- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of Think Tank with Steve Adubato has been provided by New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

Providing New Jersey residents tools to save money on energy costs.

Johnson & Johnson.

The New Jersey Education Association.

The Fund for New Jersey.

Hackensack Meridian Health.

Keep getting better.

Newark Board of Education.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Working to create a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right.

The Fidelco Group.

And by Stockton University.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

Keeping communities informed and connected.

And by ROI-NJ.

Informing and connecting businesses in New Jersey.

[MOTIVATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato for the next half hour.

We're gonna talk to the co-author of a compelling important book.

You think you know everything about our president?

Donald Trump and his finances, let's say a complex topic.

We're joined by Sue Craig, who's the co-author of "Lucky Loser."

How Donald Trump squandered his father's fortune and created the illusion of success.

Sue, great to have you with us.

- Thanks for having me, Steve.

This is great.

I'm glad you had a chance to dig into the book.

It just came out in paperback.

So, I see you.

- Yeah, I have the paperback.

Speaking of digging into the book, I thought I knew everything about Donald Trump because I'd been obsessed by reading about him for years, way before he became president.

- Right.

- Put this in context for us.

I've heard the president say many times that his financial success is in many ways not really related to his dad because his dad didn't, who was a real estate developer, if I'm not mistaken- - Yeah.

- Earlier, much earlier on, Donald Trump was in his early twenties to 30 years old, if you will.

His father, he said, didn't give him much.

Few bucks and he turned it into millions, billions.

What's the reality?

- Well, I always think, I think if Donald Trump thought if he said that long enough, it would become fact.

And I think for a lot of people it did.

I think people bought the idea that Fred Trump was a small time guy out in the outer boroughs and didn't really help Trump out that much.

His son, there's a line that Donald Trump has used often that says, I got a million-dollar loan from my father.

But he really didn't help.

But he was an outer borough guy and I came into New York City, and I built Trump Tower and I built all these other things, but he really did it on his own.

And actually, when we started digging into that, we found nothing could be further from the truth.

And I just wanna take people back a little bit in time now, because the book, it was published in 2024, but my colleague Russ Buettner and I, who's a great reporter and another colleague of ours at the paper, we started digging into Fred Trump after Donald Trump became president the first time.

We were just really curious about just how much did Fred Trump contribute to his father's success, and kind of more about who he was.

And we just started digging around in the property records in New York City mainly.

And that's the city and the boroughs.

And a lot of this is public and we just couldn't believe how much Fred Trump owned as a starting point.

And then we started in these documents to see the mechanisms that Fred Trump had set up to transfer money to all of his children, including Donald Trump.

And it was millions of dollars starting when they were just kids.

He set up trusts, put land in it, and that was throwing off money to them.

And this continued throughout Donald Trump's life.

And then as we went along, we started calling a lot of the people that we saw in these documents and we ended up getting from Mary Trump, who's now talked publicly about this.

- His niece?

This is Donald Trump's niece?

- Yeah, his niece.

And it was interesting because all the family members were on these documents, but his niece and nephew got in a legal battle- - I know.

- With Donald Trump.

You know, some people remember this.

It was a really ugly legal battle about the estate of Fred Trump, and in that they signed over a lot of, we saw some land to their siblings.

They got a settlement, but in that they went to court and we saw that there was discovery in this.

We had no idea what came out in discovery, but we imagined it was probably a lot.

- Right.

What did you find?

- So, we ended up getting a lot of documents from Mary Trump that really helped us build a story that ran in 2018.

And what it showed was, first of all, just the huge inner workings of Fred's empire and just how profitable it was.

And then we also discovered within that, we were able to see, particularly there was one incident that really stands out in my mind and as Fred Trump's getting older, unlike Donald Trump, he didn't believe in debt.

He was hugely cash rich, and he was at a point towards the end of his life, he's gonna die just actuarily at some point, probably in the next five or 10 years, that he had so much cash and was facing, if he died with all of that, huge estate taxes, which at the time were running close to 50%.

And Fred, throughout his life, he has all these buildings.

He's got to just buy things like, he's got to paint, he's got to buy boilers, all these sorts of things, and he would source them on Long Island at stores.

And all of a sudden, one day that changed and he started sourcing them from this company called All County.

And it turns out, and we found out through the documents and through sources, that All County was controlled by Donald Trump and his siblings.

So, they would then go out and buy all the same stuff that Fred Trump needed and they would mark it up, and then they would sell it to him.

- Excuse me, I'm sorry for interrupting.

- Yep.

- I just wanna do this.

- Yeah.

First of all, get the book because when Sue's talking about in the weeds, a lot of it is in the weeds.

- Yeah - Try to be a financial investigator, if you will, understanding finances, it's often in the weeds.

But here's the question I know a lot of people are asking right now.

Why does any of this matter, Sue Craig?

Why does this matter to who Donald Trump is as president?

Because I also wanna talk about- - Right.

- His finances since he's been in public office, which also matters, but why does the early part matter, please?

- Well, I think it really matters when you step back from it.

You know, this is a guy and we started the conversation there that he has said for his whole life and he ran for the presidency on the idea that he was this self-made billionaire, and that he was also a great businessman.

And I think that the book lays bare that in fact, both those things aren’t true, but that's the bill of goods he sold to the American public.

And I think it comes in two parts.

One is because we got so much tax information.

We later got troves of his personal and corporate tax information.

Most of his businesses regularly lose money.

And then separately, while all of that is going on, a guy named Mark Burnett, a TV producer- - Yep, - Came along and we got "The Apprentice."

- "The Apprentice."

Did Trump make money on "The Apprentice?"

- He made one of the most, I think kind of the fun part of the book, one of the really fun sections, and you probably found it as you were reading it, was the stuff about "The Apprentice" and what was shocking about "The Apprentice."

I had no idea when I started this.

I figured, okay, he's a TV host on a, it was a game show, but it was a television show.

He's the host.

He comes in at the end.

So, how much did he get per episode?

Well, he got paid per episode, but the real money that, and I just had no idea about it.

- Was it in licensing?

- It was in, part of it, you're right, was licensing.

And then the other part of it was that every TV show for people who, a lot of people have seen it, but for people who haven't, the construct really quickly is just, there's two teams.

- Yep.

- They come in and a company comes in and they produce a product.

It's Dove, you're gonna do soap.

- Yep.

Well, Dove is paying 3 million, 2 million, 4 million, whatever it is, every one.

- Product placement?

- And they would write a check for 4 million, 2 million Mark Burnett, 2 million would go to Donald Trump.

They split that money 50-50.

- But what about if someone said, Sue, because Trump says this all the time, President Trump says all the time, even about his bankruptcies, even about how much he paid or didn't pay in taxes, he would often say, I'm a smart business person, so what you just said about "The Apprentice," as I'm reading it and I'm thinking, first, I didn't know that.

Thank you Sue and your colleague Russ for writing that.

- But also, I thought, that's smart business.

So is Trump right- - Yep.

- When he says, don't criticize me for being good- - I think he was a great TV show host and he made a great, there's no question he made a great show.

- Made a great deal.

- But what those profits did is they allowed him to paper over the massive losses that were going on at his core businesses.

And we could not believe the money he was pumping into foreign golf courses, into golf courses like Doral, like those were hemorrhaging money.

And he was able to use that, and our book shows how he was able to use the money he was making from the TV show, which really saved him at the time.

He was in a very rough shape in the early 2000s and that show came along.

And so, the book sort of tracks all of that.

- So, Sue, this is another thing I'm fascinated by.

But this, and help us on this, a fair number of my friends, people I grew up with who are middle class, working class, middle-class guys, some are in the construction trades, carpenters- - Yeah.

- Plumbers, people who do work on your home.

People do work on properties, right?

- Yeah.

- Electricians.

In the book, it talks extensively about Donald Trump as a business person who had someone work on a property and then just not pay them.

- Right.

- And then when that person would say, wait, I did this work, electrical work, plumbing work, contracting, whatever, carpentry, you owe me.

- Yeah.

- Well, I'm not gonna give it to you.

- Right.

- And I would tell my friends, they go, no, I don't believe that ever happened.

Did Donald Trump not pay the working men and women who worked for him to build his properties?

- Well, that was sort of the, kind of part of the music in the background of the book.

It's told as a narrative and we have characters come in and often at the end of it, the story is they didn't get paid or they got a haircut on it.

And, you know, one fellow told us that was sort of just, there was a guy in the office and that was his job was just to get all of these bills down.

- What do you mean get them down?

So, you owe him 10 grand- - Sometimes he got them down and sometimes he didn't pay people.

It just depended on the circumstance.

- But how did it get away?

- Because the reason he gets away with it, it's a- - I can't even imagine not paying the contractor.

- Right.

- He's got to put food- - Right.

- On his family's table, kids to go to college, pay the mortgage.

How do you not do that?

And then what does he say, sue me?

Does he then say what, go ahead and sue me?

- Right.

And then they end up in litigation with them and they can't afford it.

These are, for the most part, they're, you know, they're not, he's not dealing with people who have billions of dollars, he's dealing with a contractor who may have been hired to build a wing on his golf club or an architect.

And often even the architects, you know, some people caught onto it and they would say, we're not gonna sign all the papers until we're paid.

And there's sort of always a version of what you're talking about plays out for a lot of people in the book.

- Okay.

And by the way- - And it's the fear of litigation.

- Well, as we speak right now, there's a lot of work going on in the East Wing, if I'm not mistaken, of the White House.

And I believe as we're talking, the original architect has been no longer involved.

I don't know.

We'll find, we'll follow who gets paid and who knows whether that becomes public, but let's stay on this money issue.

So back in the day before Donald Trump became president, as a columnist, I used to write a lot about, I used to write for the Atlantic City Press.

- Yeah.

It was a syndicated column and it appeared there.

So, I used to write a lot about the Taj Mahal.

I was fascinated by Trump's casinos.

What was Trump's casino, before we talk about Trump University, university in quotes, what was Trump's track record as a business person in Atlantic City?

Well, he went in and he, first of all, he gets a partner when he goes in and they build the first casino, but he just doesn't wanna take the advice of the partner who's an expert in running casinos.

Like I couldn't believe the stories we were hearing about that.

He didn't wanna do market research and he just, he didn't take their advice and then it didn't work out and that partnership fell apart.

And then he continues to build casinos.

And I just always think about that period, you know, they're cannibalizing each other.

Who wants three casinos in Atlantic City?

Like he runs into problems where, you know, his customers may be going from one of his casinos to another one.

And it all kind of fell apart in the end.

- What about the Taj Mahal, the last casino where there are many economists who understood the economy of Atlantic City.

I remember writing about one of them extensively who Trump went after, who said the economics do not work for the Taj Mahal casino.

There'll never be enough gamblers gambling enough money to pay for this casino.

- Right.

- Trump said he was totally wrong, and the Taj Mahal was gonna be the best.

What happened to the Taj Mahal casino, Sue?

- Well, it failed spectacularly because of what you just said.

He poured so much money into it.

And it failed.

And all of them did.

I mean, it was an ugly- - Did he go bankrupt?

I'm sorry for interrupting.

Did he go bankrupt on the casinos?

- He did, he did, and he had a reckoning with his lenders after that.

- His relationship with the banks.

How did he keep getting money from banks knowing that he was going bankrupt?

- Well, in a way it was too big to fail.

And so, he got a workout and he got an allowance out of it.

But that was a really ugly chapter in his life and I always remember, and this kind of when I step back and think about that time and it is a pattern that continues, is he's always trying to project himself as successful while all these failures are going on in the background.

And one of my favorite stories in the book is during this period where he's struggling and the casinos aren't doing well, he is on a show, you'll probably remember it, called "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" with- - Is that Robin Leach?

- Yeah, yeah.

You know, Champagne Dreams and Caviar whatever and- - Whatever.

- And he was participating in this, and Robin Leach loved him.

The producers loved him because so many rich people did not wanna go on the show because they don't, they're not flashy about their money, but Donald Trump was willing to do it and was willing to have Robin Leach and his crew fly all over the place.

They were gonna Mar-a-Lago.

They were going to his casinos.

They loved the casinos because they were flashy.

They were loud.

They were gold.

And one of these trips, and this comes back to an earlier point of yours, they fly in and they're doing scenes with Donald Trump, and at some point, somebody on one of the tables taps one of the producers that we talked to on the shoulder and says, hey, I don't know if you know about this, but he's not paying his contractors in Atlantic City.

Like this thing is going downhill fast.

And at that point, the producer sort of starts to do a little bit of his own, he's asking a few other people and he finally pulled Robin Leach over and they had a discussion, and they decided not to use Donald Trump on the show anymore.

He had a line to me, he says, we've milked that cow.

So, let's move on.

But they never went public with what they were hearing.

And this is another theme in Donald Trump's life.

He wrote the "Art of the Deal."

You know, he's the greatest, you know, entrepreneur and businessman ever that he writes this book called "Art of the Deal."

We got his tax returns from the year of the "Art of the Deal" and he was losing so much money behind the scenes, but he's projecting this image of wealth over and over and over.

And he's not publicly traded.

So, how do reporters know?

- Yeah.

- But the reporters play into it because he's more celebrity than businessman in New York City.

- So, one of the themes that I keep getting, that I'm fascinated by is who loses in this?

Because there are many people watching right now who are gonna say, Steve, why are you even doing this program?

Who cares?

Donald Trump worked the system.

He often will say that I worked the system.

I knew the system.

I was one of the rich people who took advantage.

I'm more interested in people who got hurt, and let me be more specific.

- Yep.

- As someone who has been engaged in academia, let's say, right?

- Yep.

- I've taught at several universities.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, I mean, but university life, those are, the word university, some of us take seriously- - Right.

- As a graduate of Rutgers University.

That being said, Trump University, what was as concise as possible, so what, first of all, how the heck were they a university?

And B, what did the people get for the 30 plus grand in tuition they were paying?

And then what ultimately did the government do?

Please Sue.

- Yeah, a lot of victims, when you talk about people who got hurt, they were supposed to not be using the word university.

They were warned by the government about that.

He continued to do it, but what did they get?

They paid a lot of money to get some pamphlets and videos about real estate and they paid a huge amount of money and were conned.

- And did the government shut down Trump University?

- They did and they fined him.

It was one of the fines that he's paid in his life, but they made money off of that.

- Did Donald Trump ever say at any point, because I know his philosophy is you don't, and then Roy Cohen, his late great attorney who told him never, ever, ever apologize, did he ever apologize to those people or acknowledge, yeah, you got the shaft, you did not get for your 30 grand or 35 grand, whatever it was?

You're smiling because you know the answer.

- Did he ever apologize?

Not that I remember.

- Did he ever acknowledge that Trump University did not provide what it committed to provide for 30 some odd thousand dollars?

- You know what?

I don't know the details of that settlement, but the fact that it went to a settlement, you can say that, yeah.

- Okay.

Fast forward.

- Yeah.

- Can we talk about, President Trump often says, I got CBS and ABC to pay me 16, $17 million because they defamed me, so out of court I got money from them.

So, I'm a winner there.

Okay.

People can decide for themselves.

- Yeah.

- But what the heck is the deal with making money with cryptocurrency?

- Oh... And if the president says, it's not me, it's my sons.

I have nothing to do with it.

What is the fiscal reality of the presidency of Donald Trump and cryptocurrency?

- Right.

I mean, that's a really tough one.

And, you know, the UAE made an investment in Binance and it was backed by a stablecoin.

- United Arab Emirates?

- Yeah, yeah, And it was backed by the so-called one of these stablecoins, but it was backed by World Liberty Financial, you know, the Trump family's crypto business.

And they're making interest off of this huge investment.

It's almost unbelievable that this is happening.

And I think people, at a certain point, you know, believe what you see with your eyes on this.

- Is it legal?

Sue, from your perspective, you're not doing this as an attorney, is it legal to make money while your president, make personal money?

And by the way, to be full disclosure, the president has publicly said, and I believe it's true, he does not take the salary for being president.

You acknowledge that, right Sue?

- Yeah.

There's fewer rules surrounding what the president can do.

And I would have to look at each one individually and say, is this legal or is this illegal?

You know, I'm not sort of in the weeds on a lot of those.

So, I just wanna be careful about how I'm phrasing.

- I appreciate that, especially because there's a lot of litigation going on.

- Right.

- That being said, President Trump and his children and money, What's the message we should take away?

- I think you should step back when you think about all these things you're seeing and, you know, Don Jr.

is involved in companies that are benefiting from government contracts.

You've got, you know, the cryptocurrency issue.

You know, the east wing is being financed.

This new ballroom is being financed.

Not, you know, he says, well, not by taxpayers, but it's being financed by corporate.

By private contributors.

I think a good question as a reporter and as just a citizen, somebody who votes, is what are those corporations getting?

These are sort of the macro things that you should ask.

You look at the cabinet, you've never seen more, you know, massive multi-multi-millionaires or billionaires in a cabinet and... - Is that a bad thing, Sue, by itself?

In and of itself?

- I think you should just ask, I don't know good or bad.

I just look at it, well, what does that mean and how did they stand to benefit?

How do their business interests stand to benefit?

These are just great questions for investigative reporters and we look into them, but I think one of the things that's sort of interesting about this sort of emergence, and we can talk about it in two pieces, but you know, Elon Musk is the richest guy in the world.

He's by a lot of standards.

When you look at his businesses, he's brilliant, but does that make him qualified to do, to run a cost cutting effort for the US government?

Do we bestow that talent on him just because he is rich?

And I think people should ask questions like that.

Maybe in some cases that person is qualified, but having billions of dollars just doesn't necessarily make you qualified to do those sorts of jobs.

Maybe there's better people, but billionaires, maybe they just think, well, other billionaires are all brilliant.

And then, what is the cost of that?

And there could be numerous costs.

- Before I let you go, by the way, our producers are putting in the chat, make sure you know what the source of this is, team, since the elections, President Trump's family has gotten one, has received $1.8 billion in cash and gifts.

I wanna make sure we source that folks.

Okay.

Center for American Progress.

Thank you very much.

Last question.

We've got a minute left, Sue.

If you were to ask the president these questions in a public Q&A or press conference, he would say, you're a terrible reporter.

You're a terrible person.

This is fake news.

How should we in the media respond when that happens?

When he does that?

- I've seen that over and over.

One could be true, but I think just repeat the question again.

And don't let him move to another reporter who asks a different question.

That reporter should repeat the question if it's worth repeating to get an answer.

I think he does that all the time to deflect and let him do it and then just ask the question again.

- I'm always fascinated by when you get a tough question.

It's not about Donald Trump.

Anyone who's in a public position or a corporation or in media and you're asked a tough question and the response is, well, you're a terrible person.

I never followed that logic.

- You can just say, well, that could be true, but could you please answer my question?

- I like that in my case, I would not have a hard... Some people might agree as well.

But I'll tell you who's not a terrible person.

Watch this corny segue.

Sue Craig is the co-author of "Lucky Loser," How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, a New York Times bestseller.

And by the way, you and your colleague, Russ, pronounce Russ's last name?

- It's Buettner and he's an awesome guy.

So big shout out to him.

- And you're both winners of the Pulitzer Prize.

I've heard of that prize.

It's a big thing.

Thank you, Sue, so much.

We appreciate it.

- Thanks, Steve.

This was lots of fun.

Good fun.

- Same here.

I'm Steve Adubato.

That's a very talented writer, author, and researcher, and investigative reporter.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

Johnson & Johnson.

The New Jersey Education Association.

The Fund for New Jersey.

Hackensack Meridian Health.

Newark Board of Education.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Fidelco Group.

And by Stockton University.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by ROI-NJ.