The caricature of Donald Trump has become so familiar that it’s surprising to see him in the flesh and realize that, oh yes, there really is a living, breathing person named Donald Trump. The concept of Trump seems to have long ago – many billions of dollars and dozens of glassy towers and blonde wives ago – broken free from the flesh and blood to exist as a platonic ideal of Trumpness. The name has become so synonymous with wealth, brilliant deal-making, bold risk-taking, massive overleveraging, conspicuous consumption, reality show theatrics – “You’re fired!” – that you forget that somewhere in all the brassy brand of Trump is the man Trump.

Yet here Trump is, seated before a northfacing window in a corner office on a high floor of the Trump Tower, New York’s Central Park resplendent in vivid summer greens and olives behind Trump, and framed magazine covers of Trump arrayed on the wall beside Trump. From all the hours of television, Trump’s features and accoutrements have become so familiar – the yellow power ties, the dark suits, the diamond cufflinks, the onion loaf of hair – that by now it all seems like costume instead of business suit and the man himself seems like a cartoon character come to life, as if Bugs Bunny or SpongeBob had humanized and was now ready to take your questions.

He leans forward, behind his immense maple desk, vast as a ping-pong table, strewn with brochures of new projects, deal memos, and letters from the famous and notorious. “Look at this,” he shows me, “You see this? This is off the record.” It is a letter written by a famously beautiful woman, a supermodel, saying she wants to meet with Trump, to dine with him. “I get these all the time.” He starts handing over glossy brochures and color photocopies of magazine articles about Trump, new Trump golf resorts – “The best! You play golf? You need to play there. Tell Rhona [his assistant] to make a call” – luxury condominiums, bigger and better buildings than anyone has ever built before. “These are all first class projects. Trump means quality.”

Here are Fairways + Greens, Southland Golf and other golf magazines I have never heard of – with Trump on the cover. Here are the Nielsen ratings for The Apprentice. And here, of course, is a copy of Trump magazine, and a photocopy of Harper’s Bazaar with daughter Ivanka on the cover. Oh, that’s Ivanka calling. “Ivanka, honey … we’re just talking about where we have some of our jobs going up, honey, tell them.” Ivanka says over the speakerphone they are doing jobs all over the world, from “Jordan to Dubai to Panama to Scotland.”

"Turkey and Egypt,” Donald interrupts her, leaning forward. “Very hot."

In Trump’s hustle, his tireless selling of condominiums and golf clubs and cufflinks and ties – not to mention his fragrance and bottled water – there is the relentless urgency of a salesman, a deal maker who loves, more than anything else, the action. His presence is infectious, his eagerness, his vanity, his ego, all of it on display and insistent. Look at this. Look at my building. Look at me!

Born to a wealthy real estate family, his gift was to multiply that money to the point where his joyous avarice defined the go-go 80s and then, after the early 90s real estate implosion and falling a billion dollars into personal debt, he miraculously came back to define yet another era of conspicuous consumption through his reloaded real estate empire and, more publicly, his television show. “The highest paid star on television,” Trump boasts. “The most successful show.”

Why then, do we admire him so?

What elevated Trump above any of a dozen other tycoons was his public rise, fall and the gritty resilience he showed in his comeback. By the early 90s, we should have been done with him, with his overleveraged properties and under-funded gaming companies and airlines. He was reduced, according to the New York Times, to borrowing money from his siblings. Yet he never did what so many of his stricken mogul colleagues did: he never declared bankruptcy, never turned his bankers into dunners. His ego would not allow it. Here we saw the virtue in vanity and ego: Trump could not stand the public failure.

He is back on the Forbes list of richest Americans: No. 117, net worth US$3 billion. His empire comprises a half-dozen prime buildings in New York, including Trump Plaza and Trump Towers, several golf clubs ranging from Scotland to California, his Mara- Lago estate and other Florida properties, not to forget a vast and extensive licensing and partnership business that has extended the empire to virtually every profitable corner of the globe. All those towers throughout the world – and soon a few in China – bearing his name, the golf courses and the bestselling books and television show and, yes, the cufflinks and neckties, it is all only possible because The Donald never quit.

“I came out very well,” Trump says of his comeback. “I never surrendered.”

His presence is infectious, his eagerness, his vanity, his ego, all of it on display and insistent. Look at this. Look at my building. Look at me!

The business world sees you as an inspiration because when you got into trouble in the early 1990s, you never declared bankruptcy or defaulted on your debt.
And many people I know did, both friends and enemies. Now is a great time for me: I’m in many foreign countries, we have a tremendous amount of cash and these are great times to buy things. In fact, I am closing on something tomorrow that you’ll probably hear about, which is phenomenal …

What is it ?
I’m buying a big club in New Jersey that two years ago I wanted to buy and it was impossible to even think about because the price was so ridiculous. Today I am buying it for a fraction.

Golf?
Yeah it’s a club, and it’s golf, but it’s also clubhouses with big catering events and weddings and everything else. And the golf is not only good for golfers but it’s also good for the ambience. You know, when you have a club in the middle of the course, it creates a lot of ambience. They built it for hundreds of millions of dollars and I’m buying it for fractions. [In August, Trump announced he was buying the Shadow Isle Golf Club in Colts Neck, New Jersey for US$28 million.]

[Assistant notifies Trump of a phone call.]

Hey Christian! Your son just left the office, and he is a great kid and he did a great job, he was a wonderful intern, I hate to lose him. Everybody in the company liked him and I know he liked his accommodations and how’s this shipping business going? … So we’ll sign our deal when you’re in here, very good. And if you want to stay in Trump International Hotel and Tower, let us know. Don’t worry about it, he was great; have a great time, Christian, I’ll see you when you’re in New York. So long!

Your resilience – being down but unwilling to declare bankruptcy – is a big part of your brand and who you are right now.
When I do speeches, I talk about one of the elements of success: to never, ever give up. Never quit under any circumstances. Some people can do that and some people can’t, and you probably need a certain gene for that. Just one second …

[[Trump takes phone call.]]

But at some point, especially in the early 1990s, your banker must have advised you to throw in the towel.
In 1989, I put together a very nice group of real estate properties; a lot of great real estate, and it was over-leveraged but not overly overleveraged. All of a sudden it was very overleveraged because the values went down. The debt stayed the same but the values went down. It was a very interesting period of time for me, it was a tough period, but it was a great period. The banks respected me and they knew that I am the best at what I do. I’m the best builder, what I do best is build.

The Apprentice is wonderful and it’s been a great success, but the thing I do best is build. They also respected the fact that I treated them well in good times. I always treated them well. I know some guys that treated their bankers very badly, and when they got in trouble those bankers crushed them. I think life is about relationships to a large extent. Today the company is much bigger, much stronger than it ever was before, and now we’re all over the world.

You treat people well in good times so they will be there for you when you need them?
Well, I don’t think it’s the reason I treat them well. I think I treat them well because I respect them. In 1990, 91, when I was in very deep trouble, my bankers respected me, liked me.

You were deeply in debt at that period.
Yeah, much more than a billion in debt. I owed many billions of dollars, and they worked with me and they were very smart. Ultimately they got paid back, and it allowed me to build a much bigger, stronger company because at the same time bankruptcy is also a great tool if you use it properly. It’s a great tool. But I wouldn’t use it on a personal basis, because that’s going a step too far. I never went bankrupt, I’m happy about that. Many people that I know did, and most of those people have never recovered. Most of the people that filed personal bankruptcy, they’re not really around as business people today.

Were you ever tempted?
I was never tempted because I had some great banks that believed in me and worked with me, and we worked it out and they got their money back. I never even got a default notice, you know it was amazing, they really had confidence in me. So that’s why I survived a very dangerous period where many people went out of business permanently, and other people didn’t. I’m very proud of that little chapter in my life. I wouldn’t want to go through it again, but I am very proud of it.

“ I’m very proud of that little chapter in my life. I wouldn’t want to go through it again, but i am very proud of it”

You’ve written that you always separate your person from your business, and never put your own assets at risk. Yet you crossed that line in the 1980s.
I wrote a book called The Art of the Deal and it was the number one bestselling business book of all time, 3.9 million copies. It’s still selling great to this day, and since then I’ve done seven number one bestsellers. But The Art of the Deal was my first book, and in it I talked about not personally guaranteeing your corporate debt. I didn’t follow the advice of my own book. I both blame myself and don’t blame myself.

In the end I don’t blame myself because I was able to get out of it. And if I didn’t personally guarantee some debts, I would never be as big as I am today. If you have an empty piece of land and you want to borrow a billion dollars to build something great, a bank isn’t going to say, “Oh, that’s wonderful, it’s really wonderful, here is a billion dollars, have fun.” They want some kind of a guarantee. So to a certain extent, I am a big believer of no personal guarantees, but at the same time if you don’t use certain personal guarantees you might just as well just sit home and watch television, because you won’t be able to do very much.

In terms of your business practices now, you’ve overruled your own advice.
To a certain extent, you need to guarantee if you want to become big. At the same time, I do very little personal guaranteeing because I have a lot of cash. My book is still 100 percent right: “Don’t personally guarantee.”

If you don’t have to.
But sometimes you have to. Do I listen to Trump, or do I listen to Trump? You can go both ways.

As long as you are listening to Trump.
As long as you are listening to Trump. Actually, nobody has ever asked me that before. It’s really interesting.

What does it take to be a great businessman?
I believe that being a businessman is kind of like being a great baseball player, or great golfer, or great anything. You see a great athlete and it doesn’t take long to realize, “Oh gee, that guy is great.” It’s sort of instant gratification.

Although with businessmen sometimes it takes years to determine whether someone is great.

I’m very much a believer in the gene theory: just like you can hit a baseball, like you can be great soccer player, you know that some people are just better than others and nobody knows why. One guy looks better, he’s bigger, he’s stronger, but he’s just not as good. It’s the same thing in business. I think genes are more important than experience. If you gave me a choice of having a great business genes or great experience, I would take the genes. But the combination is still the best.

And you know I’ve seen a lot, like what I am doing now. I’m buying at discount because I know a lot that other people don’t know, they still haven’t figured out. Now is a great time to make money. You know a lot of people pay me a lot of money to go around making speeches?

Over a million dollars per talk?
Yeah. Two or three years ago I’d make speeches and tell people, “Don’t buy real estate now, don’t buy it.” I’d lecture them: “Don’t use these exploding mortgages.” I called them exploding mortgages because I knew they were going to explode in everybody’s faces. You’re getting 112 percent financing, but you’re putting your life at risk, and I told people don’t use exploding mortgages, don’t buy real estate, which didn’t please the sponsors of the conferences. In Canada, I made a speech to 61,000 people, a huge number of people, and they weren’t thrilled when I told them not to buy real estate. I said, “Look, I’m going to speak the truth.” But now I say buy, this is a great time.

Is the US ?
This is the greatest time to buy, although New York is still …

Pricey?
New York is different. New York is a little sliver of an island. And with the low dollar, that’s where our friends from Europe and Asia want to come, they want to come to New York.

“ I think genes are more important than experience. If you gave me a choice of having great business genes or great experience, I would take the genes”

You do your business in dollars. I’d imagine buying internationally for you is pretty pricey?
A lot of properties I already bought, like I bought a huge piece of land in Scotland,which you’ve probably heard about. And I bought it in dollars about six years ago.

You were smart to denominate that deal in dollars.
Everybody said, “What a great deal, he’s a genius, he’s a genius!” And I said, “I’m not a genius, I just deal in dollars, I got a little bit lucky.” I’m not into the world of currency appreciation. I buy in dollars because I buy in dollars. Now when the dollar gets stronger, which I think it will, I think it’s going to start soon, that’s good for somebody like me that has a lot of dollars, but it’s not necessarily good in terms of property.

In terms of your assets in New York …
If I want to sell something from New York, I’ll get a fortune for it because people come. I just sold an apartment for $39 million at my building over at the United Nations. I have another one on sale right now for $45 million and I have Park Avenue and I have Trump Park Avenue, and people want to buy them.

Let’s talk a bit about globalization and your business, which is two-fold: building and real estate development.
Beyond anything else my business represents quality. I do quality. For the most part I’m in development, the real estate business, but I also did a show called The Apprentice, which became the number one show on television and is doing fantastically well. My daughter was just on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar.

And she’s running the Soho …
Trump Soho.

And that sold out right?
Not sold out but it’s doing great.

What percentage of your cash flow is from real estate versus gaming?
I’d say most of my cash flow is from real estate. I own just a piece of the gaming company in Atlantic City. I own 29 percent.

You’re still the chairman though?
I’m the chairman, but I devote very little time to it. That’s literally less than one percent of my assets. For the last 10 years I sort of became uninvolved with the company.

Do you think international real estate development will bring you higher growth than US projects?
Right now I do, but I think it will bounce back the other way. Right now we’re in Russia, we’re in China, we’re now doing two jobs that are going to be announced pretty soon.

In what cities? Mainland or Hong Kong?
Mainland. And it could also be Hong Kong. I would say over the next two to three months we’ll be announcing them.

Residential?
Yeah, they’ll be residential, very high-end, beautiful.

Are you in partnership with some Chinese investors?
Yes, I will be a partner. You have to be. It’s the same way that people want to be our partners in New York. When you go far away in the real estate business, you really want to partner with somebody that’s great in what they do. Especially when you get into a foreign country with a language that’s different, the building techniques are different. I mean over there they use bamboo outside.

Bamboo scaffolding.
That bamboo is unbelievable, how they can go up, they can go up as high as they want, it’s amazing. Over here, we use steel, it’s a whole different thing, so different, the building techniques are so different.

On a project like that, will you be intimately involved?
Yes: design, the look, the sales. We’ll be very much involved. But we’ll have a great Chinese partner.

But how involved? Do you make sure the finishes are of certain quality?
I’ll give you an example. We did a building in Korea that was very successful. The Trump Plaza. When we were doing it, I noticed they didn’t have a lobby. They’re beautiful apartments, frankly, nicer than in New York, but they don’t have lobbies. It’s like, just a door and you go right into the building and I said, “What is this? I’ve never seen such a …” and they said that’s their custom. I changed it, I created the lobby, and it was a big sensation.

[Trump takes a phone call.]

Ivanka, honey, I have a gentleman who is interviewing me, a friend of mine asked me to do it. And if he gives me a good interview I’ll be happy and if he gives us a bad interview I will never speak to my friend again, ha ha ha! We’re just talking about where we have some of our jobs going up, honey, tell them.

[Ivanka Trump on speaker.]

We’re doing jobs all over the world now, from Jordan to Dubai to Panama to Scotland.

[Trump] Turkey and Egypt. Very hot. I think we’ll be in China but I don’t want to talk about it until it’s done. In addition to television, I have a clothing line, it’s called the Donald J Trump Signature Collection. We have shirts, ties, it’s unbelievable, like the number one selling shirt at Macy’s, the number one selling tie.

[We sell] 18,000 ties a week at Macy’s, which is like unheard of. We also do cufflinks, like these cufflinks. People think they’re Harry Winston, and they’re actually not, slightly less expensive. We’re doing tremendous business with them.

This is all licensing?
That’s all licensing.

“ That bamboo scaffolding in hong kong is unbelievable, how they can go up as high as they want, it’s amazing. Over here, we use steel”

"How much of your business now is licensing?
I’ve never thought of it in terms of a percentage, but we do a lot of licensing. We do a lot of full ownership, like I own this building, I own lots of buildings. I also license deals, I also have combinations of licensing and ownership.

Is the Trump name now at such a premium that you can get ownership in a development just by giving your name?
Absolutely.

That’s an amazing achievement.
And as Forbes said it’s one of the great business models. And by the way, the owners are as happy as can be. I’ll give you an example, Trump at Cap Cana in the Dominican Republic. We sold $329 million worth of lots in three hours and literally there was a frenzy for them. Two years earlier, without Trump, they would have sold $50 million dollars and been as happy as can be. So my partners love me. Hawaii, you heard about Hawaii? $729 million in seven hours, less than a day!

What percent of those buyers are from Asia?
A lot of them are from Japan.

You have no ventures in Japan right now?
No I don’t, but we’re talking about possibly one in Tokyo.

Golf property or residential?
It would be a big residential tower.

You’re not involved in Macau gaming?
No. My public company has the right to do gaming in Macau. But they have to do that themselves, they don’t do that through me.

We talked a little bit about global real estate growth. What markets are you looking at?
I hate to tell you that, because … well, let’s put it this way. I told you I’m buying a great club at a great low price. When people hear that I am going to buy, there’s a frenzy. The deal in New Jersey, if people knew I was buying, there’s no way I’d be able to buy it, because they would go in and bid twice or three times what I am paying. So I don’t usually like talking about deals, until … like the deals in China, until I have a signed paper. Because I really drive up values. If I say, we’re going to Russia, which we are, people read that and say, “Let’s go to Russia.” It’s hard to believe, but it does have an impact, so I don’t really like to talk in terms of the bigger picture. But we’re going to be doing a big job in India, big job in Russia, we’re working on something in China that will be spectacular if it happens, maybe it won’t.

You’re still involved in television, right?
The Apprentice just got renewed for two more years, and continues to do great.

Isn’t it crazy what happened with that? We had 15 imitations of The Apprentice. Fifteen copies, every one of them failed: Richard Branson, Martha Stewart, Mark Cuban … totally failed. Total losers. You know one thing about television, if you don’t get ratings, you’re off. You can come up with a cure for cancer, and if it doesn’t get ratings, they won’t even broadcast it. It’s a very cold business.

Why do you think your show succeeded, while others didn’t?
The Apprentice: Martha Stewart was an exact copy of my show, and she drew flies, she drew nobody, nobody watched it. And my show was number one, and nobody was watching her, and she got angry at me, she said I shouldn’t have put her on. We had a fight over it. I said, “What the hell, I didn’t put you on, you wanted to do it.” But her demeanor wasn’t right, the whole thing wasn’t right. Did you ever watch her show?

I don’t remember.
Yeah, they were all copies. The good news is nobody cares to copy it anymore.

Let me ask you about the US presidential candidates.
I think it’s going to be a very close election, although the Democrats have a huge advantage because Bush is so bad. Bush is the worst thing going for the Republicans. But I think the economic policies of McCain ultimately would be better. I’m not a proponent of the war, the war is a disaster. It was a very stupid decision made by probably the worst president in the history of the United States, George W. Bush. I am a big hawk, but they attacked the wrong country. As a result, Iraq, which didn’t have terrorism because. Saddam Hussein used to kill the terrorists, is now the breeding ground for terrorism.

Who are you supporting?
McCain.

You once said the first rule of success is to be able to broadcast your own success.
Because nobody else will. In my case it works because I created a great brand. I don’t want press, I just get a lot of press. We do not seek publicity, believe me.

You’ve always been very comfortable with the media.
Yeah, I’m comfortable. I’m comfortable with it knowing it as a double-edge sword. I have a lot of friends that are very successful, but they don’t want to be known, they don’t want anyone to know them at all. If you called them, they wouldn’t know what to do. They would call their lawyer: “Should I respond? Should I talk?” They go out and hire public relations firms who know nothing about anything.

What does the Trump name stand for?
I think it means quality more than anything else. I think people know its quality. I’ll give you an example: George Clooney did a job in Las Vegas [the abandoned Las Ramblas condo/ casino project] and Donald Trump has a job in Las Vegas. My job has been very successful, I sold a tremendous number of units. It’s very interesting, people didn’t want to buy George Clooney, but they wanted to buy Donald Trump. And a woman said, somewhat crudely, “I want to get fucked by George Clooney, but I want to buy an apartment from Donald Trump.”

And I’ve never known whether I was insulted by that or not. In other words, I think I would have rather had it the other way round. I think I like George Clooney’s deal better.And I’ve never known whether I was insulted by that or not. In other words, I think I would have rather had it the other way round. I think I like George Clooney’s deal better.

“ i want to get fucked by george clooney, but i want to buy an apartment from donald trump”

The Donald Comes Up Trumps

Donald John Trump – the fourth of five children of Frederick Christ Trump and Mary Anne Macleod – was born on June 14, 1946. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 and joined his father’s successful real estate company, Trump Enterprises.

When Fred Trump (who died in 1999) retired, he turned over a US$250 million real estate portfolio to his children. Donald used his share – and his father’s political and social connections – to nudge his way into the Manhattan real estate market. In 1975, the younger Trump became president of the company and renamed it the Trump Organization.

The Trump Organization soared in the 1980s when Trump became involved in a number of high-profile property deals, including Trump Tower and Trump Parc condominiums. His status and connections grew, and he and his wife, Ivana, became the darlings of Manhattan society.

By 1989 the effects of recession left Trump unable to meet loan payments. By 1991, he was on the verge of personal bankruptcy. But banks opted to restructure his debt and by 1994, Trump had eliminated a large portion of his $900 million personal debt and $3.5 billion business debt.

In 1996, Trump unsuccessfully ran for the Republican Party presidential candidacy. In 2000, he ran for presidential candidacy of the Reform Party, but was again unsuccessful.

The Trump trademark has become a valuable brand. Licensing deals include Trump Restaurants, Trump fragrance, Trump Ice bottled water, Trump vodka, Trump steaks, the Donald J Trump Collection (menswear) and Trump magazine. The TV show, The Apprentice, is a ratings winner. Trump also owns the broadcast rights for the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA beauty pageants.

Trump has written a number of bestsellers, including Trump: Surviving at the Top (1990); Trump 101: The Way to Success (2007); and Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success (2008).

Trump is taking his real estate empire to the world. There’s Trump World in Seoul; Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto (completion date 2010); Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama City (2009); Trump at Cap Cana in the Dominican Republic; and the Palm Trump International Hotel and Tower in Dubai. Deals in Hong Kong and China are on the cards.

Trump’s first of three marriages was to Czech model Ivana Zelnickova in 1977. They have three children: Donald Jr (born 1977), Ivanka (1981) and Eric (1984). They divorced in 1991. He married Marla Maples in 1993. They divorced in 1999. Trump married Melania Knauss in 2005.