Others interviewed for the book include boxing legend Muhammad Ali, talk show host Larry King, entrepreneur Michael Bloomberg, and tennis star Billie Jean King. Trump's is the lead interview.
At the time the book was published, Mackay was, and probably still is, a syndicated columnist and motivational speaker.
"In the early 1990s," Mackay remarked as a preface to the Q&A interview, "Trump was in the red. Not millions. But billions." Among the setbacks were his failing Atlantic City casinos.
"Although [Trump]was never in his life actually fired from any job," acknowledged Mackay, "Donald Trump experienced far worse. The financial community and the press pulverized him." This happened at a time when he was having a lot of financial woes and was an easy target for his enemies.
Mackay, in total awe of Trump's financial wizardry, referenced Trump's book, Trump: The Art of the Comeback, in which "he chronicled perhaps the greatest personal rebound in financial history." That led to his hit NBC-TV reality show, The Apprentice, which premiered in 2004 and ran for ten years with him as the host.
According to Joshua Green, the author of Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (Penguin Press, 2017), "Mark Burnett, the show's creator, had originally sold the concept to NBC as one where Trump would host The Apprentice for only the first season, after which he would give way to a succession of iconic business moguls, such as Richard Branson, Mark Cuban, or Martha Stewart." Following the airing of episode one, NBC decided, said a network executive, that "we want more Trump." And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.
According to Joshua Green, the author of Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (Penguin Press, 2017), "Mark Burnett, the show's creator, had originally sold the concept to NBC as one where Trump would host The Apprentice for only the first season, after which he would give way to a succession of iconic business moguls, such as Richard Branson, Mark Cuban, or Martha Stewart." Following the airing of episode one, NBC decided, said a network executive, that "we want more Trump." And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.
Mackay, in a brief phone interview, asked Trump how he went about firing people. Trump told him that "I've fired people slowly, letting them down gently over a period of months and even years. And I've fired people on the spot. Whenever you terminate someone," he continued, "the end result is always the same. They always hate you. There are certain people whom I've not only eased out over a period of months, I even got them new jobs. [Italics mine.] Then I found out that they still hate me."
Did Trump try to find new jobs for former FBI director James Comey and former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara after he fired them shortly after being inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States? I'm certain that he didn't.
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