Yuri Dubinin

• Trump was introduced to the Soviet Ambassador in 1986 at a luncheon hosted by Leonard Lauder, an heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune (who also attended Trump’s alma mater of Wharton). “The courtship began in 1986, when Trump was seated next to Ambassador Yuri Dubinin at a luncheon given by Leonard Lauder, who runs his mother Este'e's cosmetics business. Turned out that Dubinin's daughter knew all about the Trump Tower, with its six-story-high atrium of apricot marble and blinding brass where a $2 million, 80-foot-high waterfall sloshes down one wall. As Trump recounts the conversation in his 1987 book, ‘one thing led to another, and now I'm talking about building a large luxury hotel across the street from the Kremlin.’ The plan was to build in partnership with the Soviet government.” (Washington Post, December 3, 1988)