Combatant in Chief
Nearly 50 years ago, The Daily News captured the fighting spirit of `superlandlord' Donald Trump. He's been brawling ever since, so don't expect another indictment to stop him now.
Last night, I read a little of the media coverage about the indictment of Donald Trump on federal conspiracy and obstruction charges.
Emphasis on a little.
Americans have embarked on another round of intense coverage of our 45th (and potentially 47th) U.S. President. So, I really need to pace myself: the next Presidential election is a full 15 months and three days away.
Instead, I decided to devote a little time looking back to the earliest mention of Trump that I could find at Newspapers.com. It came nearly a half-century ago, in The Daily News, one of the Big Apple’s publications.
For those who regard Trump as a figure worthy of worship and unflagging devotion, I imagine coming across this article is akin to a sacred early text in the Book of Donald.
Headlined “Weaving city rents: the pattern is crazy,” the January 1975 story details a “Trump court triumph last November when he successfully challenged the meagerness of rent increases for 700,000 rent stabilized apartments. At the court’s order, the Rent Guidelines Board is reconsidering rent rises of a maximum 12% and is expected to announce higher increases soon.”
In the lede, reporter Ken McKenna labels Trump a “superlandlord,” a term I’ve never encountered before. It strikes me as superstrange, but the gist of the title is that he was a landlord of many buildings (and not necessarily a super landlord to his tenants).
By the way, that last bit of the lede—about the valuation of the apartment properties as being “in the hundred millions of dollars”? As we’ve come to know, it’s probably prudent to take that estimate with an entire shaker of salt.1
The reporting underscores the reality that journalism, as I wrote in April, is the first rough draft of history.
There is one facet of Trump’s personality that the story absolutely nails: his willingness to brawl. Check out the pull quote below the photo here:
It’s a paraphrased rendering of the full remark, tightened to accommodate the layout. Here’s how it appeared in full within the story:
“To make it in this city as a landlord, you’ve got to fight everything that’s done, practically. This isn’t the real estate business. This is combat. It’s like being in the infantry.”
Of course, as is well documented, Trump never served in the military as a young man. But that didn’t deter him from making the “infantry” analogy. Turns out, it was part puffery, part prophecy: 42 years later, almost to the day, he became Commander in Chief, the head of the nation’s armed forces.
And his mounting legal problems notwithstanding, he could become Commander in Chief once again.
Say what you will about the man—Lord knows plenty of people do—but there’s no debating he has plenty of combat experience.
Among other legal challenges, Trump was sued last year by New York Attorney General Letitia James for years of alleged financial fraud. “Donald Trump Falsely Inflated His Net Worth by Billions of Dollars to Further Enrich Himself and Cheat the System,” the AG’s website states.
I grew up in NY so I know what Trump did. His father Fred had an "empire" of middling rental properties, mostly in Brooklyn and Queens. The Donald's critical insight was in order to make it BIG in the BIG Apple you got to expand into the big time: Manhattan ... and upscale properties. And that is exactly what he did. Along with this came the local celebrity and mega riches ... so the hundreds of millions of dollars of property may in fact be accurate. And by the way. In those days Donald Trump was a classic NY Liberal. I also remember my mother - and many like her - being quite amused by him as if he was a kinda "lovable blow hard." From the NY Times (November 1, 1976, by the way a great article especially now as we know how his life played out up till now):
"Although the Trumps have been building in New York City since 1923, the family has not gotten as much publicity as other real‐estate developers because they did not enter the Manhattan market until three years ago.
“It was psychology,” Mr. Trump explained. “My father knew Brooklyn very well, and he knew Queens very well. But now, that psychology is ended.”
I was a Manhattan landlord for much of Donald Trump's New York City tenure 1979-98. I was overseer of a tiny building and certainly would agree with his characterization of landlording as combat! After I sold it my building reached a Zillow valuation of $5million