Thread by @RLukeDuBois

THREAD:

in september of 1995, @realDonaldTrump penned an letter to the @nytimes . for some reason, the full text link is unavailable. :)

but if you go here...

timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1…

...you'll find it.

i present it to you now accompanied by pictures from today's #MarchForOurLives .

consider it a study in contrasts.

New York Times, Sunday, September 17, 1995
Voices, Section F, Page 13

FROM THE DESK OF
Donald J. Trump

What My Ego Wants,
My Ego Gets

"At first, I was quite angry to read the suggestion in the front-page story on Sam Zell in this section last week that my purchase of that great trophy property, the Plaza Hotel, was driven by my ego."

"Was Mr. Zell, in thinking about buying that great landmark Rockefeller Center, the article asked, 'succumbing to the folly' that lured Donald J. Trump to buy the Plaza."

"But after I thought about it, I realized it was 100 percent true – ego did play a large role in the Plaza purchase and is, in fact, a significant factor in all of my deals."

"I only hope that Mr. Zell, or whoever succeeds in acquiring 'the Rock,' has the same success, fun, and luck with it that I have had – and continue to have – with the Plaza Hotel."

"Although I paid proportionately far less money for the Plaza than Mitsubishi laid out for Rockefeller Center – we can't go totally crazy, after all – it was the importance and majesty of this magnificent hotel that kept up my spirits..."

"...and carried me through some very tough ownership times in the early 1990's. When real estate values plummeted in 1990, '91, '92, and '93, the Plaza Hotel actually did phenomenal business, and it has continued to do so."

"When I bought the hotel in 1988, it had a gross operating profit of $7.5 million; that grew to $28.5 million last year, and it looks to top that this year."

"To be sure, those numbers don't include the interest payments we were paying on the debt we too on to buy the Plaza. The premium one pays for a true trophy property can create seemingly insurmountable obstacles during hard economic times."

"Large premiums mean substantial debt service, and we paid both. But our lenders agreed that the Plaza was too important a property to simply walk away from."

"Patience and this recognition by the lenders enabled us to retain control through the difficult years and, ultimately, to bring in two wonderful partners. A lesser property would not have received such special attention."

"Now, with these new partners – CDL Hotels of Singapore headed by Kwek Leng Beng and Fairmont hotels of San Francisco, whose owner is Prince Al Walid Bin Talal Abdul Aziz – we intend to bring the Plaza to yet another level, at the same time improving both profits and service."

"The management council, composed of Mr. Kwek, Prince Al Walid and myself, will see to it that this happens.

I write, however, not to discuss the Plaza Hotel alone but to confront the always hot topic of the 'ego purchase.'"

"Almost every deal I have every done has been at least partly for my ego – and I have made a great deal of money and have had both fun and artistic enjoyment because of this. When I took over construction of the Wollman Rink in 1986 after the City of New York had failed,"

"...after seven years, to open it to the skating public, I did it in only four months not only to help the city out of a problem but to prove to myself that it could be done."

"My ego drove me forward and now, based on what I have created at the Wollman Rink, a concessionaire – the right one, we hope – will take over the rink's management under a lucrative lease for the city."

"I have many friends who go into transactions that are not ego-driven. The deals are usually not very exciting, have no glamour, flair or style and, when it is time to sell, seldom attract a wide range of buyers."

"Often these friends ask me how I am able to get financing for my deals when they have to fight so hard to secure it for theirs."

"The so-called ego deal, if properly conceived and carried out, not only attracts tenants at higher rents and potential buyers at higher prices, but can be much easier to finance than a nondescript and unexciting transaction."

"As an example, I recently reached an agreement to buy one of the country's great properties, the 200-acre Mansion at Seven Springs in Bedford, N.Y. north of New York City."

"Built in 1917 by Eugene Meyer, on of the great industrialists of the time and the father of Katherine Graham of The Washington Post, the mansion was being operated as a conference center, and I announced that I was going to turn it into a world-class golf course and spa."

"While this is a relatively small job for me, something to do on weekends, I'm using the same formula that has made my other great mansion, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla., perhaps the hottest new private club in the United States."

"Because I am the one purchasing Seven Springs, coupled with the fact that the mansion is already such a well-known landmark, the press surrounding this small but picture-perfect transaction has already lead to an avalanche of people wanting to join both the golf club and spa."

"Great value has already been added by me to a property where the ink is hardly dry on the contract. It is yet another one of my ego-related transactions that I can expect to make a great deal of money and, at the same time, be creative and fun."

"I now have an option to buy a building known as 40 Wall Street. It is 70 stories tall and was, for a short time, the tallest building in the world. It is also considered one of New York's most beautiful structures."

"But in recent years the building has seen some bad times. Long after its construction in 1927, 40 Wall was considered the hardest building in which to find space for rent in all of downtown Manhattan, and its tenants were among the most prestigious in New York."

"But in the late 1970's and 1970's a succession of ownership changes and improper management led to its rapid decline.

Were it not for this building's special history, location and importance, however. I would have no interest in proceeding with the purchase."

"The downtown market is very weak, and I am offered buildings there on a daily basis – but they are not 40 Wall Street, they are not 70 stories tall, they do not have the magnificence of design nor, by comparison with the potential of this much more ego-driven property,"

"...do they have the nearly the potential for success.

I am not saying that 'ego deals' work for everyone and, in fact, they cannot. But for me it has been a great way to do business, not just in buying buy also in building 'ego' properties."

"Trump Tower, for instance was built largely to satisfy my so-called oversized ego and yet, with some of the highest-priced condo sales ever made, it has succeeded beyond any such measure."

"Because of its beauty and mass, the proposed Riverside South project that I have nurtured for the abandoned West Side rail yards, running from 59th Street to 72d Street, also promises to become one of my most important and successful developments."

"Through pure willpower and force of ego, I was able to get the city's largest zoning change to allow the transformation of this fallow acreage into a city within a city. And then, with the new zoning,"

"...I have been able to attract some of the finest partners and investors I have ever had.

The Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City was said at the time of its building to be 'too large, too opulent and too expensive' to succeed."

"The critics did not see, however, that these were the very qualities that would bring people in by the thousands. Like other casinos in Atlantic City, the Taj suffered through a downturn several years ago during the recession and the Persian Gulf war,"

"...but I remained confident that it would emerge from the debt renegotiations that followed with results that would exceed all expectations."

"Last year, the Taj had a gross operating profit of $130 million, and this year's profits should once again prove the largest in Atlantic City history."

"I paid far too much, according to many, when I purchased the St. Moritz Hotel in 1985 from investors who included Harry and Leona Helmsley for $70 million. When I sold the building three years later for $180 million, nobody said a word."

"Over the years, I have been offered many physically and locationally unattractive buildings and developments that offered very attractive returns. Knowing them to be good, and sometimes very good, I turned them down anyway –"

"...there is just not enough time in my life to focus on things that are not imaginative or that I cannot get excited about. None of these deals promised to become a Trump Tower, a Trump Taj Mahal, or, for that matter, any of the many buildings I have built and profited from."

"I have made far more money by allowing my ego to rule my instincts than I ever would have by figuring the bottom line alone. If you can build or create the ego value in a property from scratch, as I did with Trump Tower and almost all of my other projects,"

"...there is far more money to be made than from purchasing something that through the years has established its own value or pedigree, which can only be increased from that point."

"But with glamour, beauty, location and many other too-subtle-to-even-grasp ingredients, the very few standout properties will always have far more buyers than sellers – and more buyers means higher prices."

"Anyone doing deals must have the basic prerequisites of intelligence, instinct and savvy, but in my case I willingly add 'ego.' The prestige of an ego-driven deal amounts to money."

"Many people do not see this immediately, but the smart people do. And now let's watch as construction begins on one of the most beautiful buildings ever to be undertaken in our great City of New York, The Trump International Hotel and Tower at One Central Park West!"

fascist.republican