US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3849

Some Americans are just getting to know Donald Trump. Readers of The Times have known him for 42 years.

They first met him, on the front page no less, on Oct. 16, 1973. Then 27 years old, Mr. Trump was the president of the Trump Management Corporation, at 600 Avenue Z in Brooklyn, which owned more than 14,000 apartments in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.

“Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias in City,” the headline stated. The Department of Justice had brought suit in federal court in Brooklyn against Mr. Trump and his father, Fred C. Trump, charging them with violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in the operation of 39 buildings.

“The government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals ‘because of race and color,’ ” The Times reported. “It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.”

Donald Trump’s first quoted words in The New York Times expressed his view of the charges:

“They are absolutely ridiculous.”

“We never have discriminated,” he added, “and we never would.”

Two months later, Trump Management, represented by Roy M. Cohn, turned around and sued the United States government for $100 million (roughly $500 million in today’s terms), asserting that the charges were “irresponsible and baseless.”

“Mr. Trump accused the Justice Department of singling out his corporation because it was a large one, and because the government was trying to force it to rent to welfare recipients,” The Times reported.

Under an agreement reached in June 1975, Trump Management was required to furnish the New York Urban League with a list of all apartment vacancies, every week, for two years. It was also to allow the league to present qualified applicants for every fifth vacancy in Trump buildings where fewer than 10 percent of the tenants were black.

Trump Management noted that the agreement did not constitute an admission of guilt.

Mr. Trump himself said he was satisfied that the agreement did not “compel the Trump organization to accept persons on welfare as tenants unless as qualified as any other tenant.”

By then, his interests had grown far beyond his father’s real-estate empire and reached into Manhattan. Judy Klemesrud portrayed him on Nov. 1, 1976:
“He is tall, lean and blond, with dazzling white teeth, and he looks ever so much like Robert Redford. He rides around town in a chauffeured silver Cadillac with his initials, DJT, on the plates. He dates slinky fashion models, belongs to the most elegant clubs and, at only 30 years of age, estimates that he is worth ‘more than $200 million.’ ” (That’s gone up a bit.)

Mr. Trump was already proving to be quite adept at courting reporters. “He was one of those who always returned a phone call,” said Charles Kaiser, the author of “The Cost of Courage.”

When Mr. Kaiser was a real estate reporter at The Times, in the early years of Edward I. Koch’s mayoralty, New York City was determined to build a convention center, to show the world that it was on the rebound from the mid-1970s fiscal crisis. Mr. Trump held an option on one of the possible sites, over a rail yard at the western end of 34th Street.

“Trump’s site was the only one that was all ready to go,” Mr. Kaiser recalled. “I was about to go on vacation to Europe to visit my parents when I called him up and said, where will it be? ‘It’s my site,’ he said. ‘You can bank on it.’

“He was my only source, and it was the only time I took a chance like this with a single source. I wrote it would be built there, it went on Page 1, and I climbed on a plane to Budapest.” (“Koch Said to Have Chosen 34th St. as Site of New Convention Center,” March 31, 1978.)

Back when trans-Atlantic telephone service was reserved for the most important and urgent communications, it must have been doubly jarring for young Mr. Kaiser to receive a call from his editor, Sheldon Binn, in Budapest the next day.

“Who was your source?” Mr. Binn demanded. “Koch is going crazy.”

“Donald Trump,” Mr. Kaiser answered.

“That’s what I figured,” Mr. Binn said.

As Mr. Kaiser told it: “Koch had a press conference, said I was a fine reporter, and my story was 100 percent without foundation. No one had told Ed yet they had chosen the site — or maybe they hadn’t! In any case, I was vindicated a month later.” (“Convention Site at West 34th St. Chosen by Koch,” April 29, 1978.)

The choice of the site for the convention center, Mr. Trump said, was “perhaps the most significant economic decision made in New York City since the building of the United Nations.” Still so young, he was perhaps too modest to say, “Since Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan Island.”