>> A recording obtained by The Washington Post captures what New York reporters and editors who covered Trump’s early career experienced in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s: calls from Trump’s Manhattan office that resulted in conversations with “John Miller” or
“John Barron” — public-relations men who
sound precisely like Trump himself — who indeed are Trump, masquerading as an unusually helpful and boastful advocate for himself, according to the journalists and several of Trump’s top aides.
.... Some reporters found the calls from Miller or Barron disturbing or even creepy; others thought they were just examples of Trump being playful. Today, as the presumptive Republican nominee for president faces questions about his attitudes toward women, what stands out to some who received those calls is Trump’s characterization of women whom he portrayed as drawn to him sexually.
Miller was consistent about referring to Trump as “he,” but at one point, when asked how important Bruni was in Trump’s busy love life, the spokesman said, “I think it’s somebody that — you know, she’s beautiful. I saw her once, quickly, and beautiful . . . ” and then he quickly pivoted back into talking about Trump — then a 44-year-old father of three — in the third person.
In 1990, Trump testified in a court case that “I believe on occasion I used that name.”
In a phone call to
NBC’s “Today” program Friday morning after this article appeared online, Trump denied that he was John Miller. “No, I don’t think it — I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time and it doesn’t sound like my voice at all,” he said. “I have many, many people that are trying to imitate my voice and then you can imagine that, and this sounds like one of the scams, one of the many scams — doesn’t sound like me.” Later, he was more definitive: “It was not me on the phone. And it doesn’t sound like me on the phone, I will tell you that, and it was not me on the phone. And when was this? Twenty-five years ago?”
Then, Friday afternoon, Washington Post reporters who were 44 minutes into a phone interview with Trump about his finances asked him a question about Miller: “Did you ever employ someone named John Miller as a spokesperson?”
The phone went silent, then dead. When the reporters called back and reached Trump’s secretary, she said, “I heard you got disconnected. He can’t take the call now. I don’t know what happened.”
Trump has never been terribly adamant about denying that he often made calls to reporters posing as someone else.
From his earliest years in business, he occasionally called reporters using the name “John Barron.”
A “John Baron,” described as a “vice-president of the Trump organization,” appeared in a front-page New York Times article as early as 1980, defending Trump’s decision to destroy sculptures on the facade of the Bonwit Teller department store building, the Fifth Avenue landmark he was demolishing to make way for his Trump Tower. Barron was quoted variously as a “Trump spokesman,” “Trump executive” or “Trump representative” in New York magazine, The Washington Post and other publications.
Trump’s fascination with the name “Barron” persisted for decades. When he was seeing Maples while still married to Ivana, he sometimes
used the code name “the Baron” when he left messages for her. In 2004, when Trump
commissioned a dramatic TV series based on the life of a New York real estate mogul like him, his only request to the writer was to
name the main character “Barron.” And when Trump and
his third wife, Melania,
had a son, they named him Barron.
... Carswell this week recalled that she immediately recognized something familiar in the Queens accent of Trump’s new publicist. She thought, “It’s so weird that Donald hired someone who sounds just like him.” After the 20-minute interview, she walked down the hall to play the tape to co-workers, who identified Trump’s voice. Carswell then called Cindy Adams, the longtime New York Post gossip columnist who had been close to Trump since the early 1970s. Adams immediately identified the voice as Trump’s.
“Oh, that’s Donald,” Carswell recalled Adams saying. “What is he doing?”
Then Carswell played the tape for Maples, who confirmed it was Trump and burst into tears as she heard Miller deny that a ring Trump gave her implied any intent to marry her.
Carswell, now a reporter-researcher at Vanity Fair, said the tape cuts off mid-interview, leaving out the part in which Miller said that actress Kim Basinger had been trying to date Trump. Hearing the tape for the first time in decades, Carswell said, “This was so farcical, that he pretended to be his own publicist. Here was this so-called billion-dollar real estate mogul, and he can’t hire his own publicist. It also said something about the control he wanted to keep of the news cycle flowing with this story, and I can’t believe he thought he’d get away with it.” <<
--- Rump Masqueraded as Publicist to Brag About Himself
--- so this is all news to you, right? You live in some kind of cave, is that it?
The man's mentally ill. Invents imaginary spokespersons, then admits having done it, then denies having done it after he's already admitted to it IN COURT. He
Tell me again how that's not fucked up delusional.