Podcast: Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth
When Harper Collins published Wayne Barrett's 1991 book, "Trump: The Deals and the Downfall," the business tycoon was beginning to unravel, due to the ugly convergence of his business and personal life.
"When the book came out, he was a joke," Barrett said. "When I signed the book in '89, he was the king of the hill. It took me about a day to reach the dollar terms with Harper Collins and then it took about three or four months to work out the libel language in the contract because Harper Collins did not have libel insurance at the time, so who was going to pay what and under what circumstances? I had to hire my own lawyer to work out the libel language, but then by the time I'm on the trail and working on the book, he starts falling apart."
Fast forward roughly 25 years, and Trump is at the forefront of the Republican presidential field, a candidate unlike any the United States has seen in modern history. With Trump's ascension to political relevancy, Barrett is getting ready to reissue his book, retitled "Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: the Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention." Barrett, a former longtime investigative reporter for the Village Voice, sat down with Gerson Borrero and me at his Brooklyn home on this week's Slant Podcast to take us through Trump's early business failures and knack for incendiary, racially-tinged rhetoric that has carried over to his 2016 candidacy.
"No one ever said the obvious, but the obvious is that this is a race button that Donald has pushed," Barrett said. "He thought he was gonna run in 2012 and what button did he push? The birther button. He's understood this for a long time. He thought he might run for mayor in '89, when he did the ads about the death penalty in the jogger case in Central Park. He's had one move to the basket, and it's race, and he understood that this was supposed to be a subliminal message. Not too subliminal, but a subliminal message of the Republican Party, the 'southern strategy' nationwide. But he's made it extremely explicit."
Barrett also spoke on what he believes is a complete absence of serious questioning of Trump's credentials. And while he predicts that Trump will get a fresh round of vetting during the general election, he has very little faith in the broadcast media to set a standard for serious reporting.
"I don't think the print media has done a bad job, the broadcast media has been...I go beyond shameful," Barrett said. "If there is the slightest bit of an email story about Hillary, every cable TV guy is talking about it all day long. The New York TImes can do front page stories, the Washington Post can do front page stories, Politico, who is constantly quoted on broadcast news, they can do and have done some excellent stories on Donald, and they're never even discussed."
Be sure to download, review and subscribe to this week's Slant Podcast on iTunes or stream the episode via Stitcher. Stay tuned for part two of our discussion with Wayne Barrett later this week, when he weighs in on local politics, including his take on the relationship between Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.