September 9, 2025 • 46 mins
Donald Trump’s New York story isn’t just about gold-plated towers—it’s about shady deals, mob ties, bankruptcies, and the grift that built his so-called empire. In this episode, host Rick Wilson sits down with Jonathan Mahler of The New York Times Magazine to dig into Trump’s corruption in New York real estate, his mob connections, and how those dirty deals shaped the man who would later seize the presidency. Together, they expose the Trump Tower backstory, the bankruptcy bailouts, and the pattern of fraud and scandal that defined Trump long before MAGA.
This deep-dive connects the dots between Trump’s shady New York origins and the current chaos of his political empire, revealing how the same real estate scams, mafia ties, and financial fraud that fueled his rise are still driving his downfall today.
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You can purchase Jonathan Mahler’s newest book ‘THE GODS OF NEW YORK: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990’ wherever fine books are sold, and you can follow him on X @jonathanmahler.
Follow Rick Wilson at @TheRickWilson on X and @therickwilson.bsky.social on Bluesky, and subscribe to his Substack at therickwilson.substack.com.
Join the fight with the Lincoln Project at www.lincolnproject.us and follow LP on X at @ProjectLincoln. If you'd like to help us continue our critical work, visit https://action.lincolnproject.us/helplp to make a difference.
Get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at BollandBranch.com/LINCOLN. #ad
This deep-dive connects the dots between Trump’s shady New York origins and the current chaos of his political empire, revealing how the same real estate scams, mafia ties, and financial fraud that fueled his rise are still driving his downfall today.
•
•
•
•
•
You can purchase Jonathan Mahler’s newest book ‘THE GODS OF NEW YORK: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990’ wherever fine books are sold, and you can follow him on X @jonathanmahler.
Follow Rick Wilson at @TheRickWilson on X and @therickwilson.bsky.social on Bluesky, and subscribe to his Substack at therickwilson.substack.com.
Join the fight with the Lincoln Project at www.lincolnproject.us and follow LP on X at @ProjectLincoln. If you'd like to help us continue our critical work, visit https://action.lincolnproject.us/helplp to make a difference.
Get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at BollandBranch.com/LINCOLN. #ad
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you want to understand how Donald Trump operates and
does this big distraction palooza every day, Page six exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Your attack will not be an easy one. Your enemy,
as well as trained well.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Is not a liberal America and is conservative of America, the.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
United States of America.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Hey, folks, it's Rick. Welcome back to the Lincoln Project podcast.
I'm your host as always. Glad you joined us today
on the Lincoln Square Network, and we are so delighted
to be joined today by the author of a tremendous
new book called The Gods of New York by Jonathan Mahler,
and he has written a profile of a time and
a place in New York that has shaped our history
(00:45):
more than we have thought. It's about the big players,
the big game in New York City and in some ways,
how Donald Trump emerged from that big game and how
it was covered at the time. So, Jonathan, tell us
about Gods in New York. Talk to us about about
about what led you to write this book and walk
us through some of the formative things that you know
(01:06):
about about our current president that you learned in reporting this.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
Sure, So this book actually kind of grew out of
my work in twenty sixteen. On the twenty sixteen presidential campaign.
I work my day jobs at the New York Times.
I was working on the campaign. I wasn't following a
specific candidate, but I was doing kind of deeper dives
into into the histories of some of the candidates. Because
I'd written a previous book about New York ladies and gentlemen,
(01:31):
The Bronx Is Burning, which is about New York in
the seventies. I was kind of especially interested in the
kind of the Trump origin story.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Before he was a presidential candidate, and I've been saying
for years, keep the oil, keep the oil.
Speaker 6 (01:43):
Don't let him have the oil.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Before he was a reality TV star, yes fire, Donald
Trump was a New York tabloid fixture all through the
nineteen eighties. Trump was busy building something new, and it
wasn't a skyscraper billionaire developer.
Speaker 7 (01:58):
Donald Trump has put his name on a New York
City hotel, shopping center, and apartment buildings, as well as
the casino in Atlantic City, and now he's going to
put his name on a big piece of Eastern airlines.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Trump was creating a public persona one that could be
both funny and demeaning, arrogant, and somehow in touch with
the common man.
Speaker 8 (02:17):
I sort of love and hate him at the same time.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
I mean, I think he has, you know, a monumental ego.
He comes off to being very that's the word I'm
looking for.
Speaker 9 (02:26):
Arrogant.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
Yeah, he'sant.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I like him.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
You've got a name, got everythick.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
He often did this by picking fights.
Speaker 10 (02:34):
He said, I think Donald Trump is an artful liar.
I think he is a reedy, vicious and arrogant man.
Speaker 11 (02:41):
Why.
Speaker 12 (02:41):
I don't know, is that supposed to be a compliment
or not.
Speaker 9 (02:43):
I'm not sure.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
Donald Trump in nineteen eighties New York. So I kind
of got into the got into my research sort of
through those stories, really discovered that that period of time
was just like both both like kind of a fascinating
period filled with these out sized characters. I mean Donald Trump,
of course, but also Al Sharpton, Spike Lee, Larry Kramer,
(03:06):
Rudy Giuliani, the list goes on. So I had these
these kind of big characters in this kind of crazy
period of time in the life of New York, with
all these big racial incidents, Black Monday.
Speaker 13 (03:19):
As the Dow Jones industrials took off on a fear
fed free fall to close down a record five hundred
and eight point thirty two points. Panic traitors worked through
lunch hours in a desperate but losing attempt to keep
up with tickers that rolled up an all time high volume.
CBS News Business correspondent Ray Briggy looks at this devastating
(03:41):
day for the market.
Speaker 14 (03:44):
They're calling at the Monday massacre, the worst drop in
Wall Street history.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I just came from inside, and it looks like a manhouse.
Speaker 9 (03:51):
So crazy, you can't nobody even expected it to be
down this much.
Speaker 14 (03:55):
Hour after hour today, wave after wave of selling hit
the stock market.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Selling panic, the professionals call it.
Speaker 14 (04:02):
By the closing bell, the Dow Jones Industrial average was
in the steepest fall and its one hundred and three
year history, down more than five hundred points.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
But I also came to see this as a really
kind of important moment, a kind of an inflection point
in the life of the city and kind of ultimately
in the life of America, because this is really when
when kind of Wall Street and finance and real estate
sort of took over the city, when the city kind
of reoriented its economy around around those forces, and it
(04:34):
was when you know, Donald Trump kind of rose up
from kind of from the ashes of the fiscal crisis
in nineteen seventies, New York, you know, built the Trump.
Speaker 15 (04:44):
Tower, the tallest concrete building in the city of New York.
I think this is a first rate to project, sixty
eight stories and now the toast. May these walls withstand
the winter years of endless years. May all who dwell
within know only happiness, and may the windows of this
(05:07):
building forever lookout upon a place of peace and prosperity.
Speaker 12 (05:12):
Just thank you, very nice, very near.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Nice by the way.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
He is a chip off the old block.
Speaker 15 (05:19):
This is my father, Fred Wright, who has done a
remarkable job on being half.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Of the seven half million New Yorkers.
Speaker 15 (05:26):
You're bringing in a lot of money into the city
and that.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Helps us deliver services.
Speaker 10 (05:30):
And we congratulate Don Trump today.
Speaker 12 (05:33):
Thank you very much, Joy I appreciate it. We've employed
five thousand construction workers. There'll be many people employed in
running the building, and I think it's a very important
step for New York. I think it's a vital step
for New York.
Speaker 9 (05:44):
Many literally it's delirating.
Speaker 12 (05:46):
We're going to release ten thousand bulls so have a
good time.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
Humiliated Ed Koch every chance he got.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
He waiged a years long battle with New York City
Mayor Ed Kotch.
Speaker 12 (05:57):
I hope that New York City has a different mayor
at some point.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I think Ed Cotch is a total disaster.
Speaker 12 (06:01):
He's been a very bad mayor for the city.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Ed Koch has been a disaster as a mayor.
Speaker 9 (06:06):
You know it, I know it.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Everybody knows it. I would say he's got no talent
and only moderate intelligence.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
What Ed Koch has is nothing. The man has not
got it.
Speaker 9 (06:14):
Ed Koch has been a lousy mayor.
Speaker 12 (06:16):
I believe he'll go down as probably in history, the
worst mayor in the history of the City of New York.
And you know, when I say that, it's hard for
him to say I really like Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I want to make it very clear.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I'm very biased.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I don't like him.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
You know, I think that you're kind of Maybe most
important is you know, people I think often consider The
Apprentice to be the kind of origin story of Donald Trump. Right,
people think about that, That's where Donald Trump began.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
In January two thousand and four, the Apprentice premiered at
first Trump didn't realize what a phenomenon the show would be.
Speaker 8 (06:51):
The new reality TV series The Apprentice brings together twenty
ambitious contestants hoping to survive in New York's corporate jungle.
Speaker 16 (06:59):
Donald Trump and Mark for good morning.
Speaker 12 (07:01):
Nice to see you guys.
Speaker 8 (07:02):
Oh, Katie, why why why why why?
Speaker 9 (07:04):
I have absolutely no idea.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
But The Apprentice was a giant hit. Why and when
the season ended in April, Trump was ascending to New Heights.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
At a bar in Chicago, the whole town of The
New Apprentice, it sounded as loud as a Cobs victory party.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
The Apprentice portrayed Donald Trump in the most flattering possible light.
As the host of the show, Trump came across like
an able commander, a morally strong but fair leader, and
a tycoon who couldn't fail.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Now, I've always got a lot of attention. This is
getting a little ridiculous, and I had.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
No idea it.
Speaker 10 (07:35):
Come on.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
I discovered doing my research that that really this is
the Donald Trump origin story. This was Donald Trump Trump's crucible.
And by this I mean nineteen eighties New York in particular,
the kind of tabloid culture. Oh yes, yes, this was
the place where Donald Trump learned that if he could
(08:00):
capture the public's attention and hold it, that was power,
That publicity was power. And this is where he learned
how to develop a storyline, right, That's what he did
through the tabloids so long before The Apprentice.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, I mean I've always said this to people for
it for ten years now. You know, this is from
my experience in New York. If you want to understand
how Donald Trump operates and does this big distraction palooza
every day, page six exactly. Yeah, Yeah, the New York Post. Yeah,
nineteen seventies and eighties, Donald Trump is that's at the
(08:37):
peak of his I'm the most eligible bachelor in New
York game. That's the peak of the you know, you know,
an unquestioned ability of Trump to spend a line of
garbage about anything. I'm paying for this, I'm doing that.
I'm I'm restoring Central Park all the shit. You know, folks,
(09:00):
guy who likes things that are made to last, that
are built well, that are built with care, that are
built with commitment, that are made by folks who really
want their product to last and to mean something.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
In your life.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
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I also love Boling Branch sheets. Now, before I even
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(09:31):
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and for both of us who are hot sleepers, and
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Speaker 2 (09:46):
On it long. And I live in Florida, and believe me,
we need it here.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
We're so happy with our Bowl and Brand sheets that
I'm really honored to recommend them to my friends and family.
They're just so well made. You cannot imagine the quality
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(10:12):
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them on your bed. It's one of those intimate products
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you're going to sleep on every night. And believe me,
we have several sets of Bolon brand sheets, and again
this was before they became a sponsor of the show.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
We're real believers.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
We also love the waffle Weed blanket, which is one
of those things. It's warm and cool, it breathes beautifully
in warm weather. If you bundle up in it, it's
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Speaker 2 (10:46):
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(11:13):
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exclusions apply. And you know it's funny because when I
got to New York to work for Juliani in ninety seven,
(11:43):
I had this outsider's impression like, oh, Trump's really powerful,
and immediately, and this is always ironic to me, Rudy
was like, no, fuck that guy. He's an idiot. He's
a fucking moron. And I'm doing my Rudy voice here
a little bit for folks. He's an idiot, he's a moron,
he's a jerky. He's jerky and idiot. And literally, one
of the deputy Maris pipes up because we said, that
(12:04):
guy a couple of parking passes a year, but other
than that, he's a joke and if you want to
meet real New York real estate developers, you're going to
meet him working for the boss.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I'm like yeah, and I did, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
I realized quickly it's like you get a Bernie Mendick
type guy who was like at extra zeros on the
end of the of the of the deals compared to
what Trump was doing. So we yeah, that page six
culture man that really shaped him, didn't it.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
And the crazy thing about it is, you know there
were there were there were always gossip columns in New York, right,
it was it was except it was you know, it
had been before the eighties. It had been kind of
movie stars and athletes and and Broadway rights. And you know,
suddenly in the eighties, when when when when when the
kind of when city kind of pivoted around Wall Street?
(12:51):
When when you know, sort of the greed is good
era began? When when America kind of started in New
York America started to really kind of worship the culture
of money and celebrities. Page six kind of invented a
new class of celebrities, and Donald Trump was the head
of that class. These were bold based names only in
a new in the New New York and in New
(13:13):
America that had kind of a different sense of values.
And so you know, if if you were if you
were a big finance guy, if you were you know,
the the head of Solomon Brothers, or if you were
Donald Trump, and you could you know you were you
were in the if you could, you could kind of
advocate for yourself. You could pretend to be a big shot,
you were a bold face name.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
It's it's it was. That transition was to those it
used to be the people around the tables at Elaine's
and at and at the twenty one Club were show
people and older New York families and and older money.
And then it became maybe more vulgar. But that was
a perfect fit for Trump at the time, wasn't. I mean,
(13:55):
it just it really because he he was always the
kid from Queen's looking in and look looking up at
people that he thought hated him, looked down on him,
and they did. The old money in New York absolutely
did and still does. I guess to agree there is
still any old money, but all these characters. I mean,
(14:16):
I always thought one of the big through lines in
that era was race. And you mentioned Sharpton, you know,
who was a big figure in that time. And we
ended up at that period where we went through that
whole long arc of terrible to want a Brawley and
Crown Heights and use all and that entire arc, I
mean up until where when I was there with Abmiral
(14:38):
WEMA and all these terrible, terrible like the racial undercurrent
in New York was a real shaping factor in what
the city became in that period of time.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
It absolutely was.
Speaker 5 (14:51):
And the tabloids again, you know, played a key role
in that, of course, because they were this, you know,
this very kind of polarizing force, and so you know,
you had a story like the Central Park five, which
of course Trump would end up roll in.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
You better believe that I hate the people that took
this girl and raped her brutally. You better believe it.
And it's more than anger, it's hatred, and I want
society to hate him.
Speaker 16 (15:17):
In New York City in the late eighties and early nineties,
the case of the Central Park jogger was notorious. In
April nineteen eighty nine, a white woman who had been
jogging was found brutally raped and beaten nearly to death
in Central Park. Not long after the woman was discovered,
four black teenagers one Latino teenager were charged and jailed
for the crime. The gruesome case whipped up an unbelievable
(15:38):
hysteria throughout the city, the media ginning up fears with
headlines about wolf packs and roving gangs and Wilding, but
the five boys, ages fourteen to sixteen, had falsely confessed
to the crime after hours of police interrogations. They were
later tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison. But vindication for
the group, known as the Central Park five, came in
two thousand and two when it convicted murder and rapist
(16:00):
confessed to the crime, and that confession was then corroborated
by DNA. The prison sentences of the Central Park five
were overturned, but by that time they had already served
between five and thirteen years. In twenty fourteen, the men
were awarded a forty million dollars settlement from New York City.
The story that had gripped the city for years came
to a close, and yet one Manhattan residence obsession with
(16:23):
the case continues to this day. Just weeks after the
crime was committed in nineteen eighty nine, Donald Trump took
out a full page ad in four New York newspapers
advocating the return of the death penalty, and when the
city awarded the men a settlement in twenty fourteen, Trump
wrote an editorial in The Daily News calling the settlement
a disgrace and now even now as the presidential nominee
(16:44):
for the Republican Party. Trump hasn't allowed science or evidence
to change his initial reaction to the case. Just this week,
Trump said he still considers the men, again exonerated by
the criminal justice system and by DNA scientific evidence, guilty,
issuing a state been saying, quote, they admitted they were guilty.
The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty.
(17:04):
The fact that case was settled with so much evidence
again them is outrageous. The woman so badly injured will
never be the same.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
It was gasoline on the fire, you know. And you
mentioned mentioned Rudy before. I mean, you know, after Trump
took out his kind of infamous Central Park five that
you may remember this, but it probably it probably predated
your time with Rudy. But you know, Trump Trump was
(17:33):
was was, you know, toxic in certain quarters of the city.
And at that point, you know, Rudy was running for
mayor for the first time nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 17 (17:40):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
Yeah, he was trying to build build a kind of
a coalition and you know, get himself elected. And he
had a he had a fundraiser, he had already committed
to having Trunt Trump beyond the committee and the whole
staff was was telling him beforehand, you know, you cannot
be photographed with Donald Trump. Whatever you do, that man
(18:03):
is toxic.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I heard this story from Raymond Harding.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
There you go very hard Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
I mean it's just my god, right.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
It is.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
It is is definitely a but that that entire political
change in the city. Yeah, thought you put your final
point on it. You know, David Garth and Rudy's team
in ninety three and eighty nine and ninety three, successfully
ninety three. You know we're selling I'm going to clean
up the city. That was a very narrowly veiled racial code.
Speaker 18 (18:36):
In nineteen ninety three, he was elected as the first
Republican mayor of New York City since the sixties.
Speaker 17 (18:43):
I head off, William Juliani.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Do solemnly swear, do solemnly swear.
Speaker 18 (18:47):
Interestingly, some of his politics were pretty liberal. He supported
gay rights, immigrant protections, gun control, and abortion rights.
Speaker 8 (18:55):
But the mayor was.
Speaker 18 (18:56):
Hyper focused on cleaning up the city streets suit of
petty offenses like graffiti and marijuana possession to bring down
the crime rate. But some believe this strategy was racially biased.
The violent crime rate did drop during Giuliani's tenure, but
it already began declining under his predecessor.
Speaker 17 (19:15):
We're held together by wall, and we're held together by
respect for the wall.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
Ales and Ales you know went to work. Oh yes, Ales, right, yeah.
Ales had this this you know, kind of infamous line
right after he took over Rudy's campaign and they were
preparing for the general election against Dinkins. He said, you know,
Rudy is going to get one percent of the black
vote by accident. He was like, you know, this is
we know where this is going. And then sure enough,
(19:41):
that's that's exactly where it went. You know, he immediately
went after Dinkins, you know, for you know, dug up
an old an old kind of tax you know, failure
to pay taxes scandal that was you know, many many
years earlier. It was you know, crime and corruption. Rudy,
it was, you know.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
It it And by the when I got there, the
city was on the uptick. You know, there there had
been that that sort of economic turn. He look, Rudy,
Ruddy did a lot to encourage it, but he also
was writing a national economic uplift at the moment that.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
You know, during the Clinton era.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
But it strikes me as interesting. One of the things
I just thought about this. In American political culture, most
people have a half life of about fifteen years where
they're a known character. Sharpton, Juliani, Trump, So many of
these people are still in our politics and our culture
every day.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
It's incredible. I know, what do you think explains that? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (20:43):
Well, I mean, I think I think a variety of things.
One for sure is, you know, they they learned, they
learned how to use the media. They learned that the
power that you can you can kind of accrue from
from keeping yourself in the public eye. And I think
they also all you know, you know, and it's you
don't want to equate the three of those guys too
(21:05):
much because they're very different characters, but they also share
a sense of well, shamelessness maybe is the best word
for it. That if you don't you know, you don't apologize,
you don't back down, you just keep going right.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
If you act bulletproof, you are bullets.
Speaker 17 (21:22):
We did nothing wrong.
Speaker 9 (21:23):
I did nothing wrong and everybody knows that.
Speaker 6 (21:26):
Do you owe John McCain an apology?
Speaker 7 (21:29):
No, not at all.
Speaker 9 (21:30):
Actually, why not say maybe I went too far poor
choice of words or even I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I don't have to say that.
Speaker 6 (21:38):
I can never apologize.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
How yeah, I can never apologize for the truth. Is
there anybody you'd like to apologize to right now?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yourself? No?
Speaker 5 (21:48):
I think they all kind of they all learned that
in nineteen eighties New York, in this period of time
I'm writing about. And you know, that is a it
turns out that is a that is that is kind
of a secret to political success, right you listen this
as a superpower exactly, And so I think that's you know,
I think they learned this is where they learned it.
I mean they learned it in the in the kind
of the tabloid culture of nineteen eighties New York where
(22:10):
you know, where you are getting ridiculed. I mean, you know,
Trump too was getting mocked. He was, yes, he was,
you know, he was in page six, you know, on
on a weekly even daily basis. But he was. But
you know, but but he was also the target of
ridicule at times to himself. And it just you know,
didn't matter. It was it was all it was of.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
My magazine had more fun than the law allow with
Donald Trump during the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 17 (22:38):
What if Donald Trump were to get his own Saturday
Morning cartoon show.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
Trump Regular, Why Donald, I don't forget Johnny.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, folks, I'm dating myself a bit. But if you
ever go back and read the Spy magazine archives of
Donald Trump stories, they will they will first off, seem
very fresh to you because of how much he bullshits
then and now. But they are also just so brutal.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
Yeah, short fingled vulgarian.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Short finger Vulgarian. Kurt Anderson, baby Brayden Carter.
Speaker 19 (23:34):
The President has been unhappy with you for about forty years.
Speaker 20 (23:39):
Yes, I was an early Canadian that he was angry with.
Now he's angry with the entire country forty years.
Speaker 19 (23:44):
You did a profile of him before Benny Fair, which
you write about.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
In the book before Spy, actually before the Spy.
Speaker 19 (23:51):
Magazine, which was a whole other brilliant thing that you did,
and you commented on his hands.
Speaker 20 (23:57):
Well, I spent three weeks with them. It was his
first Nash exposure and so he let me hang around
with him and I and I wrote that his his
cup links were too large and his hands were too small,
and that drove them crazy. And then when we went
to went to Spy, we had sort of funny epithets
for people. And he was always a short fingered Bulgarian,
(24:18):
which short finger Bulgarian was slightly droven crazy over there.
Speaker 19 (24:22):
Yes, and yet he the hand thing which ended up
being in part of the presidential debate. He actually before
I think he was running for president. He actually has
not forgotten that and sent.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
You a note with a photograph, didn't he?
Speaker 20 (24:37):
He said, he we had a he tried. We tried
to be friends for a period and that didn't work out.
And on probably the summer before he announced, he sent
me a note with a twenty year old twenty five
year old ad for the for the art of the deal,
and had a photograph and then he circles his hand
and gold sharp He says, see quite large. And then
I stapled a card to it and sent it and said,
(24:58):
actually quite small and had to handle over it right back.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
He did not, I said, talk to us a little
bit about some of the other stories in this book
about how New York was changing at that time. The
AIDS crisis was an enormous overlay in the early and
mid eighties in New York. Talk to us about some
(25:22):
of the stories that you profile folks that were involved
in that in that yeah, horrible moment.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
Yeah, yeah, So I cover the these years, which are,
you know, nineteen eighty six to nineteen ninety so, so
the beginning of the story AIDS is, you know, is
already kind of on the scene. It's already it's already
kind of begun its rampage through the city and particularly
through the gay population. But it's it's at this point
it's starting to tip also into the black population, to
the homeless population, and and you know, along comes in
(25:51):
nineteen eighty seven a character named Larry Kramer.
Speaker 8 (25:54):
He fought for bold action against HIV and for gay
rights in the nineteen eighties and nineties. Jeffrey Brown looks
at his life.
Speaker 6 (26:04):
Have you told him there there's an epidemic going on?
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Says who the government?
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Which government?
Speaker 7 (26:08):
What our government? And epidemics?
Speaker 9 (26:10):
In The Normal Heart Is nineteen eighty five play and
later an HBO film, Larry Kramer wrote of love, agony,
and anger in the early years of AIDS. It was
the subject of much of his work as writer and activist.
He was a founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis
(26:30):
and later the group Act Up, whose public confrontations demanded
attention and urgent action to address the growing AIDS crisis.
Play forty million infected people. Here is the play.
Speaker 6 (26:46):
We are in the worst shape we.
Speaker 9 (26:48):
Have ever ever been in. He was passionate, often loud,
but he was heard, including when he took on then
prominent AIDS researcher doctor Anthony Fauci. Kramer labeled Fauci an
incompetent idiot. The two would later come to mutual respect
and even friendship. Today, Fauci, one of the leaders of
the White House Coronavirus Task Force, spoke to Judy about Kramer.
Speaker 11 (27:11):
I'm very sad that we've lost him. He's just an
extraordinary man. He changed totally by his extraordinary, iconoclastic and
theatrical ways of doing things. He changed the relationship between
the afflicted community with a given disease and the scientific
(27:32):
and regulatory community that has such a great impact on them.
He said, you can't be separate. You've got to keep
us in the tent. We've got to be in there
with you.
Speaker 5 (27:41):
Who is an unforgettable figure. And in many ways, you know,
I call these guys gods in a obviously not in
the Judeo Christian sense, and in the Greek sense that
they are all kind of kind of over the top
with their pettiness and their wrath and their vengeance, and
you know, New York is their mount olympus. And in
many ways, you know, Kramer is part of this pantheon too.
(28:03):
He's he's not so different in certain respects from from
these other characters we've been talking about, because he realizes
that he has got to bring he needs to he
needs to stir up some outrage, he needs to get confrontational,
he needs to force people to pay attention to the
AIDS crisis. And he does that, of course through you know,
(28:25):
this this kind of world changing activist group that he
forms called act Up, and so act Up is born
in nineteen eighty seven, and over the course of the
next few years, you know, becomes this really powerful force
in the social culture of New York but also nationally
and even globally as it kind of finally finally brings
(28:47):
attention to the AIDS crisis and forces some action from Washington.
And in fact, I write about our last thing I'd
say is I write about in particular about Larry Kramer's
relationship with Anthony Fauci, who you know, was kind of
running running the AIDS research for the countries, and you know,
and and and Kramer was was absolutely vicious toward him,
(29:08):
but ultimately Fauci kind of recognized that that Kramer was
more right than he was wrong, uh, that that the
government did need to sort of change, you know, did
you kind of light a fire under their AIDS research?
And and they reconciled, and and and Fauchi went on
to become Kramer's doctor and they became close friends later
in life.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
I did not know that that's fascinating. So, you know,
the city was changing so radically at that moment, and
it is the money, but but in some ways I
also wonder if if, as you wrote this, that that
it was that it was some of that's like the
death of the old neighborhood system in New York, some
(29:50):
of that collapse of the old you know, because when
I was the New York kind of department on eighty
first mean first and second up in Yorkville, right and
I still could see like the the memory of the
German and the Hungarian neighborhoods that were around there, but
that was, you know, kind of fading away. It was
also the time where we started to see like the
tip of the iceberg of that sort of homogenization of
New York's neighborhood cultures. Yeah, and I'm curious if you
(30:14):
if you if you have thoughts on that, because that's
something to me that it's like Americans on the outside
still think New York is is in weird ways more
diverse than it still is, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's still it's still
ethnically diverse, right, it's still as you know, one hundred
different nationalities, languages, et cetera. But you're right, I mean
as kind of culturally it has been homogenized. And I
think that, you know, what a lot of what happened
in the eighties is is the kind of the city's
kind of economic structure changed. Right, New York had always
(30:48):
been I should not say always, but you know, since
World War Two, New York had been the kind of
great working class city, right with all this kind of
diverse manufacturing shipping. It had lots of little industries. It
was like the home of amazing little industries and shops
and restaurants and bars, and you know, the once the
(31:08):
sort of working class got hollowed out, really by de
industrialization in the sixties and into the seventies, you know,
and the city kind of was like burned to the ground.
In the seventies, a new city was built on those ashes.
And that city that I think is the one you're
talking about, you know, was it was the city of skyscrapers,
(31:29):
of chain stores, of a of a kind of a
disnified Times Square, which of course had once been you know,
kind of porn shops and everything else. So you know,
it was it was the kind of you know, the
city just kind of bent toward toward kind of money
and corporate interest, I think at that point.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, yeah, it is that that that, you know, the
the Lulu limit effect that wasn't around then, but it
certainly is striking now. You walk down, you know, Madison
Avenue and it just looks like, yeah, ver other high
end place you go. It's Aspen or it's or it's
Santa Barbara or whatever. It doesn't it doesn't feel like
(32:09):
this the older city is as present as it once was.
I mean, I guess you could still get that up
in the boroughs, but it's not more so.
Speaker 5 (32:17):
But if the boroughs are going for that same transformation, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
I mean Brooklyn, certainly.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
When you were writing this, did you see some of
the previews of the MAGA culture that was going to emerge?
And you know, because I always I always look back
at Staten Island and I think, goddamn, that was MAGA
one point zero and nobody saw it come, not even
me totally.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
Yeah, no, no, I mean that And and and I
have to say, you know Trump, Trump's sort of did
I mean, if you think about that, if you think
about that Central Park five ad sure, the death penalty
for for these five black kids who had had not
even tried yet, right, and uh, you know, ended the
same time kind of indicting Cotch for his failure to
(33:03):
keep the city safe because of one, you know, kind
of random crime. He you know, you could see that
that that that he was he was catering to to
a very particular audience to what would you know, this
time he was like not a political figure at all,
but that was he's that was the that was his base,
I mean, that was what would become his base. And
(33:26):
you see that play out in all these racial incidents
in the city too. You know, when Sharpton brings bring
brings black protesters into white neighborhoods and they are shouted
down with you know, with the ugliest racial epithets. You
can possibly imagine.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
What your heights all those.
Speaker 5 (33:46):
Exactly what you're seeing there is like a kind of
a resentment toward how the city has changed, toward toward
a feeling that you know, New York used to be better. Uh,
you know he used to be that that that you
know that that that you know, there were there were
there were there were jobs for us, you know, without
those like non college educated New Yorkers, right, Uh, you
(34:09):
know there was the streets were safer. I mean at
least that's the kind of the mythos, right and and
you can see it all happening right there in nineteen
eighties New York. I mean you see, and you can
see Trump was fully aware of it. I mean that
that's and and look those are his politics today. It's
almost like they're so they're so kind of retro it's
like it's almost hard to believe, right.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
It is it is that you know, somebody else explained
this time that it's like like, do not forget that
Trump is a guy from Queens, Yes, yeah, where where
it used to be like keep the white and white
Stone sort of that part of Queens that and here.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
In this in this very in particular, this real true
white enclave in Queens. Yeah, even as Queen's was itself
becoming the new kind of immigrant borough in New York,
of course the eighties, they were in their own little enclave,
this sealed off enclave that was you know.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (35:05):
So that's all that is all very that's that's who
he is. That's that's the essence of his identity. And
you know remember that he and his father would not
rent apartments to black people. I mean, this is you know,
this is that's his DNA.
Speaker 8 (35:19):
Fourteen thousand apartments in thirty nine different buildings, all mostly
white tenants. That is until the Department of Justice took
notice in nineteen seventy three and slammed Donald Trump and
his father, Fred Trump with a lawsuit. Trump Management was
charged with discriminating against African Americans and breaking federal law.
Donald Trump, then just twenty seven, was president of the company.
(35:42):
The Department of Justice accused the Trumps of violating the
Fair Housing Act, arguing they were turning away renters based
on race and color, who tipped them off. Local activists,
so called testers posing as potential renters at Trump's buildings,
mainly in Brooklyn and Queens. Elease gold Weber was a
lawyer for the DOJ's Fair Housing Section at the time
(36:03):
and was called on to handle the Trump case.
Speaker 21 (36:05):
When the black testers came, they were shown they may
have been shown apartments, but were told nothing was available,
whereas when the white testers came, yes, there were things
that were available that would be the norm.
Speaker 8 (36:20):
And if the Trumps did rent to a black person,
gold Webber recalls, they would do so only at one
building in Brooklyn, reserving the other buildings for white tenants.
Speaker 21 (36:30):
That the white people would live in Trump Village and
the people of color would live in Flatbush.
Speaker 8 (36:39):
And according to the Justice Department, they even had a
secret coding system to do it, a racial code. Here's how.
Speaker 21 (36:46):
Some of the applications were marked with the C, which
we learned that it meant colored, so that the prospective
tenants who had come in were noted to be colored.
Speaker 8 (36:58):
Yes, you heard her, night, The Department of Justice alleged
applications submitted by prospective African American renters were designated with
a secret code, such as C for colored, to indicate
a black person was looking to rent in true Trump fashion.
Donald Trump hit back, calling the government's accusations absolutely ridiculous
(37:20):
and telling the court I have never, nor has anyone
in my organization ever, to the best of my knowledge,
discriminated or shown bias in the renting of our apartments.
Trump's lawyers said the government's suit failed to give names, addresses,
or specific incidences of discrimination, claiming the lawsuit caused substantial
damage to their business and reputation. Trump took the most
(37:42):
unusual step of suing the Justice Department for defamation, seeking
one hundred million dollars in damages, but that counter suit
was tossed out by the judge. Even so, the Trump
family maintained they never discriminated based on color, but were
instead trying to avoid renting to people on welfare. Two
years later, in nineteen seventy five, Trump and his father
(38:05):
settled the case, agreeing not to discriminate against anyone. They
also promised to advertise in publications aimed at minorities, familiarize
themselves with the details of the Fair Housing Act, and
notify civil rights groups of apartment vacancies. The Department of
Justice claimed victory, but the Trumps never admitted any wrongdoing,
(38:25):
reportedly noting this settlement was in no way an admission
of a violation.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah, I think, And I think it's interesting that. You know,
I think a lot of people are they look at Trump,
they go, oh, he's from New York. He's got to
be more sophisticated than that. He's got to be more
empathetic than He's got more And I'm like, no, no,
that's not where he's from. He may live in a
Golden Tower in Midtown, but our near Central Park, but
(38:54):
he is from what basically was as white as a
affluent Birmingham, Alabama suburb in New York.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
And it shaped him.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
I think, you know, Fred was Fred was pretty Fred
was a pretty bad guy in terms of that stuff
as well. So I think he learned. I think when
I think part of what Trump came to do was
associate using the word luxury with using the word white.
You know, this will this will be, these are luxury apartments.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
They won't be here. That's that's, you know, right out
of Fred's playbook.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
What else from the eighties do you think really shaped
New York as it is today? And shaped and And
I do think this book is interesting because it does
there's such a big footprint on the rest of American
culture from what happened in New York right in that window.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
I mean, another huge thing that that that was happening
then was that New York in those years was was
the kind of became the center of global capitalism. Right,
this is where globe globalization kind of and gurbialism begins
in New York in the nineteen eighties, as kind of
technology allows Wall Street to become this kind of international phenomenon.
Speaker 17 (40:11):
This is the trading for the New York Stock Exchange,
the nerve center of American capitalism.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I think in.
Speaker 17 (40:17):
Nineteen eighty seven was the beginning of a new Wall Street.
It had been different. It had been kind of a
pinstripe Yale Harvard graduates who ran the old banking houses.
And then suddenly they were hiring a lot of people
who had street sports but not necessarily trained in economics,
and they were currency traders or they were stock traders.
(40:39):
And it was going twenty four to seven with us
for over ten years.
Speaker 22 (40:42):
And he came to us out of high school. This
is his first job, and Bob Modis is working for
the senior fellow over here at the rhine End who's
been in the business since nineteen fifty nine, came to
the securities business right after the Navy.
Speaker 17 (40:55):
So you can take someone who doesn't not necessarily have
a business school background and making a good trader.
Speaker 22 (41:00):
I think you can do so. But it really is
more of a field for the markets, more of personality
than it is in a formal education.
Speaker 17 (41:05):
I remember a young woman at a trading death. She
was currency trading. She had a ferrari, a picture of
a ferrari on her trading council. That was her objective.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
What do you get out of this?
Speaker 17 (41:16):
What's the big cake?
Speaker 18 (41:19):
I guess making a lot of money.
Speaker 17 (41:23):
It was rock and roll. You could see money driving everything,
a lot of cocaine around, a lot of party hardy
every night.
Speaker 5 (41:38):
The old guard took her years and years, and the
new people on Wall Street they want to do it
in two days.
Speaker 17 (41:45):
I don't say that Wall Street was always the paragon
of morality before they all arrived. There have been scandals
over the years, and people who had in their own
way manipulated the system for their own benefit. But now
you had so many people and the rewards were so great.
Wall Street is in a continuing state of shak as
a result of the greatest scandal in its history in America.
Speaker 22 (42:08):
One of the great things about this nation is that
we can seek profit, and I'm proud of that.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
If you can gain profit, that's even better.
Speaker 10 (42:16):
That was even Boski a couple of years ago. Before
investigators caught up with him. He had been known on
Wall Street as King of the Arms, a big time
arbitrajurer who invested in stocks of companies he thought were
going to be taken over.
Speaker 17 (42:30):
Some of the smartest and most respected traders on the
Street have been led from their prestigious firms by federal
law enforcement authorities. One was even led away in handcuffs.
You know, the Wall Street people, whatever else we think
about him, are very canny, and they make quick judgments,
and they're tough about what they're doing, and they generally
pick up on who seems to be gaming the system
(42:50):
because they're making more money than they would otherwise. Bosky
was a classic example of that.
Speaker 10 (42:58):
If Bosky was greedy, so a lot of other people
on Wall Street. Since nineteen eighty four, there had been
more than forty eight cases of insider trading, many involving
the financial community, brought by New York's US attorney Rudolph Giuliani.
Speaker 17 (43:13):
I can't say that I saw it coming, but it
was what started then that led to the collapse of Barrowsturns,
led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. And now we
see in the course of the last thirty some rors
how it has changed Wall Street. Great wealth has been
accumulated by many of these young people who became hedge
fund traders and other things, but in too many instances
(43:37):
they parked their moral compass at the door.
Speaker 5 (43:40):
So you see, you know, so that is sort of critical.
And then again the sort of backlash you see against
that in the outer boroughs is that is like a
microcosm of what we have seen in our nation over
the last decade, this idea of like the globalized economy,
there are no jobs for the working class. Uh, it's
(44:03):
a it's a system that favors you know, the elites,
the wealthy. Uh and you know, and and others are
left out and become resentful. And that is you know,
so that is what happened in New York in the eighties,
and that is what then kind of swept across our
country over the subsequent decades. The amazing thing is that Trump,
(44:23):
who was in the nineteen eighties was was the personification
of of of greed and of excess and of of
of money. Somehow, through some crazy magic trick kind of
reinvented himself or without losing that as a working class
hero is the voice of all the people who felt
(44:46):
left out of this transformation. So so you see that
transformation first in New York in the nineteen eighties, all
the seeds of it are there, and and then it
just rolls across the country.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
I think it's.
Speaker 5 (44:56):
A you know, like the misperception about misconception about out
about Trump and the Apprentice. I think there's a misconception
that that America that it was it was NAFTA and
and deregulation under under Clinton, you know, et cetera. That
that kind of that that started this sort of the
global is the backlash against globalization. I think you can
go back further to nineteen eighties New York to see
(45:19):
like its real roots.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
I think that is the most fascinating part of this
book is that is that particular case that New York
in that moment shaped our culture and it and it's
hard to say that it shaped our culture at other times,
you know, certainly other times, but this seems so consequential
and that long running knock on effect almost forty five
years later.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yeah, yeah, which makes me feel old as shit now.
Speaker 5 (45:45):
It is crazy.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
It's the same.
Speaker 5 (45:46):
It's the knock on effect and the same somehow, the
same cast of characters.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
It's like Matt, Yeah, yeah it is. It is quite something. Well,
it's a tremendous book, folks. Jonathan Mahler's The Gods of
New York absolutely a banger, and it is. It is
such a window into how a culture shaped and continues
to shape our politics right now. Thanks so much everybody
for tuning into the Lincoln Project podcast today. Jonathan, tell
(46:11):
folks where they can find you online, and tell them
about your day job where they can read your other stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (46:16):
So my day job is at the New York Times.
I'm a writer for the New York Times Sunday magazine.
And you know, you can buy The Gods of New
York anywhere. You can buy it at your local bookstore,
you can buy it on Amazon. You can also follow
me on Twitter or on Instagram. But most importantly, go
out and buy the book.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
It's great. Go buy the book, folks, it's a good one.
It's a banger.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
So hey, Jonathan, thanks so much for coming on that.
I really appreciate you.
Speaker 5 (46:38):
Man, thanks for having me Rick, I really appreciate it.
If you want to understand how Donald Trump operates and
does this big distraction palooza every day, Page six exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Your attack will not be an easy one. Your enemy,
as well as trained well.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Is not a liberal America and is conservative of America, the.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
United States of America.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Hey, folks, it's Rick. Welcome back to the Lincoln Project podcast.
I'm your host as always. Glad you joined us today
on the Lincoln Square Network, and we are so delighted
to be joined today by the author of a tremendous
new book called The Gods of New York by Jonathan Mahler,
and he has written a profile of a time and
a place in New York that has shaped our history
(00:45):
more than we have thought. It's about the big players,
the big game in New York City and in some ways,
how Donald Trump emerged from that big game and how
it was covered at the time. So, Jonathan, tell us
about Gods in New York. Talk to us about about
about what led you to write this book and walk
us through some of the formative things that you know
(01:06):
about about our current president that you learned in reporting this.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
Sure, So this book actually kind of grew out of
my work in twenty sixteen. On the twenty sixteen presidential campaign.
I work my day jobs at the New York Times.
I was working on the campaign. I wasn't following a
specific candidate, but I was doing kind of deeper dives
into into the histories of some of the candidates. Because
I'd written a previous book about New York ladies and gentlemen,
(01:31):
The Bronx Is Burning, which is about New York in
the seventies. I was kind of especially interested in the
kind of the Trump origin story.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Before he was a presidential candidate, and I've been saying
for years, keep the oil, keep the oil.
Speaker 6 (01:43):
Don't let him have the oil.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Before he was a reality TV star, yes fire, Donald
Trump was a New York tabloid fixture all through the
nineteen eighties. Trump was busy building something new, and it
wasn't a skyscraper billionaire developer.
Speaker 7 (01:58):
Donald Trump has put his name on a New York
City hotel, shopping center, and apartment buildings, as well as
the casino in Atlantic City, and now he's going to
put his name on a big piece of Eastern airlines.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Trump was creating a public persona one that could be
both funny and demeaning, arrogant, and somehow in touch with
the common man.
Speaker 8 (02:17):
I sort of love and hate him at the same time.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
I mean, I think he has, you know, a monumental ego.
He comes off to being very that's the word I'm
looking for.
Speaker 9 (02:26):
Arrogant.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
Yeah, he'sant.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I like him.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
You've got a name, got everythick.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
He often did this by picking fights.
Speaker 10 (02:34):
He said, I think Donald Trump is an artful liar.
I think he is a reedy, vicious and arrogant man.
Speaker 11 (02:41):
Why.
Speaker 12 (02:41):
I don't know, is that supposed to be a compliment
or not.
Speaker 9 (02:43):
I'm not sure.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
Donald Trump in nineteen eighties New York. So I kind
of got into the got into my research sort of
through those stories, really discovered that that period of time
was just like both both like kind of a fascinating
period filled with these out sized characters. I mean Donald Trump,
of course, but also Al Sharpton, Spike Lee, Larry Kramer,
(03:06):
Rudy Giuliani, the list goes on. So I had these
these kind of big characters in this kind of crazy
period of time in the life of New York, with
all these big racial incidents, Black Monday.
Speaker 13 (03:19):
As the Dow Jones industrials took off on a fear
fed free fall to close down a record five hundred
and eight point thirty two points. Panic traitors worked through
lunch hours in a desperate but losing attempt to keep
up with tickers that rolled up an all time high volume.
CBS News Business correspondent Ray Briggy looks at this devastating
(03:41):
day for the market.
Speaker 14 (03:44):
They're calling at the Monday massacre, the worst drop in
Wall Street history.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I just came from inside, and it looks like a manhouse.
Speaker 9 (03:51):
So crazy, you can't nobody even expected it to be
down this much.
Speaker 14 (03:55):
Hour after hour today, wave after wave of selling hit
the stock market.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Selling panic, the professionals call it.
Speaker 14 (04:02):
By the closing bell, the Dow Jones Industrial average was
in the steepest fall and its one hundred and three
year history, down more than five hundred points.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
But I also came to see this as a really
kind of important moment, a kind of an inflection point
in the life of the city and kind of ultimately
in the life of America, because this is really when
when kind of Wall Street and finance and real estate
sort of took over the city, when the city kind
of reoriented its economy around around those forces, and it
(04:34):
was when you know, Donald Trump kind of rose up
from kind of from the ashes of the fiscal crisis
in nineteen seventies, New York, you know, built the Trump.
Speaker 15 (04:44):
Tower, the tallest concrete building in the city of New York.
I think this is a first rate to project, sixty
eight stories and now the toast. May these walls withstand
the winter years of endless years. May all who dwell
within know only happiness, and may the windows of this
(05:07):
building forever lookout upon a place of peace and prosperity.
Speaker 12 (05:12):
Just thank you, very nice, very near.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Nice by the way.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
He is a chip off the old block.
Speaker 15 (05:19):
This is my father, Fred Wright, who has done a
remarkable job on being half.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Of the seven half million New Yorkers.
Speaker 15 (05:26):
You're bringing in a lot of money into the city
and that.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Helps us deliver services.
Speaker 10 (05:30):
And we congratulate Don Trump today.
Speaker 12 (05:33):
Thank you very much, Joy I appreciate it. We've employed
five thousand construction workers. There'll be many people employed in
running the building, and I think it's a very important
step for New York. I think it's a vital step
for New York.
Speaker 9 (05:44):
Many literally it's delirating.
Speaker 12 (05:46):
We're going to release ten thousand bulls so have a
good time.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
Humiliated Ed Koch every chance he got.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
He waiged a years long battle with New York City
Mayor Ed Kotch.
Speaker 12 (05:57):
I hope that New York City has a different mayor
at some point.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I think Ed Cotch is a total disaster.
Speaker 12 (06:01):
He's been a very bad mayor for the city.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Ed Koch has been a disaster as a mayor.
Speaker 9 (06:06):
You know it, I know it.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Everybody knows it. I would say he's got no talent
and only moderate intelligence.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
What Ed Koch has is nothing. The man has not
got it.
Speaker 9 (06:14):
Ed Koch has been a lousy mayor.
Speaker 12 (06:16):
I believe he'll go down as probably in history, the
worst mayor in the history of the City of New York.
And you know, when I say that, it's hard for
him to say I really like Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I want to make it very clear.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I'm very biased.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I don't like him.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
You know, I think that you're kind of Maybe most
important is you know, people I think often consider The
Apprentice to be the kind of origin story of Donald Trump. Right,
people think about that, That's where Donald Trump began.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
In January two thousand and four, the Apprentice premiered at
first Trump didn't realize what a phenomenon the show would be.
Speaker 8 (06:51):
The new reality TV series The Apprentice brings together twenty
ambitious contestants hoping to survive in New York's corporate jungle.
Speaker 16 (06:59):
Donald Trump and Mark for good morning.
Speaker 12 (07:01):
Nice to see you guys.
Speaker 8 (07:02):
Oh, Katie, why why why why why?
Speaker 9 (07:04):
I have absolutely no idea.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
But The Apprentice was a giant hit. Why and when
the season ended in April, Trump was ascending to New Heights.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
At a bar in Chicago, the whole town of The
New Apprentice, it sounded as loud as a Cobs victory party.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
The Apprentice portrayed Donald Trump in the most flattering possible light.
As the host of the show, Trump came across like
an able commander, a morally strong but fair leader, and
a tycoon who couldn't fail.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Now, I've always got a lot of attention. This is
getting a little ridiculous, and I had.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
No idea it.
Speaker 10 (07:35):
Come on.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
I discovered doing my research that that really this is
the Donald Trump origin story. This was Donald Trump Trump's crucible.
And by this I mean nineteen eighties New York in particular,
the kind of tabloid culture. Oh yes, yes, this was
the place where Donald Trump learned that if he could
(08:00):
capture the public's attention and hold it, that was power,
That publicity was power. And this is where he learned
how to develop a storyline, right, That's what he did
through the tabloids so long before The Apprentice.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, I mean I've always said this to people for
it for ten years now. You know, this is from
my experience in New York. If you want to understand
how Donald Trump operates and does this big distraction palooza
every day, page six exactly. Yeah, Yeah, the New York Post. Yeah,
nineteen seventies and eighties, Donald Trump is that's at the
(08:37):
peak of his I'm the most eligible bachelor in New
York game. That's the peak of the you know, you know,
an unquestioned ability of Trump to spend a line of
garbage about anything. I'm paying for this, I'm doing that.
I'm I'm restoring Central Park all the shit. You know, folks,
(09:00):
guy who likes things that are made to last, that
are built well, that are built with care, that are
built with commitment, that are made by folks who really
want their product to last and to mean something.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
In your life.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
You know, I have a few weaknesses in that regard.
I love a good pair of handmade shoes, love good watch.
I also love Boling Branch sheets. Now, before I even
had a podcast, Renee and I were Bowl and Branch fanatics.
They're made with this amazingly long lasting quality material that
(09:31):
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and for both of us who are hot sleepers, and
when I tell you I'm a hot sleeper, I am
a hot sleeper. These Bowling Branch sheets are so cool
and they keep you cool.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
On it long. And I live in Florida, and believe me,
we need it here.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
We're so happy with our Bowl and Brand sheets that
I'm really honored to recommend them to my friends and family.
They're just so well made. You cannot imagine the quality
level of the sheets. They are just terrific. In every department,
these Bowling Brand sheets feel amazing, not just because of
the thread count, which is kind of a myth, but
because of the actual thread they use, the material they use,
(10:12):
the fabrics they use are so high quality. You'll know
what the second you touch them, the second you have
them on your bed. It's one of those intimate products
you can buy in a weird way. It's something that
you're going to sleep on every night. And believe me,
we have several sets of Bolon brand sheets, and again
this was before they became a sponsor of the show.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
We're real believers.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
We also love the waffle Weed blanket, which is one
of those things. It's warm and cool, it breathes beautifully
in warm weather. If you bundle up in it, it's
wonderfully comfortable, and they look great. You know, I've never
had a set.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Of sheets like these Bowling brand sheets. The softness is
just something I know.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
I remark on it frequently, but they really are so
different than any other sheet I've ever purchased. The quality
level is a parent right away, and they just get
softer and softer and sofcer with every washing. I also
love the fact that these incredibly high quality sheets. They're
made with one hundred percent organic cotton. It's soft, it's breathable,
it's durable, and the quality again, it gets softer with
(11:13):
every wash.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
And Bowlin Branch comes with a thirty night or a
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Speaker 1 (11:17):
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Speaker 1 (11:20):
With Bowlin Branch get fifteen percent on plus free shipping
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exclusions apply. And you know it's funny because when I
got to New York to work for Juliani in ninety seven,
(11:43):
I had this outsider's impression like, oh, Trump's really powerful,
and immediately, and this is always ironic to me, Rudy
was like, no, fuck that guy. He's an idiot. He's
a fucking moron. And I'm doing my Rudy voice here
a little bit for folks. He's an idiot, he's a moron,
he's a jerky. He's jerky and idiot. And literally, one
of the deputy Maris pipes up because we said, that
(12:04):
guy a couple of parking passes a year, but other
than that, he's a joke and if you want to
meet real New York real estate developers, you're going to
meet him working for the boss.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I'm like yeah, and I did, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
I realized quickly it's like you get a Bernie Mendick
type guy who was like at extra zeros on the
end of the of the of the deals compared to
what Trump was doing. So we yeah, that page six
culture man that really shaped him, didn't it.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
And the crazy thing about it is, you know there
were there were there were always gossip columns in New York, right,
it was it was except it was you know, it
had been before the eighties. It had been kind of
movie stars and athletes and and Broadway rights. And you know,
suddenly in the eighties, when when when when when the
kind of when city kind of pivoted around Wall Street?
(12:51):
When when you know, sort of the greed is good
era began? When when America kind of started in New
York America started to really kind of worship the culture
of money and celebrities. Page six kind of invented a
new class of celebrities, and Donald Trump was the head
of that class. These were bold based names only in
a new in the New New York and in New
(13:13):
America that had kind of a different sense of values.
And so you know, if if you were if you
were a big finance guy, if you were you know,
the the head of Solomon Brothers, or if you were
Donald Trump, and you could you know you were you
were in the if you could, you could kind of
advocate for yourself. You could pretend to be a big shot,
you were a bold face name.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
It's it's it was. That transition was to those it
used to be the people around the tables at Elaine's
and at and at the twenty one Club were show
people and older New York families and and older money.
And then it became maybe more vulgar. But that was
a perfect fit for Trump at the time, wasn't. I mean,
(13:55):
it just it really because he he was always the
kid from Queen's looking in and look looking up at
people that he thought hated him, looked down on him,
and they did. The old money in New York absolutely
did and still does. I guess to agree there is
still any old money, but all these characters. I mean,
(14:16):
I always thought one of the big through lines in
that era was race. And you mentioned Sharpton, you know,
who was a big figure in that time. And we
ended up at that period where we went through that
whole long arc of terrible to want a Brawley and
Crown Heights and use all and that entire arc, I
mean up until where when I was there with Abmiral
(14:38):
WEMA and all these terrible, terrible like the racial undercurrent
in New York was a real shaping factor in what
the city became in that period of time.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
It absolutely was.
Speaker 5 (14:51):
And the tabloids again, you know, played a key role
in that, of course, because they were this, you know,
this very kind of polarizing force, and so you know,
you had a story like the Central Park five, which
of course Trump would end up roll in.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
You better believe that I hate the people that took
this girl and raped her brutally. You better believe it.
And it's more than anger, it's hatred, and I want
society to hate him.
Speaker 16 (15:17):
In New York City in the late eighties and early nineties,
the case of the Central Park jogger was notorious. In
April nineteen eighty nine, a white woman who had been
jogging was found brutally raped and beaten nearly to death
in Central Park. Not long after the woman was discovered,
four black teenagers one Latino teenager were charged and jailed
for the crime. The gruesome case whipped up an unbelievable
(15:38):
hysteria throughout the city, the media ginning up fears with
headlines about wolf packs and roving gangs and Wilding, but
the five boys, ages fourteen to sixteen, had falsely confessed
to the crime after hours of police interrogations. They were
later tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison. But vindication for
the group, known as the Central Park five, came in
two thousand and two when it convicted murder and rapist
(16:00):
confessed to the crime, and that confession was then corroborated
by DNA. The prison sentences of the Central Park five
were overturned, but by that time they had already served
between five and thirteen years. In twenty fourteen, the men
were awarded a forty million dollars settlement from New York City.
The story that had gripped the city for years came
to a close, and yet one Manhattan residence obsession with
(16:23):
the case continues to this day. Just weeks after the
crime was committed in nineteen eighty nine, Donald Trump took
out a full page ad in four New York newspapers
advocating the return of the death penalty, and when the
city awarded the men a settlement in twenty fourteen, Trump
wrote an editorial in The Daily News calling the settlement
a disgrace and now even now as the presidential nominee
(16:44):
for the Republican Party. Trump hasn't allowed science or evidence
to change his initial reaction to the case. Just this week,
Trump said he still considers the men, again exonerated by
the criminal justice system and by DNA scientific evidence, guilty,
issuing a state been saying, quote, they admitted they were guilty.
The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty.
(17:04):
The fact that case was settled with so much evidence
again them is outrageous. The woman so badly injured will
never be the same.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
It was gasoline on the fire, you know. And you
mentioned mentioned Rudy before. I mean, you know, after Trump
took out his kind of infamous Central Park five that
you may remember this, but it probably it probably predated
your time with Rudy. But you know, Trump Trump was
(17:33):
was was, you know, toxic in certain quarters of the city.
And at that point, you know, Rudy was running for
mayor for the first time nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 17 (17:40):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
Yeah, he was trying to build build a kind of
a coalition and you know, get himself elected. And he
had a he had a fundraiser, he had already committed
to having Trunt Trump beyond the committee and the whole
staff was was telling him beforehand, you know, you cannot
be photographed with Donald Trump. Whatever you do, that man
(18:03):
is toxic.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I heard this story from Raymond Harding.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
There you go very hard Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
I mean it's just my god, right.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
It is.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
It is is definitely a but that that entire political
change in the city. Yeah, thought you put your final
point on it. You know, David Garth and Rudy's team
in ninety three and eighty nine and ninety three, successfully
ninety three. You know we're selling I'm going to clean
up the city. That was a very narrowly veiled racial code.
Speaker 18 (18:36):
In nineteen ninety three, he was elected as the first
Republican mayor of New York City since the sixties.
Speaker 17 (18:43):
I head off, William Juliani.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Do solemnly swear, do solemnly swear.
Speaker 18 (18:47):
Interestingly, some of his politics were pretty liberal. He supported
gay rights, immigrant protections, gun control, and abortion rights.
Speaker 8 (18:55):
But the mayor was.
Speaker 18 (18:56):
Hyper focused on cleaning up the city streets suit of
petty offenses like graffiti and marijuana possession to bring down
the crime rate. But some believe this strategy was racially biased.
The violent crime rate did drop during Giuliani's tenure, but
it already began declining under his predecessor.
Speaker 17 (19:15):
We're held together by wall, and we're held together by
respect for the wall.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
Ales and Ales you know went to work. Oh yes, Ales, right, yeah.
Ales had this this you know, kind of infamous line
right after he took over Rudy's campaign and they were
preparing for the general election against Dinkins. He said, you know,
Rudy is going to get one percent of the black
vote by accident. He was like, you know, this is
we know where this is going. And then sure enough,
(19:41):
that's that's exactly where it went. You know, he immediately
went after Dinkins, you know, for you know, dug up
an old an old kind of tax you know, failure
to pay taxes scandal that was you know, many many
years earlier. It was you know, crime and corruption. Rudy,
it was, you know.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
It it And by the when I got there, the
city was on the uptick. You know, there there had
been that that sort of economic turn. He look, Rudy,
Ruddy did a lot to encourage it, but he also
was writing a national economic uplift at the moment that.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
You know, during the Clinton era.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
But it strikes me as interesting. One of the things
I just thought about this. In American political culture, most
people have a half life of about fifteen years where
they're a known character. Sharpton, Juliani, Trump, So many of
these people are still in our politics and our culture
every day.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
It's incredible. I know, what do you think explains that? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (20:43):
Well, I mean, I think I think a variety of things.
One for sure is, you know, they they learned, they
learned how to use the media. They learned that the
power that you can you can kind of accrue from
from keeping yourself in the public eye. And I think
they also all you know, you know, and it's you
don't want to equate the three of those guys too
(21:05):
much because they're very different characters, but they also share
a sense of well, shamelessness maybe is the best word
for it. That if you don't you know, you don't apologize,
you don't back down, you just keep going right.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
If you act bulletproof, you are bullets.
Speaker 17 (21:22):
We did nothing wrong.
Speaker 9 (21:23):
I did nothing wrong and everybody knows that.
Speaker 6 (21:26):
Do you owe John McCain an apology?
Speaker 7 (21:29):
No, not at all.
Speaker 9 (21:30):
Actually, why not say maybe I went too far poor
choice of words or even I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I don't have to say that.
Speaker 6 (21:38):
I can never apologize.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
How yeah, I can never apologize for the truth. Is
there anybody you'd like to apologize to right now?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yourself? No?
Speaker 5 (21:48):
I think they all kind of they all learned that
in nineteen eighties New York, in this period of time
I'm writing about. And you know, that is a it
turns out that is a that is that is kind
of a secret to political success, right you listen this
as a superpower exactly, And so I think that's you know,
I think they learned this is where they learned it.
I mean they learned it in the in the kind
of the tabloid culture of nineteen eighties New York where
(22:10):
you know, where you are getting ridiculed. I mean, you know,
Trump too was getting mocked. He was, yes, he was,
you know, he was in page six, you know, on
on a weekly even daily basis. But he was. But
you know, but but he was also the target of
ridicule at times to himself. And it just you know,
didn't matter. It was it was all it was of.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
My magazine had more fun than the law allow with
Donald Trump during the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 17 (22:38):
What if Donald Trump were to get his own Saturday
Morning cartoon show.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
Trump Regular, Why Donald, I don't forget Johnny.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, folks, I'm dating myself a bit. But if you
ever go back and read the Spy magazine archives of
Donald Trump stories, they will they will first off, seem
very fresh to you because of how much he bullshits
then and now. But they are also just so brutal.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
Yeah, short fingled vulgarian.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Short finger Vulgarian. Kurt Anderson, baby Brayden Carter.
Speaker 19 (23:34):
The President has been unhappy with you for about forty years.
Speaker 20 (23:39):
Yes, I was an early Canadian that he was angry with.
Now he's angry with the entire country forty years.
Speaker 19 (23:44):
You did a profile of him before Benny Fair, which
you write about.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
In the book before Spy, actually before the Spy.
Speaker 19 (23:51):
Magazine, which was a whole other brilliant thing that you did,
and you commented on his hands.
Speaker 20 (23:57):
Well, I spent three weeks with them. It was his
first Nash exposure and so he let me hang around
with him and I and I wrote that his his
cup links were too large and his hands were too small,
and that drove them crazy. And then when we went
to went to Spy, we had sort of funny epithets
for people. And he was always a short fingered Bulgarian,
(24:18):
which short finger Bulgarian was slightly droven crazy over there.
Speaker 19 (24:22):
Yes, and yet he the hand thing which ended up
being in part of the presidential debate. He actually before
I think he was running for president. He actually has
not forgotten that and sent.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
You a note with a photograph, didn't he?
Speaker 20 (24:37):
He said, he we had a he tried. We tried
to be friends for a period and that didn't work out.
And on probably the summer before he announced, he sent
me a note with a twenty year old twenty five
year old ad for the for the art of the deal,
and had a photograph and then he circles his hand
and gold sharp He says, see quite large. And then
I stapled a card to it and sent it and said,
(24:58):
actually quite small and had to handle over it right back.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
He did not, I said, talk to us a little
bit about some of the other stories in this book
about how New York was changing at that time. The
AIDS crisis was an enormous overlay in the early and
mid eighties in New York. Talk to us about some
(25:22):
of the stories that you profile folks that were involved
in that in that yeah, horrible moment.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
Yeah, yeah, So I cover the these years, which are,
you know, nineteen eighty six to nineteen ninety so, so
the beginning of the story AIDS is, you know, is
already kind of on the scene. It's already it's already
kind of begun its rampage through the city and particularly
through the gay population. But it's it's at this point
it's starting to tip also into the black population, to
the homeless population, and and you know, along comes in
(25:51):
nineteen eighty seven a character named Larry Kramer.
Speaker 8 (25:54):
He fought for bold action against HIV and for gay
rights in the nineteen eighties and nineties. Jeffrey Brown looks
at his life.
Speaker 6 (26:04):
Have you told him there there's an epidemic going on?
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Says who the government?
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Which government?
Speaker 7 (26:08):
What our government? And epidemics?
Speaker 9 (26:10):
In The Normal Heart Is nineteen eighty five play and
later an HBO film, Larry Kramer wrote of love, agony,
and anger in the early years of AIDS. It was
the subject of much of his work as writer and activist.
He was a founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis
(26:30):
and later the group Act Up, whose public confrontations demanded
attention and urgent action to address the growing AIDS crisis.
Play forty million infected people. Here is the play.
Speaker 6 (26:46):
We are in the worst shape we.
Speaker 9 (26:48):
Have ever ever been in. He was passionate, often loud,
but he was heard, including when he took on then
prominent AIDS researcher doctor Anthony Fauci. Kramer labeled Fauci an
incompetent idiot. The two would later come to mutual respect
and even friendship. Today, Fauci, one of the leaders of
the White House Coronavirus Task Force, spoke to Judy about Kramer.
Speaker 11 (27:11):
I'm very sad that we've lost him. He's just an
extraordinary man. He changed totally by his extraordinary, iconoclastic and
theatrical ways of doing things. He changed the relationship between
the afflicted community with a given disease and the scientific
(27:32):
and regulatory community that has such a great impact on them.
He said, you can't be separate. You've got to keep
us in the tent. We've got to be in there
with you.
Speaker 5 (27:41):
Who is an unforgettable figure. And in many ways, you know,
I call these guys gods in a obviously not in
the Judeo Christian sense, and in the Greek sense that
they are all kind of kind of over the top
with their pettiness and their wrath and their vengeance, and
you know, New York is their mount olympus. And in
many ways, you know, Kramer is part of this pantheon too.
(28:03):
He's he's not so different in certain respects from from
these other characters we've been talking about, because he realizes
that he has got to bring he needs to he
needs to stir up some outrage, he needs to get confrontational,
he needs to force people to pay attention to the
AIDS crisis. And he does that, of course through you know,
(28:25):
this this kind of world changing activist group that he
forms called act Up, and so act Up is born
in nineteen eighty seven, and over the course of the
next few years, you know, becomes this really powerful force
in the social culture of New York but also nationally
and even globally as it kind of finally finally brings
(28:47):
attention to the AIDS crisis and forces some action from Washington.
And in fact, I write about our last thing I'd
say is I write about in particular about Larry Kramer's
relationship with Anthony Fauci, who you know, was kind of
running running the AIDS research for the countries, and you know,
and and and Kramer was was absolutely vicious toward him,
(29:08):
but ultimately Fauci kind of recognized that that Kramer was
more right than he was wrong, uh, that that the
government did need to sort of change, you know, did
you kind of light a fire under their AIDS research?
And and they reconciled, and and and Fauchi went on
to become Kramer's doctor and they became close friends later
in life.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
I did not know that that's fascinating. So, you know,
the city was changing so radically at that moment, and
it is the money, but but in some ways I
also wonder if if, as you wrote this, that that
it was that it was some of that's like the
death of the old neighborhood system in New York, some
(29:50):
of that collapse of the old you know, because when
I was the New York kind of department on eighty
first mean first and second up in Yorkville, right and
I still could see like the the memory of the
German and the Hungarian neighborhoods that were around there, but
that was, you know, kind of fading away. It was
also the time where we started to see like the
tip of the iceberg of that sort of homogenization of
New York's neighborhood cultures. Yeah, and I'm curious if you
(30:14):
if you if you have thoughts on that, because that's
something to me that it's like Americans on the outside
still think New York is is in weird ways more
diverse than it still is, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's still it's still
ethnically diverse, right, it's still as you know, one hundred
different nationalities, languages, et cetera. But you're right, I mean
as kind of culturally it has been homogenized. And I
think that, you know, what a lot of what happened
in the eighties is is the kind of the city's
kind of economic structure changed. Right, New York had always
(30:48):
been I should not say always, but you know, since
World War Two, New York had been the kind of
great working class city, right with all this kind of
diverse manufacturing shipping. It had lots of little industries. It
was like the home of amazing little industries and shops
and restaurants and bars, and you know, the once the
(31:08):
sort of working class got hollowed out, really by de
industrialization in the sixties and into the seventies, you know,
and the city kind of was like burned to the ground.
In the seventies, a new city was built on those ashes.
And that city that I think is the one you're
talking about, you know, was it was the city of skyscrapers,
(31:29):
of chain stores, of a of a kind of a
disnified Times Square, which of course had once been you know,
kind of porn shops and everything else. So you know,
it was it was the kind of you know, the
city just kind of bent toward toward kind of money
and corporate interest, I think at that point.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, yeah, it is that that that, you know, the
the Lulu limit effect that wasn't around then, but it
certainly is striking now. You walk down, you know, Madison
Avenue and it just looks like, yeah, ver other high
end place you go. It's Aspen or it's or it's
Santa Barbara or whatever. It doesn't it doesn't feel like
(32:09):
this the older city is as present as it once was.
I mean, I guess you could still get that up
in the boroughs, but it's not more so.
Speaker 5 (32:17):
But if the boroughs are going for that same transformation, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
I mean Brooklyn, certainly.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
When you were writing this, did you see some of
the previews of the MAGA culture that was going to emerge?
And you know, because I always I always look back
at Staten Island and I think, goddamn, that was MAGA
one point zero and nobody saw it come, not even
me totally.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
Yeah, no, no, I mean that And and and I
have to say, you know Trump, Trump's sort of did
I mean, if you think about that, if you think
about that Central Park five ad sure, the death penalty
for for these five black kids who had had not
even tried yet, right, and uh, you know, ended the
same time kind of indicting Cotch for his failure to
(33:03):
keep the city safe because of one, you know, kind
of random crime. He you know, you could see that
that that that he was he was catering to to
a very particular audience to what would you know, this
time he was like not a political figure at all,
but that was he's that was the that was his base,
I mean, that was what would become his base. And
(33:26):
you see that play out in all these racial incidents
in the city too. You know, when Sharpton brings bring
brings black protesters into white neighborhoods and they are shouted
down with you know, with the ugliest racial epithets. You
can possibly imagine.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
What your heights all those.
Speaker 5 (33:46):
Exactly what you're seeing there is like a kind of
a resentment toward how the city has changed, toward toward
a feeling that you know, New York used to be better. Uh,
you know he used to be that that that you
know that that that you know, there were there were
there were there were jobs for us, you know, without
those like non college educated New Yorkers, right, Uh, you
(34:09):
know there was the streets were safer. I mean at
least that's the kind of the mythos, right and and
you can see it all happening right there in nineteen
eighties New York. I mean you see, and you can
see Trump was fully aware of it. I mean that
that's and and look those are his politics today. It's
almost like they're so they're so kind of retro it's
like it's almost hard to believe, right.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
It is it is that you know, somebody else explained
this time that it's like like, do not forget that
Trump is a guy from Queens, Yes, yeah, where where
it used to be like keep the white and white
Stone sort of that part of Queens that and here.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
In this in this very in particular, this real true
white enclave in Queens. Yeah, even as Queen's was itself
becoming the new kind of immigrant borough in New York,
of course the eighties, they were in their own little enclave,
this sealed off enclave that was you know.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (35:05):
So that's all that is all very that's that's who
he is. That's that's the essence of his identity. And
you know remember that he and his father would not
rent apartments to black people. I mean, this is you know,
this is that's his DNA.
Speaker 8 (35:19):
Fourteen thousand apartments in thirty nine different buildings, all mostly
white tenants. That is until the Department of Justice took
notice in nineteen seventy three and slammed Donald Trump and
his father, Fred Trump with a lawsuit. Trump Management was
charged with discriminating against African Americans and breaking federal law.
Donald Trump, then just twenty seven, was president of the company.
(35:42):
The Department of Justice accused the Trumps of violating the
Fair Housing Act, arguing they were turning away renters based
on race and color, who tipped them off. Local activists,
so called testers posing as potential renters at Trump's buildings,
mainly in Brooklyn and Queens. Elease gold Weber was a
lawyer for the DOJ's Fair Housing Section at the time
(36:03):
and was called on to handle the Trump case.
Speaker 21 (36:05):
When the black testers came, they were shown they may
have been shown apartments, but were told nothing was available,
whereas when the white testers came, yes, there were things
that were available that would be the norm.
Speaker 8 (36:20):
And if the Trumps did rent to a black person,
gold Webber recalls, they would do so only at one
building in Brooklyn, reserving the other buildings for white tenants.
Speaker 21 (36:30):
That the white people would live in Trump Village and
the people of color would live in Flatbush.
Speaker 8 (36:39):
And according to the Justice Department, they even had a
secret coding system to do it, a racial code. Here's how.
Speaker 21 (36:46):
Some of the applications were marked with the C, which
we learned that it meant colored, so that the prospective
tenants who had come in were noted to be colored.
Speaker 8 (36:58):
Yes, you heard her, night, The Department of Justice alleged
applications submitted by prospective African American renters were designated with
a secret code, such as C for colored, to indicate
a black person was looking to rent in true Trump fashion.
Donald Trump hit back, calling the government's accusations absolutely ridiculous
(37:20):
and telling the court I have never, nor has anyone
in my organization ever, to the best of my knowledge,
discriminated or shown bias in the renting of our apartments.
Trump's lawyers said the government's suit failed to give names, addresses,
or specific incidences of discrimination, claiming the lawsuit caused substantial
damage to their business and reputation. Trump took the most
(37:42):
unusual step of suing the Justice Department for defamation, seeking
one hundred million dollars in damages, but that counter suit
was tossed out by the judge. Even so, the Trump
family maintained they never discriminated based on color, but were
instead trying to avoid renting to people on welfare. Two
years later, in nineteen seventy five, Trump and his father
(38:05):
settled the case, agreeing not to discriminate against anyone. They
also promised to advertise in publications aimed at minorities, familiarize
themselves with the details of the Fair Housing Act, and
notify civil rights groups of apartment vacancies. The Department of
Justice claimed victory, but the Trumps never admitted any wrongdoing,
(38:25):
reportedly noting this settlement was in no way an admission
of a violation.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah, I think, And I think it's interesting that. You know,
I think a lot of people are they look at Trump,
they go, oh, he's from New York. He's got to
be more sophisticated than that. He's got to be more
empathetic than He's got more And I'm like, no, no,
that's not where he's from. He may live in a
Golden Tower in Midtown, but our near Central Park, but
(38:54):
he is from what basically was as white as a
affluent Birmingham, Alabama suburb in New York.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
And it shaped him.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
I think, you know, Fred was Fred was pretty Fred
was a pretty bad guy in terms of that stuff
as well. So I think he learned. I think when
I think part of what Trump came to do was
associate using the word luxury with using the word white.
You know, this will this will be, these are luxury apartments.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
They won't be here. That's that's, you know, right out
of Fred's playbook.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
What else from the eighties do you think really shaped
New York as it is today? And shaped and And
I do think this book is interesting because it does
there's such a big footprint on the rest of American
culture from what happened in New York right in that window.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
I mean, another huge thing that that that was happening
then was that New York in those years was was
the kind of became the center of global capitalism. Right,
this is where globe globalization kind of and gurbialism begins
in New York in the nineteen eighties, as kind of
technology allows Wall Street to become this kind of international phenomenon.
Speaker 17 (40:11):
This is the trading for the New York Stock Exchange,
the nerve center of American capitalism.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I think in.
Speaker 17 (40:17):
Nineteen eighty seven was the beginning of a new Wall Street.
It had been different. It had been kind of a
pinstripe Yale Harvard graduates who ran the old banking houses.
And then suddenly they were hiring a lot of people
who had street sports but not necessarily trained in economics,
and they were currency traders or they were stock traders.
(40:39):
And it was going twenty four to seven with us
for over ten years.
Speaker 22 (40:42):
And he came to us out of high school. This
is his first job, and Bob Modis is working for
the senior fellow over here at the rhine End who's
been in the business since nineteen fifty nine, came to
the securities business right after the Navy.
Speaker 17 (40:55):
So you can take someone who doesn't not necessarily have
a business school background and making a good trader.
Speaker 22 (41:00):
I think you can do so. But it really is
more of a field for the markets, more of personality
than it is in a formal education.
Speaker 17 (41:05):
I remember a young woman at a trading death. She
was currency trading. She had a ferrari, a picture of
a ferrari on her trading council. That was her objective.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
What do you get out of this?
Speaker 17 (41:16):
What's the big cake?
Speaker 18 (41:19):
I guess making a lot of money.
Speaker 17 (41:23):
It was rock and roll. You could see money driving everything,
a lot of cocaine around, a lot of party hardy
every night.
Speaker 5 (41:38):
The old guard took her years and years, and the
new people on Wall Street they want to do it
in two days.
Speaker 17 (41:45):
I don't say that Wall Street was always the paragon
of morality before they all arrived. There have been scandals
over the years, and people who had in their own
way manipulated the system for their own benefit. But now
you had so many people and the rewards were so great.
Wall Street is in a continuing state of shak as
a result of the greatest scandal in its history in America.
Speaker 22 (42:08):
One of the great things about this nation is that
we can seek profit, and I'm proud of that.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
If you can gain profit, that's even better.
Speaker 10 (42:16):
That was even Boski a couple of years ago. Before
investigators caught up with him. He had been known on
Wall Street as King of the Arms, a big time
arbitrajurer who invested in stocks of companies he thought were
going to be taken over.
Speaker 17 (42:30):
Some of the smartest and most respected traders on the
Street have been led from their prestigious firms by federal
law enforcement authorities. One was even led away in handcuffs.
You know, the Wall Street people, whatever else we think
about him, are very canny, and they make quick judgments,
and they're tough about what they're doing, and they generally
pick up on who seems to be gaming the system
(42:50):
because they're making more money than they would otherwise. Bosky
was a classic example of that.
Speaker 10 (42:58):
If Bosky was greedy, so a lot of other people
on Wall Street. Since nineteen eighty four, there had been
more than forty eight cases of insider trading, many involving
the financial community, brought by New York's US attorney Rudolph Giuliani.
Speaker 17 (43:13):
I can't say that I saw it coming, but it
was what started then that led to the collapse of Barrowsturns,
led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. And now we
see in the course of the last thirty some rors
how it has changed Wall Street. Great wealth has been
accumulated by many of these young people who became hedge
fund traders and other things, but in too many instances
(43:37):
they parked their moral compass at the door.
Speaker 5 (43:40):
So you see, you know, so that is sort of critical.
And then again the sort of backlash you see against
that in the outer boroughs is that is like a
microcosm of what we have seen in our nation over
the last decade, this idea of like the globalized economy,
there are no jobs for the working class. Uh, it's
(44:03):
a it's a system that favors you know, the elites,
the wealthy. Uh and you know, and and others are
left out and become resentful. And that is you know,
so that is what happened in New York in the eighties,
and that is what then kind of swept across our
country over the subsequent decades. The amazing thing is that Trump,
(44:23):
who was in the nineteen eighties was was the personification
of of of greed and of excess and of of
of money. Somehow, through some crazy magic trick kind of
reinvented himself or without losing that as a working class
hero is the voice of all the people who felt
(44:46):
left out of this transformation. So so you see that
transformation first in New York in the nineteen eighties, all
the seeds of it are there, and and then it
just rolls across the country.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
I think it's.
Speaker 5 (44:56):
A you know, like the misperception about misconception about out
about Trump and the Apprentice. I think there's a misconception
that that America that it was it was NAFTA and
and deregulation under under Clinton, you know, et cetera. That
that kind of that that started this sort of the
global is the backlash against globalization. I think you can
go back further to nineteen eighties New York to see
(45:19):
like its real roots.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
I think that is the most fascinating part of this
book is that is that particular case that New York
in that moment shaped our culture and it and it's
hard to say that it shaped our culture at other times,
you know, certainly other times, but this seems so consequential
and that long running knock on effect almost forty five
years later.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yeah, yeah, which makes me feel old as shit now.
Speaker 5 (45:45):
It is crazy.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
It's the same.
Speaker 5 (45:46):
It's the knock on effect and the same somehow, the
same cast of characters.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
It's like Matt, Yeah, yeah it is. It is quite something. Well,
it's a tremendous book, folks. Jonathan Mahler's The Gods of
New York absolutely a banger, and it is. It is
such a window into how a culture shaped and continues
to shape our politics right now. Thanks so much everybody
for tuning into the Lincoln Project podcast today. Jonathan, tell
(46:11):
folks where they can find you online, and tell them
about your day job where they can read your other stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (46:16):
So my day job is at the New York Times.
I'm a writer for the New York Times Sunday magazine.
And you know, you can buy The Gods of New
York anywhere. You can buy it at your local bookstore,
you can buy it on Amazon. You can also follow
me on Twitter or on Instagram. But most importantly, go
out and buy the book.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
It's great. Go buy the book, folks, it's a good one.
It's a banger.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
So hey, Jonathan, thanks so much for coming on that.
I really appreciate you.
Speaker 5 (46:38):
Man, thanks for having me Rick, I really appreciate it.
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