B009HOTHPE EBOK (41 page)

One day Hausman said Roy Cohn wanted to meet me and introduce me to a guy named Donald Trump, who wanted to be in the casino business and would I meet with him and just give him all my wisdom about casinos,
blah-blah-blah-blah.

We go into Roy Cohn’s living room. I’m talking to Roy and Jack Hausman and in walks this guy, very sure of himself, making a grand entrance—you expected to see papers flying about the room in his wake—Donald Trump. He was very much a prototype of what he is today, thinner, but with the same kind of confidence—and the same hair. We sat down and I talked to him about the gaming industry, everything that I knew, marketing, etc. So that’s the Cohn-Trump connection. Trump wanted to get into the casino business in the worst way—and wanted to know
everything
about gambling. Eventually Trump and Steve got together and they, too, sat down and talked. Steve, of course, had far more experience than I did in the gaming business. And you know the rest: in went Trump head-first, into the gaming industry.

Later on I wound up working for Trump at two of his resorts—Atlantic City and Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida—and this was while he and Steve Wynn were still fighting tooth and nail. Trump would come on with such animosity about Steve. And Steve would say similar things about Trump: “Look at that guy! He’s like a cartoon of himself.” I mean, they were at each other like you wouldn’t believe. They were just cursing each other out. It was wartime. Big, big wartime.
Geronimo!

In January 1990, Donald called me. He had a serious problem on his hands. He had a big fund-raising gala at his casino in Atlantic City, and his star attraction, Barry Manilow, had backed out at the last minute. Apparently Manilow was offended by side-by-side photographs of himself and Christine Whitman on the cover of a local magazine, which jokingly pointed out a passing resemblance between the two, and suggested they might have been siblings in a past life. Manilow, a lifelong Democrat, was also apparently irritated that this charity event promoted a Republican governor elect. I got a chance to be a hero, came in on a moment’s notice, did the charity concert, and saved the day, for which Donald—and all involved—were extremely grateful.

I got a very appreciative letter of thanks from Donald:

Dear Paul,

You have my everlasting and heartfelt thanks for coming to our rescue on Saturday night … What could have been a disaster became a giant success for you and all of us. I am very grateful to you, Paul, and hope you know there will always be a place for you in one of my casinos—and my heart.

Some $300,000 was raised for the Children’s Hospital of New Jersey, National Pediatric AIDS Foundation in Newark, and Respond Inc. of Camden that night, and I was glad to be able to help out those good causes and get Donald out of a tricky situation.

*   *   *

Steve Wynn and Donald Trump are two utterly different types of people—opposites, basically. Later on—much later on—Steve told me an outrageous story. He said the Trump organization had enlisted a spy who was trying to get a hold of Steve’s best casino customers, high rollers. All these allegations wound up in court papers in a lawsuit Steve filed against the Trump group. Steve had two high powered guys on his security team, they were serious crime busters. As Steve tells it the security guys turned the spy and convinced him to gather information for Steve’s organization. They had the spy meet with his Trump contacts where the spy would tape everything the Trump guys had to say. The idea was to gather proof that the Trump organization was stealing Steve’s trade secrets.

Trump’s lawyers denied all of those charges. But then, Steve explains, Trump filed a countersuit in federal court accusing Steve’s people of using illegal recording equipment. “Under New York law you can’t use this kind of device in single party situations.” Steve was devastated. I had never seen him so distraught over anything. “So incomprehensible was that moment,” Steve told me, recollecting that afternoon, “that sitting in that big room in the Bellagio and hearing this news was the single worst day in my business career. Never had a moment like that since my father died.”

It turns out that the government is not subject to the taping prohibitions that apply to laymen because everything they do as government employees has to have judicial approval in front. His security guys said they didn’t know this, but how could they not know?

According to Steve, “It was a pure filthy stalemate. Filthy and ugly and uglier. I’m feeling I’d like to kill someone.… The whole thing is so mean but Donald thought that was okay in those days. Business is war—that mentality. Thank God everybody’s outgrown those kind of things.”

A few months after that I was hiking at a spa in St. George, Utah, with Steve. It was one of many hiking trips that Steve and I would take together throughout our friendship. We were standing on top of that little mountain and just looking at the beautiful vista lying before us and he turned to me and said, “You know, I really have a great time doing what I’m doing and I’ve accomplished a lot, but I’m really tired of this new crop of people that are there, like Goldberg and all these other people coming in, who from my point of view have no class and are trying to do anything they can to get their way. I’m sick of that fucking town. And what’s happened to it. I’m done with this, with guys like that.”

It was really Arthur Goldberg who had become a real thorn in his side. Trump’s friend and Bally Entertainment CEO, Goldberg was a ruthless greenmail raider, a guy who’d been in the trucking business before getting into the gaming business. Steve had dealt with some tough customers in his day, some very unsavory characters, but this was just hell.

Richard “Skip” Bronson, who worked for several years for Steve Wynn, is from Connecticut, and like me, he is a former paperboy and a college dropout. I met him when he started working for Steve on Steve’s Atlantic City project—the Atlantic City Nugget hotel and casino—and that’s when he became one of my closest friends. I was working for Steve Wynn downtown at the Nugget at the time. Steve Wynn hired him at a board meeting at the Nugget. Skip worked as an executive at the time, putting Atlantic City together for Steve and has written a great book about the whole mess called
The War at the Shore,
detailing his adventures with Arthur Goldberg and Donald Trump and all the things that happened in Atlantic City. It got really ugly.

In Steve’s mind, Donald Trump isn’t an out-and-out prick like Goldberg—he isn’t a vicious guy. A little crazy at times, marching to the tune of God knows what—we didn’t know; we’d never heard that music before. But once you figure him out, Donald is the wrong guy to fight with; you don’t want him as an enemy because he’ll do
anything.
He’s the wrong guy to have saying the wrong thing about you. I don’t think he’s a mean-spirited guy, just a loose cannon. Arthur Goldberg, though, was another matter altogether—a mean, cruel guy, a pull-wings-off-a-butterfly type of guy. He would verbalize in a very vicious manner if he got into a confrontation with you.

Trump knew I was a close friend of Steve’s and would never rap Steve to me. He knew not to tread there with me, because I was very tight with Steve. When I worked for Trump I treated him as a separate entity without getting in the middle of it. But whether I liked it or not I was involved in nitty-gritties. The Trump-Wynn feud became a problem for me because I worked for Trump and was a friend of Steve’s, and worked at Steve’s and I knew Trump, so I was smack in the middle of that. I knew what was going on, and without getting directly involved I wanted to help get them back together.

Then one night I was performing at a special gala at Mar-a-Lago for Donald, at Trump’s resort on Marjorie Merriweather Post’s former estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and I decided I could end the feud. While there I had a few talks with Donald and could read between the lines that he didn’t want this feud to continue—and, by this time, neither did Steve. One night, I decided to see if I could end it. I called Steve from Mar-a-Lago and said, “You know, Steve, this guy doesn’t want to go to war with you. He doesn’t want to sue. Get rid of this lawsuit. At least talk. He will talk to you. Donald would really like to settle this and end the feud.” So I get them on the phone together and they mended their beef. Trump had cost Steve three million in legal expenses by that point but Steve dropped the lawsuit anyway. And they started talking and then they never shut up! Because they’re both big talkers. With Steve Wynn, you take a breath in a conversation and you lose your turn, but you don’t mind because he’s such a colorful storyteller—and one of the toughest guys I know. You knew you were among two great businessmen when you were with them. I am happy to report that as of this writing after all of the insulting barbs that were thrown at each other between Donald and Steve, it has been long put behind them. I was so happy to have made that phone call that brought them back together.

As Steve says about Donald, there are two very different Trumps: “If he likes you, he can be so sweet and caring. I went down to Mar-a-Lago for a birthday party that Oprah Winfrey threw for Maya Angelou on her seventy-fifth birthday. I called Trump, I said I’m coming. ‘I’ll take care of everything,’ he said, ‘you’ll be my guest.’ I land, a car picks me up when I get to Mar-a-Lago, he’s waiting at the door in a pink tie, and a suit. It’s ninety degrees but he’s all dressed up! He can be a honeybunch.”

The great thing about Steve’s character is his resilience. And he’s one of the smartest and toughest guys I know. He found a healing way to think about this monstrous thing Trump had done to him. “After the Trump-taping fiasco,” Steve tells me, “that was the point in my life I didn’t want any extended beefs with anybody. I chose to take a page from the Dalai Lama’s playbook. Just ask yourself one question and the rage will subside: ‘What in the world happened to that person, what unhappiness or insecurity or terrible wrong has this person suffered to make him do something
like that
?’ It’s their karma. Force yourself to say that and the rage drains right out of you.”

Donald Trump is in ecstasy when he’s the subject of public focus. No matter what he said, or what’s said about him, it’s a beautiful fucking day. He’s truly a man who believes, “Say anything about me, good or bad. Just keep talking about me.” When he gets ignored he dies. That TV show of his didn’t exactly help reduce his ego, but at that point he was not in good shape financially, and that show was the right thing at the right time for him. And whatever you say about him, he did a great job with his children. His daughter is a wonderfully poised woman. In the end you have to say Trump is a remarkable but remarkably odd character, sometimes totally bizarre. He’s behaved in a manner most of us are told not to behave, but my pal Donald does it his way and I like him a lot. We have always had a good relationship.

*   *   *

In 1987, when Steve Wynn sold the Golden Nugget Atlantic City, I worked for Trump in various other casinos. I also worked for Arthur Goldberg when he had the Hilton. He is from New Jersey, was a tough and nasty executive, and was a huge rival and was out for Steve. He did not have the notoriety or celebrity of Trump or Steve, but behind the scenes Goldberg was lethal. We all knew he did not want him in Atlantic City. He was a tough-and-rough businessman who started out in the trucking business. He’s no longer with us—he died of bone marrow failure in October 2000.

I would spend many hours alone with Steve in his office. He and I and his German shepherds. The feelings he would expose to me regarding the Goldberg and Trump situation were harrowing. It is public knowledge how Trump and Goldberg launched an offensive on Steve. I told you of the time down near the end when Trump was having problems with his hotel and how I made the call for Kirk Kerkorian and Terry Lanni who worked for him at the time. Lanni was another intelligent and classy no-nonsense type of guy who headed MGM resorts.

I shared the triumphs from what was a rough journey for my buddy Steve and Skip right down to the ground-breaking in November 1998 of the Atlantic City–Brigantine Connector, the tunnel over which Trump, Wynn, and Goldberg had had such acrimonious feuds, due to disputes over which casino would have direct access. But even after the ground-breaking, I shared more of the skirmishes that went on between Trump and Steve in 1999 about trade secrets being stolen regarding high-roller lists. It ultimately took a different direction when Kirk Kerkorian came into the picture. Kirk is an old friend of mine since 1959. He is ninety-five years old today. His approach to business and life is quite different from that of Steve and Donald. And what a success story he is in his own right.

Kirk began as an amateur boxer, became interested in flying, and is something of a daredevil: as a member of the Royal Air Force in the 1940s, he transported de Havilland Mosquitoes to Scotland via the treacherous “Iceland Wave” current. In 1947, he bought Trans International Airlines for $60,000 and sold it in 1968 for $104 million. He began investing in real estate in Las Vegas and owned a number of hotel casinos and megaresorts, most notably the MGM Grand, which at the time was the biggest hotel in the world. He’s reportedly worth $15 billion.

While Steve and Trump were active in Atlantic City, Kirk and MGM Grand were looking at the possibility of building there. Steve was still trying to design Atlantic City. The Bellagio was doing incredible business in Vegas but the Beau Rivage, which was the Bellagio’s original name was now in Biloxi, Mississippi. I made many trips down there with Steve because it was not doing as well as expected. Steve had a small percentage of the company. In March 2000, it was at half the price that it was at the previous year.

One thing led to another, and Steve ended up having a conversation with Kerkorian regarding building on his land in Atlantic City. Kirk came back with other things in mind. The bottom line was he wanted to be involved with the whole ball of wax. In other words, he wanted to be the buyer of Steve’s Mirage Corporation. I was with Steve in his office the week he got the letter from Kerkorian and told me his company was in play. I lived through that whole scenario till the company was bought, from A to Z. I witnessed it from Steve’s initial reaction, to where he realized it was an opportunity for him.