Donald Trump

From RAGEPATH Wiki
Revision as of 15:25, 13 October 2019 by Geoff (talk | contribs) (Religion)

(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search
    This page is currently under active development. Significant changes may appear as we add, modify or relocate its contents.
Trump RNC Speech.jpg

Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States. Trump holds the unfortunate distinction of winning the Presidency through the Electoral College despite losing the 2016 US Presidential election by 2.9 million votes (a 2.1% margin).[1] So far, Trump has been consistently setting records as the most unpopular President in the history of polling.[2]

Contents

Childhood and Family

Trump Showed Early Propensity for Aggression and Violence

All accounts seem to agree that Trump was an aggressive and violent child. Trump himself has written "I was a very assertive, aggressive kid" and has claimed he was almost expelled from school for punching his second-grade teacher in the face.[3] Trump's father backed up his assessment, telling reporters that his son "was a pretty rough fellow when he was small."[4] Trump's childhood neighbor has recounted an incident in which a young Trump was caught hurling rocks over the fence at a smaller child left unsupervised in a playpen.[5] Another childhood neighbor has described Trump as a "loudmouth bully" and recounted watching Trump and one of his friends beat up another boy. [6] In boarding school, Trump attempted to push a fellow student out of a second-floor window, but was restrained by other students.[7] During the 2016 US Presidential Election, Trump claimed "when I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same. The temperament is not that different."[8]

  • Donald Trump's father has claimed that his son "was a pretty rough fellow when he was small." “But Mr. Trump prides himself on being street smart and boasted that Brooklyn and Queens, where he was raised, are among ‘the toughest, smartest places in the world.’ Mr. Trump prefers the vocabulary of war and sports to document his exploits, acknowledging ‘I don't like to lose.’ Nor does he like to receive less than full credit for his victories. ‘He was a pretty rough fellow when he was small,’ recalled his father, who packed off his obstreperous teen-age son to the New York Military Academy in Cornwall-on-Hudson for his high school education. According to some of his peers in the industry, Donald Trump has not really changed much from those boyhood days.” (New York Times, August 7, 1983)

Early Childhood Steeped in Bigotry

One of Trump's childhood neighbors has claimed that his brother, Fred C. Trump Jr. told her that his parents had been upset when her Italian Italian family moved into their neighborhood, because they were "the first ethnic family to move into the neighborhood."[9]

Trump's childhood pastor, Norman Vincent Peale, sparked controversy in 1960 when he claimed "faced with the election of a Catholic, our culture is at stake." Peale reportedly backed away from his comments and avoided opining publicly about politics after the incident.[10] Trump's parents joined Peale's church a decade later, during the 1970s.[11]

Trump's father, Fred C. Trump was one of seven men arrested at 1927 Klan rally that led to violence.[12] When asked about the incident in an interview, Donald Trump resorted to his well-known reality-distorting tactics. Trump denied the incident had ever happened while simultaneously pointing out that his father had never been charged in the incident.[13]

Domination at Home

Our investigation has convinced us that Donald Trump was deeply shaped by Fred C. Trump's abnormally domineering personality. One of the most telling insights into the lasting effect of that relationship occurred in an August, 2016 interview. When the interviewer asked Trump what his father would have thought of his presidential campaign, Trump mused "he would have absolutely allowed me to have done it."[14]

Trump's ex-wife, Ivana Trump has recounted a bizarre anecdote about dining with the Trump family at a public restaurant in the 1970s. According to Ivana, Fred C. Trump required everyone at the table to order steaks. When Ivana Trump attempted to order fish instead, Fred C. Trump told the waiter, "No, Ivana is not going to have a fish. She is going to have a steak." Ivana Trump refused to be overruled by the Trump family patriarch, leading Donald Trump to ask her later that evening, "Ivana, why would you have a fish instead of a steak?" Trump has not denied the story's truth and has defended his father's conduct, claiming "he would have said that only on the basis that he thought, 'that would be better for her.'"[15] We can't help but wonder whether this anecdote also provides some insight into Trump's bizarre affection for overdone steak with ketchup.[16]

Other Snippets

As late as the mid-80s, the Trump family was falsely claiming Swedish descent. [17]

Family

Father: Fred Christ Trump or Fred C. Trump

Fred C. Trump was arrested in Maryland in 1976 for criminally negligent code violations in a housing complex he owned.[18]

Fred C. Trump was well-connected with local Democratic politicians, including the machine that backed the election of New York Mayor Abraham Beame. [19]

Fred C. Trump passed away in June of 1999, leaving an estate that his heirs publicly estimated to be worth $250 million to $300 million.[20]

Fred C. Trump developed Alzheimer's disease in his 80s. Donald Trump has acknowledged that he may have inherited his father's susceptibility to the disease, claiming "Do I accept it? Yeah. Look, I'm very much a fatalist."[21]

Mother: Mary Macleod Trump

Trump's mother Mary Macleod Trump passed away in August of 2000.[22]

Uncle: John Trump

Brother: Fred C. Trump Jr.

Trump appears to have had a strained relationship with his older brother, Fred C. Trump Jr., who used to describe the future President as "my pain-in-the-ass brother Donald."[23]

Brother: Robert Trump and Blaine Trump

Sister: Maryanne Trump Barry and John Barry

Sister: Elizabeth Trump Grau and James Grau

Trump canceled health benefits for his nephew's sick infant

After Fred C. Trump passed away, his grandson Fred C. Trump III was surprised to learn that he and his family had been disinherited. Fred C. Trump III sued to have his family reinstated in the will, arguing that they had been disinherited while his grandfather suffered from dementia and that the disinheritance was the product of "undue influence" by Donald Trump and his surviving siblings. Donald Trump responded to the lawsuit by cutting medical benefits to Fred C. Trump III's infant son, who was ill with cerebral palsy. On the campaign trail, Trump explained his decision to endanger a blameless infant's medical care by claiming "I was angry because they sued."[24]

Education

Education - Personal History

Grade School (Queens)

Trump's earliest school was Kew-Forest, a private academy.[25]

New York Military Academy

Fred C. Trump shipped Donald Trump off to military school when he was in seventh grade, reportedly after discovering Donald had amassed a secret stash of switchblades.[26]

The son of Gambino Family crime boss John Gotti was also an alumnus of the New York Military Academy. [27]

Trump's alma mater, the New York Military Academy filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors to students during the 2016 US Presidential campaign.[28]

Fordham

Trump was active in sports when he attended Fordham. [29] (Trump would later claim a medical deferment for "bone spurs" to avoid the Vietnam draft.)

Wharton

Somehow, the false impression has spread among profilers of Trump that he graduated first in his class at Wharton, even though he received no honors of any kind.[30]

Trump has summarized one of the key things he learned at Wharton: "rules and regulations are really meant to be broken."[31]

Career Overview

Early Career

Manhattan Developer

Eighties Tycoon

Financial Collapse

Reemergence

Celebrity

Great Recession

Current Business

Romantic Affairs

Melania Knauss

Melania Trump

Melania Trump and Donald publicly split during Trump's ill-fated 2000 US Presidential campaign. Trump claimed he had dumped Melania, but friends of Melania reportedly claimed she had ended the relationship after discovering Trump had cheated on her. [32]

Marla Maples

Marla Maples

Ivana Trump

Ivana Trump

Karen McDougal

Karen McDougal

During the 2016 US Presidential campaign, reporters discovered that the National Enquirer had paid $150,000 to Karen McDougal, one of Trump's former mistresses for exclusive rights to her story, which it never published. The practice is known in the tabloid industry as "catch and kill."[33]

Rowanne Brewer Lane

Rowanne Brewer Lane

Trump's ex-girlfriend Rowanne Brewer Lane was upset with an early New York Times examination of Trump's treatment of women that described her "meet cute" story as a "debasing face-to-face encounter" in which "Trump had barely met Rowanne Brewer Lane when he asked her to change out of her clothes." To the best of our knowledge, Brewer Lane did not contest the underlying facts presented by the article.[34]

Nancy O'Dell?

Nancy O'Dell

Nancy O'Dell is a former "Access Hollywood" hostess and guest judge of Donald Trump's beauty pageants who rebuffed Donald Trump's sexual advances in the infamous "Grab 'em by the Pussy" tape. [35]

Parenting

Mrs. Trump says that, though they both work long hours, they try to spend two or three nights a week at home with the children, aged 6 years, 2 years and three months, but the social obligations do pile up. (New York Times, April 8, 1984)

Donald Trump Junior

Donald Trump Junior

Vanessa Haydon

Vanessa Haydon

Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, Vanessa Haydon, have recounted a bizarre "meet cute" story in which Donald Trump tried twice to fix the couple up at a fashion show. Donald Trump did not previously know Vanessa Haydon. The couple claim they became reacquainted at a later party, at which Vanessa Haydon exclaimed, "you're the one with the retarded dad!" [36]

Ivanka Trump

Ivanka Trump Former Miss Universe Brook Antoinette Mahealani Lee has described watching Ivanka Trump perform at a 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant with Donald Trump. She has claimed that he turned to her and asked "don't you think my daughter's hot? She's hot, right?"[37]

Jared Kushner

Jared Kushner

Eric Trump

Eric Trump

In a 2006 interview, Eric seemed to suggest his father was a neglectful and often absent figure in his childhood. Eric claimed of his older brother Donald Trump Jr., "in a way, he raised me. My father, I love and I appreciate, but he always worked 24 hours a day."[38]

Lara Yunaska

Lara Yunaska

Tiffany Trump

Tiffany Trump

Barron Trump

Barron Trump

Religion and Civic Affairs

Jury Duty

Mr. Trump was fined $250 this year for failing to appear for jury duty several times in recent years. Mr. Cohen said Mr. Trump had not appeared on those earlier occasions because the summonses had been sent to an address on Central Park South where Mr. Trump never lived and he had not received them. The fine has been waived, Mr. Cohen said. “Mr. Trump's failure to appear for previous jury requests was the result of the unified court system's error in the mailing address, and not Mr. Trump's refusal to uphold his civic duty,” he said. “It is impossible to know if you are being asked to serve when the jury selection documents are sent to someone else's home.” (New York Times, August 15, 2015)

Religion

  • 1991: One of the acolytes at the National Cathedral recounted seeing Donald Trump accompanying Marla Maples, wearing “a Band-Aid of a skirt” to services at the Cathedral. “Every Sunday and on holidays, they march proudly down the aisle at Washington Cathedral in their flowing white robes with the hoods and the rope belts, a 290-pound defensive tackle, a heavy metal rocker, a debutante. They are seven teenagers -- six boys and a girl -- called acolytes, who assist the priests with everything from polishing the silver to carrying the 15-pound brass cross, flags and banners in the processions. […] In addition to having the run of the cathedral, they also have a front-row seat to history. As they walk in unison down the aisle, carrying torches, flags and banners, they rub shoulders with presidents, royalty and celebrities. ‘Mrs. Bush really liked us,’ said Freer, who also recently spotted Marla Maples in ‘basically a Band-Aid of a skirt. I said, 'Oh my God, it's Marla Maples and Donald Trump.' It was so neat.’” (Washington Post, October 23, 1991)

Personal Appearance

Hair

[39]


[40]

Teeth

[41]

Hands

[42]

[43]

Weight

Height

Italian Suits

Health, Hygiene and Diet

Received Vietnam draft deferment for bone spurs

[44]

Germophobia

[45]

[46]

Steaks

Junk Food

Sports and Recreation

Gun Registrations

Real estate tycoon Donald Trump owns two pistols, a Hechler & Koch .45 and a Smith & Wesson .38. Even though he is Donald Trump, and he often travels with bodyguards. “I’m licensed. I'm licensed in New York City,” Trump said in a phone interview, boasting that it’s “not an easy feat.” (Washington Post, March 29, 2015)
Consultants and attorneys charge as much as $15,000 to help gun lovers like Donald Trump pack heat. "There are high-profile people as well as average businessmen who want a permit but don't feel comfortable doing the process themselves," said John Chambers, an attorney who helped start consultancy Gun Permits Inc. four years ago. […] Mr. Chambers, the Fifth Avenue-based attorney who has specialized in gun licensing for the past two decades, said he's worked with security officers for Mr. Trump and also consulted on an airport issue for Harry Connick Jr. Basic consultations cost $250, but legal fees and other services, such as an escort to police headquarters, could bring the price up to $15,000. The $430 permit needed to buy a handgun requires a typed license application, fingerprints, a background check and an in-person appearance at police headquarters. Carry permits-like those in the possession of bigwigs such as Mr. Trump and supermarket magnate John Catsimatidis - require jumping through extra hoops. (Crain’s New York Business, July 30, 2012)

Golf

Compiling the net worth valuations for billionaires requires a huge amount of legwork and estimation, but determining their golf handicaps is a lot easier and far more precise. That's thanks to the U.S. Golf Association's online database. [...] One of the the lowest we saw: Donald J. Trump, who controls a few courses himself, at 4.4. (Forbes, March 26, 2007)
One morning in the mid-1990s, Mark Mulvoy was on the sixth hole of Long Island's Garden City Golf Club with Donald Trump when the skies opened, and they ducked for cover under a nearby awning. The rain let up a few moments later, and Mulvoy, then the managing editor of Sports Illustrated, returned to the green. When he got there, he found a ball 10 feet from the pin that he didn't remember seeing before the storm.

"Who the hell's ball is this?" he said. "That's me," the real estate mogul said, according to Mulvoy. "Donald, give me a f---ing break," Mulvoy recalls telling him. "You've been hacking away in the ... weeds all day. You do not lie there." "Ahh, the guys I play with cheat all the time," he recalls Trump replying. "I have to cheat just to keep up with them."

It's a story that the current Republican front-runner hotly denies. "I don't even know who he is," Trump said when asked about Mulvoy's account."I don't drop balls, I don't move balls. I don't need to." (Washington Post, September 5, 2015)
"The worst celebrity golf cheat?" the rock star Alice Cooper said in a 2012 interview with Q magazine. "I wish I could tell you that. It would be a shocker. I played with Donald Trump one time. That's all I'm going to say." ("I've never played with Alice Cooper," Trump said. "That's a terrible thing to say about people, especially me.") (Washington Post, September 5, 2015)
"Golf is like bicycle shorts: It can reveal a lot about a guy," said Rick Reilly, the sportswriter who hit the links with Trump for his 2004 book "Who's Your Caddy?" - in which Reilly lugged clubs for several of the world's best golfers and VIP amateurs. As for Trump? "When it comes to cheating, he's an 11 on a scale of one to 10," Reilly said. [...] Trump disputes Reilly's entire story as well: "I always thought he was a terrible writer," he said. "I absolutely killed him, and he wrote very inaccurately. I would say that he's a very dishonest writer.... I never took a gimme chip shot.... I don't do gimme chip shots. If I asked his approval, that's not cheating, number one. Number two, I never took one." (Washington Post, September 5, 2015)
Jonathan Carr spent the 2007 and 2008 golf seasons caddying at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. He remembers a gregarious club owner who treated the caddies with the utmost respect, a man who, despite lacking a "pristine" golf swing, played with a high level of skill and an even higher level of confidence. Carr never saw Trump come close to bending the rules, although he said everyone who caddied there had heard of that reputation. "The caddies would say, 'If I get on his bag, I'm going to make sure he always has a good lie,'" Carr said, meaning that even if Trump shanked a ball, the caddies would do what they could to place it on the fairway. (Washington Post, September 5, 2015)
Of all the things Donald Trump has been called on the campaign trail, this one might sting the most: golf cheat. Oscar De La Hoya says that's what he saw on the links when Trump joined up with his group at Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles two years ago. Trump, he said, cheated not once but twice in the space of two holes. "Yes, I caught him," De La Hoya said. "It was unbelievable. But I guess it was his course, so it was his rules." (New York Times, May 5, 2016)
A plaque at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., lists the nine men who have won the club's championship. One of the names will be familiar: "Donald J. Trump" was the champion in 1999, 2001 and 2009. Those are apparently 3 of the 18 club championships Trump claims to have won over the years. [...] But not all of those 18 championships were created equal, it seems. First off, Trump is listed as the 1999 club champion, but the course didn't have its official grand opening until Jan. 8, 2000, according to a contemporaneous Palm Beach Post report. The course did have what the Post called a "soft opening" on Nov. 1, 1999. [...] What about 2013? Trump tweeted with pride back in March 2013 about his victory in that year's club championship. But Trump's name is not listed on the plaque as the 2013 champion. In its place is "Tom Roush," who would later go on to win again in 2015 and 2016. The reason: Trump conveniently left out of a pretty important modifier. He didn't win the same club championship he had won previously, you see. Instead, Hicks told us, he won the senior club championship. (Washington Post, October 28, 2016)

Exercise?

Private Clubs

Donald Trump, developer of Trump Tower and Trump Plaza, recently was quoted in The Washington Post as saying: "I know one man who is one of the most successful men in New York, and he couldn't get a table at a restaurant. He's worth maybe four or five hundred million dollars, and he's standing at Le Cirque or one of them and he couldn't get a table. So I see him standing there and he's a little embarrassed and he says, 'Don, could you help me get a table?' So I got him a table. So he calls the next day and I said, 'No one knows you, you're very successful.' And he says, 'No, no, no, I like to keep a low profile.' That's great. But in the meantime he can't get a table in a restaurant. The man calls me back a week later. He wants to know the name of my public relations firm. And I said to him, 'Either you have it or you don't.'" [...] Miss Manners has lived her life, and plans to go on living it, under the following assumptions [...] That the United States is a democracy, and that being rich or famous does not mean that one is in a different class of citizenship, entitled to preferential treatment. If there are restaurants that do not subscribe to these ideas, Miss Manners wants neither to hear about them nor to dine in them. Miss Walters' behavior seems to her to be simple decency, and that of those who think either publicity or bribery the proper route to special treatment, pathetic. (Washington Post, Miss Manners column, January 27, 1985)

Sexual Assaults

This isn't the first time Prince Andrew had to bat away allegations about his relationship with Epstein - a disgraced businessman who pleaded guilty to procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution in 2008 and later served 13 months in prison. [...] Donald Trump was Epstein's pal at that time. "He's a lot of fun to be with," Trump said. "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." (Washington Post, January 5, 2015)

Kristin Anderson

Kristin Anderson

Anderson told the Washington Post she was at a crowded nightclub with friends when she suddenly felt fingers moving up her inner thigh and touching her underwear over her vagina. Anderson said she pushed the hand away, turned to look at who had touched her and recognized Trump. [...] Trump said Anderson's account was not credible because he never sits alone at clubs. (Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2016)

Rachel Crooks

Rachel Crooks

Mr. Trump's claim that his crude words had never turned into actions was similarly infuriating to a woman watching on Sunday night in Ohio: Rachel Crooks. Ms. Crooks was a 22-year-old receptionist at Bayrock Group, a real estate investment and development company in Trump Tower in Manhattan, when she encountered Mr. Trump outside an elevator in the building one morning in 2005. Aware that her company did business with Mr. Trump, she turned and introduced herself. They shook hands, but Mr. Trump would not let go, she said. Instead, he began kissing her cheeks. Then, she said, he “kissed me directly on the mouth.” It didn't feel like an accident, she said. It felt like a violation. “It was so inappropriate,” Ms. Crooks recalled in an interview. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.” (New York Times, October 13, 2016)

Jessica Drake

Jessica Drake

An adult film actress on Saturday accused Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump or someone acting on his behalf of offering her $10,000 and the use of his private jet if she would agree to come alone to his hotel suite at night after a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006. [...] Trump's campaign issued a statement calling Drake's account "totally false and ridiculous" and indicating that Trump "does not know this person, does not remember this person and would have no interest in ever knowing her." (Washington Post, October 22, 2016)

Jill Harth

Jill Harth

In a lawsuit described by the Boston Globe in April, Jill Harth alleged that Trump repeatedly harassed her over several years starting in 1992, when she and her boyfriend operated a Florida company that ran a beauty contest and other shows that Trump wanted to be held at his Atlantic City casino. In one 1992 incident, Harth alleged, Trump put his hand up her skirt to her crotch under a table while dining with her and her boyfriend. In 1993, she alleged that while giving her a tour of Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., he pushed her against a wall of the room being used as daughter Ivanka's bedroom and began kissing her. [...] The litigation was settled in 1997, and Harth later dated Trump for several months in 1998. (Washington Post, October 18, 2016)
By the time the three of them were having dinner at the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel the next night, Mr. Trump's advances had turned physical, Ms. Harth said in the deposition. “Basically he name-dropped throughout that dinner, when he wasn't groping me under the table,” she testified. “Let me just say, this was a very traumatic thing working for him.” Ms. Harth, who declined to comment, gave the deposition in connection with a lawsuit that alleged Mr. Trump had failed to meet his obligations in a business partnership. (New York Times, May 15, 2016)

Cathy Heller

Cathy Heller

About 1997, Cathy Heller told the Guardian that she was attending a Mother's Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago when she was introduced to Trump, who she said grabbed her and moved to kiss her on the mouth. She said she leaned back to avoid him, but Trump exclaimed "Oh come on," and then held her firmly while he kissed her on the side of her mouth for an uncomfortably long moment. (Washington Post, October 18, 2016)

Jessica Leeds

Jessica Leeds

More than three decades ago, when she was a traveling businesswoman at a paper company, Ms. Leeds said, she sat beside Mr. Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York. They had never met before. About 45 minutes after takeoff, she recalled, Mr. Trump lifted the armrest and began to touch her. According to Ms. Leeds, Mr. Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt. “He was like an octopus,” she said. “His hands were everywhere.” She fled to the back of the plane. “It was an assault,” she said. Ms. Leeds has told the story to at least four people close to her, who also spoke with The New York Times. (New York Times, October 13, 2016)

Temple Taggart McDowell

Temple Taggart McDowell

Temple Taggart, the 21-year-old Miss Utah, was startled by how forward he was with young contestants like her in 1997, his first year as the owner of Miss USA, a branch of the beauty pageant organization. As she recalls it, he introduced himself in an unusually intimate manner.

“He kissed me directly on the lips. I thought, “Oh my God, gross.” He was married to Marla Maples at the time. I think there were a few other girls that he kissed on the mouth. I was like “Wow, that's inappropriate.”” --Temple Taggart, 1997 Miss Utah USA

Mr. Trump disputes this, saying he is reluctant to kiss strangers on the lips. But Ms. Taggart said it was not an isolated incident. (New York Times, May 15, 2016)

Mindy McGillivray

Mindy McGillivray

Mindy McGillivray told the Palm Beach Post that Trump groped her buttocks when she attended an event at Mar-a-Lago in 2003. Then 23, McGillivray said the incident occurred as she stood with a photographer friend who was working at the event, a concert by Ray Charles. She said Trump gave her a "pretty good nudge - more of a grab" at the event as she stood in a group of people. The photographer, Ken Davidoff, confirmed to the Palm Beach Post that McGillivray immediately told him that Trump had grabbed her. Trump's campaign has denied the account. (Washington Post, October 18, 2016)

Cassandra Searles

Cassandra Searles

A contestant in the 2013 Miss USA contest representing Washington state, Cassandra Searles has alleged on Facebook that Trump "continually grabbed" her buttocks and invited her to his hotel room during the contest and was generally demeaning to her and her fellow pageant participants. Trump has denied the allegations. (Washington Post, October 18, 2016)

Natasha Stoynoff

Natasha Stoynoff

In an article posted to the website of People magazine, Natasha Stoynoff wrote that she was a reporter for the magazine assigned to the Trump beat when she visited Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, in December 2005 to write a story about his first anniversary with wife Melania. She wrote that while Melania was upstairs changing, Trump pushed her against a wall and kissed her, "forcing his tongue down my throat." (Washington Post, October 18, 2016)

Karena Virginia

Karena Virginia

Karena Virginia, who was 27 at the time, said she had attended a match with a group of doctors while working as a pharmaceutical representative. Her companions had left, and she was waiting alone outside the tennis complex to be picked up by a car service when she encountered Trump. She had never met the celebrity businessman but said he immediately started making comments about her appearance to a group of men. "Look at her legs," she recalled him saying before approaching her, wrapping his arm around her and then reaching down to her breast. "Don't you know who I am?" she said he asked. She said the encounter ended moments later when her car arrived. (Washington Post, October 21, 2016)

Summer Zervos

Summer Zervos

A former contestant on the reality show "The Apprentice" on Friday accused Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of aggressively kissing her and groping her breasts during a 2007 meeting to discuss a possible job at the Trump Organization. Summer Zervos, who appeared on the show in 2006 and now owns a California restaurant, spoke about the incident at a news conference alongside civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred. At times tearing up, Zervos said the incident occurred at Trump's bungalow hotel suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, which she visited after he suggested the two have dinner. Zervos said Trump greeted her with an "open-mouthed kiss" and then urged her to sit close to him on a love seat before kissing her again, groping her and trying to pull her into his bedroom. Zervos said she pushed Trump away and told him, "Come on, man, get real." She said Trump responded by mimicking her words, "Get real," and "thrusting his genitals" in her direction. (Washington Post, October 14, 2016)

Legal Violations

Securities Violations

Environmental Violations

Campaign Finance Violations

Civil Verdicts

Mendacity

Footnotes and Citations

  1. More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than any other losing presidential candidate in US history. The Democrat outpaced President-elect Donald Trump by almost 2.9 million votes, with 65,844,954 (48.2%) to his 62,979,879 (46.1%), according to revised and certified final election results from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. (CNN, December 22, 2016
  2. Trump’s current rating is a low not just for Trump’s presidency so far, but also for this point in any recent presidency. We’re on day 69 of the Trump administration, and his net approval rating — -11.1 — is by far the lowest of any of the past 13 presidents at this point. (Five Thirty Eight, March 29, 2017)
  3. Donald Trump, the new president-elect of the United States, once said he punched a teacher in the face when he was in the second grade. So did he? Here's what he wrote in his 1987 book, "The Art of the Deal": “Even in elementary school, I was a very assertive, aggressive kid. In the second grade I actually gave a teacher a black eye. I punched my music teacher because I didn't think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled. I'm not proud of that, but it's clear evidence that even early on I had a tendency to stand up and make my opinions known in a forceful way. The difference now is that I like to use my brain instead of my fists.” (Washington Post, November 13, 2016)
  4. “He was a pretty rough fellow when he was small,” recalled his father, who packed off his obstreperous teen-age son to the New York Military Academy in Cornwall-on-Hudson for his high school education. According to some of his peers in the industry, Donald Trump has not really changed much from those boyhood days. (New York Times, August 7, 1983)
  5. Dennis Burnham was four years younger and lived around the corner from Donald. He inherited his own impression of his neighbor from his mother, who warned that he should "stay away from the Trumps." "Donald was known to be a bully, I was a little kid, and my parents didn't want me beaten up," said Burnham, 65, a business consultant in Texas. Once when she left Dennis in a playpen in a back yard adjoining the Trumps' property, Martha Burnham returned to find Donald throwing rocks at her son. "She saw Donald standing at the fence," Dennis Burnham said, "using the playpen for target practice." (Washington Post, June 22, 2016)
  6. In his neighborhood, Donald and his friends were known to ride their bikes and "shout and curse very loudly," said Steve Nachtigall, who lived nearby. Nachtigall said he once saw them jump off their bikes and beat up another boy. "It's kind of like a little video snippet that remains in my brain because I think it was so unusual and terrifying at that age," recalled Nachtigall, 66, a doctor in New Jersey. "He was a loudmouth bully." (Washington Post, June 22, 2016)
  7. At the military academy where he attended high school, Donny grew taller, more muscular and tougher. Struck with a broomstick during a fight, he tried to push a fellow cadet out a second-floor window, only to be thwarted when two other students intervened. (Washington Post, June 22, 2016)
  8. "When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same," the 70-year-old presumptive Republican nominee once told a biographer. "The temperament is not that different." (Washington Post, June 22, 2016)
  9. From the beginning, Freddy stood out as different from his authoritarian, workaholic father. [...] When Ms. Schifano moved to Jamaica Estates, Queens, the wealthy enclave where the Trumps lived, Freddy confided to her that his parents had panicked because, as Italians, the Schifanos were “the first ethnic family to move into the neighborhood.” (New York Times, January 3, 2016)
  10. A bespectacled, avuncular figure, Peale was not prone to angry public outbursts. He was capable of expressing regret for a controversial statement, as was the case in 1960 when a coalition of ministers he chaired said John F. Kennedy's Catholicism made him unfit for the presidency. "Faced with the election of a Catholic," Peale said, "our culture is at stake." After a torrent of criticism, Peale disavowed the effort to undermine Kennedy and pledged to steer clear of politics. (Washington Post, January 22, 2016)
  11. Trump's parents, Fred and Mary Trump, formally joined Peale's Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan - a venerable affiliate of the Reformed Church in America - during the 1970s. Trump visited Marble Collegiate with his second wife, Marla Maples. (Newspaper accounts have reported that Trump's adulterous relationship with Maples began at Marble Collegiate - "THEY MET IN CHURCH" was the New York Post headline - although Trump said in the interview that it all started at a party.) (Washington Post, January 22, 2016)
  12. On Memorial Day 1927, brawls erupted in New York led by sympathizers of the Italian fascist movement and the Ku Klux Klan. In the fascist brawl, which took place in the Bronx, two Italian men were killed by anti-fascists. In Queens, 1,000 white-robed Klansmen marched through the Jamaica neighborhood, eventually spurring an all-out brawl in which seven men were arrested. One of those arrested was Fred Trump of 175-24 Devonshire Rd. in Jamaica. [...] The predication for the Klan to march, according to a flier passed around Jamaica beforehand, was that "Native-born Protestant Americans" were being "assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City." "Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon," it continued, "when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organize to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language." (Washington Post, February 28, 2016)
  13. For a story about Donald J. Trump's childhood home of Jamaica Estates, Queens, I talked to the presidential candidate about the role his father, Fred C. Trump, played in developing the neighborhood. I also asked him about a 1927 report in The New York Times, unearthed by the website Boing Boing, that listed Fred Trump as being among a group of people arrested, and then discharged, by the police in response to a Klu Klux Klan rally that had turned violent in Queens. [...] Mr. Trump's barrage of answers - his sudden denial of a fact he had moments before confirmed; his repeatedly noting that no charges were filed against his father in connection with the incident he had just repeatedly denied; and his denigration of the news organization that brought the incident to light as a "little website" - shows his pasta-against-the-wall approach to beating down inconvenient story lines. Here is a transcript of our conversation on the subject. [...]

    Q. Did your father live on Devonshire Road before that?

    A. That was a different one, that's where my grandmother lived and my father, early on.

    Q. Have you seen this story about police arresting a Fred Trump who lived at that Devonshire address in 1927 after a Klu Klux Klan rally turned violent?

    A. Totally false. We lived on Wareham. The Devonshire - I know there is a road Devonshire but I don't think my father ever lived on Devonshire.

    Q. The Census shows that he lived there with your mother there. But regardless, you never heard about that story?

    [...]

    A. And by the way, my father was not involved, was never charged and I never even heard this before. What? It comes out on a website and you are going to write it on The New York Times? It shouldn't be written because it never happened, No. 1. And No. 2, there was nobody charged. (New York Times, September 22, 2015)
  14. Even today, Donald Trump seems to bathe in his father's approval. A framed photo of Fred Trump faces him on his cluttered desk. Asked what his father, who died in 1999, would have thought about his run for president, Mr. Trump, 70, said, “He would have absolutely allowed me to have done it.” (New York Times, August 13, 2016)
  15. Mr. Trump grew up with an influential role model for how to deal with women: Fred C. Trump, his powerful and unyielding father. The elder Mr. Trump exerted control no matter how big or small the decision, as Ivana Zelnickova learned over dinner one night in the late 1970s. Her boyfriend, Donald Trump, had invited her to join his siblings and parents at Tavern on the Green, the ornate restaurant in Central Park. When the waiter came to take orders, Ivana made the mistake of asking for what she wanted. Fred Trump set her straight, she recalled in a previously unpublished interview with Michael D'Antonio, the author of “The Truth About Trump.”

    “Fred would order steak. Then Donald would order steak.... Everybody order steak. I told the waiter, “I would like to have fish.” O.K., so I could have the fish. And Fred would say to the waiter: “No, Ivana is not going to have a fish. She is going to have a steak.” I said, “No, I'm going to have my fish.” And Donald would come home and say, “Ivana, why would you have a fish instead of a steak?” I say, “Because I'm not going to be told by somebody to have something which I don't want.”” --Ivana Trump, ex-wife

    Mr. Trump defended his father's conduct. “He would've said that out of love,” he said. If his father had overruled her fish order, Mr. Trump said, “he would have said that only on the basis that he thought, 'That would be better for her.'” (New York Times, May 15, 2016)
  16. Donald Trump ate in his first D.C. restaurant as POTUS on Saturday night. [...] Trump ordered a strip steak, which he ate per his preference, well done and with ketchup, as if the entree would be accompanied by a sippy cup. Insert a moment of silence for the cow, the condiment and what most chefs would call a forced marriage. Really, I feel the same way about masking the flavor of a $54 dry-aged steak as I do about guys who wear baseball caps indoors: Just don't.
  17. The Trump family owns 25,000 apartment units primarily in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island - the empire that Fred C. Trump, Donald Trump's father, built. [...] The family is of Swedish descent. (New York Times, April 8, 1984)
  18. The most recent example of code enforcement success, according to Kelly, was the September arrest of a New York owner of a Seat Pleasant apartment complex that did not meet housing codes. Arrested was Fred C. Trump, the owner of Gregory Estates at 6918 George Palmer Hwy. Trump was ordered by a Prince Goerge's County judge to correct the code violations in all of the 504 units before his sentencing March 22. (Washington Post, March 10, 1977)
  19. The roots of the Trump Organization lie deep in the foundations of New York politics. Fred Trump, for instance, was closely involved with the Brooklyn Democratic organization which produced a New York Mayor, Abraham D. Beame, and a New York Governor, Hugh L. Carey, as well as lesser officials of strategic influence who were in power when Donald Trump mounted his invasion of Manhattan in 1974 and 1975, a low point in the city's economic history. The tax abatement and other concessions he secured from government agencies were termed by Trump critics as both "outrageous," and "sweetheart deals" - presumably awarded as political favors. (New York Times, August 7, 1983)
  20. Fred C. Trump, one of the last of New York City's major postwar builders, died yesterday at a hospital in Queens. He was 93 and lived in Jamaica Estates, Queens. Although Mr. Trump was stricken with Alzheimer's disease six years ago, he still retained his title of chairman of the board of Trump Management, a title he held since the company was formed in the mid-1960's. [...] His estate has been estimated by the family at $250 million to $300 million. [...] From World War II until the 1980's, Mr. Trump would tell friends and acquaintances that he was of Swedish origin, although both his parents were born in Germany. [...] (New York Times, June 26, 1999)
  21. In the last decade of his life, the early stages of Alzheimer's disease slowed Fred Trump, according to his friends and relatives, and he died at the age of 93 with difficulty recognizing people. Mr. Trump said he wasn't scared that the disease might be the last thing he inherits from his father. "Do I accept it? Yeah," he said. "Look, I'm very much a fatalist." (New York Times, August 13, 2016)
  22. Mary MacLeod Trump, a philanthropist who supported charities near her home in Jamaica, Queens, and elsewhere, died on Monday at 88 at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, her family said. Mrs. Trump was born Mary MacLeod on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland on May 10, 1912. On a visit to New York City in the 1930's, she met Fred C. Trump. They married in 1936 and settled in Jamaica Estates, and Mr. Trump went on to become one of the city's biggest developers. (New York Times, August 9, 2000)
  23. It eventually became apparent to his fraternity brothers that Freddy, who wore Brooks Brothers clothes that draped his thin frame, was wealthy. He drove a Corvette and owned a Century speedboat. Sometimes he would take his little brother Donald, then a student at an upstate military academy, onboard for summer fishing expeditions off Long Island. “I hope you don't mind, I have to take my pain-in-the-ass brother Donald along,” another fraternity brother, Stuart Oltchick, recalled him saying. (New York Times, January 3, 2016)
  24. Fred III, spoke at the funeral, and that night, his wife went into labor with their son, who developed seizures that led to cerebral palsy. The Trump family promised that it would take care of the medical bills. Then came the unveiling of Fred Sr.'s will, which Donald had helped draft. It divided the bulk of the inheritance, at least $20 million, among his children and their descendants, “other than my son Fred C. Trump Jr.” Freddy's children sued, claiming that an earlier version of the will had entitled them to their father's share of the estate, but that Donald and his siblings had used "undue influence" over their grandfather, who had dementia, to cut them out. A week later, Mr. Trump retaliated by withdrawing the medical benefits critical to his nephew's infant child. “I was angry because they sued,” he explained during last week's interview. (New York Times, January 3, 2016)
  25. According to the book "Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power," by Washington Post reporters Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, Trump attended the private Kew-Forest School in Forest Hills, N.Y., where he often got into trouble. He and his friends would disrupt class "with wisecracks and unruly behavior, such as throwing spitballs and playing racing chairs with desks." (Washington Post, November 13, 2016)
  26. Near the end of seventh grade, Fred discovered Donald's knives and was infuriated to learn about his trips into the city. He decided his son's behavior warranted a radical change. In the months before eighth grade, Fred Trump enrolled Donald at the New York Military Academy, a boarding school 70 miles from Jamaica Estates. (Washington Post, June 22, 2016)
  27. Among its thousands of alumni, the 126-year-old New York Military Academy counts the unlikely grouping of Donald J. Trump, Stephen Sondheim and John A. Gotti. Yet all three have this in common: They remember their time at the prep school with deep affection. "It got me away from my mother -- she babied me," said Mr. Gotti, whose father, John J. Gotti, the debonair boss of the Gambino crime family, sent him there to gain structured habits after he was skipping classes. "It made me get out on my own, grow as a man, made me responsible. I couldn't depend on my mother." (New York Times, September 21, 2015)
  28. After struggling financially for years and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March, the private boarding school did not open as promised last Monday. Its 113 acres of land and buildings are scheduled to go on the auction block at the end of this month for a minimum bid of $9.5 million, with no requirement that the buyer maintain a school there. [...] There is also a smidgen of hope among some alumni that Mr. Trump, class of 1964 and a candidate seeking the Republican nomination for president, would be a rescuing angel and provide the $13 million the school needs to pay creditors and other costs. [...] According to Rich Pezzullo, a 1976 alumnus who headed a committee to rescue the nonprofit school, Mr. Trump was asked four years ago for $7 million but determined that the school was a failing enterprise and that he had better uses for his philanthropy. (New York Times, September 21, 2015)
  29. Mr. Trump received the first of four education deferments as he worked his way through his undergraduate studies, first at Fordham, in the Bronx, and then as a transfer student in the real estate program at the Wharton School, in Philadelphia. He received subsequent student deferments during his sophomore, junior and senior years. At Fordham, Mr. Trump commuted from his parents' home in Queens and played squash, football and tennis. He remembered Fordham for its “good sports.” (New York Times, August 2, 2016)
  30. Just about every profile ever written about Mr. Trump states that he graduated first in his class at Wharton in 1968. Although the school refused comment, the commencement program from 1968 does not list him as graduating with honors of any kind. (New York Times, April 8, 1984)
  31. "I took a lot of finance courses at Wharton," says New York real estate tycoon Donald Trump," and first they taught you all the rules and regulations. Then they taught you that those rules and regulations are really meant to be broken; it's the person who can create new ideas who is really going to be the success." (Forbes, March 9, 1987)
  32. Perhaps the real reason for Donald Trump's split from Slovenian super-model Melania Knauss is coming out. Contrary to the mogul's claims that he ended their affair, the New York Post reports that the 26-year-old Knauss actually dumped him after she caught him cheating with another super-model, Kara Young, 33. The 53-year-old Trump, a possible presidential contender, is testily denying the story, while Knauss's friends say she's heartbroken. "She's a one-man woman," says one. (Washington Post, January 13, 2000)
  33. In the tabloid business, the practice is called "catch and kill." That phrase was circulating on Saturday after the Wall Street Journal's solidly reported story that the National Enquirer - no stranger to checkbook journalism - had laid out $150,000 in August to a former Playboy magazine Playmate, who says she had a lengthy adulterous affair with Donald Trump a decade ago. The paper paid for exclusive rights to Karen McDougal's story but never published it, the Journal reported. Thus: catch and kill, otherwise known as trapping a story to keep it out of the public eye, for one reason or another. The tabloid, run by Trump pal David Pecker, is one of a tiny handful of papers to endorse Trump for president. (Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan column, November 6, 2016)
  34. The Times's story opens on the scene of a 1990 pool party at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where Brewer Lane was one of about 50 models in attendance. The first sentence is an attention-grabber. “Donald J. Trump had barely met Rowanne Brewer Lane when he asked her to change out of her clothes.” Is the sentence true or false? "False," Brewer Lane said on "Fox & Friends." She continued - and then appeared to contradict herself. If anybody would ask me, "How did you meet Donald Trump?," you are going to get the story of how I was at a pool party at Mar-a-Lago with my agency ... and I didn't have a swimsuit. I started talking with Donald and chatting with him over the course of the first maybe 20 minutes I was there, and we seemed to get along in conversation nicely.... We were having a very nice conversation, and we got into a certain part of it, and he asked me if I had a swimsuit. I said I didn't. I had not really planned on swimming. He asked me if I wanted one. I said, "Okay, sure." And I changed into one. Brewer Lane's retelling actually does match the facts of the Times's blunter summary. She had just met Trump; he asked if she wanted to change out of her clothes and into a bikini. [...] Many people would surely view Trump's behavior that night 26 years ago as inappropriate - or at the very least, rather forward. He chatted up a model for 20 minutes, invited her to put on the spare bikini he just happened to have lying around and then - while still technically married - introduced her to other guests as a "stunning Trump girl," as if she were somehow Trump's. It's not much of a stretch to call this sequence of events a "debasing face-to-face encounter," as the Times did. (Washington Post, May 16, 2016)
  35. The woman who rejected Donald Trump's sexual advances - referred to as "Nancy" in an obscenity-laced video obtained by The Washington Post - has been identified as Nancy O'Dell, a television personality whom he reportedly tried subsequently to have fired as host of the Miss USA pageant. In the 2005 video clip, the Republican presidential nominee recalled his failed attempts to seduce a married woman. "I moved on her, and I failed. I'll admit it," he said. On Friday night, "Access Hollywood" reported that the woman who rebuffed Trump's advances was that show's former host, O'Dell. (Washington Post, October 8, 2016)
  36. As a newly minted Trump, Vanessa Haydon Trump seems born for the role. [...] Vanessa focused her attentions on an intimate circle of friends, not on social advancement. In fact, years later, she did not have to take any particular strides to marry rich. Donald Trump Sr. took care of that. “I'm at this fashion show,” Ms. Trump said, recalling their meeting in 2003. “Donald Trump comes up to me with his son: 'Hi, I'm Donald Trump. I wanted to introduce you to my son Donald Trump Jr.'“The three engaged in a brief, awkward conversation. At intermission, the elder Mr. Trump again noticed a gorgeous girl nearby. “Donald comes back up to me again, 'I don't think you've met my son Donald Trump Jr.,'” Vanessa Trump recalled. She remembers responding, “Yeah, we just met, five minutes ago.” Vanessa looked at the younger Mr. Trump “like we're taking crazy pills,” he recalled. “You know, I'm 25 at the time, I did perfectly well with girls. It wasn't really my M.O. to have my father try to pick up girls for me.” Six weeks later, at a birthday party at the downtown restaurant Butter, they were introduced a third time, this time by a mutual friend. Neither remembered the other. “We talked for an hour,” she recalled. Then suddenly, something clicked: “Wait, you were at that fashion show. Wait, you're the one with the retarded dad!” Ms. Trump blurted out. (New York Times, November 19, 2006)
  37. Mr. Trump frequently sought assurances -- at times from strangers -- that the women in his life were beautiful. During the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant, he sat in the audience as his teenage daughter, Ivanka, helped to host the event from onstage. He turned to Brook Antoinette Mahealani Lee, Miss Universe at the time, and asked for her opinion of his daughter's body. “'Don't you think my daughter's hot? She's hot, right?'” Ms. Lee recalled him saying. 'I was like, 'Really?' That's just weird. She was 16. That's creepy.” (New York Times, May 15, 2016)
  38. In fact, even growing up amid the polished brass and Breccia Perniche marble of Trump Tower, their childhoods were oddly normal, Eric Trump recalled. The eldest sibling, he said, held a certain authority over the two younger kids, who were prone to squabble. “Donnie's always been my best friend, a mentor,” Eric Trump said. “In a way, he raised me. My father, I love and I appreciate, but he always worked 24 hours a day.” (New York Times, November 19, 2006)
  39. Mr. Trump has offered little in the way of an environmental policy during his presidential campaign, but on Wednesday he said that President Obama's concerns about the environment were infringing on his rights as a consumer. More pressing than saving the ozone layer, he suggested, was the freedom to buy aerosol hairspray. “You can't use hairspray because hairspray is going to affect the ozone,” Mr. Trump said during a rally in South Carolina. "They don't want me to use hairspray, they want me to use the pump." [...] Mr. Trump revealed that he had a strong preference for old-fashioned aerosol sprays. "It comes out in big globs, right, and it's stuck in your hair and you say, 'Oh my God, I've got to take a shower again, my hair is all screwed up,'" Mr. Trump lamented to a laughing audience. [...] For his part, Mr. Trump said that he did his spraying inside his well-sealed Manhattan penthouse, inflicting little damage on the atmosphere. "I don't think anything gets out," Mr. Trump said of the pollutants he emits while taming his hair. (New York Times, December 30, 2015)
  40. His hair, a wonder on TV, is a riddle in person. None of his elaborately swirled locks appears to actually touch his head. The whole thing somehow hovers, like one of those high-end turntables that float on magnets and aren't attached to anything. (Washington Post, September 9, 2004)
  41. Traders in cocktail-party confidences can score points by announcing, "Larry did my teeth," referring to Dr. Larry Rosenthal, whose patients include Donald Trump, Kathie Lee Gifford and a long roster of socialites. […] "I'm not God," Dr. Rosenthal said. "I'm only a dentist." [...] According to the New York State division of professional licensing, Dr. Rosenthal's dental license was suspended for six months in 1987, although the agency would not reveal the reason. Dr. Rosenthal explained that he had been charged with a misuse of prescription forms to obtain sleeping and diet pills, but he maintained that the forms had been stolen and used by someone else. Dr. Rosenthal and his family spent last Easter in Palm Beach, Fla., as guests at Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. [...] "Did the Beatles know they were the Beatles?" he asked, pondering his legacy. "Did Muhammad Ali know he was Muhammad Ali? I'm not saying I'm in that league, but..." (New York Times, January 31, 1999)
  42. Fifty-two minutes into Donald Trump's discussion of weighty issues with The Washington Post's editorial board came an interlude about his hands. "Normal," the Republican presidential front-runner insisted. "Strong." "Good size." "Great." "Fine." "Slightly large, actually." (Washington Post, March 21, 2016)
  43. Trump does, in fact, have unusually small hands. 15th percentile small. [...] The Hollywood Reporter measured his hand to be 7.25 inches from his wrist to the tip of his middle finger. [...] According to data from Ergonomics Center of North Carolina, the average American male's hand is 7.61 inches long. Trump's hand sits at the 15th percentile mark. That is, 85 percent of American men have larger hands than Trump. As do a third of women. But bear in mind, that is the 15th percentile among all American men. Trump is tall - about 6-foot-3, half a foot taller than the 5-foot-9 average among American men, according to the Center for Disease Control. If Trump were compared to men of his stature rather than the public at large, his hands would comparatively be even smaller. (Washington Post, August 5, 2016)
  44. Back in 1968, at the age of 22, Donald J. Trump seemed the picture of health. He stood 6 feet 2 inches with an athletic build; had played football, tennis and squash; and was taking up golf. His medical history was unblemished, aside from a routine appendectomy when he was 10. But after he graduated from college in the spring of 1968, making him eligible to be drafted and sent to Vietnam, he received a diagnosis that would change his path: bone spurs in his heels. The diagnosis resulted in a coveted 1-Y medical deferment that fall, exempting him from military service as the United States was undertaking huge troop deployments to Southeast Asia, inducting about 300,000 men into the military that year. [...] Mr. Trump has described the condition as heel spurs, which are protrusions caused by calcium built up on the heel bone, treated through stretching, orthotics or sometimes surgery. Mr. Trump said that he could not recall exactly when he was no longer bothered by the spurs, but that he had not had an operation for the problem. “Over a period of time, it healed up,” he said. (New York Times, August 2, 2016)
  45. So Trump shakes dozens of hands these days, outwardly smiling, inwardly repulsed. [...] A shake even for a guy, recently, who'd just walked out of the men's room and strode by to say hello. “‘Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, I'm such a big fan,’” Trump recalls, sourly reliving the moment. "Now his hands are wet, and he's drying them off, shaking them in the air. Disgusting. But if I don't shake his hand, he'll be devastated. If I do, it won't be so bad. I just won't eat." He says this with a Jewish mother's resignation. "So, I shake his hand and I don't eat." (Washington Post, September 9, 2004)
  46. The plan to bring two Americans stricken by the ebola virus back to the United States for treatment has sparked a backlash on social media from some people terrified that the incurable disease will spread here as it has in western Africa. "Stop the EBOLA patients from entering the U.S.," Donald Trump tweeted Friday. "Treat them, at the highest level, over there. THE UNITED STATES HAS ENOUGH PROBLEMS!" (Washington Post, August 1, 2014)