You Can't Spell America Without Me
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK SELIGER © MARK SELIGER
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PHOTOGRAPHS OF IVANKA TRUMP: Michael Loccisano / Getty Images: page here (left) (also here); Peter Kramer / Getty Images: here (right) (also here); Evan Agostini / Getty Images: here (left); Lars Niki / Getty Images: here (right); Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images: here; Lars Niki / Getty Images: here PHOTOGRAPHS ON BOOK COVERS: Mary Ellen Matthews: here and here
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ISBN: 9780525521990 (HARDCOVER); 9780525522003 (E-BOOK)
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For my fellow Americans, who deserve only the best, and now finally have it –
the richest, smartest
&
most amazing president ever
MY TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
CHAPTER 1
YOU ACTUALLY CAN’T SPELL AMERICA WITHOUT “ME”
CHAPTER 2
I HAD TO DO IT MY WAY
CHAPTER 3
THIS IS AMERICAN HISTORY
CHAPTER 4
I WON, I’M A WINNER, I’M THE WINNER
CHAPTER 5
WITH GREAT WEALTH COMES GREAT QUALITY
CHAPTER 6
THE ACTUAL LEGAL TAKEOVER OF THE GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER 7
I NEED A TV IN THE OVAL
CHAPTER 8
IT FINALLY FELT REAL, LIKE A MOVIE
CHAPTER 9
I’M THE PRESIDENT
CHAPTER 10
I FEEL LIKE A NEW MAN
CHAPTER 11
I LIKE TOUGH
CHAPTER 12
IT WAS ABOUT TO GET EVEN BETTER
CHAPTER 13
THE SO-CALLED RUSSIA STORIES
CHAPTER 14
IF I ACTED “PRESIDENTIAL” I’D LOSE MY SPECIAL POWERS
CHAPTER 15
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE UNDERSTAND
CHAPTER 16
A GOOD TEST FOR COMEY
CHAPTER 17
THEY SAID IT ON THE NEWS
CHAPTER 18
THE BAD POLLS ARE PROBABLY MOSTLY OR COMPLETELY FAKE
CHAPTER 19
EVERYBODY LIED TO ME
CHAPTER 20
IVANKA HAS SUCH A GORGEOUS SMILE
CHAPTER 21
THE PRESIDENCY REALLY IS LIKE A TV SERIES
CHAPTER 22
I NEVER PANIC
CHAPTER 23
I HAD TO “KILL” HIM—
KILL IN QUOTATION MARKS
CHAPTER 24
THE “SPECIAL COUNSEL” IS TOTALLY RIGGED
CHAPTER 25
EVERYONE NERVOUS EXCEPT ME
CHAPTER 26
IS JARED A FREDO?
CHAPTER 27
WE’RE BOTH STRONG AND KNOW THE SCORE
CHAPTER 28
IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME, HERE’S THE TRUTH
CHAPTER 29
WE’LL ALL LOOK BACK AND LAUGH ABOUT THIS
CHAPTER 30
CALL HIM FLIPPER
CHAPTER 31
IT’S A CRAZY WORLD
CHAPTER 32
SO MANY, MANY SECRETS TO KEEP
CHAPTER 33
ROUTE 66
CHAPTER 34
MAGA
CHAPTER 35
MY NOBEL PRIZE
CHAPTER 36
SHLIMAZEL
CHAPTER 37
ANG BUHLAY AY MAGANDA
CHAPTER 38
WAS THAT ALL A DREAM?
CHAPTER 39
ALL FAKE
CHAPTER 40
HOORAY PRESIDENT TRUMP, HOORAY PRESIDENTE TRUMP, HOORAY PRESIDENT TRUMP IN RUSSIAN WITH THE CRAZY BACKWARD 3
CHAPTER 41
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
YOU ACTUALLY CAN’T SPELL AMERICA WITHOUT “ME”
I remember the day this all began, the “journey to the presidency,” as my daughter Ivanka calls it. It was a really, really fantastic day, one of the best days of my entire life. I’ve had so many great days—the day my mom finally made my father stop calling me “the Grouchy Little Homo,” the day my net worth got bigger than his, the day of my first 60 Minutes appearance (before CBS News was fake news), the day The Apprentice got 28.1 million viewers, the days each of my five children were born, including Tiffany. So many phenomenal, incredible days.
It was in January 1986, the day the space shuttle blew up, so tragic, but I was in a fabulous mood. My first casino in Atlantic City was doing unbelievably great, making so much money, and I’d just made a great deal to take it over and make it more successful by renaming it Trump Plaza. I was in my thirties, and I’d just met one of my future wives, Marla Maples, who was twenty-one, maybe twenty-two, and at that time a nine-plus in the looks department, to be perfectly frank. I was in Palm Beach, my wife Ivana was doing her thing, and I drove my Rolls-Royce over to The Breakers hotel to visit the legendary genius Roy Cohn, my extremely tough lawyer and personal friend. Roy kept a suite at The Breakers, which had recently refused to let me buy two penthouses and combine them, the morons, because they’d now be so valuable as historic residences. In the dozen years I’d known Roy, he had taught me about the importance of maintaining a strong, great suntan all year long, but I remember that day he was very pale, I guess he was sick by then, AIDS, sad, so I decided to cheer him up by driving him down to Mar-a-Lago for a tour of the place.
I’d just closed on Mar-a-Lago—it was such an amazing deal, one of the best deals I ever made, not the biggest but one of the most outstanding. I bought it for a fraction of what I’d offered only a few months earlier, because I told the owners I’d acquired the whole beach directly behind the house and could totally block their view with a new building, which basically meant selling to me or nobody. (That wasn’t completely true, but they were weak and scared—to be perfectly honest, like so many people born into money who aren’t Trumps, and even some who are.) And one of the sellers, the B-list snob actress Dina Merrill, was such an unbelievable un-PC-word to me. In fact, by the way, since they were technically a foundation, letting me take them to the cleaners, even though I hadn’t actually closed on the beachfront lot, people told me it was probably some kind of fiduciary crime on their part.
Anyway, there I was with Roy Cohn, who respected me greatly, at Mar-a-Lago, the most beautiful, amazing, prestigious home in Florida, one of the most beautiful and
prestigious in the United States or the entire Western Hemisphere, probably in the whole world. Which I now owned, for almost nothing. It was totally empty, except for the Hispanics and the African Americans—great people scrubbing off the mold and hatcheting the lizards and so forth.
“My Xanadu, right?” I said. Roy understood I meant William Randolph Hearst’s house in my favorite movie, Citizen Kane, because like me, Roy was very smart, Ivy League but not a phony. He mentioned that Marjorie Merriweather Post, the Shredded Wheat and Honey Bunches of Oats heiress who built Mar-a-Lago, had meant it to be used by American presidents as a Winter White House. Most presidents, then just like now, couldn’t afford extremely nice homes of their own, not even to rent.
“YOU KNOW WHAT, ROY?” I said. We were standing on one of the beautiful marble verandas—it’s covered in fifteenth-century Spanish tiles, that’s the 1400s, when Spain and those people were on top, each tile now worth $25,000, half a million pesos apiece—and I was looking out at the ocean, not in a sad way, but more kind of a wise way. “It’s really a shame that Donald Trump can’t ever be president,” I said. “Not that I’d necessarily want to be. My life is better than a president’s in a lot of ways, much better. In most ways. Did you know Reagan only makes two hundred grand a year? But what I hate is that because of that one law I can’t be president, only because of that stupid, ridiculous law.”
Roy was rubbing one of the carved stone griffins, the weird little gay royal dragon things all around Mar-a-Lago. “What ‘law’? You mean the problem with that punk in Atlantic City? Don’t worry about him. Forget him. He’s gone. He doesn’t exist. Literally.”
“No, no,” I said, “because of my mom. Because she’s from Scotland.”
Roy explained that all these years I’d had it wrong—a foreign parent doesn’t mean you can’t become president. Article something, clause whatever.
“Wow,” I said. “Wow. And in a few months I turn forty. You know what that means.”
“You’re dumping Ivana? Fine. Don’t tell her until after we get the new postnup drafted and signed.”
“No, it means I’ll be old enough to run for president! Nothing stopping me! Mar-a-Lago could actually be my Winter White House someday, Roy!”
“You can be elected president now, Don. The minimum age is thirty-five, not forty. Same article, same clause.” Even with the AIDS, Roy had a very brilliant legal mind.
HE WAS MY MENTOR, AND I WAS HIS JOHN F. KENNEDY, IF JOSEPH KENNEDY HAD BEEN GAY AND JEWISH AND HIS SON HAD BEEN PROTESTANT.
At that moment, I saw a whole new direction my life could go, all kinds of new angles I could play. Roy died a few months later, but people have told me he actually died much happier after he knew he had cleared the way for my greatest deal and greatest achievement of all—that he was my mentor, and I was his John F. Kennedy, if Joseph Kennedy had been gay and Jewish and his son had been Protestant. Proud that someday I would, you know, make America great again. But also so I could prove once and for all, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Trump is an important man the world should never ignore or laugh at. A great American winner at business? Sure. A sexy guy who attracted a thousand beautiful ladies, supermodels and entertainers and many others? Definitely. More importantly, a highly intelligent and strongly trustworthy leader who people really, really, really admire, who millions and eventually billions of people would really, really, really love and respect forever.
That was the day, almost thirty-two years ago, when my brand was just beginning to become a very hot brand, long before it was the hottest brand in the world, I realized that you actually can’t spell America without me. Literally. Which is so amazing when you think about it.
I HAD TO DO IT MY WAY
The chapter you just read was written personally by me, Donald Trump. I swear it, on the life of my youngest daughter. What you’re reading now, I am also personally writing. This entire book: me, all the words and sentences and larger sections, the paragraphs, the chapters, all mine, not “as told to” or “with” some pathetic low-life parasite ghostwriter.
This Trump book, unlike my many previous excellent Trump books, which were typed up by subcontractors who interviewed me, is being created 100 percent by me. It will be, if I can be completely honest, the best one. It already is.
There are many reasons I’m writing it myself. But the basic problem is trust. Who can we totally trust? Family. And by that I mean children—and maybe grandchildren, too, my oldest is ten, so I can’t say for sure—but not wives or adopted children because, sorry, they don’t contain your genes. Although I’ve heard you can inject people with your genes and make them related to you by blood, which is interesting. Genes, someone once told me, probably Dr. John Trump, my brilliant uncle at MIT, are like computer chips that give you a kind of Bluetooth connection mentally to your children, a kind of remote control over them. It’s how you own your children and grandchildren the way you own your homes, which is comforting, and why you love them.
WHO CAN WE TOTALLY TRUST? FAMILY. AND BY THAT I MEAN CHILDREN—AND MAYBE GRANDCHILDREN, TOO, MY OLDEST IS TEN, SO I CAN’T SAY FOR SURE—BUT NOT WIVES OR ADOPTED CHILDREN BECAUSE, SORRY, THEY DON’T CONTAIN YOUR GENES.
But back to trust. I trusted the third-rate clown who “wrote” my phenomenally best-selling first autobiography, The Art of the Deal, and gave him many millions of dollars—but then thirty years later, because nobody had ever heard of him since, as soon as I ran for president he betrayed me. “He’s a Judas,” a lot of my Christian sup- porters said, which was true, and I like hitting back, but “Judas” seemed a little rough. Some of my supporters say that a lot about the people who hit me—even about people like John McCain, who’s Protestant, and Paul Ryan, who’s Catholic—and I always wonder if that makes my son-in-law Jared Kushner feel bad, or even Ivanka, who’s now technically one also. I’d asked Steve Bannon, my campaign CEO and first White House chief strategist, if he would arrange to have them turn down the “Judas” stuff a little. Not good.
Then I trusted a nice lady at The Trump Organization, former ballerina, used to be gorgeous, who helped write a few of my recent bestsellers—including Trump: How to Get Rich, Money Does Buy Happiness, The Amazing Magical Miraculous Mr. Trump, and Everyone But You Is a Loser. So I let her write my wife’s little speech for the Republican convention. By using Michelle Obama’s convention speech for that, she didn’t betray me on purpose—my top security guy, Keith, spent a few hours alone with her making sure, believe me—but she did give the dishonest hater disgusting fake media an opportunity to embarrass me and, sure, my wife, on the day of my nomination. Although as Ted Nugent said to me when that blew up, he goes onstage at every concert and plays songs by Chuck Berry and Sam & Dave and the Temptations and Jimi Hendrix and so on, and everybody thinks that’s totally okay.
Some earlier Trump books, all huge bestsellers even though “I” didn’t “write” them.
Since this will be my greatest and most important book yet, there was another problem: What “professional writer” could I trust to understand and truly love Trump? Sean Hannity volunteered to write it, and I believe Sean does love me with the kind of total loyalty I rarely see in high-net-worth individuals who aren’t related to me. But I’m sure that like almost all successful people, Sean hires ghostwriters to write his books. Plus, with his show to do every night, which is extremely important for our country, he wouldn’t be able to do what I needed—be around me all the time, in every meeting, seeing and hearing it all, taking notes. Then the lawyers told me that any outside writer would have to get the top, top, top security clearance, too, which would make the lying, fake media go crazy—although, about that, Bannon said “a feature, not a bug,” which is true and funny, but Ivanka convinced me it wasn’t worth the fight.
Everybody thought they’d convinced me to drop the idea of doing this book. Can’t be done. Too hard. Too many other things on my plate, a
ll the making-America-great things. Even though they also all agreed I have been making America great in so many ways for years, quietly, sometimes anonymously.
“Wait until you’re out of office, Daddy,” Ivanka said, “when you can say everything you want to about Ryan and Merkel and the Clintons and everybody else, and you’ll get paid even more.”
“That’s Mr. President-elect Daddy to you,” I replied, with a little pinch, as usual, “but do the math, baby. After eight years, I’ll be almost eighty. I know you say ‘eighty is the new forty,’ but I don’t want to wait that long to bring out the true story.” And I probably won’t want to stay in office any longer than that, although as Jared said, Mike Bloomberg got the system in New York fixed so he could stay mayor for an extra four years. And a friend told us that a friend of his in Europe, the president of Belarus, which is an actual European country, did the same thing, so he’s been the elected president there for twenty-two years and counting. So anything’s possible. And Trump specializes in doing the impossible. And then I’d be the first U.S. president in like a century, since FDR, to go more than two terms. That would be very special.
If you tell Trump he can’t do something, that makes him do it. Like my MIT uncle Dr. John Trump, PhD, taught me, “Every action causes a much, much bigger reaction against it.” The other great thing about me is that if I have a problem with one of my businesses, I always step in and fix it myself. (For instance, that’s what Roy Cohn was referring to in the previous chapter, concerning the dishonest person causing the problem when I was building my casinos in Atlantic City.)
So for this book, I decided I really had to do it myself. I had to do it my way.
Incidentally, that’s my favorite song, “My Way.” I love my Native American friend Wayne Newton’s version, which he sings for me every time I see him, almost whispers it in my ear, so fantastic. (Which means I’ve had the opportunity to examine that very expensive face of his up close. Whoa.) I was going to print the lyrics to “My Way” right here until I found out how they screw you for that, even though you can read them for free on the Internet. Unbelievable! So why would I pay thousands of dollars to the composer, the very overrated Paul Anka, who wouldn’t even perform at our great inauguration?