- Banned
- #21
Just wanted you to know I didn't watch as you wet your panties just now. I respected your public meltdown.Donald Trump’s Long, Strange History of Using Fake Names
The Washington Post set off a controversy last week when it published a story alleging that Trump posed as a public relations man named John Miller to energize the tabloid scandal raging over his affair with the model/actress Marla Maples and his divorce from his first wife Ivana. Trump last week denied that he’d made the call. The report provoked a new round of questions about Trump’s character. What could possibly motivate a grown man running a business empire to do such a thing? And what does this say about Trump’s temperament?
In fact, Trump’s use of fake names is far more extensive than most people realize. For more than a decade – 1980 to 1991 — Trump used phony names to promote himself. I know from my work as Trump’s biographer that even prior to the John Miller episode, Trump had posed as John Baron (or Barron). A close look at when and how Trump used these ruses–and how he’s using a new form of verbal trickery today–provides insight into billionaire developer who could be America’s next president.
Who gave Trump the idea to use fake names
Trump’s father, Fred, had used a fake name – Mr. Green – to conduct business that he wanted to keep secret. He was well-known as a developer in the outer boroughs of New York, and he wanted to inquire about properties without tipping his hand. In theory, owners who knew that wealthy Fred Trump was interested would bargain more aggressively. “Mr. Green” was well known by his children. When Donald began using John Baron alias, the joke inside the family was that on the day became the subject of a subpoena, poor Baron would fall ill and die.
He used Baron, and later, Miller, to avoid trouble, float ideas, and even spread gossip about himself. In all these cases he sought to protect and polish the Trump image, or brag in ways that would be unseemly, even for a man who is synonymous with self promotion.
Donald Trump with Fred Trump (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage)
When Trump began using a fake name
The first known case I could find was in 1980, when Trump used “Baron” to fend off reporters who called about the destruction of important art work that was supposed to be preserved as he tore down the Bonwit Teller department store to make way for his Trump Tower. In 1984, Baron appeared again as the spinmeister who put the best face on a Trump setback in Atlantic City. And he was the one who spoke about the rumor that Trump was buying the famous 21 Club.
In 1985, it was Baron who suggested that other owners in the upstart United States Football league help pay the salary for the quarterback Doug Flutie who had signed with Trump’s team, the New Jersey Generals. During a legal dispute in 1990 Trump admitted, under oath, that he had used the name, saying, “I believe on occasion I used that name.”
In the case of the Bonwit Teller artwork, Trump used John Baron, supposedly a vice president in his company, to tell The New York Times in 1990 that “the merit of these stones was not great enough to justify the effort to save them.” Art expert Robert Miller disagreed, saying the art deco friezes were as valuable as the sculptures on the nearby Rockefeller Building and their loss was “just tragic.”
Given the civic concern about the decision to jackhammer the art to smithereens, Trump’s desire be shielded by John Baron suggests he knew he had crossed a line. But Trump does not apologize, and he does not back down. At least in his own name.
Similarly, John Baron’s suggestion that Trump’s fellow team owners in the USFL help pay for his quarterback Doug Flutie tells us something about his willingness to speak clearly, and directly, for himself. At the time the matter was raised, the USFL was struggling against the more established National Football League. Trump was pushing the owners to bring a lawsuit against their rivals. Many of them resisted. Trump would have looked weak going to them, hat in hand, seeking help paying a contract he had negotiated? But it couldn’t hurt having someone else float the idea.
John Baron became expendable in 1990, when Trump testified in the case of some workers who said he owed them $1 million because, as undocumented immigrants, they had been underpaid by one of his contractors. Years earlier, “John Baron” had said the workers might be counter-sued by Trump.
When asked under oath who Baron might be, Trump confessed that it was an alias he had used.
And then ‘John Miller’ suddenly appears
After admitting under oath that Baron was a fake, Trump apparently offered a new spokesman, John Miller, to Sue Carswell of People magazine in 1991. Unlike Baron, who was concerned with business matters, Miller served to spread gossip about Trump’s romantic exploits. Miller made sure that Carswell understood that Trump was practically being hounded by celebrated women – Kim Basinger and Madonna were mentioned – and that in addition to his relationship with Marla Maples he had “three other girlfriends.”
In an interviewed recorded on tape by Sue Carswell, Miller explains that Trump broke things off with Maples – “he really didn’t want to make a commitment” — in favor of the celebrity beauty Carla Bruni. Miller went on to say Trump was doing “tremendously well financially “and that many other famous women were pursuing him romantically.
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