoulder.

- The city so nice,

they had to name it twice.

Well, New York, New York is Manhattan.

It's the lake in the park.

It's the skyline after dark.

It's the Empire State,

it's the monument to world peace,

the UN,

and if you become

a power broker in Manhattan,

you are the man.

♪

- From an early age, Donald Trump knew

there was more than Queens.

He felt constricted

by, uh, his father's world

of the outer boroughs.

♪

- Imagine a young Donald Trump.

He leaves this mansion

that he lives in with his parents

in Jamaica Estates

and every morning,

makes his way down south

along Belt Parkway

to Avenue Z in Brooklyn,

not far from the waste treatment plant,

and into the shabby offices

of the Trump Organization.

- He was trying so hard

to get away from being the son

of a developer from Coney Island,

a father who operated

out of a very modest,

almost trailer-like affair

filled with cigar store Indians.

♪

- Donald Trump hated going to that job.

He was there to collect rents.

He was there to process the paperwork.

He was there to check in

and keep an eye on the contractors.

This was not where he wanted to be.

- You're a young guy. - Right.

- This is early '70s.

You're barely 30 years old

when you start this. - Right.

Younger. Younger.

- 28. - Yeah.

- What are you thinking? What are you--

are you thinking, "I've really

got to get into Manhattan"?

- I worked in Brooklyn for my father.

♪

You know, I did very well.

I did a lot,

but I always wanted to be in Manhattan.

♪

My father was a very good builder...

- Mm-hmm. - But he built

on his own territory. He felt comfortable

in Brooklyn and Queens.

He never wanted to enter Manhattan.

He didn't think it was his place.

♪

- For Donald Trump,

Manhattan--it's like Oz.

He's staring across the East River at Oz,

and he wants a piece of that.

♪

- And he gets a one-room studio

and he moves into Manhattan.

He's gonna become a player.

- He had his Cadillac convertible

with personalized license plate,

"DJT," and he would go bombing

up and down the avenues,

looking for properties to buy,

thinking, you know, "If I could just start small"

doing in Manhattan what his father had done

in the outer boroughs.

Real estate prices were going down,

and so it was

open territory

for a real estate developer

who was eager to make his mark.

♪

He was generating and grooming

this image of himself

as a playboy millionaire,

and so he would go out to the clubs

that were hot at that moment.

♪

- Le Club was a place

where you would roll up to the bar

hoping to meet model,

so you can see

that a Donald Trump would be attracted

to that kind of a scene.

♪

- I was one of the very first

female members of Le Club,

and it was glamorous and fun,

and they played fabulous music.

It was the hottest place in town.

It had a very intimate dance floor.

All the women were chic

and well-dressed and the men were handsome,

wearing either suits or tuxedos,

and you could really fall in love

with anybody in this place.

♪

And I remember one night,

I went over to the maître d',

and I said, "who is that man?"

He said, "He's a new member.

His name is Donald Trump."

I thought he was extremely handsome.

He had a way about him that just

caught my eye immediately.

- You went to Le Club. - Le Club, right.

- The greatest I've ever been to.

The level of beauty was--

Le Club, to me,

was the greatest club that I've ever

been associated-- - In the world?

- I-I've been to every-- I've been everywhere.

♪

- Trump would hang out there

in order to be noticed, but also

to get to know the movers and shakers

of this new world of Manhattan

that he was diving into.

- Donald very much set his sights

on becoming a player

in the hierarchy of New York real estate,

but before he could make his move

in Manhattan,

a problem arrived on the doorstep

of his father.

♪

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit

against the Trump Organization,

alleging that they had discriminated

against black and Latin families

wanting to live in the buildings

that his father had built.

♪

This was a big problem

that could jeopardize any deal.

♪

- The 1973 lawsuit alleges rampant discrimination

on the part of the Trump Organization.

We're not talking

about discrimination

here and there.

We're talking about systemic,

structural discrimination.

♪

- And this is the kitchen here.

- I was contacted and asked

to be a tester

for the, uh,

Beach Haven apartments,

which were owned by Trump Management.

♪

- There was a sign outside

that said "Apartment for rent,"

and this articulate,

well-dressed black man

had applied for the apartment,

and the superintendent--

he said to the man,

uh, "I'm sorry, but the apartment is taken."

- As I remember, there was a gentleman,

and he said, "I have none to show,

"because there's nothing

vacant right now."

Right after I--I left,

they sent a white person.

- The super greeted me with open arms

like he was just waiting for me,

and he handed me the lease,

and I just ran,

and when I got outside,

I met up with the commissioner,

and we walked back into the building,

and at this point,

the superintendent--

all he could say was, uh,

"Well, uh, I'm just doing

what my boss told me to do."

- You feel outraged.

You feel insulted.

I'm a young black man

who has been to college,

who has a job,

so you do feel a sense

of anger at the fact

that society still allows

this sort of thing to happen.

♪

- In 1973,

I went out to Trump Village

and tried to interview

as many people as I could...

♪

And we found out that if a person of color

did apply to live at Trump Village,

that on their application would be handwritten

a big C, for "colored."

♪

- Those applications

would then be put in a separate pile,

and those people

would be offered

either no apartment,

or they'd be offered a lesser apartment

at a lesser property.

The Justice Department comes after Donald Trump

and his father Fred,

accusing them of racial discrimination.

- And everyone around him, including his father,

is saying,

"Just settle, Donald.

Nobody beats the federal government."

♪

- As Donald Trump was deciding

whether to settle the racial bias case

on behalf of the company and his father,

he goes into Le Club,

he walks in,

and there's a man at a table,

and that man is Roy Cohn.

♪

The meeting between Roy Cohn and Donald Trump

began one of the most important relationships in Trump's life.

♪

- This fight, I have absolutely total confidence

is going to be won,

and won completely and totally.

- To this day, Roy Cohn is one

of the most controversial and hated people in America.

Mention his name, and people will throw things at you.

♪

- To Donald Trump, Roy Cohn is

exactly what his father had called a killer.

♪

- Donald Trump had two mentors:

his dad, who taught him

there are killers and losers,

and Roy Cohn, who said

even when you lose, you win.

Doesn't matter if it l-- you say it's a win

when it's a loss.

♪

- Roy Cohn, as a young man,

was chief counsel

to Senator Joseph McCarthy.

♪

McCarthy was the rabble-rousing senator

from Wisconsin

who rose to power on a lie.

- All Senator McCarthy has been trying to do

is expose the Communists.

- The lie was that there were hundreds of people

in the government who were Communist.

It was all fake.

♪

- Roy helped Senator McCarthy

invent things, s-- out of whole cloth,

invent, you know, Communist conspiracies

and Communists in the State Department

and all that. Roy pushed that through.

- Are you now, or have you ever been,

a member of the Communist-- - Wait a minute!

Let me answer the question! - Ask the next question.

- Are you asking me

to violate

the Constitutional guarantee...

- It does not violate the Constitution

to answer a question. - It does.

♪

- Years before Twitter,

years before cable news,

Roy knew that he could get headlines,

he could make allegations,

and that would stick.

♪

- But McCarthy and Roy Cohn

were driven out of Washington

in an utter state of disgrace

when they were belittled by Joseph Welch

in a beautiful moment of American theater

when he said...

- Have you no sense of decency, sir?

At long last,

have you left

no sense of decency?

♪

- When Roy came to New York,

he played it like a win,

and he rose to become

one of the most powerful fixers

in New York of the 20th century.

♪

- Roy and Trump met at Le Club,

which was, in those days,

the place to be,

and Donald proceeds to tell him

that the U.S. Justice Department

is going after the Trump family really hard

for discriminating against people

in their--in the housing they own,

and everybody's telling Trump,

"Just settle it."

Roy is the first one who says to Trump,

"What are you talking about?

"Go after the Justice Department.

"Counter-attack.

You can win this."

- Roy Cohn was a great lawyer.

You talk about a controversial guy.

I mean, he was a controversial guy.

- Unbelievable. - But if he was your friend,

he would fight to the death.

- Did you know his reputation?

- I-I-I did, but his reputation

was tough. I needed a tough lawyer.

You know, I was dealing with tough people,

and Roy was very good,

and Roy, for me, did a great job.

♪

- Donald and Fred Trump,

along with Roy Cohn,

called a press conference.

- He did something preposterous,

which is they said

that they were suing

the Justice Department

for defamation.

♪

- Donald says "This isn't about racism.

"I don't want them in there

because they're all welfare recipients."

- Nothing could be further from the truth.

It was just a made-up story.

- He knew it was an effective public statement

to make to spin the public debate

in a different way.

This was all Roy Cohn.

It's Roy Cohn

who's got Trump at his knee,

telling him how the world works.

♪

- Roy understood how to generate news

and how the media worked,

and he understood the interplay

between public events

and media coverage.

♪

Trump marveled

at Cohn's understanding

of how to sell an idea,

both his legal tactics

and the coverage of the matters

in which he was involved.

♪

- I remember

the first big argument

in court.

Roy Cohn speaks,

uninterrupted,

for 45 minutes.

Donald Trump was very flippant,

and one of his comments

during one of the breaks was, you know,

"You don't want to live with them, either."

♪

- Roy assures Donald

that they can go into this and win.

They don't.

They lose. They have to settle

with the federal government.

- The Trump Organization--

they say, "We didn't admit guilt.

"We didn't say that we did anything wrong.

"We settled with the Justice Department

just to make it go away."

To this day, you know,

you ask Donald Trump about that,

and he says, "Well, we won that."

♪

- Of course, that's not true.

It was a big victory for the Justice Department.

♪

- I think that case, you know, to this day,

is in--in Trump's mind.

He hated being accused of discrimination.

He hated the idea of the government

going after him and his father...

♪

And he holds animus towards the government

to this day.

♪

[sirens blaring]

- Standard & Poor's bond rating service

said today it is absolutely certain

that New York City will default on its debt.

- President Ford has been against

federal help for New York,

saying it would establish a costly precedent.

- Default if you must,

but don't expect help from the federal government.

- People were fleeing the city,

and that was when Ford said "Drop dead,"

the famous article. - Right.

- Yeah. - You know, it wasn't,

like, that competitive.

I was wanting to come in, and other people

were afraid to touch it. - Going the other way.

- Everybody was on the sidelines

- They were all gone or bust,

and--and the city was doing terribly.

Crime was through the roof.

[sighs] I didn't think about it,

because I was counter to the market.

I was very counter to the-- - Yeah.

- I've always been counterintuitive.

♪

- The Manhattan that Donald Trump

crossed the bridge to fulfill his dreams

was a Manhattan in pretty sorry shape.

♪

- Crime was at record height.

People were afraid.

The city was near bankruptcy.

I wrote the column for the "Daily News,"

writing about New York.

The attitude in New York

was a depressing attitude.

It was a feeling that,

"Oh, my God, this city's really in danger."

♪

- In other news, the Penn Central,

which has been running in the red

for a long time now,

decided today to sell off some choice real estate,

including ten blocks in downtown Manhattan.

They hope to bring in about $1 billion in the deal.

♪

- Penn Central--most people thought of it

as two railroad companies,

but it was really

a landowning company

that happened to have some railroads.

- Railyards were on the market.

Grand Central was on the market,

and even hotel companies.

It was more or less

a fire sale.

♪

- Donald Trump stumbles

upon an announcement in the press

that the Commodore Hotel, one of the grand old

hotel properties of Manhattan,

is sitting there, unwanted.

- So it was a big deal

when Donald said he was gonna restore

a cruddy hotel on 42nd Street.

- At a time when New Yorkers were reeling,

were insecure, were frightened,

here's Donald Trump on the scene,

bold, optimistic.

He was kind of a rare

ray of light

in a--in a pretty dark scene.

♪

- He began to play all the players

against each other.

To get the property, he went to Penn Central and said,

"Hey, look, I have the agreement of Hyatt,

"and they're gonna make this a Hyatt hotel,

so you should give it to me. I'll renovate it."

He didn't have the agreement of Hyatt,

but he said he did.

Then he went to Hyatt and said,

"Hey, I'm the one with the control

of the property from Penn Central,"

which he didn't have.

They each bought the story,

so now he had both the land

and the name Hyatt

and their cooperation.

♪

Now he needed money.

He goes to the bank and says, "Hey, I've got

this tax abatement from the government."

He didn't have it at that point,

but he persuaded the bank

that he did,

in the ultimate showman kind of way.

He was being part operator,

part savvy businessman.

♪

- Donald Trump came in to see me,

and he wanted me to exempt his hotel

from real estate taxes,

which I had the power to do,

but I said no,

because I did not believe,

and do not believe,

that a Hyatt hotel on 42nd Street

would not earn enough money to pay taxes.

When I said no, he was extremely unpleasant.

- Donald got very angry, and threatened

to have him fired.

- He told me what to do to myself.

I told him he'd better get out,

or I'd have him arrested.

- I think he was worried.

He needs every little bit of help

that he can get.

Donald didn't have a lot,

but he did have one thing:

his father,

so he went to his father

to help him out.

His father was very close

to both the governor

and to the mayor,

and so he had entrée

when he wanted to put forward

this idea of getting a big tax break,

and so, thanks to his political connections,

he was able to get the support

of both the city and the state.

- Controller?

- Donald Trump,

through a complicated series

of absolute moxie maneuvers,

managed to get

a huge, huge tax break.

- It's been a long, hard fight. How do you feel?

- Well, I'm very happy, and I think

the city of New York is going to be very happy.

We're gonna do something now

which is going to be a great stride forward

for New York City.

- Donald Trump

is a street fighter,

and Donald Trump wants to win.

He is the consummate, constant, negotiator.

- People asked me, "How come?

How is it that you got 40 years of tax abatement?"

and I'd always say, "Because I didn't ask for 50."

- But there was more work to be done.

♪

Donald Trump, upon the city's demand,

was required to submit

the contract that indicated

he had permission from the Penn Central railroad,

so Donald said, "Here's my contract

for the Penn Central."

No one actually looked at the last page

to notice it had never been signed.

♪

So he moved forward on a project

of immense scale, guaranteeing the city

that he had the legal authority to do it,

and he did not have the authority.

♪

- And nobody noticed. - And nobody noticed?

- Nobody noticed.

They just said, "Could we see your contract?"

so I sent them a contract that was signed by me

and nobody else, and nobody ever--nobody said,

"Nobody ever signed the other..."

- All right, if they had said, "Hey, what--what's going on?"

would you have copped to it? Would you have said,

"Well, you didn't tell me--" - I don't know what

I would've done, and I went through

all of that stuff to get the tax abatements

that had never been given in the history of New York

'cause the city was in trouble, right?

Where did you hear that story?

- I... got my in--sources.

♪

- It's really the model

that sets up everything that follows,

the idea of playing one player against the other,

a fair bit of hucksterism mixed with some business savvy

to create the buzz, the PR.

All of that sense of Trump as a force

comes out of the Hyatt deal.

♪

- Amid a lot of fanfare,

the Grand Hyatt held its grand opening today.

The mayor and the governor of New York

were among those on hand

for the ribbon-cutting.

[cheers and applause]

- Hyatt Regency

is now an architectural gem

for all the world to see.

- Hyatt is a fantastic outfit,

and all of this is going to combine

to make probably the most successful hotel--

one of them--in the country, we feel.

- It was fabulous.

He did it fast and he did it efficient.

♪

It really gave him a sense of pride

and a sense that he knew

exactly what he was doing.

The Commodore was the stepping stone

to the Trump Tower.

♪

- Friend of mine in the real estate industry

said "You have the greatest ability

"to get great locations

of any human being I've ever seen."

It's true.

No matter what it is,

if you look at any of my projects,

I have the best locations.

♪

- One day, so the story goes,

Donald is looking for an ideal location

to put up what would become a signature project.

He's criss-crossing Manhattan in his car,

looking for that ideal situation.

♪

- Suddenly, reaching the corner

of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street,

and noticing the Bonwit Teller building,

an old Art Deco ten-story department store.

Here is the opportunity

Donald is looking for,

and it is at that corner

that he decides

"This is where I'm going to stake my future."

♪

- The finest piece of real estate,

considered to be the finest piece of real estate

in the world, is at the corner

of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street.

That's the Tiffany corner of the world.

- "The New York Times" is reporting

that Bonwit's is being sold to Donald Trump,

and that the store could be closed by July.

♪

- Bonwit gives him a six-month

$25 million--the option

to purchase the property.

He was constantly borrowing money

from his father during this period

and he had to get a partner

Equitable bank,

because he can't do this alone.

♪

He just doesn't have the money

to build his signature tower.

♪

So now he's got a mortgage,

the interest clock is ticking,

he's got a partner

that's taking the bulk of the profits.

He needs every little bit of help

that he thinks he can get,

so he, again, latched onto tax breaks.

♪

- Donald Trump now faces

the biggest skirmish in his battle

to build Trump Tower.

He's going to come into conflict

with the mayor of New York City.

- The positions that I take

are not ideological.

They are reasonable, they are sensible,

and that's why people support me.

- Look, Ed Koch was a totally overrated mayor.

He was a bad guy-- - A few times, you said--

- And you can quote me. - Right.

- Ed Koch was a bad guy. He was a total bully.

All Ed Koch was concerned about

was press.

In other words,

he wanted to make sure he looked good.

Ed, go [bleep] yourself. You're a piece of [bleep].

♪

- The city was offering tax breaks to developers,

but they were not thinking

that this is the kind of tax break

they would give away for luxury apartments.

- This was a program that would be used

to turn a vacant lot

into an apartment building

for the middle class.

- But here comes this application

from Donald Trump,

and the city turns him down.

He's outraged.

Trump sues the city,

so now he's at loggerheads

with the Koch administration,

and that potentially meant a long battle

that could go on for years.

♪

- One of the beneficiaries of the abatements

is real estate developer Donald Trump.

- I was entitled to that abatement,

and I am by law entitled to that abatement.

- Councilman Henry Stern

and Councilman Robert Wagner Jr.

opposed it as an excessive gift of public funds.

♪

I did a weekly show

between Ruth Messenger,

who's the city council member

who was very much against

giving any tax breaks to businessmen,

particularly businessmen like him,

Donald Trump,

and Trump believed

in tax breaks, particularly for him.

- The program has become

a corporate welfare program.

- I really think, before you make

those statements on the air,

that you should go back

and check your facts and figures.

- Donald, the statute says very specifically

that in order to qualify,

the site on which the residential building

is going up

is either vacant,

predominantly vacant,

or underutilized. The site on which--

- You don't think a ten-story building

is an underutilization

when I'm building a 68-story building?

- Absolutely not. - Oh, I see.

Okay, okay. - Correct.

Tell me about it, dear.

- I had the grand time

between these two. It was a knife fight.

- Ruth, I'd like you to-- - We deny the benefit.

- This ridiculous. To listen to this is just--

- I mean, look, at the end of the day,

there's a toughness to him.

I mean, this is a very tough guy.

I mean, he can take a lot of bullets.

He can catch bullets in his teeth.

He can eat broken glass.

A punch-back sort of a person

with a armadillo skin.

- This is just so ridiculous.

You've asked me onto a program

I'm supposed to be,

and I listen to this, that--

- It's a calling card.

Attack the person personally.

Don't give them a quarter. Don't be nice.

Don't be reasonable. Attack them.

You have to destroy them,

because they're gonna destroy you.

- If you spent the same time

trying to clean up our subways and clean up

the city of crime-- - I do.

- Well, I don't know that you do, or if you do,

you're certainly doing a very ineffective job.

♪

- Sound familiar?

♪

- When Trump finally got all the permissions he needed

and was ready to roll on the construction

of Trump Tower, his pride and joy,

he needed to get someone

who actually knows how to build a building.

- Donald and I sort of worked together

while I was working on the Hyatt.

I was at a fundraiser with my husband,

and he said to my husband,

uh, "I'm gonna hire her. She's gonna work for me.

I'm gonna double her salary," [laughs]

and that's how I learned about Trump Tower.

♪

- She was the first woman to run the construction

of a major skyscraper.

Trump was always proud of the fact

that he'd put a woman in that position

and entrusted her

with this project from beginning to end.

♪

- Barbara Res had a very tough job.

It was a culture of macho men.

A lot of these guys are chauvinistic pigs,

you know, to be quite honest.

- There were no women in the construction industry.

You could count them on one hand,

er, and even if you lost a few fingers.

♪

He said something to me.

He said, "Men are better than women,

"but a good woman

is better than ten good men,"

and he meant that as a compliment.

♪

Donald trusted me implicitly,

and he respected people

that told him things the way they were,

and it was not easy to do that,

because when you stood up to him,

you got--you got hammered.

♪

He said to me, "You know, you're a killer,"

and--[laughs]

I later learned that his father

actually used that expression with him,

that people should be killers.

♪

I thought, and I quickly confirmed it--

he was very inexperienced.

He really didn't know much about construction at all,

but I thought that he was intelligent.

Didn't have to tell him a hundred times,

and with him, that was a good thing,

'cause he could only listen once,

if you were lucky, and you got him to listen

to a whole story.

♪

- Once the project got the green light,

Donald Trump confronted the next problem,

which was, "How do we take down

this ten-story department store?"

- Most famously, that building had this facade

of gorgeous sculptures

that were the hallmark of Bonwit Teller,

one of the most prized architectural features

on Fifth Avenue.

- These stone relief sculptures

at the top of the building

were very stylized,

very naked, dancers

with long scarves.

♪

- Trump made a deal

to remove this piece of art

carefully from the façade of the building

and give it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

and this would be a compromise.

The--the great landmark art would be saved,

and Trump would be able to go ahead

and demolish the building.

♪

In order to get the demolition done cheaply,

Donald Trump, as he often did, found

the lowest-bidding company he could.

- He hired a Polish demolition company

which turned out to employ

immigrants who were undocumented.

- They were being paid, essentially,

less than $5 an hour, when they got cash,

'cause some of them said they were being paid in vodka.

♪

They did the work-- 12- to 18-hour days.

- And it's dangerous, dirty work.

You're dismantling concrete,

debris falling down on you.

- They had nowhere to live.

They were sleeping on the floor

of the Bonwit Teller store at night.

- And all of this was done at breakneck pace.

♪

- And then one afternoon, one of the directors

of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

gets a call at her office,

and she's told

Donald Trump is destroying the frieze.

♪

- I got into a taxi,

got into a classic

New York City traffic jam.

I was nine months pregnant at the time...

♪

But I got out of the cab

and I ran for ten blocks.

I'll never forget that run.

Got out on 56th Street.

♪

[debris clattering]

♪

And we watched them being jackhammered.

♪

I was furious. [laughs]

♪

The Trump Organization

could've asked the Met for help

in taking the pieces down and removing them...

♪

And they didn't.

♪

- You were recently the object

of a lot of controversy

because you ordered destroyed

some sculptures on the--

a building that you bought

that the Metropolitan Art Museum wanted.

Why did you have those destroyed, first of all,

and what happens to the look of the city?

- As an art building, or an Art Deco building,

it really was not worth very much,

and we did take it down,

and there was somewhat of an outcry,

but I think that's generally subsided.

♪

- He gets a bunch of bad publicity,

but in his mind, it's all good publicity,

because here he's seen as this force of progress,

this guy who's bulling his way through all this red tape

and all these fussy artist types

in order to get his building built,

and to k--get the commerce of New York moving again.

- Very carefully, Donald is putting

all the pieces in place

for this signature project,

but he's also borrowing money all over the place.

While he often portrays himself

as sort of a self-made man,

the only money he had

is what he borrowed from his father.

- Fred Trump was nervous.

He was co-signing all the loans.

He was the one. It was his money.

♪

- Fred Trump was involved

in the Trump Tower project.

That's how I met him. I remember, he was--

he didn't like me. I'm--let's put this way.

He hated me.

He hated the very notion

that a woman would be working in construction

to begin with, and much less

be in charge of a project

that was his son's project,

so, uh, we were like, "Ah! Ah!"

He would say, "Oh, no, that's all wrong.

You don't know what you're doing."

But I went to Donald. I said,

"You've got to get your fathr off of my back.

He's driving me crazy," and he--he said to me,

"Suck it up, baby," in so many words,

because, you know, he was putting up with him, too.

♪

- Most buildings, by the time

the Trump Tower was built,

were using steel to put structures up,

and what was unusual about Trump Tower

was that it was largely built out of concrete.

♪

- What we were doing was what's called a fast track,

which is you build it

before it's completely designed,

and it was a concrete building, which was great,

because you design it one day, and you can pour it the next.

♪

- Most of the contracting

in the construction industry in New York

was controlled, to a large extent,

by the mob,

specifically the concrete business.

- Business that you could call Mafia, Inc.

- They are said to run the most powerful

crime families in New York.

- Federal investigators say

the mob controls the concrete workers

in the construction industry.

♪

- My name is Michael Franzese,

and, uh, you can call me Michael.

That's fine.

- You know, former caporegime

in the Colombo crime family

is, uh, a normal moniker for me,

and, uh,

I guess for this purpose,

it's probably the best way to address it.

♪

Basically, the mob controlled

all the concrete business

in the city of New York.

♪

Because Trump Tower was a concrete building,

you know, it was a big score for us guys.

♪

You know, and I want to be clear.

I'm not saying that, you know,

Trump was in bed with the mob.

I'm not saying that he was one of our guys,

but he certainly had a deal with us.

I mean, he didn't have a choice,

so in that regard, he did.

♪

- In 1982, there was a major stoppage

among all the concrete providers.

- Everybody's worried.

A lot of developers are in a bind now.

There's a delay in their construction.

- When it occurred, we were in the process

of pouring concrete

to get the main structure up,

and every day that you lose

that goes by is a day delayed,

and, uh, it costs money for Donald,

- They're not gonna beat us.

I mean, we can hold out as long as we wanna hold out,

so, you know, eventually, they have to come around.

♪

- John Cody was a union boss

who lived on the dividing line

between the union and the mob.

Cody was a guy who could make things go well for you,

or he could make things go poorly for you.

♪

- It's an interesting questin as to why,

when every other developer in New York

can't get access to concrete,

Donald Trump is still able

to just move along swimmingly.

♪

- One of the things that Cody was able

to do for Trump was make sure

that drivers continued to deliver

concrete to the site.

♪

- You have to be able to deal with many different things

to be able to be a successful developer.

You have to be able to deal with the unions.

- And concrete guys who are mobbed-up.

- You have to get-- you get along

with these people. You had no choice.

There's nobody else to do it.

♪

- Trump struck a deal

with John Cody,

and Mr. Cody was able

to get an apartment for his mistress

in Trump Tower.

♪

- She was given a very prominent apartment

on a high floor of Trump Tower,

and she had one demand,

and that was she wanted

a swimming pool in her apartment.

Trump Tower did not come with a swimming pool.

♪

So Trump went in and had

that part of the building reinforced

so that it could hold the weight

of a swimming pool and all the water in it.

♪

- This is the world Trump operated in...

♪

And shortly before

Trump Tower was finished,

Cody was convicted of racketeering

and sent to prison.

♪

- I don't like getting close to people like that,

but they respected me.

- And a lot of this is relationships.

- A lot of it is re-- well, a lot of life

is relationship--a lot of what I've done

is relationship. A lot of great things

that have happened to me

happened to me because of relationship.

♪

- Millionaire real estate developer Donald Trump

will get a handsome tax break

for his latest project on Fifth Avenue.

- In the case of Trump Tower,

he engaged the city in a big battle

over getting this deal,

and in the end,

there was a fair umpire

in the Court of Appeals of New York State,

and he won, fair and square,

and got his tax abatement.

♪

- Well, here we are on the top

of the Trump Tower. Today is the topping-off

of this fabulous building.

- When they finally finished the Trump Tower,

Donald took the opportunity to have a topping-off party.

- This is the greatest skyline in the world,

so this is a great addition to New York skyline.

- What do you think about the view?

It's pretty nice from up here, isn't it?

- I've always wanted to look down on General Motors,

and the-- - [laughs]

It was quite exciting, being on the top

of the building when they finished it off,

put the last cornerstone in,

and everybody was there with balloons,

and it was quite a fanfare.

Trump Tower was the biggest moment

in Donald's life.

♪

- Eight years ago, I must say,

I was embarrassed to say I was

in the real estate business in New York.

Today, I can honestly say I'm proud of it,

and it's the number one city in the world,

and I say a large part of that

is due to the tremendous abilities

of Mayor Koch. I think he's done

a tremendous job. - Thank you.

- Thank you very much.

- Yeah, all the media were there

covering this, and, um,

Ed Koch gave a speech,

which was so funny,

because they hated each other.

- And may the windows of this building

forever look out

upon a place of peace

and prosperity.

- Very nice. Thank you, sir.

Very nice. Very good--nice. Very...

- Mr. Trump, what are your sentiments today

regarding the whole celebration?

- A very happy day.

The com--the completion

of the tallest concrete building

in the city of New York.

- How are the sales going?

- Uh, well, I have nothing to do with sales,

but they--I hear they're going excellent.

Fantastic. Unbelievable.

- I think Fred Trump was authentically proud

of Donald's early successes

in New York.

He was amazed that his little boy

had graduated from Queens

into a premiere address in Manhattan

and was able to build a landmark tower

with the family name on it.

♪

- I remember we were going up to New York

on spring break

and I asked my son

what he wanted to do in New York,

what he wanted to see,

and he said, most of all,

he wanted to go see

the lobby of Trump Tower,

and sure enough, we did it,

and we were all pretty impressed.

- I remember walking in and looking up,

and seeing this escalator and seeing the fountains,

and feeling that I was, you know, as an outsider,

as a--as a Brit,

that this was the apotheosis of big, glitzy,

you know, vulgar, if you like, Americana, and I loved it...

♪

Because, you know, that's what was fun about America.

♪

It was kind of the Liberace

of buildings, really,

if you like. [laughs]

- Here is Donald being lauded for this great achievement,

but obviously, absent from the celebration

is Donald's elder brother,

Fred Jr.

♪

As a pilot, Fred Jr. continues to struggle

with what, in retrospect,

will be seen as a lifelong battle

with alcohol,

and he falls out of grace with the airlines

and cannot function as a pilot anymore.

By this time in his life,

it's been communicated by his father

and by his brother

that they don't expect much from him.

He winds up moving home

and into the family mansion

and is essentially a handyman

for the Trump properties,

ordered about by his father,

asked to do menial tasks.

- He was intended to be the heir to the throne

of the Trump Organization,

but from this point on,

he really did start to spiral downward

more rapidly.

♪

- Fred was a great guy, but, you know,

he had an alcohol problem. - Yeah.

- Okay. And he was such

an amazing guy, and the best personality--

best-looking guy you'll ever see,

and you know, he had a lot of things,

but he had an alcohol problem.

- I never really thought of his having

a problem with drinking

really until the last time I saw him,

and that was in the hospital of Manhattan.

He kept saying,

"I've got to get off the sauce.

I've got to get off the sauce."

♪

- His passing is the first real loss

in Donald's life,

but Donald viewed Fred Jr.'s death

as an example of weakness,

of what happens when you're not tough enough,

when you don't fight, when you don't strike back.

It's just a fact of life

that some people win and some people lose,

and they may be brothers,

but they're still winners and losers.

What his father taught him,

that he was a killer,

turned out to be true.

Donald Trump had made all of this happen.

He was not yet 40 years old,

and he was a force to be reckoned with

on the island of Manhattan.

There was no greater proof

that could be offered by life

of the excellence of the Trump method

and the superiority of his own talents

than the completion of this grand project.

- By the way, uh, he is a chip off the old block.

This is-- - My father, Fred Trump.

- Right.

- You were gonna say somethig about your dad.

You said-- - He was very difficult

to work with. Number one, he was

a very tough man,

but he was also a--a man

that would never let anything go.

He was a very strong man.

He was a very detail-oriented perso,

but I did great deals for him.

In fact, he gave a statement

to "BusinessWeek" magazine

many, many years ago.

"Everything Donald touches turns to gold."

♪

- Donald Trump was never a man

who was dying to settle down.

♪

- The name Marla Maples came up shortly after that.

No guy likes talking about affairs, by the way.

[laughs]

- It had sex, it had beauty,

it had bazillions of bucks.

It had everything.

- The attention he got in the media

actually made him feel alive.

♪

- Boy, there's a lot of coverage there.

- Then gradually, of course,

things got out of control.

♪

- He was frightened.

Trump was staring at destroying

not only his own legacy,

but his father's legacy as well.

- But you have said that if you ran for president,

you'd win. - I think I'd have

a very good chance. I mean, I like to win.

- He's one of the greatest shows on Earth,

you don't know what he's going to do next,

and you can't stop watching.

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