EXCLUSIVE: 'I would watch supermodels getting sc***ed on a bench.' How Donald Trump prowled posh NYC clubs with racist, gay-hating super lawyer Roy Cohn and asked conquests like Carla Bruni to take an AIDS test
- A new book by Pulitzer -prize winning reporter reveals Donald Trump was a terror even in elementary school
- He hurled erasers, threw birthday cake at children's parties and gave a teacher a black eye 'because I didn't think he knew anything about music'
- 'Donald had been sneaking into Manhattan on the subway and acquiring a small collection of switchblades' his father sent him to military academy
- He met Roy Cohn when he left college at Le Club, where all of New York's movers and shakers hung out
- Cohn was gay but opposed gay rights, Jewish but anti-Semitic. He often used epithets like n****r, f*g and s**c
- When the Justice Department alleged Trump Corp refused to rent to tenants 'because of race and color' Trump hired Cohn to wage war
- Trump's clandestine affair with Marla Maples was revealed to first wife Ivana in Aspen, where she famously confronted the actress on the slopes
When Donald Trump jumped into the 2016 Presidential race in June, it wasn't his first foray into presidential politics.
In 1987 and 1999, he flirted with a political run because he had two books to sell - but then he was out of the game.
It was a tactic he learned from the most infamous defense lawyer in New York, Roy Cohn, chief aide to notorious red-bating Wisconsin senator, Joseph McCarthy back in the 1950's.
After the Senate hearings, Cohn returned to New York to resume practicing law.
Trump was headed to Manhattan and party nightlife after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce in 1968. With a rich father, he had no real responsibilities.
The two men connected while trolling the city's hottest spots - 21 Club, the Four Seasons and Le Club, a members-only restaurant-bar-discotheque.
'Le Club was renowned for attracting beautiful women, who commanded Trump's attention that drink and drugs could not. He would eventually confess that sex was his one real indulgence… and expended much time and energy in he pursuit of models, flight attendants, and others he found attractive', writes author Michael D'Antonio in his new book: Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, Thomas Dunne publisher.
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Roy Cohn (in yellow jacket), Ed Kosner, who was the editor in chief of Newsweek, and Donald Trump hang out in the Seventies. Cohn was Trump's mentor. The two connected while trolling the city's hottest spots - 21 Club, the Four Seasons and Le Club, a members-only restaurant-bar-discotheque
Cohn, at right, with New York City Mayor Ed Koch, was gay but opposed gay rights. He was Jewish but was anti-Semitic. He often used epithets like s**c, n****r and f*g
'The whole point of Le Club was to be noticed as powerful or beautiful and to be photographed alongside a celebrity and thereby become one yourself,' D'Antonio writes.
At Le Club, Trump lived up to his 'ladies' man' moniker as well as befriending older, powerful men who could stoke his ambitions as well as his ego.
First tier celebrities at the private club included Diana Ross, Al Pacino, various Kennedys including Jackie Onassis. Thirteen princes and four barons were on its membership rolls and the Maharaja of Jaipur and the Duke of Bedford were on the board of directors.
Le Club was all about status.
The club's real regulars included Trump, Yankees' owner George Steinbrenner and Roy Cohn who was gathering up high-powered clients and friends who were politicians or celebrities.
Trump and Cohn became fast friends and Cohn became the Trump family lawyer.
Donald described Cohn as 'a total genius' who 'would kill for somebody that he liked' and he liked Trump.
Cohn was gay but opposed gay rights and helped persecute other gays. He was Jewish but was anti-Semitic. He often used the words s**c, n****r and f*g.
Author Michael D'Antonio is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist i
He dressed impeccably in fine suits, silk ties, matching handkerchiefs – 'and was so vain that he never appeared in public with a hair out of place'.
He drove a rattletrap Rolls Royce with his initials RMC on the vanity license plate and often entertained friends in the back seat of his car over drinks.
Trump followed the lead of his mentor, always wearing a flashy suit, a fine shirt, and was chauffeured in a limousine with his initials, DJT on the vanity plate. He wore patent-leather shoes.
Cohn and Trump were also regulars at Studio 54, another nightclub synonymous with the glamour and excess of the late Seventies, with drugs and debauchery the norm.
Trump recalls: 'I would watch supermodels getting sc***ed, well-known supermodels getting sc***ed, on a bench in the middle of the room. There were seven of them and each one was getting sc***ed by a different guy. This was in the middle of the room'.
When not working the nightclub circuit, Trump and Cohn were focused on the outcome of a housing discrimination case brought by the federal government in 1973 against the Trump organization.
Trump Management Corporation, the family's real estate company, was being sued by the Department of Justice, 'alleging that the company had refused to rent to prospective tenants 'because of race and color'.
Instead of settling the case, the 'Trumps had hired Cohn and signaled their willingness to wage a long fight'.
Cohn filed a $100 million counter suit and accused the Justice Department of using 'Gestapo-like tactics'.
But when current and former Trump workers testified that they were required to report the race of anyone seeking apartments and had been told to discourage black applicants, Cohn negotiated in earnest and Trump had to make a 'public pledge of nondiscrimination'.
A first in New York City, the Trumps had to provide weekly lists of vacancies to the Urban League's Open Housing Center and they had three days to submit applications from minorities who had first preference.
Cohn was eventually disbarred in 1986 shortly before he died at age fifty-nine from AIDS.
Years later, when one-time president of the Trump Plaza Hotel, John O'Donnell quit and wrote a tell-all book about Trump, he 'presented a picture of Trump as an imperious and possibly prejudiced man who seemed indifferent to others'.
O'Donnell wrote in Trumped! that his former boss said, 'I've got black accountants at Trump Castle and at Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day'.
Trump grew up in Jamaica Estates, Queens, in a Colonial Revival, red brick exterior house with four massive columns guarding the front door and an overhead plaque with 'an ersatz crest'
Trump's father Fred was a real taskmaster. When Donald begansneaking into Manhattan on the subway and acquiring a small collection of switchblades he was sent away to military school
Trump called O'Donnell 'a f**king loser' but later admitted that everything O'Donnell said was probably true. O'Donnell moved on to successfully work for Merv Griffin Resorts as CEO.
In the summer of 1976, Trump was dating slinky fashion models when he met Ivana Winklmayr, a name 'she had acquired in a sham marriage to an Austrian who had agreed to it so she could get a passport,' writes the author.
But she also continued to use her maiden name – Zelnickova. A Montreal newspaper said she had another husband, a Czech named George Syrovatka, who defected during a ski meet in the West.
She was the hottest fashion model at the time in Montreal but 'the facts of Ivana Trump's early life would prove elusive to the many journalists who sought to determine them'.
'However the self that she presented to the world – beautiful, successful, and most of all desired - would remain consistent'.
After meeting her at restaurant bar Maxwell's Plum in Manhattan, Trump began the pursuit.
Dozens of roses, dinner at 21 Club, flying up to Montreal to see her in the fashion shows, a skiing trip to Aspen, rented chalets and then he proposed marriage. She said yes but then Donald asked her to sign a prenup agreement - Roy Cohn's idea.
Cohn believed that marriage was definitely not in Donald's best interest. But Ivana proved to be a good negotiator and won the concession that should they divorce she had to return all his presents.
Cohn was eventually disbarred in 1986 shortly before he died at age fifty-nine from AIDS.
The self-created imperial couple married in April 1977 in a lavish society bash and moved into an eight-room Fifth Avenue apartment where they often invited press in to have a look and answer questions about their furnishings and wardrobes.
But in August 1985, Miss Hawaiian Tropic International, Marla Maples, was introduced to Trump. She had left her studies at the University of Georgia and arrived in New York hoping to 'become successful as a screen actress and some day do Broadway'.
She was the hottest fashion model at the time in Montreal but 'the facts of Ivana Trump's early life would prove elusive to the many journalists who sought to determine them'
Marla found an inexpensive apartment in the city and decorated it with images of Marilyn Monroe.
'Maples's power resided in the kind of wholesome sexiness that one writer would say made her a' 13-year-old-boy's ideal woman'.
That appealed to Trump who continued to meet up with her at social events and had his aide call her and invite her to lunch.
She accepted after several phone calls. Lunch lasted five hours and he insisted his marriage was all but over, divorce inevitable.
Marla didn't want 'to be something that keeps the boredom away', but Donald's relationship with Ivana last two more years while Marla waited in the wings.
'Rumors of infidelity swirled around Trump who made no secret of his interest in beautiful women' and gossip columnists hinted at an affair with Marla.
Ivana's friends told her she was being betrayed by her husband but she didn't believe them until he complained about her appearance and she flew to the West Coast for plastic surgery.
'She returned looking younger, but so surgically altered that she was almost unrecognizable'.
Donald was the 'king' in Marla's eyes. 'She was enchanted by all that she encountered in his realm'. She didn't imagine the nightmare that would follow.
Trump's clandestine affair with Marla was revealed to Ivana when she picked up an extension phone in a luxury hotel, Little Nell, in Aspen, Colorado, over Christmas, winter of '89, and heard 'a male voice on the call noting, in the crudest terms, that 'Marla' was sexy'. It could only have been Donald.
Confronting him, he told her that Marla was a woman pursuing him for two years and he wasn't involved with her.
Caught! Trump's clandestine affair with Marla was revealed to Ivana when she picked up an extension phone in a luxury hotel, Little Nell, in Aspen, Colorado, over Christmas, winter of '89, and heard 'a male voice on the call noting, in the crudest terms, that 'Marla' was sexy'. It could only have been Donald. Turns out Marla was in Aspen too
Two days later, the two women ran into each other at a slope-side restaurant.
'You, bitch, leave my husband alone', Ivana was quoted in People magazine, realizing Marla was the other woman. Donald tried escaping down the mountain on his skis but onlookers told the magazine they saw Ivana, an excellent skier, ski backwards down the slope shaking her finger in her husband's face.
Donald tried to smooth it over with his wife but the marriage was on the rocks.
Donald or The Trumpster or DT as he called himself, viewed the scandal as 'great for business' while the front page of the New York Post screamed, 'Marla Boasts to Pals About Donald: Best Sex I've ever Had'.'
To Donald, this confirmed that he had true sex appeal. He loved it.
Playboy offered Marla $2 million to pose nude but she opted to endorse a brand of jeans, No Excuses for $500,000.
This was a new era of salacious stories and with all the gossip, the marriage with Ivana was over.
Ivana named Marla in the divorce, which was granted on the grounds of 'cruel and inhumane treatment'. She accepted a $10 million check plus $650,000 a year to support herself and the three little Trumps – Ivanka, Donny and Eric.
But WHAT ABOUT MARLA
Trump says he was bored as he was walking down the aisle to marry Marla. He divorced her after six years
Trump , Marla Maples and their daughter Tiffany at the launch party for his latest New York hotel and tower, the Trump International Tower, at Claridges Hotel in London
In 1991, Trump went on a hunt for 'the right woman' while dating model and one-time girlfriend of Mick Jagger, Carla Bruni, future wife of French president Nicholas Sarkozy.
He was asking all women he wanted to date to stop by his doctor's office for an HIV test.
Bruni was outraged.
Meanwhile Marla waited in the wings and 'dreamed that a life with Trump would allow her to practice philanthropy and somehow contribute to the greater good'.
'She saw in him the reincarnation of a former monarch. He was a king'…'At least that was her dream'. She hoped Donald would return to her. 'If a miracle happens and Donald finds God – I'm there'. She was in it for love, she said.
Trump eventually went back to her promising marriage and an enormous diamond ring. They missed several wedding dates but finally said their vows at the Plaza Hotel in 1993.
The marriage was over six years later.
'I was bored when she was walking down the aisle', Trump later told a writer. 'I kept thinking, 'What the hell am I doing here'.
'For him the getting was everything', the author writes.
While admitting to some personal failures, Trump viewed himself as an impressive man because of the many beautiful women he had known.
'To stay good-looking he battled against middle-age weight gain, wore a uniform of expensive suits, and devoted great effort to keeping his hair'.
In 1991, Trump went on a hunt for 'the right woman' while dating model and one-time girlfriend of Mick Jagger, Carla Bruni, future wife of French president Nicholas Sarkozy. He was asking all women he wanted to date to stop by his doctor's office for an HIV test. Bruni was outraged
'The worst thing a man can do is let himself go bald', he once told casino executive Mark Estess. While he never admitted to surgery for hair loss, he has carefully maintained his 'famous helmet of hair that evokes the cockscomb of the Rhode Island red rooster – a beacon meant to attract women'.
The next woman to be drawn in by Trump's glowing beacon of hair was the 5'11', 28-year old model from Slovenia, Melania Knauss.
Trump, not yet divorced, appeared with Melania at a gala marking the renovation of Grand Central Terminal in 1998.
'She wasn't much interested in being his partner outside of marriage. Ivana had run the Plaza. Marla had hoped to push him into active philanthropy, which she would help direct.
Knauss had no such ambitions'.
Trump gave her a $1.5 million engagement ring and they married in a Palm Beach church on January 22, 2005.
As she promised, she continued to work as a model and devote herself to their son, Barron William, born in 2006.
Happy at home, Trump was still eyeing beautiful women and in May 2009, when semi-nude photos of Miss California USA Carrie Prejean appeared on the web, Trump viewed the pictures as acceptable, After all, this was the twenty-first century.
He changed his mind and fired Prejean several weeks later and she wrote a tell-all book claiming Trump reviewed Miss USA contestants and screened out the ones he found less attractive before the competition.
Trump went into denial but the brouhaha was obscured when an explicit sex tape emerged that Prejean had made years earlier and Prejean had to settle with pageant officials who had paid for her breast implants.
'I am the creator of my own comic book, and I love living in it', Trump declared. It was just another day in the life of the publicity hungry man.
Trump, not yet divorced, appeared with Melania at a gala marking the renovation of Grand Central Terminal in 1998. 'She wasn't much interested in being his partner outside of marriage. Ivana had run the Plaza. Marla had hoped to push him into active philanthropy, which she would help direct,' writes the author. Melania has done her own thing
'There is nothing more voracious than this man's hunger for wealth, fame and power'.
When Donald Trump was interviewed by D'Antonio for the book, the presidential candidate told the author he hoped the book would promote his story as an example of 'entrepreneurial genius'.
'I always loved to fight', Trump told him, all types of fights including physical'.
'His many feuds and conflicts suggest he worries a great deal about how he is perceived and whether he is judged to be a winner or a loser, handsome or hideous, strong or week', writes D'Antonio.
'While he says that he is driven by the thrill of competition, his bully-boy quality is a sign that something else has pushed him to overwhelm his opponents, run up the score, and dismiss those who speak against him'.
Trump grew up in Jamaica Estates, Queens, in a Colonial Revival, red brick exterior house with four massive columns guarding the front door and an overhead plaque with 'an ersatz crest'.
The walkway was flanked by two painted cast iron jockeys.
One of five children – two girls and three boys, Donald was a problem even in elementary school.
He hurled erasers at teachers, threw birthday cake at other children's parties.
'At Kew-Forest School, Donald Trump was a bit of a terror'.
He once said that he gave a teacher a black eye 'because I didn't think he knew anything about music'.
In elementary school, he was the person he would always be.
'When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same. The temperament is not that different', Trump told the author.
Maryanne Trump Barry, Donald's sister, described him as 'extremely rebellious'.
A camp counselor described it as an 'ornery' disposition that he used to get his own way.
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He used to tag along with his father, Fred, touring his father's real estate properties and building sites and adopted his father's own gruff way of doing business.
But when Fred received the teachers' reports of bad behavior, that was it.
'Donald had been sneaking into Manhattan on the subway and acquiring a small collection of switchblades' as well as exhibiting unruly behavior in class.
He packed off the unmanageable boy to the New York Military Academy (NYMA), a no-nonsense military school for boys on the Hudson River near West Piont.
There, the brash thirteen year old encountered Theodore Dobias, the baseball and military coach who was a screaming US Army war vet and active disciplinarian.
'He could be a f**king p***k. He absolutely would rough you up. You had to learn to survive', Donald recalled.
Dobias recognized that Trump's own father was tough on his son. 'He was very German', although he sometimes claimed he was Swedish.
Dobias taught that 'winning wasn't everything, it was the only thing', using a cliché from pro football coach Vince Lombardi.
In elementary school, he was the person he would always be. 'When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same. The temperament is not that different', Trump told the author
'Donald picked right up on this. He always had to be number one in everything. He was a conniver even then. A real pain in the ass. He would do anything to win', Dobias told the author.
'He just wanted to be first, in everything, and he wanted people to know he was first'.
He was a good, not a stellar student and absorbed the sense of superiority preached at NYMA.
When he excelled at baseball and garnered a headline in the local paper, he found the experience 'electrifying'.
'It was the first time I was ever in the newspaper. I thought it was amazing'.
Trump repeated his gilded baseball experience for years and by his own estimate was 'the best baseball player in New York' – State that is.
Trump went on to Fordham University in the Bronx for two years and then reluctantly to the University of Pennsylvania in 1966. He really wanted to work in his father's business but his father insisted Donald earn a degree.
'He was not a natural student and wasn't much interested in the social opportunities available to him on or off campus in Philadelphia.
He didn't go to beer bashes at the fraternity houses but stayed in at night and watched Johnny Carson.
'He would often say he graduated at the top of his class, but as the school does not issue official rankings, this claim cannot be confirmed or contested'. But he had to say he was at the top of his class.
Trump would later claim that in prep school he received more military training than actual soldiers did. 'I always thought I was in the military'.
Trump came of age in the narcissistic 1970s, and established his company in the 'greed is good' 1980's. He survived a tabloid sex scandal in the 1990s with the explosive and public breakup of his marriage to Ivana and affair with Marla Maples.
'For all of his excesses, Donald Trump is a man perfectly adapted to his time', writes D'Antonio. 'Trump is not a man apart. He is, instead, merely one of us writ large'.
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