Personal Contacts - Russia

Generally

• July, 1984: Donald Trump attended a party for visiting Soviet journalists held on Malcolm Forbes’ yacht during the Fourth of July. “Fireworks over the East River have always been a magnet for Malcolm S. Forbes and his sumptuous 126-foot yacht, the Highlander. The tradition continued Wednesday night, when Mr. Forbes treated 111 guests, including a group of visiting Soviet journalists, to a cruise around lower Manhattan and ringside seats for the annual July 4 sky show. […] Among the guests, who boarded the yacht to the sound of Yankee Doodle played on a bagpipe, were […] Donald and Ivana Trump, and three generations of Forbeses. ‘It's a very capitalistic crowd,’” Kay Meehan said". (New York Times, July 6, 1984)
• November, 1984: Donald Trump declared that he should be appointed as an American arms control negotiator, citing the encouragement of Roy Cohn as his rationale: “This morning, Trump has a new idea. He wants to talk about the threat of nuclear war. He wants to talk about how the United States should negotiate with the Soviets. He wants to be the negotiator. He says he has never acted on his nuclear concern. But he says that his good friend Roy Cohn, the flamboyant Republican lawyer, has told him this interview is a perfect time to start.” (Washington Post, November 15, 1984)
• November, 1984: Donald Trump boasted that he could learn “everything there is to learn about missiles” in an hour and a half, making him qualified to negotiate arms control with the Soviets: “This morning, Trump has a new idea. He wants to talk about the threat of nuclear war. He wants to talk about how the United States should negotiate with the Soviets. He wants to be the negotiator. […] ‘It's something that somebody should do that knows how to negotiate and not the kind of representatives that I have seen in the past.’ He could learn about missiles, quickly, he says. ‘It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles ... I think I know most of it anyway. You're talking about just getting updated on a situation ... You know who really wants me to do this? Roy ... I'd do it in a second.’” (Washington Post, November 15, 1984)
• February 1985: Trump argued that he should be appointed to negotiate an arms control treaty with the Soviet Union that would entail cooperation between the USA and the USSR to prevent other countries from developing nuclear weapons: “Trump has said he would like to be the U.S. negotiator in arms talks with the Soviets. ‘Some people have an ability to negotiate,’ he says. ‘It's an art you're basically born with. Either you have it or you don't.’ ‘I feel for the first time in many years we're in a position to negotiate a really good treaty. I've been involved in studying the issue for years. I feel very knowledgeable about the issues.’ And the issue, he says, is not so much the United States vs. the Soviet Union as it is both superpowers against a Third World country which gains nuclear capability.” (Associated Press, February 24, 1985)
• 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)
• June, 1987: Trump announced he would travel to Moscow to discuss building a luxury hotel in the Soviet Union. “Real Estate tycoon Donald Trump said Thursday he will travel in July to Moscow, where he hopes to build a luxury hotel. The announcement follows verbal sparring between Trump and New York Mayor Ed Koch over the developer's plan for keeping NBC from moving to New Jersey.” (Miami Herald, June 5, 1987)
• July, 1987: Trump was a guest of the Soviet regime in Moscow, staying at the luxurious National Hotel: “Real-estate mogul Donald J. Trump stepped onto the circular balcony in his sumptuous corner suite at Moscow's National Hotel -- and criticized the door. ‘This I can't understand,’ he said, pointing to layer upon layer of crusted brown paint. ‘But this,’ he said, making a sweeping gesture at the unsurpassed view of the Kremlim, ‘is fabulous.’ […] Last week Soviet officials rolled out the Red carpet for the American megacapitalist, hoping to get him to build two luxury hotels in Moscow and Leningrad.” (Newsweek, July 20, 1987)
• Trump flew to Moscow in 1987 at the invitation of Intourist, the official agency for Soviet tourism, but he did not have an opportunity to meet with the Soviet premiere on his visit. “In January 1987, the Soviet agency for international tourism, Intourist, expressed interest in a meeting. Trump and his wife Ivana, who speaks Russian, flew to Moscow that July and looked at half a dozen potential sites (none of them across the street from the Kremlin, however). ‘He met with a lot of the economic and financial advisers in the Politburo,’ says Trump spokesman Dan Klores. But he didn't meet the top man.” (Washington Post, December 3, 1988)
• Trump’s 1987 trip to Moscow followed lobbying by high-ranking Soviet officials including Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin: “The Soviets admit to being dazzled by the opulence of Trump's buildings. At a lunch six months ago Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin told Trump that his daughter ‘adored’ Trump Tower on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue and informally proposed building a Russian version. Soviet officials visited Trump in New York, inviting him on the all-expenses-paid trip. Trump saw a half-dozen sites in Moscow alone.” (Newsweek, July 20, 1987)
• September, 1987: Trump paid $94,801 for newspaper advertisements calling on American officials to charge our allies money in exchange for defense guarantees: “Donald J. Trump, the multimillionaire developer who has gotten into some well-publicized spats with city officials here, is using his cash to wade into the more exotic waters of foreign policy. In full-page advertisements running Wednesday in The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Boston Globe, Trump argues that the United States should present Western Europe and Japan with a bill for America's efforts to safeguard the passage of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. When a prominent private person spends $94,801 to publicize such a message, it raises the age-old question: What's he running for?” (Washington Post, September 2, 1987)
  • Trump singled out Japan and Saudi Arabia for special criticism: “Trump, the 41-year-old powerhouse, is concerned about the money the United States is spending in defense of Persian Gulf oil that benefits other nations. He said yesterday he is ‘tired of watching the U.S. get ripped off by so many foreign countries.’ And he specifically mentioned Japan and Saudi Arabia. ‘We're bringing Japan's oil out so they can kick hell out of Chrysler and Ford,’ he added.” (Washington Post, September 3, 1987)
  • Trump’s advertorial warned that America’s allies were “laughing at us:” “Donald Trump recently published an impassioned full-page newspaper ad that reported that our friends around the world were ‘laughing’ at us and that the time had come for them to ‘pay for the protection we extend as allies.’” (Washington Post, Richard Burt, October 8, 1987)
• December, 1987: Donald Trump was one of approximately 250 guests at a State Department luncheon in Mikhail Corbachev’s honor. “Between meetings with President Reagan and other governmental leaders, Gorbachev lunched at the State Department, spent the afternoon meeting with media heavies at the Soviet Embassy and hosted a dinner for the Reagans later in the evening. […] The Gorbachevs took their time working the receiving line, talking with all 250 guests. […] The guests included industrialists H. Ross Perot and Donald Trump, ABC journalist Barbara Walters, artist Andrew Wyeth (who sat next to Raisa Gorbachev), Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, Sens. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) and Albert Gore (D-Tenn.), Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), Dobrynin and House Majority Leader Tom Foley (D-Wash.).” (Washington Post, December 10, 1987)
• December, 1987: Trump traveled to DC to attend a State Department luncheon honoring a visit from Mikhail Gorbachev: “Washington reached a negotiated peace yesterday with visiting Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, as the protectors and the protected settled with the rest of the city into a relatively good-humored, if inconvenient, routine. […] Communists and capitalists agreed. New York developer Donald Trump, in town for yesterday's State Department luncheon with Gorbachev, said he was ‘impressed with the quality of the security job D.C. police have done.’” (Washington Post, December 10, 1987)
  • Trump claimed that he and Gorbachev discussed Trump’s interest in building a Moscow hotel when they met on the receiving line of a State Department luncheon in Gorbachev’s honor. “On receiving lines at the White House, the State Department and in the Soviet Embassy, Mr. Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, seemed fully aware of the backgrounds of each of the dozens of guests who shook their hands. He asked Donald Trump, the developer, to build a hotel in Moscow (‘They want to have a great hotel, and they want me to be the one to do it,’ said Mr. Trump).” (New York Times, December 13, 1987)
  • Trump excitedly boasted that Gorbachev would visit Trump Tower on a trip to New York and claimed he would personally escort Gorbachev’s wife through the tower’s mall. “Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is tentatively scheduled to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Trump Tower during his trip to New York next week. Donald Trump lost no time in deciding how to guide the Soviet leader through his Fifth Avenue tower, saying he would start by showing off the peach-colored marble in the tower's shopping atrium. ‘I'm going to show his wife the stores,’ Trump said.” (Palm Beach Post, December 1, 1988)
• August, 1990: Trump endorsed a joint senior athletic contest with the USSR. “Manya Joyce, founder and president of the North Palm Beach-based U.S. Senior Athletic Games, has been named to head a committee promoting inter-relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Joyce, 85, was appointed by Oleg Mihailovich Copyev of the Moscow City Physical Training and Sporting Unit, who said the committee will be comprised of ‘the leading CEOs of American industry and sports.’ The project has been endorsed by, among others, developer Donald Trump, actor Burt Reynolds and Gerald F. Wilson, manager of international investment for the Florida Department of Commerce bureau of international trade and development. Joyce hopes several 50-and-older athletes from the Soviet Union will come to Palm Beach County for the 10th anniversary Senior Games in October.” (Palm Beach Post, August 26, 1990)

Trump Humiliated by Mikhail Gorbachev

• December, 1988: The Soviet Mission to the United Nations announced that Mikhail Gorbachev would visit Trump Tower during a three-day visit to New York. “Mikhail S. Gorbachev is tentatively scheduled to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Trump Tower during his trip to New York next week, the Soviet Mission to the United Nations said yesterday, and Donald Trump plans to show Mr. Gorbachev a swimming pool inside a $19 million apartment. The mission made public a schedule for the three-day visit, the Soviet leader's first to New York, that calls for him to visit the museum and Mr. Trump's Fifth Avenue building on Wednesday. The next day, according to the schedule, he will spend two hours touring the World Trade Center, Central Park and Broadway.” (New York Times, December 1, 1988)
• Gorbachev’s main reason for visiting to New York was to meet with President-Elect George H.W. Bush and then-President Ronald Reagan. “The main purpose of the trip is an appearance at the United Nations and a lunch with American officials, including President Reagan and President-elect Bush, on Wednesday at Governors Island. The White House said yesterday that Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbachev, the Soviet leader's wife, would also have lunch together.” (New York Times, December 1, 1988)
• Trump expressed excitement at the prospect of a visit from the Soviet Premiere, telling reporters that he would take Gorbachev’s wife on a tour of the store in Trump Tower’s shopping mall. “Mr. Trump lost no time in deciding how to guide the Soviet leader through his Fifth Avenue tower, saying he would start by showing off the peach-colored marble in the tower's shopping atrium. ‘I'm going to show his wife the stores,’ Mr. Trump said. The visit will give the Gorbachevs ‘a really great shot of what New York and the United States are about,’ he said. ‘I hope that he's going to find it special.’” (New York Times, December 1, 1988)
• Trump also told reporters that he would give Gorbachev a tour of his private residence in Trump Tower. “The real-estate developer said he and Mr. Gorbachev would spend some time in Mr. Trump's 26th-floor office before taking an elevator to higher floors to see some apartments. One apartment above the 60th floor has a swimming pool – ‘virtually regulation size, within the confines of an apartment,’ Mr. Trump said. He said he wanted to show the couple his own apartment, which is on the 68th floor and does not have a swimming pool.” (New York Times, December 1, 1988)
• Trump expressed an intention to respect Gorbachev’s wariness of capitalism during his anticipated private audience with the Soviet Premiere. “Trump said he has ‘great respect’ for the Soviet leader and would not try to change ‘opinions that have been formed over a lifetime’ by lecturing him on the glories of capitalism. He said Gorbachev asked to see Trump Tower because ‘it's become the hottest building in New York. It's a phenomenon .... Perhaps he wants to see things that really do work.’ Trump, who plans to show Gorbachev the building's glitzy atrium and, if time permits, his $19 million apartment, said the Soviets asked him last year to consider building a hotel of similar design in Moscow. He said the idea did not work out because ‘in the Soviet Union, you don't own anything. It's hard to conjure up spending hundreds of millions of dollars on something and not own it.’” (Washington Post, December 4, 1988)
• Trump reportedly requested the visit from Gorbachev in a note that he had personally sent to the Soviet Mission in New York. “‘Blasphemy!’ Donald Trump's executive assistant is horrified at the question -- namely, how did Mikhail Gorbachev hear about Trump Tower, the Fifth Avenue shrine to acquisitiveness he's agreed to visit next week? ‘Everybody in the whole world knows about Trump Tower!’ Like Gorby heard a coupla guys jawing about it on the Moscow subway the other day. The fact is, the billionaire developer (casino czar, bestselling author, nouveau yachtsman, etc.) has been making overtures to Moscow for some time. The Soviets seem interested in him, too. The Gorbachevs' Thursday afternoon Tower tour -- which resulted from a note Trump sent to the Soviet Mission to the United Nations in late November when the New York visit was announced -- is only the latest encounter.” (Washington Post, December 3, 1988)
• Trump sent his note inviting Gorbachev to a tour of Trump Tower after a planned visit to New York by the premiere had been publicly announced. “The Trump Organization has had nothing much to say about a Moscow hotel since then. Trump's been preoccupied, perhaps, with his purchases of the Plaza Hotel and the Eastern shuttle and his $10 million refurbishment of his yacht, the Trump Princess, among other recent sprees. But when he heard of the Gorbachevs' visit, he fired off what Klores calls ‘a simple note’ inviting them to tea at the Plaza and a tour of what Trump modestly refers to as the most luxurious building in the world. Sixty-eight stories tall, it combines six shopping levels with offices (include Trump's headquarters) and ridiculously expensive apartments.” (Washington Post, December 3, 1988)
• Trump’s spokespeople refused to deny that his efforts to meet with Gorbachev were related to his earlier efforts to win development rights for a luxury hotel in Moscow. “And does this drop-in have anything to do with that unrealized hotel across from the Kremlin, the People's Trump? Spokesman Klores says the project is ‘certainly not dead.’ Trump's assistant Norma Foerderer would only say that the Organization was ‘very honored’ to have the Gorbachevs come to call. As for news of the hotel, ‘call us after the visit.’” (Washington Post, December 3, 1988)
• 1988: Trump eagerly anticipated a private meeting with the Soviet Premiere while Soviet dissidents competed for protest space outside the United Nations. “Gorbachev appears determined to meet a wide range of Americans. He plans to have dinner with developer Donald J. Trump, a private talk with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and a session with cultural leaders. Included is Rabbi Arthur Schneier, whose Park East Synagogue is across the street from the Soviet mission to the United Nations. The Gorbachevs are to stay at the mission. Gorbachev's address to the United Nations on Wednesday morning has become a magnet for protesters, many of whom have been jockeying for position. One group representing residents of the Baltic states had to move its demonstration to another location after being told that Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in front of the U.N. building had been reserved by an Afghan resistance group. An Afghan spokesman, however, said his group had been bumped from the site by Ukrainian protesters.” (Washington Post, December 4, 1988)
• Soviet officials announced that Gorbachev would not visit Trump Tower after all, claiming that the belief that Trump would receive a visit from the Soviet Premiere was a "misunderstanding." “Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev will tell the international community that ‘new momentum’ is needed to deal with pressing global issues when he speaks for the first time from the rostrum of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday morning, a senior Soviet spokesman said today. […] Arbatov said that Gorbachev has no plans to visit the lavish Trump Tower headquarters of New York real estate developer Donald J. Trump. ‘I think that's a misunderstanding,’ said Arbatov. "I don't think that was on the program.’” (Washington Post, December 6, 1988)