When Walch met with Trump about The Tower, he didn’t object to any of her work, not even when the Trump-like character was less than scrupulous. “He was very respectful of my creative process,” she said. “It wasn’t like things had to be his way. He was a confident listener, acutely listening.” Trump gave the writer only one note: he wanted the main character’s last name to be Barron. No problem, Walch said. The Tower would be the story of John Barron—the name Trump had used for years when he called news outlets with tips for stories about Donald Trump. The Tower was never produced—it just wasn’t great, network executives said.
In 2015, when Trump was fourteen years into the run of The Apprentice, NBC announced that it was removing him as host of the program “due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants.” (In reply, Trump blasted the network, saying it was “so weak and so foolish to not understand the serious illegal immigration problem.”) Even after he became a presidential candidate, Trump loved the idea of retaining a regular presence on prime-time TV. He said he’d still like to make The Tower. “Depending on what happens with this thing, I’d like to do that,” he said in 2016. “Of course, if this goes all the way, I can’t do it. I won’t have the time. And it wouldn’t be appropriate.” Trump clearly relished talking about Apprentice, but he had to get on a plane. Before he got off the phone, though, he had a question for the reporter on the other end of the line. “So Schwarzenegger’s going to do The Apprentice,” Trump said. “You think he’ll be good? I hope he’s good. He was in politics. So maybe he can do this, too.”
Going back to his first appearances on Page Six of the New York Post, on The Howard Stern Show, and on Barbara Walters’s celebrity interviews, Trump always took pride in knowing how to win attention for himself, knowing how to feed the media’s insatiable appetite for stories about wealth, sex, and controversy—and ideally, all three blended together. Dabbling with investments in Broadway shows and making cameo appearances on TV sitcoms and in movies seemed like novelties, good for a quick injection of celebrity juice. The Apprentice, however, was a sustained development of a character, a powerful mainline into the American consciousness, an essential bridge on the journey from builder to politician. It was only a matter of time before he would use his showmanship not only to sell condos and fill hotel rooms, but to expand his brand into a dazzling array of fields.
13
* * *
The Name Game
Donald Trump built his reputation selling real estate, but the thing he had always wanted to sell was Donald Trump. His career as a reality television star would finally make Trump into a household brand—and he was determined to cash in. He started before The Apprentice had even debuted. In mid-2003, Trump laid out his vision for Mark Hager, a minor figure in the world of clothing licensing. Hager had once done a clothing deal with the rapper Nelly, but his experience with celebrity labels was limited. Still, Hager shared a lawyer with Trump, so he worked his connection to secure a meeting to propose a joint business venture. As Hager’s taxi wound its way through Manhattan’s clogged streets, he was mentally reviewing his presentation when he got a call from his lawyer friend. There had been a last-minute change: Trump no longer had any interest in the business Hager wanted to discuss. Instead, Trump had a proposal of his own.
Hager found Trump in an expansive mood. Trump talked up his role as the central character in the new show, predicting The Apprentice would be a ratings smash hit. He envisioned that companies would pay to put his name on products showcased on the program. He told Hager that he would start with menswear—shirts, ties, and suits with the classic American executive look that had been his own uniform for decades. Then he would move to fragrance and water and anything else that could be sold under the Trump brand.
Trump offered Hager a broker’s fee if he could persuade a big-name clothing company to make the first of what would eventually become more than twenty licensing deals. Hager accepted the challenge, but he found the clothing industry did not immediately share Trump’s vision. Shortly after The Apprentice premiered in January 2004, Hager’s deputy Jeff Danzer pitched the idea to Phillips–Van Heusen, the apparel industry heavyweight that manufactured clothing for Calvin Klein. The company’s head of licensing laughed. The clothing executive, Danzer recalled, saw Trump not as the powerful titan of the boardroom that he played on TV, but as what he had been in the 1980s and 1990s—the tabloid playboy known for his bluster in the face of bankruptcies at several of his businesses. Who would want to dress like him?
Undaunted by the brush-off, Danzer sent the Phillips–Van Heusen executive a copy of a New York Post story headlined “Apprentice Buzz Likely to Mint Trump a New Fortune.” Explaining that the show provided a “priceless” boost to Trump’s brand, the story quoted advertising honcho Donny Deutsch: “The Trump name always had a premium veneer to it, but it lacked the personable, likability factor that we get to see now on the show. The brand was always top-shelf; now it’s top-shelf with a smile.”
By April, after the season finale of The Apprentice, no one laughed at the idea of Trump-branded shirts, ties, cologne, water. Trump’s success emboldened him to set up an in-house licensing division instead of outsourcing it to Hager. “Everything that goes into this business, everything that goes out of the business, everything having to do with my image”—everything having to do with his brand—“everything we do here is under my thumb,” Trump said, as Danzer recalled their conversation. “I do everything. I will manage my own license, thank you.”
Trump created a new position of executive vice president of global licensing and gave the job to Cathy Hoffman Glosser, who had worked in licensing for two decades, including merchandising for Marvel Entertainment, where she had gotten Spider-Man on kids’ pajamas. Now she would get Trump on vodka and soap. But a complication arose. Danzer was still negotiating with Phillips–Van Heusen, and Trump wanted a deal with the industry heavyweight to produce his shirts and ties. The company was wary because it had just discontinued a Regis Philbin line that had petered out quickly, despite the popularity of his TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. So Trump employed his strongest tool: himself. In August 2004, Trump announced he wanted a meeting with the company’s executives. Instead of summoning them to Trump Tower, his usual practice, he offered to visit the shirt manufacturer’s Garment District headquarters. “I was taken aback,” said Mark Weber, the company’s CEO at the time. Sure enough, Trump arrived at the company’s offices looking just as he did on television, and full of flattery for his future business partners.
“I really respect and love Regis,” Trump told Weber. “However, I’m a brand. I’m building a brand. Everything I do, I do with the best quality, the finest taste. That’s why I want to do business with your company.” The more insistent Weber was that the deal just wasn’t going to work, the harder Trump pushed back. Both companies will make money. This will work, Trump told him. As the meeting concluded, Trump looked at Glosser, his newly hired licensing director. “Make it happen,” he ordered.
Despite the demands of his TV show, Trump put in extra time to pump his new product. When the clothing company unveiled a tiny showroom in its headquarters to showcase its new Donald J. Trump line, Donald and Melania surprised Weber by showing up, shaking hands, and signing autographs. The event was an internal company party—the only reporter who had even been invited was from the industry trade publication Women’s Wear Daily. Weber recalled asking, “Donald, why are you doing this?”
“Because I want to win, and I’ll do whatever it takes to win,” Trump responded.
For eleven years, Phillips–Van Heusen manufactured clothing for Trump, contracting with factories in China, Honduras, Bangladesh, and other countries, where low-wage workers stitched Trump’s name into the collars of thousands of shirts. Trump put up no money. The clothing company paid him a percentage of sales, amounting to more than $1 million a year.
• • •
TRUMP MENSWEAR MADE AN appearan
ce, of course, in an episode of The Apprentice. So did Trump Ice, a new brand of water, and Trump Success, a new fragrance. Riding the popularity of the show, Trump licensed his name to clothes, ties, home furnishings, eyeglasses, wallets, even mattresses. All sold well for years. Trump-branded products were on prominent display at Macy’s, which catered to middle-class shoppers seeking a bit of style. By 2016, Trump was receiving income from twenty-five different licensing deals, and he reported ownership interest in dozens of other companies that appeared to have been set up for licensing around the world, a sign of the scope of his ambition. Trump’s branding theory was that anything that could be sold, could be sold under his name—for a fee. That led to some unusual gambits. A venture to sell Trump Steaks at the Sharper Image, a high-tech-gadget store found in many suburban shopping malls, fared poorly.
By licensing his name without putting up money, he could often make significant profits, even when the ventures failed. The new model let Trump weather even worldwide economic collapse. Initially, his licensing deals captured the easy money flowing during the economic boom of the first decade of the new millennium, when consumers had ready money to spend on seemingly luxurious Trump-brand goods and banks were eager to finance high-priced real estate developments. Under his new strategy, he profited from the wreckage of the bust that followed as well. At worst, licensing let him walk away from deals that collapsed in the downturn, having pocketed hefty fees. Trump’s crucial insight was to turn away from building one business at a time and expand his ambition to create an empire—a series of entities that bore his name, but didn’t rely on his cash. His business was the brand. It was like owning a casino—when run properly, the house wins. The gamblers would be those who paid him for the rights to his name. Trump couldn’t lose.
Few of his branded ventures received as much notice as, or created more controversy than, Trump’s effort to educate the masses in his style.
• • •
ON A DAMP SPRING day in 2005, Trump summoned reporters to a press conference at Trump’s Bar, located on the ground floor of Trump Tower, close to Trump Grill, just steps away from Trump’s Ice Cream Parlor and the Trump Store, which was then pushing a new cologne for men called Donald Trump, the Fragrance. At the news conference, Trump unveiled Trump University, a branded product with an ostensibly noble purpose: “I would say that if I had a choice of making lots of money or imparting lots of knowledge, I think I’d be as happy to impart knowledge as to make money.” At the time, the housing market was booming, and many ordinary people saw investing in real estate as an easy path to riches. Trump promised his university would show them the way. “At Trump University, we teach success. That’s what it’s all about—success,” he said in a promotional video. Not long after his new university opened, the real estate market softened, then tanked. Rather than close shop, Trump’s university pivoted. Now it would teach people how to make money in a depressed market. “Learn from Donald Trump’s handpicked experts how you can profit from the largest real estate liquidation in history,” read one Trump University ad that ran in a San Antonio newspaper in 2009.
Sales pressure was intense. It began at free seminars such as one hosted at a Holiday Inn just outside Washington, DC, in 2009. A placard outside the ballroom read TRUMP, THINK BIG. Inside, aspiring real estate investors heard the theme song from The Apprentice, the O’Jays’ classic “For the Love of Money.” Then a Trump University instructor took the microphone and yelled, “All right, you guys ready to be the next Trump real estate millionaire? Yes or no?” The crowd responded with lackluster enthusiasm, so the instructor tried again: “Let’s blow the roof off this building. You guys are the best in the world. So, you guys ready to be the next Trump real estate millionaire, yes or no?!”
“Yes!”
Five hundred Washingtonians attended the free seminars offered during that September week in 2009. They listened to speakers and watched videos as the Trump sales team promised to reveal ways to profit from the real estate downturn. “Find it, flip it, forget about it,” instructors told potential students at a free seminar on investing in property with little or no money down. “You don’t have to own real estate; you just have to control it.” Again and again, students at these events heard about Trump’s personal involvement in hiring professors and developing the curriculum.
Behind the scenes, the staff was taught to build interest and “set the hook” for customers who might sign up for pricey classes. Instructions on running the events came in employee “playbooks” that detailed how to pressure students to choose the most expensive courses. The playbooks suggested how to persuade attendees of free seminars to buy a $1,495 ticket to a three-day workshop: “Let them know you’ve found an answer to their problems and a way for them to change their lifestyle.” The playbooks urged the sales team to push further by suggesting that students who bought the $1,495 course upgrade to classes with a mentor that could cost between $9,995 and $34,995. Students filled out forms detailing their personal assets, ostensibly to provide each with targeted recommendations for investment. But the confidential playbooks revealed that the real purpose of getting the students’ financial details was to determine which customers were good targets for the $34,995 program. In the evenings, after the first day of seminars had concluded, staff members were to use the financial data to rank each participant according to assets they had available to spend on more Trump University programs. “If they can afford the gold elite,” the playbook advised, “don’t allow them to think about doing anything besides the gold elite.”
Bob Guillo, a retiree living on Long Island, was one of nearly six hundred people who paid $35,000 for the Trump Gold Elite package, charging the program to his credit card at a New York seminar. He later said he was left with little more than feel-good class certificates and a photo of himself with a cardboard cutout of Trump. “I really felt stupid that I was scammed by Trump,” said Guillo, who earned Trump’s personal ire by appearing in ads sponsored by an anti-Trump group. “I thought that he was really legit.”
He was not alone. Guillo and other former students filed two class action lawsuits in California. In 2013, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman filed a $40 million suit against Trump and Trump University, alleging that Trump had defrauded more than five thousand people through a program that called itself a university but failed to meet New York State’s requirements to be classified as an educational institution. (After resisting for years, the company dropped University from its name, rebranding itself as the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative shortly before closing its doors in 2010.)
The plaintiffs claimed that much of what Trump had said about his university was not true. From its first days, Trump had described the faculty he assembled as “the best of the best,” with “professors and adjunct professors . . . who are going to be handpicked by me.” The promotional material touted Trump University as “the next best thing” to being Trump’s apprentice. Trump and his sales team attracted customers by insisting Trump was not even intending to profit from the expensive classes. “He does not need your fifteen hundred dollars,” said one instructor whose pitch was recorded.
Trump promised to give profits from his university to charity, but none were donated. (Alan Garten, Trump’s lawyer, said Trump had intended to pass the proceeds to charity but instead spent the money defending against lawsuits.) Trump University president Michael Sexton would later say that Trump did not pick the instructors. Sexton also said he could remember no special Trump methods that were taught, other than the investment opportunities presented by foreclosures. Former students who sued alleged that their trainers had little real estate knowledge.
Trump repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, citing surveys showing that students, including Guillo, reported they were highly satisfied with the lessons. The students “were provided a substantive, valuable education,” Trump said later. Trump also argued that he had lent his name to the courses but had little to do with their daily operation. Told by a lawyer
for the plaintiffs that 25 percent of Trump University attendees had requested refunds, Trump compared the university to the Home Shopping Network, which had generous refund rules and therefore also a high refund rate: “You go to the Home Shopping Network, whatever it’s called, the refunds are unbelievable. The people use the product, wear the product, and then they send it back. I shouldn’t have given their money back. I gave back millions of dollars because I’m an honest guy.” As they did across Trump’s expanding branded empire, his representatives insisted that the truth about the seminars was available to any savvy consumer. Classes, after all, were held in hotel ballrooms.
• • •
THE APPRENTICE HAD DEBUTED during the rapid expansion of the country’s real estate bubble. Trump tried to cash in not only with his university but with a new foray into Trump-licensed developments.
The show’s 2007 season concluded with a live broadcast from the Hollywood Bowl. Perched behind his now familiar boardroom table, Trump sounded uncharacteristically humble as he noted that he was in a setting where Frank Sinatra had once performed. Trump presented a choice of prizes to the person he would name the season’s winner: his new apprentice could oversee construction of a Trump luxury resort in the Dominican Republic or a forty-seven-story condominium project that Trump bragged would reshape the skyline of downtown Atlanta.
As Trump narrated video of construction cranes looming over a Caribbean beach and the streets of Atlanta, he didn’t note that he neither owned the properties nor was primarily responsible for their construction. Trump had merely licensed his name to the developers. Both of the projects he hawked on the Apprentice finale that year eventually faltered. Trump Towers Atlanta went into foreclosure in 2010. The lot where the project was once slated to rise stood empty for years.
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