Film the choice, President Trump. Frontlinis made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Major support for frontliis provided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information is available at macfound. Org. Additional support is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The john and Helen Glessner family trust, supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. The wyncote foundation. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. Narrator on Election Night 2016, donald trump watched as his world suddenly changed. You see in these pictures donald trump sort of wearily and warily looking at the screen. And he looks like someone who cant actually believe that hes winning. Donald trump will be the 45th president of the United States. Impossible political upset to become the president elect. Narrator it was an historic upset for a political outsider. I pledge to every citizen of our land that i will be president for all americans. Narrator and it was a moment of vindication for a candidate who had climbed back from a bitter public humiliation. Were talking about the white house Correspondents Dinner tonight. Donald trump has been invited. Narrator it happened in april 2011, at one of washington, d. C. s most glamorous nights. Annual white house Correspondents Dinner, the event. din of crowd i got to talk to donald as we were going to our seats, and he was in just such a great mood, and he was very jovial, and people were taking pictures. It was very exciting that donald was there. Donald, over here narrator trumps invitation to the exclusive gathering came after weeks of attacking president barack obama on television. You are not allowed to be a president if youre not born in this country. He may not have been born in this country. But theres something on that birth certificate, maybe religion, maybe it says hes a muslim, i dont know, maybe he doesnt want that, or he may not have one. But i will tell you this if he wasnt born in this country, its one of the great scams of all time. Absolutely. Narrator but that night, in front of washingtons journalists, politicians, and powerbrokers, obama would hit back. President obama takes the microphone. All right, everybody, please have a seat. Donald trump is here tonight and proceeds to filet donald publicly. No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the donald. And thats because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like did we fake the moon landing . I was sitting 20 feet from him, and just the look of discomfort on his face. What really happened in roswell . And where are biggie and tupac . Donalds face was so incredibly serious. It was so incredibly just. He just put on a poker face. I was two tables away from trump. The conventional way in washington of absorbing a joke at the white house Correspondents Dinner is to keep your chin up and at least pretend to have a sense of humor about it, even if you go cry into your pillow that night. Trump was steaming. His face was all locked in, he was not having a good time. All kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. laughter for example. No, seriously, just recently, in an episode of celebrity apprentice, at the steakhouse, the Mens Cooking Team did not impress the judges from omaha steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so, ultimately, you didnt blame lil jon or meatloaf. You fired gary busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. And hes being treated like a pinata by the president of the United States. And i think he felt humiliated. applause well handled, sir. Well handled. But it just kept going and going, and he just kept hammering him. And i thought, oh, barack obama is starting something that i dont know if hell be able to finish. Say what you will about mr. Trump, he certainly would bring some change to the white house. Lets see what weve got up there. Donald dreads humiliation and he dreads shame. And this is why he often attempts to humiliate and shame other people. So in the case of the president ridiculing him, i think this was intolerable for donald trump. I think that is the night that he resolves to run for president. I think that he is kind of motivated by it. Maybe ill just run. Maybe ill show them all. Every critic, every detractor will have to bow down to President Trump. Its everyone whos ever doubted donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe. God bless you, and may god bless the United States of america. Donald trumps fantasy was to be the guy who takes the key to the oval office from Barack Obamas hand in 2017. And its personal. This is a burning, personal need that he has to redeem himself from being humiliated by the first black president. This is new york, a miracle city, a city of tall buildings, narrow, dark streets, magnificent parks. Narrator back in the 1940s. The borough of queens, occupying part of long island. Narrator just across the east river from manhattan. A municipally operated Electrical Railway system spreads through four of the five boroughs. Narrator . Donald trump grew up in a posh suburb called jamaica estates. Its perhaps typical of new yorks residential areas. The trump family had a huge house in queens that they used to refer to as tara. It had nine bedrooms, it had columns, it was quite beautiful, but it was in queens. Narrator the trump family would spend 50 years building memories here. Fred trump, a real estate developer, designed the house himself and raised donald and his brothers and sisters in luxury. Its not like he knew anything but comfort. When it rained and he had to deliver his papers, the chauffeur would take him around. Narrator but donalds father was tough and insisted everyone learn the family business. He was a guy who worked seven days a week. Its sunday why wouldnt you be working . And would, even on the weekends, pile the kids in the car and go to a building site, pick up old nails that werent used. Why would you waste a nail . Fred trump was a machine. I mean, he was a human machine. He was driven beyond whatever the description of driven could ever mean. And when you look at the picture of fred and you look at donald, you see the great resemblance between the two. And when you think about freds energy, you see how it is channeled through donald. Narrator fred was seen as passionate about the business, but not warm with his children. Cold he was not a warm person. I see his father at the beach, even, with a suit and a tie and a hat, a clipped very kind of military mustache, and simply being. Correct. Narrator fred had theories. He shared them with his kids. Donald especially liked one of them. This is a very deep part of the trump story. The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development. They believe that there are superior people, and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring. Narrator freds other theory life was a competition. There were winners and there were losers. He called the winners killers. The way the game got played in his household was if you did not win, you lost. And losing was you got crushed. Losing was you didnt matter. Losing was you were nothing. Narrator donald took the lessons to heart always tried to be the winner. But he was also a handful. His brother, robert, whos very discreet, told me that donald was always the kid in the family who would start throwing birthday cake at all the parties, that you would build up a tower of blocks, he would come knock your blocks down. This is the person hes been, i think, since he was five years old. Donald told me that he is essentially the person he was in first grade and that he hasnt really changed. His selfdefinition was built around the idea that he was one tough son of a bitch. That meant in classrooms, that meant with teachers, that meant with his father. Narrator by the seventh grade, even fred had had it with donalds mischief. He sent him up the hudson river just a few miles from west point to the toughest boarding school he could find the new York Military academy. drumline performing you have to think of this 13yearold kid whos lived a very comfortable life, but then all of a sudden, hes the one child of five to be banished to this austere life. Goodbye, luxury. Goodbye, mom and dad, brothers and sisters. Hello, drill sergeant. Narrator the new York Military academy was nononsense, heavy on the discipline; over the years, home to the children of gangster john gotti and cuban dictator fulgencio batista. It was a very austere, very scary place. I was homesick. I was crying hysterically. In fact, i was crying so much the first couple of nights, they put me in the infirmary. We were in a culture of hazing at the military school. Everyone. I mean, thats just the way it was. You got hit, you may have gotten slammed against the wall, you got put artificially into fights. Narrator but the rough and tumble didnt seem to bother donald. He thrived. He liked it. Apparently he really liked it. He liked the accountability. He liked the kind of clarity of it. And he liked that there was a medal and a prize for everything. Narrator he was a star athlete. He claimed he could have played pro baseball. But his classmates agree he was proudest of winning the ultimate accolade in an allboys school. He was named ladies man in the school yearbook. Hugh hefner, the publisher of playboy, was a role model for many of the boys. Yeah, you know, he had a very hugh hefner, Playboy Magazine view of success. Narrator the young cadets learned a lot from Playboy Magazine and what they called barracks talk. In fact, our biggest advice in our lives came from Playboy Magazine. Thats how we learned. Thats what we learned about women. So that was all of my adolescence. And thats why getting out of military school was difficult. You had to realize that you couldnt just follow the playboy philosophy. Narrator they would graduate and grow up. But donalds classmates say in some ways, he hasnt changed at all. The things that we talked about at that time in 1964 really are very close to the kind of way he talks now. I hear these echoes of the barracks life that we had and that we grew out of. You can tell by the way i use my walk. Narrator by the early 1970s, trump had graduated from college. He headed out of queens and into manhattan. From the very first time i met trump, i thought of saturday night fever and travolta. Whether youre a brother or whether youre a mother, youre stayin alive he was the kid who grew up as an outsider to where the real action was. Ah, ah, ah, ah. And he was acutely aware of it. Ah, ah, ah, ah. He always had his eye on what he thought was a glamorous, hollywoodish life, and that was the life of manhattan. I think if you had to pick sort of three stereotypes that are probably constantly tapdancing in donalds mind and in his imagination of himself, its clint eastwood, james bond, and hugh hefner. Hes really spreading his wings when he comes to manhattan. Well, i think hes having the time of his life. Hes a bachelor hes an eligible bachelor. Narrator he frequented the citys hottest places. He met nikki haskell, the host of an underground cable show about the party scene. When i saw donald, nobody knew who he was. He was just a young, very aggressive, smart boy. A hotshot, so to speak, someone that had big dreams, and thats what this town is built on. Whats going on . Narrator during the day, he worked hard to do something his father never did break into manhattan real estate. Hes a kid who wants to figure out how to make deals, to figure out how to establish a presence for himself in manhattan. And hes right to believe that thats not easy to do. Narrator he needed a mentor. He found one in roy cohn, the notorious new york lawyer. Well, he was savage. Cohn had an incredible reputation for being a tough, tough guy. The scene is washington and the senate investigating subcommittee mr. Cohn, his friend and aide, was present with senator mccarthy to answer accusations. Narrator cohn had become famous during the mccarthy hearings, a witch hunt that accused americans of communist sympathies. He delighted in the fact that he had ruined so many lives in the mccarthy era. There is detailed testimony of that in the record, mr. Chairman, of levitskys association, close personal association with Julius Rosenberg over a period of years. Roy cohn humiliated people. He made up things. He had no morals. You couldnt even say that he had the morals of a snake. He had no morals. He had no moral center. Everyone knows the most famous legal eagle, my pal and yours, roy cohn. Good evening, nikki. How are you . Roy was like a street guy. You know, he was like, punch. You punch me, ill punch you. And i think he made donald very confrontational. And i think you had that sort of tough guy, dont take any kind of bull bleep from anybody kind of an attitude. And i think a lot of that, you know, he instilled in donald. And in his drawer, he had a picture of roy, and it was a grainy blackandwhite picture, and roy looked like the devil. And he would pull it out and he would say, this is my lawyer. If we cant make an agreement, this is who youre going to be dealing with. Narrator in 1973, trump hired cohn to defend him and his father. They had been sued by the federal government for discriminating against black renters looking for apartments in their buildings. The lawsuit revealed that trump agents allegedly were writing down c for colored or number 9 to indicate a black prospective tenant, and those people were often turned away. And trump asked him for advice what do i do . Do i settle . And roy cohn said, never settle. Roy cohn said, you need to fight back harder than they ever hit you. Narrator at a press conference and in court filings, trump and cohn claimed they were the victims. He comes right back with a 100 million lawsuit, which was filed by roy cohn. And that was roy cohns signature kind of thing. Roy cohn taught donald how to come out punching, how to use lawsuits like machine gun bullets, and take a noprisoners approach to city hall, to your business opponents, to anyone else who might get in your way. And i think donald reveled in that. Narrator but with damning evidence of racial discrimination, the company was forced to settle. Nevertheless, trump didnt admit any wrongdoing and even declared the outcome a victory. This is a classic example of where trump begins to demonstrate something he talks about all the time today, which is hes a counterpuncher. So somebody comes after him and says that hes done something nefarious and horrible, and he just goes back at them with all guns blazing. You know, boom, boom, boom and admits nothing. Never admit anything. Never say you made a mistake. Just keep coming. And if you lose, declare victory. And thats exactly what happened there. He lost as clearly as you can lose, but he loudly proclaimed his victory. Narrator the controversy didnt diminish trumps ambitions to leave his mark on manhattan. He had been searching for the perfect location. And donald came upon this site, which had the Bonwit Teller building on it. It was kind of a landmark building. It was next door to tiffanys. He loved it. Narrator it was to be called trump tower 58 stories of highend retail and highpriced condominiums. A chance for donald to finally surpass his father. To oversee the project, trump surprised the construction world he put a woman in charge. He said that i would be his representative and act sort of like a donna trump, he said, calling me a killer. I would be in charge of everything that would normally come to him. Narrator the mens world of unions and subcontractors in new york had never seen it before. Donald told me that he thought that men were better than women, especially in this field, but he said a good woman is better than ten good men. I think he believed that women had to prove themselves more than men, so a good woman would work harder. Narrator res kept the contractors in line, and executive Vice President louise sunshine handled the sales. He hired the right people to help him, myself being one of them. And we got the job done. Look at my next guest. This is a reporter on wall street. This is what he has in mind. Narrator and trump personally took care of the marketing. Donald trump, as i say, is just 33 years old. He now has an apartment for sale in a new Trump Building called the trump tower, one floor of it, 11 million all together. Youre worth all this money. You say you didnt say that you want to be worth a billion dollars. No, i really am not looking to make tremendous amounts of money. Im looking to enjoy my life, and if that happens to go with it, thats fabulous. Narrator and to help sell the apartments, trump had a novel idea he inflated the floor numbers. His 58story building became a 68story building. How he got away with that, im not sure, but he did, and it made a lot of sense in his mind because if youre renting a room, youd rather be on the 14th floor than on the sixth floor. In his mind, having an apartment, the higher the apartment was, the better it would look. Narrator in his autobiography, written with author tony schwartz, trump would call it truthful hyperbole. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. I came up with the phrase truthful hyperbole, and of course its a ridiculous term because there is no such thing as truthful hyperbole, but its kind of a winning phrase. It really does capture a way in which he sees the world. The truth doesnt mean much to donald trump. In the time that i was reporting on him, his lawyer said to me, donald is a believer that if you repeat something enough, people will start to believe it. Its Opening Party was one to end them all. Guests, thousands of them, mingled. Narrator and at its grand opening, the marketing, the publicity, paid off. Whoohoo this is your celebration. Its donald trum