Read Online The Making of Donald Trump by David Cay Johnston - Free Book Online Page A

along with him. Judge Ralph K. Winter Jr. wrote that “what the USFL seeks is essentially a judicial restructuring of major-league professional football to allow it to enter” into a merger with the NFL.
    Calling the NFL “a highly successful entertainment product,” Judge Winter observed that “new sports leagues must be prepared to make the investment of time, effort and money that develops interest and fan loyalty and results in an attractive product for the media. The jury in the present case obviously found that patient development of a loyal following among fans and an adherence to an original plan that offered long-run gains were lacking … The jury found that the failure of the USFL was not the result of the NFL’s television contracts but of its own decision to seek entry into the NFL on the cheap.”
    The appeals court decision, which the United States Supreme Court let stand, was a stinging rebuke of Trump’s effort to use litigation to obtain what he was unwilling to achieve by patiently devoting time, money, and effort in the market.
    Years later, Trump would appear in an ESPN documentary by Mike Tollin called
Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?
The title came from Trump’s own response when Tollin suggested that the USFL could have survived had it stuck to a spring season format.
    The documentary includes a shot from the USFL days showing a smiling Trump looking into the camera and expressing his support for Tollin, along with his expectation that Tollin would not be well-rounded in his filmmaking, but biased in favor of Trump. “Mike will only use the good,” says Trump. “Mike’s a star maker.”
    At the time, Tollin ran the company that filmed USFL games and stitched together highlights, which he considered a dream job. When Tollin interviewed Trump a quarter century later for his ESPN documentary, Trump grew annoyed by questions about whether the lawsuit was the smart strategy and whether a spring football league could have prospered. “It would have been small potatoes,” Trump says as he pulls off his microphone and walks out. The documentary also includes Trump summarizing his thoughts years after the USFL fold: “It was a nice experience,” he says. “It was fun. We had a great lawsuit.”
    Tollin extended Trump a courtesy in 2009 by sending him a rough cut of the film before it aired on ESPN. Trump was not happy with what he saw. In what had long before become a pattern when he was displeased, Trump took a thick, felt-tip pen to Tollin’s letter before mailing it back: “A third rate documentary and extremely dishonest—as you know. Best wishes,” Trump wrote, adding his distinctive, jaws-like signature. “P.S.—You are a loser.” Trump underlined the last word.
    To disagree with Trump is to be wrong. To portray Trump in a way that does not fit with his image of himself is to be aloser. It is an approach to life that may work in business (where Trump can walk out and not deal with people who displease him), but government leaders do not enjoy that luxury, especially the president of the United States.
    If the Senate and House leadership do not do as the president wishes, he cannot dismiss them. The Constitution makes Congress coequal. The same is true of the Supreme Court. Leaders of sovereign nations—whether democratically elected politicians as in Canada, Europe, and Mexico, heirs to the throne as in much of the Middle East, or self-appointed autocrats as in China, Cuba, and North Korea—also cannot be dismissed in the way Trump walked out on Tollin and others who have not embraced his self-image over the years. Everyone cannot be expected to “use only the good.”
    The ruinous legal strategy Trump sold to the other USFL team owners was not the only time that he would flout conventional rules of conduct. After the USFL failed, Trump drafted a letter on Trump Organization stationery. This letter sought leniency for a major cocaine and marijuana trafficker with multiple