Donald Trump

Leverage: don’t make deals without it!

An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud

I don’t make deals for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it.

I feel a lot of people listen to what I have to say.

Focus is essential to success, and successful people are people who can focus.

You have to know how to defend yourself.

The penthouse doesn’t have immediate conveniences that you would expect, but it’s a work of art and a crown jewel in the city. That was the intention, and who else could do that but Axel Vervoordt?

I’m passionate about real estate and that’s what works for me.

Put it up for sale at an asking price of $25 million. I first looked at Mar-a-Lago while vacationing in Palm Beach in 1982. Almost immediately I put in a bid of $15 million, and it was promptly rejected. Over the next few years, the foundation signed contracts with several other buyers at higher prices than I’d offered, only to have them fall through before closing. Each time that happened, I put in another bid, but always at a lower sum than before. Finally, in late 1985, I put in a cash offer of $5 million, plus another $3 million for the furnishings in the house. Apparently, the foundation was tired of broken deals. They accepted my offer, and we closed one month later. The day the deal was announced, the Palm Beach Daily News ran a huge front-page story with the headline MAR-A-LAGO’S BARGAIN PRICE ROCKS COMMUNITY. Soon, several far more modest estates on property a fraction of Mar-a-Lago’s size sold for prices in excess of $18 million. I’ve been told that the furnishings in Mar-a-Lago alone are worth more than I paid for the house. It just goes to show that it pays to move quickly and decisively when the time is right.

I had worked for Warner Brothers most of my adult life, and I was totally enthralled by the world that this guy had created. So I bought the house. And I sold Warner Brothers all the scripts, the Oscars, the mementoes for $3 million, which they’re going to use for a museum. I sold some of the rest of the stuff for $7 million. And I kept millions of dollars of furniture and silver. So I was really paying about $34 million for prime Beverly Hills property.