Дональд Трамп - Triggered

It was during that “promotion,” however, that I got my first hard lesson in negotiation—and the lesson came from none other than Donald J. Trump. Looking back, it was a little like playing your first pickup basketball game against Michael Jordan.

My father did not operate at half speed when it came to dealmaking, even with his kids—and he still doesn’t. He wasn’t going to pull punches. That’s how we were going to learn—the hard way. Going in, I’m sure I thought, Hey, I’m this guy’s kid, he’ll go easy on me, cut me a break, treat me different from everyone else.

I was very wrong.

Here’s what happened. Hanging around the job site one day, I started doing a little math (which was never my best subject as a youngster, but when it came to money, I was able to figure it out). I thought, I used to make hundreds of dollars in tips, smelling nothing but sunscreen and salt water, and now I’m in mud and sawdust up to my knees, wiping dirt out of my eyes, and working around sweaty dudes for less money . I decided I would tell my father that weekend after dinner what I had realized about my paychecks. I assumed that he would immediately raise my pay and commend me for realizing how unfair the system was to working guys like me.

Easy.

What actually happened was much different. But to this day, I’m grateful that it did. It was a light-bulb-over-the-head moment for me. Here’s how it all went down, written as a one-act play, just so you get the full experience that I did (notice that “Don Jr.” does not have a major speaking role).

[Interior, dinner table. Donald J. Trump seated at the head.]

[Enter Don Jr. with very long hair, probably wearing cargo shorts and a camouflage T-shirt.]

Don Jr.:Dad, I’ve realized that even though I’m doing more work on the job site, you’re paying me way less money for it. Why didn’t I get a raise?

Dad:Well, you didn’t ask me for more money, so I didn’t give you more money. That’s how the world works. Why would I give you more money than you’re willing to work for? That would make me an idiot.

Don Jr.:I, uh—

Dad:Why would I do that? You think people are going to give you more money just because you’re a nice guy? They’re not, Donnie. Anything you want, you have to go out and get it. Nothing is going to be handed to you. Nothing. You have to earn it before you ask for it! Always remember: you don’t get anything you don’t ask for.

[End of scene.]

Over the next few minutes, I think I tried negotiating for a retroactive raise. I may have even pulled some pie charts out of my shorts. My father found it amusing, but he didn’t budge. That day I learned a few lessons that have stuck with me. Number one: You shouldn’t expect to get anything in life that you didn’t work for. Number two: If you don’t ask for it, don’t expect it. And number three: When someone goes around offering things for free, don’t believe them. In most cases, that person is either a liar or an idiot.

Or a leftist, which means they’re both.

This is as true in the boardroom of Trump Tower as it is out on the campaign trail. As I learned time and time again in 2016, if you want someone to vote for you, you have to go to work and earn that vote. If you want a donation, you need to explain where the money is going to go and why you need it. You shouldn’t take anyone’s support for granted. And once you get that support, it’s time to enact policies that will make the people who gave you their vote proud that they did.

By the way, throughout this book, I’m going to tell you about all the “regular Joe” things I did, such as hunting, driving heavy construction equipment, and sleeping on my buddies’ couches. I know the trigger-happy people on the left will pop a cork and accuse me of trying to be somebody I’m not. To be honest, I don’t give a crap what they think. But I don’t want to give you, my faithful readers, the wrong impression. Though I did spend a lot of my childhood in the woods in Czechoslovakia and I did learn how to drive one of my dad’s Caterpillars, I did my fair share of rich-kid stuff, too.

I grew up in an enormous triplex at the top of Trump Tower and spent a lot of the year in Greenwich, Connecticut. I really could play football in the living room, and I could see almost the entire island of Manhattan from the windows of our apartment. One day, my sister Ivanka was kicking a beachball around the living room of our house in Greenwich, and she shattered a big chandelier. There were pieces of glass everywhere. When my mother came into the room and saw the mess, Ivanka told her it was me who did it. I wasn’t even there! My mother proceeded to beat the crap out of me (she broke a wooden spoon on my ass, if I remember correctly), even though I had no idea what was going on. By the time she was done and Ivanka fessed up, my mother was too tired and over it to do anything to her. As usual, Ivanka got off scot-free, and I’ve been plotting my revenge ever since… Ivanka if you’re reading, when you least expect it, expect it!

Most mornings, I was driven to private school, and we had nannies. And, oh, by the way, in the winter we would go to a place called Mar-a-Lago.

My father bought the massive mansion in the late 1980s. It might have been the greatest deal ever recorded in Palm Beach: twenty acres on the Atlantic that stretched to the Intracoastal Waterway in one of the richest zip codes in the country. The main house had fifty-eight bedrooms, thirty-three bathrooms, and an 1,800-square-foot living room with a forty-two-foot-high ceiling. Dad bought it from the federal government for about $7 million, or about the price the original owner, cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, had paid to have it built in 1923. The asking price was sweet enough, but the deal became even better when the untapped value of the house was calculated. Ms. Post had collected antique furniture from all over the world, including from European castles. Though beautiful and very expensive, the furniture wasn’t practical. Dad sold most of it and almost paid for Mar-a-Lago with the proceeds.

Though my father’s entrepreneurial spirit would eventually kick in and he would turn the mansion into a club, when we first moved to Mar-a-Lago, it was our winter home. I was seven at the time, Ivanka was four, and Eric was two. For us, it was like the movie Night at the Museum . We explored every inch of the mansion. Hide-and-seek games were epic. You could put a full-grown palm tree in the living room, so for us it was like having our own private indoor stadium. When my parents had parties, I would climb up onto the rafters over the entranceway of the living room with a handful of raisins. As the guests passed by underneath, I would fire the raisins at them, trying to land them in their drinks. More than once, guests looked at their cocktail and thought there were spiders falling from the ceiling.

To be honest, I was much more comfortable in the rafters than down with the people in the living room. I didn’t take to the opulent lifestyle the way some children of billionaires do. It’s not that I despised my father’s money, because I really didn’t. Even as a kid, I sensed that wealth and opulence were DJT’s brand. I saw it as part of his job. Later, I would realize that it was the reason he had become so successful in the first place. Without his solid-gold image, I doubt there would be Trump properties all over the globe today, all of them rated among the highest quality in the world. That’s not a plug, that’s the truth.

Still, there was something that made me feel uncomfortable around the people who populated the rich circles my father lived and worked in. Even when Dad would bring home a celebrity, which he did often, I would usually run in the other direction. Although I did become friends with a few of them, including Herschel Walker, the Heisman Trophy winner who played for my dad’s team in the USFL, the New Jersey Generals. When I was six, I took a trip to Disney World with Herschel and his family. He used to come to our house in Greenwich. His wife at the time once took a ride on my motocross bike and crashed it, seriously injuring herself. We remain friends to this day. There was also Michael Jackson, who lived in Trump Tower and with whom I played video games. One day in Eric’s room, my father saw how much Michael enjoyed playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with us on Nintendo and told him he could take the game home. My game! To this day, Eric says it was his game because it was in his room, but I know whose game it was. I’d worked a summer job to pay for it! And here was Michael Jackson, probably a billionaire at this point, and he took it! The recent revelations about Jackson came as a shock to me. My experience with Michael does not include any of what he’s been accused of. Oh, and by the way, given all the things my father has been called, particularly a “racist,” it sure sounds odd that he’d let his son vacation with a black man or hang out with Michael Jackson, doesn’t it? If he’s a racist, he’s sure not very good at it.