Celebrating 9/11 (an excerpt from Trump's Unauthorized Autobiography)

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9/11 was probably the best day of my life. Well, I mean, like, maybe one of the best days of life. You know? I mean, I’ve had a lot of best days in my life. You can’t have too many best days. I’ve been lucky. I’ve had a ton of best days. See, I’m lucky in most things, right. I mean, look at me. Most people, like those whiny Dems and radicals, always see the worst of things, but, me, I’m a really positive guy, so I see the best in things. Yeah, that day, everyone is running around like, “Oh no, look at those buildings. Oh no, look at all that smoke and all that fire. What are we gonna do? We have to do something! This is the worst day ever! Help! Help!” But me, I’m like, “Calm down, people.” Because me, I’m really good under pressure, like nobody is better under pressure than me, right? So, there’s me, all cool and calm while everyone else is losing their minds. But me, I try to see the best in everything. I guess I’m just a really positive guy ‘cause when I walk out of my building I see the towers are totally, I mean completely, destroyed – just a mess. Then, I look over at my building at 40 Wall Street and I’m like, “Hey, wow, my building used to second tallest, and now I got the biggest one, you know?” I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always wanted the biggest one, ever since I was a kid, I always wanted the biggest one, but my father, he was a very smart man, very great businessman, always told me, he always said this, “You might have a little one, you might have a big one, but only one person can have the biggest one.” Now, I had no friggen’ idea what the old man meant, but the way he said it, I figured it was something real smart, which is why I felt really good when I walked out that day and saw those buildings in rubble, totally destroyed, ‘cause now I could say, “I have the biggest one.” And, you know, no one could say I didn’t. There it was, like, right there. It’s what called a “fact.”
Now, I know, I know, people are always like, “How is that one of your best days?” They say, “Why are you being such a bad guy when all those people got hurt? Ooooh, oh, oh me oh my.” But, hey, let me tell you, a guy like me, and no one does this better than me, I like to see the positives in the negatives, you know? So, 9/11 turned out pretty good for me. I finally had the biggest one on the block, and I made some money on it, too. I was letting people stay in my building, letting them store all kinds of stuff in my building, because it was huge, you know and had a lot of room, so later I put in for some post-disaster relief money those Clintons were throwing around – figured I deserved it, you know? But, get this, they actually asked for the money back, believe the balls on those Clintons?
And let me tell you this: 9/11 is also another reason why I got into politics. Yeah, true story. The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton didn’t kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance to kill him, and George Bush, by the way, George Bush had the chance, also, and he didn’t listen to the advice of his CIA. I’m telling you, I lost hundreds of friends that day. Also, and I never get a thank you or anything, nothing, I was in there clearing out rubble, dragging people out of the flames. I was there. I could’ve died, and where was Crooked Hillary? Where was Bill? Up in their mansions in Westchester – where I have a real nice golf course if you’re ever up there, by the way – just little old me dragging burning bodies out with the firemen. So, like I’m standing there with soot and dirt and stuff all over my tie, watching those towers burning away, and I says to myself, “I’m going into politics. This isn’t natural.” You know, like Stevie told me.
Think about it. Really, look, I could be the totally complete package, which, I think, in theory anyway, I am, right? That’s not really totally untrue, you know? Roger – Roger Stone – a long-time friend – he’s been trying to get me into politics for a very long time, like for years now, but I told him, I says, “Roger, I could make a lot more money out here on the streets than being stuck in the White House doing God knows what.”
“Nah,” he says to me, “you don’t understand. I been in this business for a long time, going way back to Nixon. You can make tons being president. Trust me.”
Now he’s got my interest, ‘cause if there’s one thing I know how to do, it's make money. So, he tells me, he says, “Yeah, it’s not that different, Donnie boy (that’s what he calls me since God-knows-when, ‘Donnie boy’) than out here on the streets. You use shell companies, right?”
See, a shell company is just a company – a fake company you set up – but it only exists on paper. So let’s say you’re father might be getting on in years and he might be dying and he might have all the money in the family and you want all that money. Not that I did this, mind you. Thing is, you don’t want to pay taxes on that money. So, and I’m not saying I would do this to my father ‘cause I loved that man, but what you could do is have a shell bill the old man for, I don’t know, drywall and painting services. Then, you fudge the figures a little bit, right? One piece of dry wall might cost 200 dollars and a paint brush might cost a 100. The money doesn’t come directly to you. No, it goes to this company, so when Uncle Sam’s IRS boys come knocking on your door, you have nothing to worry about – but you still get the money, see? I’m not saying I ever did anything like that or anything, but it happens. And yeah, yeah, I know everyone complained the whole time during my epic, I mean absolutely, positively, historic campaign, where, as long as we’re on the subject, was truly the best ever. Like, I won by more votes than anyone else, ever, in the history of presidents. In fact, if you look at the numbers, I would have won by double the numbers that I won by if shitholes like California hadn’t allowed millions of illegals to vote when they aren’t even citizens. That’s why we need to build that wall, but wait, I’ll get back to that later. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, so Roger tells me being president is basically the same as being in real estate. So, I’m like, I says, “Bullshit. Quit bullshitting me. You mean to tell me that Nixon and Bush and Reagan were into real estate?”
“Kind of,” Roger tells me. “See, there are these things called PACs.”
I asked him what these things were, and he tells me they’re just like shell companies, but you need them ‘cause there are all these bullshit rules and regulations about how much money a guy can get to campaign for president and stuff. So these PACs, they take the money and launder it and then send it your way, just like a shell. “We thought of it a while back after the feds decided that money wasn’t good for politics.”
Genius, I thought. That’s a really good idea, you know? Roger said they're called “dark money.” I said, we just call it kickbacks. He said the money comes from lobbyists. I was like, “Hey, Rog, I’m like a really smart guy, but I don’t know all these fancy political terms you’re throwing around here.” Then he tells me a lobbyist is just a guy who wants something passed through on a vote, so he spreads a little money around and makes sure the whole process goes smoothly, right? “A bribe,” I told him.
“Nah,” Rog says, “that’s one of those street terms you have to drop. In DC, they call it a campaign contribution, not a bribe.”
Then, my pal Roger was telling me, there are all kinds of business opportunities in being president. Sure, he was like, “The military production, that’s where the big bucks are. You get these little shithole countries, they don’t have the kind of workforce we have. They don’t have the factories. But we do. We make the guns and planes and bombs and what-not, and we sell it to them at a hefty margin of profit.”
So, I was like, then what do we do? We just like skim off the top a bit?”
“No,” Roger told me, “that’s too ‘street.’ What happens is that they get their bombs and whatever, and then you get something else you want.”
“Like money?” I asked him.
“Maybe, maybe not,” he says. “Sometimes it’s just like something indirect.’
I was a little confused but he told me it was like maybe I sell the Saudis a bunch of bombs and stuff so they can bomb Iraq. We want Iraq to get bombed anyway, so we can put some guy in as their leader that will basically hand over all the oil they have to us, and then, he says, when they want to buy a condo or two in New York, Chicago, maybe Vegas, the Saudis come to me and buy it, but for like a lot more than the asking price, you see?
So I was like, “It ain’t that different, really.”
And Roger was like, “Nah, you just have to use a little more finesse than out here, you know? You have to be a little slicker, but it’s the same game. This guy gets a taste of this, so the other guy gets a sniff of that. One country gets this sanction lifted, and another country gets a little help militarily with some bullshit radical ‘freedom fighters’ as they like to call themselves. It’s the same, I’m sure, as when you’re negotiating a real estate deal, right? The county commission gets this. The mayor wets his beak in this. The town board gets a park renovation. Same thing. At the end of the day, everyone is happy.”
“That’s it, really?” I was stunned, ‘cause I didn’t think presidenting was that easy. I gotta say, if that’s presidenting, then I should’ve been doing that job my whole life, right? I mean, am I wrong here? So, he pretty much had me interested, but, hey, you’re talking to the guy who wrote The Art of the Deal, okay? And one thing I always say is that it’s okay to walk away from a bad deal, like if it’s not what you want. You just get up and walk out. That’s all. So I asked Roger, I asked him: “I mean, what about my taxes? You know, I don’t know if I should let a lot of people see my taxes, especially if I’m gonna be president and all. And there’s some other stuff that, maybe, I’d rather not have people looking around into.”
“What taxes?” Roger tells me.
“Whattya mean?” I was confused again. I mean, for a smart guy Roger sure could be confusing sometimes.
“They don’t need to see them,” he tells me. “There’s no law.”
“Really?” I says.
“Yeah,” Roger goes on. “You’re supposed to but that doesn’t mean you have to. Just tell them you’re being audited and when the audit is done, you’ll turn them over.”
“That simple?” I was shocked.
“You’d be surprised how simple it is,” Rog goes on. “You keep it simple because the simple ones are the ones who are going to get you into office and keep you there. These intellectual types are constantly thinking about stuff, analyzing stuff, reading books and criticizing you. Really, who are these people to be criticizing the President of the United States, for crying out loud? Just get those simple people from, you know, like Tennessee and Arkansas. They probably don’t even have cable, for Christ’s sake!"
That’s so true, I thought to myself, ‘cause you can’t really think for anyone else, you know, ‘cause they’re your thoughts in your head, so they have to go to you, but anyway, it seemed pretty true. Like, that’s why I chose the Polish to do some work for me back in the day. They’re big, they’re strong, and nice and dumb. So when the job was over, I just didn’t pay them, but I did get my hotel done. I guess voting and elections are the same way. You just get a bunch of Pollacks and send them to the polls – ha, get it? Polls – and tell them why you’re so great.
“You really think I can win?” I ask Roger.
“Donnie boy,” he tells me, “you’re a shoe-in.”
Now, I never understood that saying, “you’re a shoe-in.” Like, what does it even mean, really? How does a shoe mean that you win automatically? I mean, I get that it means I win right away, but why a shoe? It could’ve easily have been a shoe-out or something. Some of those sayings are just stupid. It felt good, though, you know, being able to know I was gonna win, ‘cause that’s what I do. I win. So I told Roger, “This country, when I’m elected, is gonna have so much winning, so much winning that they’re gonna be sick of winning. They’ll puke up winning. I mean literally puke up victory every morning like one of those broads who forget to take her birth control and get knocked up, and then you have your lawyer make a hush payment. You know what I mean?”
“Donnie boy,” Roger tells me, “I don’t doubt you for a minute. Let’s get you elected.”
So, yeah, 9/11 was a great day in many ways for me. One of my best days, one of my very best days actually, ‘cause it kinda led to me thinking about becoming president, and then winning, and then an epic victory, and then being in the White House. I mean, it was a long process that took a lot of convincing and talking about, over many years, but in the end, it worked. And here, everyone thought 9/11 was some kind of tragedy or something.