My most memorable experience with Trump was sitting in the office of New York Post editor Jerry Nachman, an award-winning, street-wise savant who drank in information with the same gusto he gulped down countless cups of coffee. This was the heyday of the Donald/Ivana divorce, in 1990, when I was the Post's TV and radio columnist. The dueling Post and New York Daily News were documenting the couple's very public breakup. Ivana Trump, via Liz Smith, had won a front-page story — and public sympathy — at the News, portrayed as the spurned wife losing her husband to the younger Marla Maples — and Donald didn't like it.
Sitting in Nachman's office while he was editing one of my pieces, I heard his secretary yell, "It's Donald." Nachman motioned me to "shhh" and put Trump on speaker. "Those fucking bitches," Trump bellowed. "I want a front-page story tomorrow."
Jerry calmly replied, "Donald, you just don't demand a front-page story. There has to be a story." "For all the newspapers I've sold for you, you should give me one." "That's not how it works." "What gets a front-page story?" Donald asked.
The veteran newsman contemplated the question. "It's usually murder, money or sex." Donald fired back: "Marla says with me it's the best sex she's ever had." Nachman's face lit up like a firecracker. "That's great!" he said. "But you know I need corroboration."
"Marla," Trump yelled into the background. "Didn't you say it's the best sex you ever had with me?" From a distance, we heard a faint voice: "Yes, Donald." Only years later did we learn that Trump sometimes impersonated voices to reporters. I still can't be sure whether the voice in the room was really hers.
I think most people simply assumed that this quote was bullshit, but it is interesting that it was Trump himself who came up with the wording and that the reporter only relied on a faceless voice for confirmation.
That is some shitty reporting right there.
But then again who gave a fuck when Trump was simply some publicity obsessed rich asshole living in New York?
Still it irritates me that there are still some so-called "journalists" who report on Trump in much the same fashion today.
That's right, I'm looking at you Fox News.
Source https://ift.tt/2IVUEAy
