The United States of Trump

by Bill O'Reilly

  The consequence of the deferment policy was that the draft snared kids unwilling or unable to go to college. Many of them went off to fight in the jungles of Vietnam right out of high school.

  Donald Trump and his father, Fred Trump, seated, visit a tenant in one of their apartment buildings in Brooklyn, in January 1973.

  In my working-class Levittown neighborhood, the war in Vietnam was at first widely supported. Home-owning vets of World War II and Korean War vintage resented the anti–Vietnam War movement early on. After liberating Europe, Asia, and South Korea for them, the military was seen as a positive. They essentially trusted President Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson to confront the growing threat of communism in a responsible way.

  In the late 1960s, the New York City area saw thousands of mostly poor and lower-middle-class kids head over to Southeast Asia after a few weeks of army basic training. When they came back home, there was shock.

  Some of the guys I knew growing up returned from Vietnam radically changed. One committed suicide. A few others became addicted to heroin, something unheard of in Levittown before the mid-1960s.

  In the summer, when the college guys returned home from school, some of us tried to talk with our friends who had fought in Vietnam. It was difficult. They’d often lament that things were “screwed up over there,” but specifics were few. We knew some of these guys from kindergarten, and many of them had changed—for the worse.

  In general, there was a somberness about the Vietnam guys. They were no longer up for hanging out at Jones Beach or going to a drive-in movie. They tended to want to be alone. There wasn’t a lot of outward happiness.

  And there was a lot of drinking.

  My grandfather was a hero in World War I. My father was a naval officer who was part of the U.S. occupation of Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both turned against the Vietnam War and President Johnson.

  But they didn’t like the Jane Fonda crowd, either.

  My cousin Dickie Melton was a hero in Vietnam, walking point on patrol in the jungle near Cambodia with his German shepherd, Sarge. Dickie wouldn’t tell me anything about the war after he came back, but he briefed my father.

  That was it for Vietnam in the O’Reilly house.

  Jamaica Estates is just twenty miles west of Levittown, and the same thing was happening there. Draftees were coming back, some in body bags, and the truth about the Vietnam experience was on vivid display. It was a chaotic situation, one where constant death loomed. And most draftees had no idea why they were being sent far away “in country.”

  Fred and Donald Trump had to have seen the same thing my father and I saw. But I was three years behind Donald in school, and change came rapidly once Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968. Peace negotiations with Hanoi were under way, and rumors that the draft would be abolished spread quickly across the country. Eventually, that would happen, with military service decided by a lottery system.

  Nineteen sixty-eight was the same year Donald graduated from Penn and, therefore, would lose his student deferment. But Fred Trump was renting office space to a Queens doctor, a podiatrist. The man examined the now twenty-two-year-old Donald and found he had heel spurs, a calcium buildup on the bone.

  Donald Trump once again received a military deferment, this time for a medical problem.

  As president, Mr. Trump is an ardent supporter of the military, which has led to vicious attacks on him from Trump haters like former Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has called the president a “chicken-hawk.”

  On Air Force One, Mr. Trump turned very serious when I brought up Vietnam.

  * * *

  PRESIDENT TRUMP: I didn’t like the Vietnam War, even though I was very young, and I probably shouldn’t have made a judgment, but I thought it was ridiculous. And that never changed. [I even apply it] to what we’re doing now in the Middle East. I was against getting involved there.

  O’REILLY: What is it about Vietnam, the Middle East?

  PRESIDENT TRUMP: I don’t think we knew what we were doing. In retrospect, you look at the seven trillion that we’ve spent [in the Middle East], and if anything, it’s a worse situation.

  O’REILLY: But that’s interesting because you were in military school and they weren’t against Vietnam.

  PRESIDENT TRUMP: I would say that I am an absolute hawk. But that doesn’t mean I’m a hawk for the wrong things. I am somebody that is very militaristic. You look at the money that I’ve spent on the military, seven hundred billion dollars, which is far more than the previous administration … but if you’re going to be doing something [militarily], you’ve got to do the right thing. And going into the Middle East [Iraq] was a tremendous mistake.

  O’REILLY: Let’s go back to when you were in school and Vietnam was looming. You didn’t want to go to Vietnam, right?

  PRESIDENT TRUMP: No.

  O’REILLY: And you made the decision based on what?

  PRESIDENT TRUMP: I thought it was a ridiculous war that was so far away. Nobody ever heard of Vietnam and people were saying we had to go there.

  O’REILLY: Were you a protester?

  PRESIDENT TRUMP: I wasn’t a protester, only inwardly. I wasn’t marching [in] the streets as many people were. I said, why are we going there? So, I thought Vietnam was a bad war. Now, at the same time, I was very young and probably shouldn’t be making judgments at that age. You’re supposed to rely on your great leaders. But that was a big mistake for a lot of people.

  * * *

  DONALD TRUMP WASN’T the only one making judgments about Vietnam. Former Vice Presidents Joe Biden and Dick Cheney avoided military service in that era. So did President Bill Clinton. President Bush the Younger got into the Air National Guard.

  With his Vietnam problem solved for the moment, Donald Trump received his degree from Penn and immediately joined his father at the real estate company. Now he was all business and unbridled ambition.

  His father welcomed Donald into the fold, paying him well and making sure he had projects from which he could learn, such as Swifton Village, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

  In 1962, Fred Trump had bought the 1,200-unit “village” for $5.6 million at a bankruptcy auction. It was essentially a slum. Fred rehabbed the property using his usual frugal but effective building strategies. Rentals picked up, but a major problem emerged: the Trump organization was accused of not renting to black tenants.

  Foreshadowing what would happen in New York a few years later, the case was settled with no admission of wrongdoing by the Trump company.

  Young Donald was given oversight on Swifton but did not work in the rental office. His job was quality control, and on his visits to Cincinnati he kept busy upgrading the facility. The once-derelict complex became very profitable. Eventually, it was sold for a $6 million profit. The Trumps then said good-bye to Ohio.

  Quickly growing in confidence, Donald Trump learned a very clear lesson from his experience at Swifton: he didn’t want to be in Cincinnati, or in Queens.

  The brash Trump had his sights set on one prime destination: Manhattan.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MANHATTAN

  NOVEMBER 3, 1968

  AFTERNOON

  It is Sunday, and the New York Jets are rolling again. Led by a brash young quarterback from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, named Joe Namath, the home team has just defeated the Buffalo Bills 25 to 21, upping their record to six wins with just two losses.

  Richard Nixon will defeat Hubert Humphrey for the presidency two days from now, but in the New York City area, it is Joe Namath who is king. He will eventually lead the Jets to an eleven-win, three-loss regular season record, then drive a playoff victory over the powerful Oakland Raiders. And, finally, he will back up his shocking prediction that the Jets would defeat the Baltimore Colts in the Super Bowl by engineering that stunning upset.

  Namath wears his hair long and his football shoes white. He is cocky, charming, and cunning with the media. A true prince of the city, the q
uarterback squires around beautiful women, has commercial endorsements all over the place, and looks like he’s having a helluva good time every second of every day.

  The newspapers love him.

  Joe Namath is twenty-five years old. Donald Trump is twenty-two. Both are single. Both crave two things: action and adulation.

  Namath has branded himself “Broadway Joe.” His marketing quote is “I can’t wait until tomorrow, because I get better looking every day.” He will front a restaurant, Bachelors III, and pretty much owns Manhattan, figuratively speaking.

  Donald Trump does not yet have a brand, but he does have a vision: he wants to own Manhattan, at least the affluent parts, literally. He sees in front of him glittering Gotham City, and how the flamboyant Broadway Joe is dominating it. The young Trump believes he can do that, too. But the real estate developer has a problem.

  The problem’s name is Fred.

  Nineteen sixty-eight was a very turbulent year for America. In January, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam turned many American citizens against the war. About ninety days after that fight began, which American forces eventually won, President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection.

  On April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. That brutal incident incited race riots across the country, adding to the public acrimony over the Vietnam War.

  Then, on June 5, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles, the second Kennedy brother assassinated for political reasons. The country was reeling.

  Almost three months later, in late August, the city of Chicago erupted in violence and chaos while hosting the Democratic National Convention. Protesters and police clashed violently, as the nation watched on television. Americans were angry, exhausted, and discouraged.

  But back in Queens, the real estate business was good, the Trump organization making a lot of money. For a kid right out of college, Donald was being well paid, but he was already chafing. He wanted to begin buying property in Manhattan. His father did not.

  * * *

  “[FRED] NEVER UNDERSTOOD my father’s vision,” Donald Trump Jr., who is now running the Trump real estate empire, told me. “Fred had that Germanic thrift. I remember stories that he would buy a mop handle and the mop separately, then put the two together because that was a way to save money. You’d save a penny, and it mattered. He’d go around job sites collecting nails because a wasted nail was money [lost].

  “He wasn’t a spender at all. I mean his house was nice, probably one of the nicest homes in Jamaica Estates, Queens. But it was still Queens.”

  Fred Trump well understood that expanding into Manhattan meant spending an enormous amount of money getting established. He simply did not want to do it. Having graduated from the working-class Richmond Hill High School, Fred was overjoyed to be a millionaire. He didn’t need to be a billionaire.

  Apparently, his son did.

  But Fred would not budge.

  “I think no two people respected each other more than my father and his father,” Don Jr. said. “But they fought.”

  IT IS FEBRUARY 2019, and Donald Trump Jr. and I are speaking at the lavish Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The president’s oldest child is well positioned to understand how the Trump real estate dynasty evolved from his grandfather to his father, as he has experienced both the personal and business sides of both men:

  O’REILLY: Did they clash at all?

  TRUMP JR.: Incredibly, because it was the same personality with two very different perspectives. Fred would go to job sites and ask my father, “Why are you doing that?” … He would go around to make sure my father was doing it right.

  O’REILLY: To check up on your father to make sure the building was constructed correctly?

  TRUMP JR.: Right … There was a love and a respect like you couldn’t possibly understand but they [had disagreements].

  O’REILLY: Was your grandfather a workaholic?

  TRUMP JR.: There were a few occasions when it was like, okay, I’m going to go over and spend the weekend with my grandfather and grandmother. Now, my grandmother was the opposite of [Fred]. She had an incredible sense of humor, just an amazingly tough, funny lady. Fred was the opposite. When I was there, he’d say to me, “Let’s go collect some rent!” He would do that. I was five, six years old.

  O’REILLY: Collecting rent with your grandfather?

  TRUMP JR.: Like in middle-income housing in Queens. He’d knock on the door and be like, “Hey, you’re late with the rent.” And he took me along because he literally did not know anything other than what it was like to work. His constant saying was “to retire is to expire.”

  * * *

  SO IT IS that, in late 1968, Donald Trump faced a dilemma in the early part of his real estate career. His father ran the show and was not going to expand or step aside. Donald was learning and earning, but yearning. He wanted the action of Manhattan. He wanted to have what Broadway Joe had—fame, excitement, and success, big success.

  But how to make it all happen?

  Donald Trump became obsessed with finding a way.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MANHASSET, NEW YORK

  FEBRUARY 22, 2019

  DUSK

  Before Donald Trump makes his bold move into billionaire land, it is worth noting his personal philosophy of life by looking at both his actions and words. As I sit writing this chapter in my living room, I am resisting the temptation to analyze Mr. Trump because I am not qualified to do that. What I am qualified to do is impart what I have seen and learned after knowing the president for so many years.

  There is no question that Donald Trump’s ambition exploded after he graduated from college. And it was not driven solely by money. There were other things in play.

  If you research what has been written about the businessman Trump, you will find mostly ill-informed drivel, even before he became the polarizing political figure he is today. Many articles about him are condescending and full of cheap shots. Others are puff pieces designed to flatter him. Most reportage is a total waste of time, the product of lazy reporters with agendas.

  To understand the person who, against all odds, achieved the most powerful position in the world, you must listen to what he himself says. In 1990, already known to a national audience, Donald Trump gave an interview to Playboy magazine. That was a pretty big deal. Big celebrities were often featured in the Playboy Q-and-A. The magazine also put Trump on its cover, along with a nice-looking young woman. That was unusual. Women almost always commanded the covers of Playboy by themselves.

  For much of the interview, Donald Trump is posturing, elaborating on his success in business and life. He talks about giant yachts and marble floors—the usual.

  But then the conversation turns to Fred Trump Jr., Donald’s elder brother by eight years.

  As a boy, Donald looked up to Fred, who treated him with kindness. The elder Trump brother attended Lehigh University, married young (at twenty-four), quickly had two children, and became a pilot, eventually flying for TWA.

  By his late twenties, Fred Trump Jr. had developed a drinking problem, the death knell for an airline pilot. He spiraled downward, divorcing his wife and relocating to Florida to launch a commercial fishing venture.

  Front cover of Playboy magazine, March 1990.

  Then presidential candidate Trump holds up a vintage Playboy magazine with him on the cover as he greets supporters after speaking at a campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, April 2016.

  It failed.

  By the late 1970s, even as his younger brother was beginning to amass a fortune in Manhattan, Fred Jr. was back living with his parents in Queens and working for one of his father’s maintenance crews.

  A few years later, in 1981, Fred Jr. died from problems related to alcoholism. He was forty-two years old.

  “Take one environment and it will work completely differently on different children,” Donald Trump told the magazine. “Our family environment, the compe
titiveness, was a negative for Fred. It wasn’t easy for him being cast in a very tough environment and I think it played havoc on him. I was very close and it was very sad when he died. Toughest situation I’ve had.

  Murray Zaret, right, producer of the Pet Festival and Animal Husbandry Exposition, signs a contract with Donald’s brother Fred Trump Jr., left, who recently purchased the famous Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, 1966.

  “His death affected everything … I think constantly that I never gave him thanks for it. He was the first Trump boy out there and I subconsciously watched his moves.”

  * * *

  “I SAW PEOPLE really taking advantage of Fred and the lesson I learned was always to keep my guard up one hundred percent, whereas he didn’t. He didn’t feel that there was a reason for that, which is a fatal mistake in life. People are too trusting. I’m a very untrusting guy. I study people all the time, automatically. It’s my way of life for better or worse.

  “I am very skeptical about people; that’s self-preservation at work. I believe that, unfortunately, people are out for themselves.”

  * * *

  THAT KIND OF candor is a Trump trait, and to this day, I do not believe Donald Trump’s philosophy of human beings has changed. He is essentially a loner, with few close friends. He can be gregarious but is rarely revealing. He’s emotional but not nostalgic; nor does he regularly practice outreach to others.

  He essentially lives within himself, driven by success and the anticipation of public acknowledgment of his achievements. He does not rest easy, sleeping only about four hours a night.

  As his success grew, so did his lack of trust. Donald Trump even passed that along to his young children.