The Making of Donald Trump Read Online Free Page B
student, the actress Candice Bergen, on a dinner date that ended early. The only thing she remembered years later was that Trump wore a three-piece burgundy suit with matching leather boots.
Others have said they don’t recall seeing Trump a lot around campus, an interesting observation in view of Trump’s claims years later that “nobody remembers seeing” future President Barack Obama in elementary school in Hawaii or anywhere else. In fact, many of Obama’s fellow students have spoken and written about him, as have several of his professors, notably constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe. While Obama was still a first-year law student, Tribe wrote a law review article citing Obama in the first footnote. Tribe has since written about how Obama sat in the front row in every session, offering nuanced legal analyses that Tribe remembered because of his student’s ability to examine a subtle legal issue from the perspective of each relevant party with equal weight.
Nonetheless, Trump touts his 1968 bachelor’s degree in economics and says he learned “super genius stuff” at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “I was a really good student at the best school,” Trump told Barbara Walters on her show,
The View
. “I’m like a smart guy.”
Wharton, like all business schools, teaches fundamental tools for evaluating whether investments are likely to be profitable. One such concept is Net Present Value, or NPV. Thatis the value of cash expected from an investment minus the value spent to support that investment and then reduced to a lump sum payable today. Business and finance graduates of Ivy League schools know this concept the way primary school students know that 2+2=4.
In a lawsuit Trump filed against journalist Timothy L. O’Brien for writing that Trump’s net worth may be far less than a billion dollars, a lawyer asked Trump questions about his knowledge of finance and how he determined his net worth.
“Are you familiar with the concept of net present value?” lawyer Andrew Ceresney asked.
“The concept of net present value to me,” Trump replied, “would be the value of the land currently after debt. Well, to me, the word ‘net’ is an interesting word. It’s really—the word ‘value’ is the important word. If you have an asset that you can do other things with but you don’t choose to do them—I haven’t chosen to do that.”
After hearing that gibberish, the lawyer asked Trump to explain another basic business concept taught to finance students: generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. Did he understand GAAP? “No,” Trump said. “I’m not an accountant.”
Once out of college, Donald Trump set his sights not just on finding young women in need of a man with a fortune, but also on establishing his name across the East River in Manhattan, where the bright lights beckoned. Less than sixteen years later, he would erect on Fifth Avenue the first building bearing his name in big, bronze letters.
3
PERSONAL VALUES
I n 2005, Donald Trump flew to Colorado to give a motivational talk. Accompanying him were his wife, Melania, anda violent convicted felon and swindler named Felix Sater, who washelping Trump make two major development deals in Denver.Trump and Sater gave interviews to the
Rocky Mountain News
—interviews that would prove to be significant a few years later. The three took a limousine an hour north to Loveland, solidly Republican territory where more than a thousand people had paid to hear Trump’s advice on how to succeed in life and business.
Motivational speakers like Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins work up audiences with carefully crafted talks. They make lofty appeals to people about vanquishing inner demons so a better self can flourish and dreams of success can morph into reality.
Trump’s talk was nothing like that.
For more than an hour, Trump let fly one four-letter expletiveafter another. He had no prepared text, much less a rehearsed
Others have said they don’t recall seeing Trump a lot around campus, an interesting observation in view of Trump’s claims years later that “nobody remembers seeing” future President Barack Obama in elementary school in Hawaii or anywhere else. In fact, many of Obama’s fellow students have spoken and written about him, as have several of his professors, notably constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe. While Obama was still a first-year law student, Tribe wrote a law review article citing Obama in the first footnote. Tribe has since written about how Obama sat in the front row in every session, offering nuanced legal analyses that Tribe remembered because of his student’s ability to examine a subtle legal issue from the perspective of each relevant party with equal weight.
Nonetheless, Trump touts his 1968 bachelor’s degree in economics and says he learned “super genius stuff” at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “I was a really good student at the best school,” Trump told Barbara Walters on her show,
The View
. “I’m like a smart guy.”
Wharton, like all business schools, teaches fundamental tools for evaluating whether investments are likely to be profitable. One such concept is Net Present Value, or NPV. Thatis the value of cash expected from an investment minus the value spent to support that investment and then reduced to a lump sum payable today. Business and finance graduates of Ivy League schools know this concept the way primary school students know that 2+2=4.
In a lawsuit Trump filed against journalist Timothy L. O’Brien for writing that Trump’s net worth may be far less than a billion dollars, a lawyer asked Trump questions about his knowledge of finance and how he determined his net worth.
“Are you familiar with the concept of net present value?” lawyer Andrew Ceresney asked.
“The concept of net present value to me,” Trump replied, “would be the value of the land currently after debt. Well, to me, the word ‘net’ is an interesting word. It’s really—the word ‘value’ is the important word. If you have an asset that you can do other things with but you don’t choose to do them—I haven’t chosen to do that.”
After hearing that gibberish, the lawyer asked Trump to explain another basic business concept taught to finance students: generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. Did he understand GAAP? “No,” Trump said. “I’m not an accountant.”
Once out of college, Donald Trump set his sights not just on finding young women in need of a man with a fortune, but also on establishing his name across the East River in Manhattan, where the bright lights beckoned. Less than sixteen years later, he would erect on Fifth Avenue the first building bearing his name in big, bronze letters.
3
PERSONAL VALUES
I n 2005, Donald Trump flew to Colorado to give a motivational talk. Accompanying him were his wife, Melania, anda violent convicted felon and swindler named Felix Sater, who washelping Trump make two major development deals in Denver.Trump and Sater gave interviews to the
Rocky Mountain News
—interviews that would prove to be significant a few years later. The three took a limousine an hour north to Loveland, solidly Republican territory where more than a thousand people had paid to hear Trump’s advice on how to succeed in life and business.
Motivational speakers like Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins work up audiences with carefully crafted talks. They make lofty appeals to people about vanquishing inner demons so a better self can flourish and dreams of success can morph into reality.
Trump’s talk was nothing like that.
For more than an hour, Trump let fly one four-letter expletiveafter another. He had no prepared text, much less a rehearsed
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