presentation.He ripped into the location and functionality of the Denver International Airport. The rambling remarks were rich with denunciations of former wives and former business associates. In vilifying a former employee, saying she had been disloyal, Trump gratuitouslydescribed her as “ugly as a dog.”
“I have to tell you about losers,” Trump told the audience. “Ilove losers because they make me feel so good about myself.” Had Loveland’s Bixpo 2005 conference invited a loser to speak, he assured the crowd, the fee would have beenthree dollars rather than the “freaking fortune” paid to Trump. However large the speaking fee had been, it did not motivate Trump to show enough respect for the paying audience to prepare even a simple outline. Many in the crowd said afterward that none of his talk was useful and certainly not uplifting.
However, within Trump’s inchoate vitriol, some in the audience did identify two recommendations on how to succeed in life and business:
First, Trump advised, trust no one, especially good employees. “Be paranoid,” he said, “because they are gonna try to fleece you.” It was strange advice, as some in the audience told local reporters afterward, because trust is central to market capitalism. Businesspeople known for being trustworthy attract better workers, who in turn make their businesses run better. Trustworthy entrepreneurs make the economy more efficient by reducing friction in business deals. Business owners who are prudent about making promises and are known for honoring their word often go through life without a single lawsuit.Trump has been a party in more than 3,500 lawsuits, some of them accusing him of civil fraud (an issue we will examine in another chapter).
Second, Trump recommended revenge as business policy. “Get even,” he said. “If somebody screws you, you screw ‘em back ten times over. At least you can feel good about it.Boy, do I feel good.”
Two years after the Loveland speech, Trump released
Think Big
, his twelfth book.
Think Big
was coauthored by Bill Zanker, founder of The Learning Annex, which runs classes on everything from pole dancing and making your own soap to writing business plans. Chapter 6 of
Think Big
is titled “Revenge.”
“I always get even,” Trump writes in the opening line of that chapter. He then launches into an attack on the same woman he had denounced in Colorado. Trump recruited the unnamed woman “from her government job where she was making peanuts”; her career going nowhere. “I decided to make her somebody. I gave her a great job at the Trump Organization, and over time she became powerful in real estate. She bought a beautiful home.”
When Trump was in financial trouble in the early 1990s, “I asked her to make a phone call to an extremely close friend of hers who held a powerful position at a big bank and who would have done what she asked. She said, ‘Donald, I can’t do that.’ ” Instead of accepting that the woman felt such a call would be improper, Trump fired her. She started her own business. Trump writes that her business failed. “I was really happy when I found that out,” he says.
In Trump’s telling, the story of an employee declining to do something unseemly is really the story of a rebellion to be crushed.
She has turned on me after I had done so much to help her. I had asked her for one favor in return and sheturned me down flat. She ended up losing her home. Her husband, who was only in it for the money, walked out on her and I was glad. Over the years many people have called asking for a recommendation for her. I only gave her bad recommendations. I can’t stomach disloyalty … and now I go out of my way to make her life miserable.
Trump devotes another several pages to actressRosie O’Donnell, who described him as “a snake-oil salesman” in 2006. A few months later, at Zanker’s 2007 Learning Annex Real Estate & Wealth Expo, Trump called O’Donnell “a
“I have to tell you about losers,” Trump told the audience. “Ilove losers because they make me feel so good about myself.” Had Loveland’s Bixpo 2005 conference invited a loser to speak, he assured the crowd, the fee would have beenthree dollars rather than the “freaking fortune” paid to Trump. However large the speaking fee had been, it did not motivate Trump to show enough respect for the paying audience to prepare even a simple outline. Many in the crowd said afterward that none of his talk was useful and certainly not uplifting.
However, within Trump’s inchoate vitriol, some in the audience did identify two recommendations on how to succeed in life and business:
First, Trump advised, trust no one, especially good employees. “Be paranoid,” he said, “because they are gonna try to fleece you.” It was strange advice, as some in the audience told local reporters afterward, because trust is central to market capitalism. Businesspeople known for being trustworthy attract better workers, who in turn make their businesses run better. Trustworthy entrepreneurs make the economy more efficient by reducing friction in business deals. Business owners who are prudent about making promises and are known for honoring their word often go through life without a single lawsuit.Trump has been a party in more than 3,500 lawsuits, some of them accusing him of civil fraud (an issue we will examine in another chapter).
Second, Trump recommended revenge as business policy. “Get even,” he said. “If somebody screws you, you screw ‘em back ten times over. At least you can feel good about it.Boy, do I feel good.”
Two years after the Loveland speech, Trump released
Think Big
, his twelfth book.
Think Big
was coauthored by Bill Zanker, founder of The Learning Annex, which runs classes on everything from pole dancing and making your own soap to writing business plans. Chapter 6 of
Think Big
is titled “Revenge.”
“I always get even,” Trump writes in the opening line of that chapter. He then launches into an attack on the same woman he had denounced in Colorado. Trump recruited the unnamed woman “from her government job where she was making peanuts”; her career going nowhere. “I decided to make her somebody. I gave her a great job at the Trump Organization, and over time she became powerful in real estate. She bought a beautiful home.”
When Trump was in financial trouble in the early 1990s, “I asked her to make a phone call to an extremely close friend of hers who held a powerful position at a big bank and who would have done what she asked. She said, ‘Donald, I can’t do that.’ ” Instead of accepting that the woman felt such a call would be improper, Trump fired her. She started her own business. Trump writes that her business failed. “I was really happy when I found that out,” he says.
In Trump’s telling, the story of an employee declining to do something unseemly is really the story of a rebellion to be crushed.
She has turned on me after I had done so much to help her. I had asked her for one favor in return and sheturned me down flat. She ended up losing her home. Her husband, who was only in it for the money, walked out on her and I was glad. Over the years many people have called asking for a recommendation for her. I only gave her bad recommendations. I can’t stomach disloyalty … and now I go out of my way to make her life miserable.
Trump devotes another several pages to actressRosie O’Donnell, who described him as “a snake-oil salesman” in 2006. A few months later, at Zanker’s 2007 Learning Annex Real Estate & Wealth Expo, Trump called O’Donnell “a
Similar Books
The Angel Stone: A Novel
Juliet Dark
Naked Edge
Pamela Clare
Pickup Styx
Liz Schulte
Lovely in Her Bones
Sharyn McCrumb
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4
Tristram Rolph
Spelldown
Karon Luddy
Kati Marton
Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History
Betting On His Demon
Kelex
The Upright Man
Michael Marshall