BRIAN LAMB: David Cay Johnston, a book called, "The Making of Donald Trump" is your latest and you say in the book that in the spring of 2016, you talked to Mr. Trump on the phone. What was that about?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I was writing a piece for "POLITICO Magazine" about all of Donald's connections to a very major drug trafficker who supplied him with his helicopters to con artists, swindlers, American mafia, Russian mobsters and Donald had been sent an e-mail by me asking if we want to comment with about 20 points and he called me.
And the essence of the conversation was, you may have written a lot of things I like, Dave, but if I don't like what you're writing I'm going to sue you. I've -- from covering the Santa Cruz City Council in California 50 years ago to today, that's the only the politician who's ever threatened to sue me unless I write what he wants.
And I said, well, Donald, you're a public figure. That means he would have to prove I deliberately lied and knew it. And he goes, I know I'm a public figure. I'll sue when anyway. And I think this is indicative of Donald's character and his authoritarian approach. You do it the way I want it or I will make life difficult for you.
BRIAN LAMB: What do you remember reacting to when he said that? What was your…
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: People try to sue me a lot of times. It just goes with the job.
BRIAN LAMB: 1988 in Atlantic City you say you've met him for the first time, what were the circumstances?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I have left to Los Angeles Times where I spent 12 years to go to Atlantic City for the Philadelphia Inquirer. I believe we were going to see casino gaming spread all across America which we did and I wanted to examine whether government really could clean up this business which was traditionally run by vice lords and crooks.
And within a couple of days, I met Donald. I immediately recognized, Brian, that he's P.T. Barnum. He's selling you tickets to the Feejee Mermaid and the amazing two-headed woman.
And then I started -- because he was the dominant force in Atlantic City, I started asking about him and his competitors include Steve Wynn and people who work for him and some big gamblers all said to me, Donald, doesn't know anything about the casino business.
Come on, how can he not know anything about the casino business? They said, all he knows is how to extract money from the casino. He doesn't know how to manage customers. He doesn't know how to reinvest in the properties. He doesn't know how to develop customers, et cetera.
So Donald and I had a cup of coffee not long after that and I asked him a question about crops and I deliberately made a false statement and Donald immediately incorporated my falsehood into his answer. What's a con artist do? That's what the psychics advertise on daytime TV do.
So I had a couple more questions that I asked him where I made false statements and he immediately embrace them and I realized that what I was being told was true, Donald doesn't know anything. It's all blaster, it's all appearance, it's all threats.
He's quick and he's smart but he's not at all studious or deep and in the book, I quote testimony where he gives answers to questions. One of them, my students at Syracuse University who are law -- third year law and graduate business students, at the end of my course can answer the question like this, anyone who's been to Wharton Business School can answer like this, Donald's answer is gibberish, he doesn't understand the most basic issues of finance.
And listen to how he answers questions, you know, we asked him, what's your favorite Bible verse because he says, no one reads the Bible more than Donald Trump and he goes, there's so many, there's so many, you know, they're just so many.
BRIAN LAMB: Back in 1968, he appeared on the Oprah Show.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: In '88 I think.
BRIAN LAMB: Not '68, that just shows you're my age, back in '88, all right. Here is a clip of Donald Trump on that show in 1988.
(Video begins)
Oprah Winfrey: This sounds like political presidential talk to me and I know people have talked to you about whether or not you want to run. Would you ever?
Donald Trump: Probably not but I do get tired of seeing the country…
Oprah Winfrey: Why would you not?
Donald Trump: I just don't think I really have the inclination to do it. I love what I'm doing. I really like it.
Oprah Winfrey: Also don't pay as well.
Donald Trump: Yes, I think. But, you know, I just probably wouldn't do it, Oprah. I probably wouldn't but I do get tired of seeing what's happening with this country and if it got so bad, I would never want to rule it out totally because I really am tired of seeing what's happening with this country, how we're -- how we're really making other people live like kings and we're not.
Oprah Winfrey: You've said thought that if you did run for president, you believe you'd win.
Donald Trump: Well, I don't know. I think I'd win. I tell you what, I wouldn't go in to lose. I'd never gone into losing lose my life and if I did decide to do it, I think I'd be inclined. I would say that I would have a hell of a chance of winning because…
(Video ends)
BRIAN LAMB: That was 28 years ago, what do you think?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Right. Well, first of all, that was the year he asked George H.W. Bush to make him his running mate as vice president and instead Dan Quayle got the job.
Donald has been talking about running for president since 1985 and 12 years later in 2000, he ran and he said, I'm going to be the first person to run for president and make a profit.
So this indicative of Donald. Donald will tell you whatever he thinks is in his interest at the moment. That's what con artist do. They tell you whatever is in their interest, whatever they think you want to hear and what will get you to do whatever is they want.
BRIAN LAMB: What are you on politics?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I'm a registered Republican. Before that, I was registered in Tom Golisano's party in New York but I'm not a political person. I voted for people on every line that's ever appeared on the ballot I want for different offices.
I don't like politics. This is the one of only two campaigns in the last four years I've covered. I did for "The LA Times", the governor's race in 1976 in Nevada and I hated covering. I don't like covering politics. I'm a policy guy.
I am someone who believes that we should be using the government for the purposes, the six noble purposes in the preamble, to establish justice, promote the general welfare. And in fact, I'm developing, I hope, a new course to teach at Syracuse which is how we got the Constitution and what it's about in context.
BRIAN LAMB: You say in the book that Trump family really haven't been voters.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes. Interestingly, two of Donald's children did not get to vote for him because they hadn't registered as Republicans and they then complained about the rules.
Well, New York has archaic, awful, terrible election rules but they should have known this. And they are the ones who are responsible for doing this. Donald hasn't voted in bunch of elections and by the way, Donald until very recently was basically a Democrat and one of the things Donald believes in, which is a good thing in my view, is universal healthcare.
We should get healthcare off the box of business and it should be as he says a public good provided to everybody. That's certainly not a Republican Party position.
BRIAN LAMB: Give us some background on yourself, where did you grow up?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: I was born in San Francisco. I consider home to be Santa Cruz, California. My father was 100 percent disabled veteran of World War II. My mother was a disowned heiress and I had the odd experience of growing up in a house on a cliff over the beach that my parents rented for maybe $400 on today's money, nothing.
BRIAN LAMB: What do you mean by disowned heiress?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: She testified against her father in a lawsuit in 1941 when he was sued for alienation of affection and his only child, my mother was disowned and he was a very wealthy man.
And so I went to work when I was 10 years old. I went to work fulltime at 13. I became a reported for some weekly papers at 17 and my work immediately got noticed because I did some simple things. If the school board said the average owner -- the owner -- the average $34,314 house in Santa Cruz next year will pay $42.11 more in property taxes, I thought that was useful, so with long division I said, you'll pay so much more per thousand in the value of your house.
At 18, San Jose Mercury recruited me. At 19, I was right writing front page stories in the San Jose Mercury as a staff writer and I went to the Detroit -- I went to the University of Chicago, graduate of School of Eco as a fellow for two quarters to "Detroit Free Press", "The LA Times", "Philadelphia Inquirer", "The New York Times."
And then just short of 40 years of daily reporting, I left and since then, I've been a columnist and an author and teaching at Syracuse University in the College of Law.
BRIAN LAMB: But live in Rochester.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Live in Rochester, my wife runs the very successful community foundation there in Rochester, New York. We had the best child care in all of the United States, Canada and Western Europe and it costs this much more than warehousing kids, very smart that she's intimately involved with.
BRIAN LAMB: A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump went to Tampa to give a speech and when he got there, this video which was not done by him, of course, it was done by the folks that opposed him, played and it's about 50 seconds and see if what you think.
(Video begins)
Male: Something stinks about the Pam Bondi-Trump university scandal but don't take our word for it.
Donald Trump: When I call, they kiss my ass. When I call, they kiss my ass. When I call, they kiss my ass.
Male: Join thousands of Floridians and demand a federal investigation into the Bondi-Trump University scandal. Visit progressflorida.org.
Donald Trump: They kiss my ass.
(Video ends)
BRIAN LAMB: So what's that all about?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, Donald Trump had someone come to him what was a very good business idea. The man was in the business of running continuing professional education.
Lawyers, accountants, real estate agents have to go to courses to make sure they're up on the law and he went to Trump and said, why don't we do Trump real estate professional education and we charge a premium price. Well, that's a brilliant business idea. And that Donald said, that's such a good idea, I'm taking it away from you.
He gave the guy a little tiny stake, I think it was 3 percent and a quarter million dollar salary and they decided then to turn it into Trump University. Well, first of all, you can't call something university without a license from the state and that's true and I believe every state in -- but every state I've checked, it is.
Secondly, this was not a university in even the dictionary meaning of the word. And Trump University quickly came under investigation as a scam. People paid $1,500 and what they got for that were high pressure sales tactics where the faculty would stand over them and tell them how to call banks and borrow more money and credit cards so they could pay $35,000 to get the full Trump University package.
Donald did a promotional video, Trump University is all about success. You're going to have success. We're going to have the best faculty and adjunct faculty. They will be handpicked by me, the best of very best. You'll get a better education than at the best business schools and I know because I went to the best one.
He didn't by the way. He went to the undergraduate program of Wharton, not its graduate program. Well, it turned out that the faculty new nothing about real estate. They included the manager of a fastfood joint, two people in personal bankruptcy and a lot of people with experience, Brian, in high pressure sales tactics as would getting people to run up their debts.
And by the way, if you've ran up your debt and borrowed as much as the banks possibly give you to pay for a Trump University, how would you have any borrowing capacity to buy real estate?
So the New York State attorney general brought a lawsuit over this, Donald's total stop using the word university. He ignored it for several years. The Texas attorney general's office did investigation and Pam Bondi, the attorney general of Florida said publicly she was thinking about joining New York investigation.
She and Donald had some kind of communication. They also -- the Trump -- the Donald J. Trump charitable foundation then made a campaign contribution to Pam Bondi. Now charitable foundations cannot be involved in political activity. This should cause the revocation of their status as a non-profit.
The Bondi campaign manager was asked about this and the Florida newspapers reported that we're perfectly comfortable with the gift from the Donald J. Trump Foundation which is astonishing.
Pam Bondi is a lawyer. She knows better than this. She also decided not to participate in the New York attorney general's investigation and this ad which is pretty brutal is about fundamentally Pam Bondi. It's about the attorney general who accepted this gift.
And by the way, the Trump people tried to cover this up. They argued and I explained in my book that it was money to go to a particular group, an anti-abortion group that teaches people how to protest against our current abortion laws. They didn't get any money. Then they said it was the this outfit in California, they didn't get any money, and they said, well, it was just a mistake.
Well, if it's a mistake, Pam Bondi should be giving it back and they should have directed the money to the other organizations. They haven't done any of that and he goes to a poor issue about Donald. Donald has no regard for whatever the law is. He does what he wants to do.
BRIAN LAMB: Has he ever been sued?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: He's been sued according to USA Today more than 4,500 times. He's been sued by workers he wouldn't pay and there's a chapter in my book about that. He's been sued by vendors and he's been sued by investors who said they've been swindled.
Right now, it just happened after I finished the book, a Benjamin Moore pain dealer who supplied paint for the remake of the Doral Country Club that Donald owns wasn't paid the last $34,000. And to a little business like that, $34,000 is a big chunk of their year's profits.
He sued -- he spent over $300,000 on legal fees trying to collect this 34,000 and a judge finally granted this Benjamin Moore paint dealer the power to foreclose on the Doral after Donald Trump's witness testified about why didn't he pay the 34,000, your contracts said you had to pay.
Mr. Trump feels he has paid enough and Donald does this all the time. He will take the work you do for him, he'll use it and then he'll say I'm not going to use it, it's crap, I'm not going to pay you for it. And if you go to a lawyer, it's $34,000 or even a hundred, they'll tell you you're going to spend $300,000 on lawyers to fight Trump. And he's done this again and again and again and again and again.
BRIAN LAMB: This book was published by what publisher?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Melville House Press which is a little outfit in Brooklyn and in London that do something -- when I did my very first book which you interviewed me about, "Temples of Chance" back in 1992, I complained back then that my publisher was doing everything on paper and they were slow and they're efficient, I said, somebody needs to make this modern and quick and modernize the book business, these folks did it.
BRIAN LAMB: Wikipedia said it's a liberal publishing operation.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: You know, liberal, conservative, I don't care. I mean, I don't pay any attention to the politics of the people I work for. You know, when I was at "The LA Times" they ran editorials sometimes that basically said, don't believe what that guy wrote.
I don't -- I don't -- I mean, I don't care. I tell the people I'm writing for what I'm going to write even when I was a reporter. They never tell me unless if it's breaking news, you know, an airplane crashed, we need you to do -- to be ready right now and I would do that. I tell them what I'm going to do and I've always done that and if you do that, of course, eventually you were -- you're welcome wherever you work.
BRIAN LAMB: Where did you get the idea of this book and when?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, "Temples of Chance" I think all but one chapter has some reference to Trump in it because he was so dumbed in Atlantic City. When Donald announced on June 16, 2015 he was running, I got a hold in my literary agent right away and said, let's do book.
She called around and everybody said, he's not going to get the nomination, and I said, yes, he might get the nomination. He's serious this time and I was particularly charged up by the fact that here he is giving the speech talking about murders and rapists from Mexico, denouncing Muslims and all these young people applauding these lines.
And I thought, midtown Manhattan is not a place known for racism and xenophobia. What did he do? Are these his employees or did he buzz people in, where did he get this crowd?
Well, a day or two later, the Hollywood reporter revealed that they were actors 50 bucks each to show up and applaud on cue which tells you what a fraud Donald Trump is. And anyhow, nobody wants to do a book.
By the time it became clear he might get the nomination for traditional publishers who need about a year, it was too late and I had just given up on the idea, wrote about 25 pieces about Donald for USA Today, Newsweek, National Memo, some other places. Many of them aimed at reporters trying to say, this is what you should be asking, this is what you should be questioning.
And then Melville House calls out of the blue and they asked, could we do the book in I think it was three weeks, I said no but I said I can do it by a date that was four weeks later, I wrote that book in 27 days. It was hell and I'm frankly not sure I've physically recovered at my age from doing it. I'm certainly never going to do it again but 27 days.
BRIAN LAMB: Because we're in the middle of a campaign, 27 days, it was finished, what day was that and…
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, the -- my -- my closing note, the epilogue is dated the 4th of July. I actually finished the book the 5th of July. We finished editing at the 10th of July and there's a picture on my Facebook page with me sitting in my garden reading the book on the 19th of July, two weeks later, and it went on sale August 2nd, two weeks after that.
And the German language edition went on sale August 30th. They had it translated into German.
BRIAN LAMB: So lawyers and by the way, you called him on this program already a con man and a fraud, how concerned was a publisher that -- did they pull the lawyers in on this?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, sure. This was vetted by a lawyer and one of the things I don't do in this book is I don't break new ground in it because I knew we had to get it lawyered quickly.
So what I've done here is connected the dots and pulled together my work, the great Wayne Barrett's work, probably the best reporter who ever worked in New York City, pieces elsewhere and I have this enormous collection of Trump documents.
I used to have to rent two storage lockers to hold my files on Donald Trump, Barron Hilton, the LAPD, Jack Welch and some of the people and now mostly got them digitized. But I had all these files and so one of my grandchildren would sit in the other room, she created the files so they were logical for me and after I was done with them, I asked that she would put everything back in order and put it away so we could get back to when we needed it.
And the lawyer -- I don't think the lawyer on this book changed more than 10 words and I know that several times when he got to a paragraph, yes, wrong verb, fix that right now.
BRIAN LAMB: Do you have any worries? Do you have to have an insurance policy and protect you?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, publisher has an insurance policy. If Donald is going to sue me, he's going to sue me. I was actually surprised Donald said that to me because we've known each other. He knows I don't intimidate. He's tried to intimidate me in the past.
I mean, I'm a guy who hunted down in an especially vicious murder, in a black-on-white murder. I've ran into a burning building. I mean, maybe I was credulous somewhere that I don't have a fear factor.
BRIAN LAMB: Where is that by the way?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: In Mountain View, California.
BRIAN LAMB: Why did you do that?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: To get a better picture. And I also ran towards two buildings people were in but they get out before I got there, thank goodness. But, you know, you do what you need to do in your job and my job is to tell people facts they wouldn't know but for my work.
So, you know, I've been tailed by the LAPD, by the government in Taiwan or people connected with it. I've had lots of people threatened me. You know, it's my job and you do what you need to do or you don't do the kind of work that I do.
So anyway, the lawyer changed very little in this book. On contrast to that, I wrote a piece for "POLITICO Magazine", that's what Donald called me about, which had nothing new in it. It simply pointed out a number, not all of them, of his connections to criminals.
His business dealings with them and his gratuitous connections with them. That is the most heavily lawyered piece of my career with maybe one exception. And I've written stories accusing people of murder. You know, Jack Welch gave up his retirement benefits over a story I wrote.
And that lawyer then told me that he's really been intimating news organizations and threatening to sue them. Well, they know that he can't win. He can cost them a lot of money.
BRIAN LAMB: The former CEO of GE Jack Welch did what that he gave up his retirement benefits?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Jack Welch had a retirement package that was described to the investors only as Mr. Welch shall continue to receive those emoluments he had while serving the company.
Then he left his wife and she, a litigator, put in to the public record enough information that I was able to show that he was going to get what I estimate to be about $70 million of the use of the GE jet, apartments, ball game tickets, stuff whether to use them or not and I laid out the economics in particular of the corporate jet.
And Welch then wrote an article in "The Wall Street Journal" relinquishing all of this and saying that some people who don't respect contracts. I respect this contract. I just thought investors should know what they were actually paying Jack Welch and I know from something he said to another journalist that he's furious at the mention of my name, he's entitled, I caused him a lot of money.
BRIAN LAMB: Back to Donald Trump.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes.
BRIAN LAMB: In the book, he talked about an outfit called awards or the Academy of Hospitality Services, the Academy of Hospitality Services.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Or Sciences I think. This is an organization run by a convicted art thief and mob associate known as Joey Two Socks, Joseph Cinque, and it hands out what it says is the most prestigious award in the world. Not the most prestigious travel industry award, the most prestigious award in the world.
It's the five diamond award and a six diamond award and at least 19 Trump properties have these awards on a big huge plaques on the wall and they're signed by Joey Two Socks and they're also signed by the chairman of the board of the Academy Donald J. Trump. Donald Trump gives awards to himself.
There are videos at the internet you can see of this. I mean, this is absurd, giving an award to yourself.
BRIAN LAMB: It works.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, apparently a lot of people think these are fabulous properties. I'd point out that a couple of his golf courses have awards and yet if you look at the "Golf Digest" or "Golf Magazine", I forgot which one listed the hundred best golf courses, no Trump golf courses on that list.
BRIAN LAMB: What he do well?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, first and foremost, Donald is a master fool of making himself a household name. I mean, you've been on television for years and you're not a household name, Brian, and either am I. But I Donald is a household name. I mean that's a quite accomplishment.
He secondly has created this image of himself as the modern Midas that everything he touches turns to gold when in fact a lot of it turns to draws and the only person ends up with only gold is Donald.
He also has been successful in getting even network television in America to run stories that in essence he is the Don Juan of our age and that women like Madonna and Kim Basinger and Carla Bruni are pounding on his bedroom door.
By the way, he doesn't even know two of them. The third one says he's the kind of sleaze and had nothing to do with him. She's talked to him apparently twice in her life.
BRIAN LAMB: Carla Bruni.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Carla Bruni.
BRIAN LAMB: Who is married to Sarkozy of France.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Right. And when she became the First Lady of France, Donald had the opportunity when he was on the Howard Stern Show as I report in "The Making of Donald Trump" too backed away from this imaginary lover stories that he planted and he didn't.
And -- but he's very good at planting these stories so the people have an image of him that has nothing to do I think with the reality of who he is. He's building a Trump Tower. That's quite a building. It's a significant accomplishment.
BRIAN LAMB: Where is it?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: It's on 5th Avenue in Manhattan right in the middle of the city. Now it's 58 stories. He tells everybody it's 68. That's part of how Donald exaggerates things. Those are things that I think he's accomplished and done very well.
But his companies are very poorly managed. Fortune Magazine looked at his casino company and it was a public company and concluded that of the 496 companies they've studies, Donald came in dead last or almost last in every single category. This is no surprise to people who've worked for Donald and competitors.
So that's another area where he's great at creating this image of himself that doesn't comport with reality.
BRIAN LAMB: Go back to the Carla Bruni story.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes.
BRIAN LAMB: What's the rest of it? How did he get in the middle of this?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, when Donald was divorcing his first wife Ivana, he went out of his way to publicly humiliate the mother of his children. He planted all sorts of news stories that there was a competition going on and that Madonna and Kim Basinger and Carla Bruni and other women were trying to become the next Mrs. Trump and it was -- and he used a PR man named John Barron.
John Barron was Donald Trump. He called up this news organizations and they didn't know who he was, he wasn't this well-known at that time, to pose as this PR man promoting Trump and "People Magazine" outed to them at that time.
BRIAN LAMB: We've got a clip. Sue Carswell is the woman that wrote the piece in "People."
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Right.
BRIAN LAMB: And -- that was back in 1991.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes, '90 to 91, yes.
BRIAN LAMB: Yes.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: '91.
BRIAN LAMB: So when we're listening to this and there will be language on the screen, that is Donald Trump masquerading as your John Barron or John Miller.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's Donald and they outed him in the story where they made fun of him because here's a middle-aged man acting like a 13-year-old boy talking about some girl he was with. It's just extraordinary.
BRIAN LAMB: Here's just a little bit of that. It starts out slow but you'll be able to hear it right away.
(Video begins)
Sue Carswell: What kind of comment is coming from, you know, your agency or from Donald?
John Miller: Well, it's just that he really decided that he wasn't, you know, he didn't want to make any commitment. He didn't want to make a commitment. He really thought it was too soon.
He's coming out of a, you know, marriage, and he's starting to do tremendously well financially. He's somebody that has a lot of options, and, frankly, you know, he gets called by everybody. He gets called by everybody in the book, in terms of women.
Sue Carswell: Like who?
John Miller: Well, he gets called by a lot of people.
Sue Carswell: You can't say like did Madonna ever really call?
John Miller: That was -- that was -- he was so set up with that. You know, Madonna called and what happened, I mean, it's a -- I don't know if you want to listen to this.
Sue Carswell: What is your position there?
John Miller: Well, I'm sort of handling PR because he gets so much of it.
(Video ends)
BRIAN LAMB: He was -- he's gone by the name of John Miller.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Right.
BRIAN LAMB: Did she know that was Donald Trump?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, she figured it out very quickly. She had not covered him but he displayed such intimate conversation for the freshly hired PR person and talked in such detail that it was clear it was Donald Trump and "People Magazine" ran this piece saying something like, there are odd stories, there are unusual stories, there are funny stories and then there's this really bizarre story.
BRIAN LAMB: How long did he do that going under that name?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: For years, for years. He did that with the USFL. He would call up journalists and play the…
BRIAN LAMB: What's USFL?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: The United States Football League. That was the spring football league which I point out in the book he basically destroyed with a litigation strategy instead of a market strategy.
And he would call up news organizations sometimes to different reporters and he would be John Barron or John Miller and then he would call himself and verify that story to get it planted. He did this to get a story planted that way in the "New York Times" about the USFL, the football league. He also used it to menace, to threaten people with litigation if they didn't back off.
In particular, there about 150 to 200 illegal immigrants from Poland who were demolishing the Bonwit Teller Department Store where those sites which is going to Trump Tower, they were being paid $4 an hour. They slept on the site in the middle of winter because they had nowhere else to go. They didn't have hard hats or goggles or any safety equipment and then they didn't get paid and tell they threatened to hang Donald's overseer off the site of the building because they haven't gotten paid.
And Donald was later found by a federal judge who have engaged in a conspiracy to cheat the workers out of their money, $4 an hour and he's not paying people.
BRIAN LAMB: Bulgari.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes.
BRIAN LAMB: What is it and what's the story?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, Bulgari is a high-end Italian jewelry company with stores all over the world including across the street from Trump Tower and Donald Trump engaged in something known as the empty box scam.
He bought a $50,000 piece of jewelry and then $15,000 piece and he had them shipped out of state. That -- if they were shipped out if state to a non-resident of New York, there would be no sales tax due. There might be a use tax due in that state but that's not enforced (much).
And Donald was not eligible for this because he live in New York, he live right across the street. When law enforcement got into this and the New York Attorney General Robert Abrams began investigating, Donald got in to this. He had a casino license and his involvement in any crime would vitiate his license.
So Donald went to law enforcement to help them and he wasn't the other one involved. Mary Tyler Moore and Henry Kissinger were involved in this. It's a scam that's going on for decades and continues to go on. There's a case right now about this.
BRIAN LAMB: But those people know it's illegal doing…
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Of course, they do.
BRIAN LAMB: OK.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Of course, they do. And the Bulgari was so cheap in doing this that instead of paying the postage for what the weight would be at the jewelry, they saved a little bit of money by sending empty boxes with no weight.
But the significance of the story is it's clear evidence of Donald participating in tax cheating and that should have caused him his casino license had the State of New Jersey had any interest in tightening up and enforcing the law that required Donald and all other casino owners to prove by clear and convincing evidence that they are morally fit, they're honest, they don't associate with criminals.
BRIAN LAMB: So if you were with some of your friends and Donald Trump was elected president and you're around talking and all of a sudden you look up on the screen, the winner is Donald Trump, what's the first thing you'd say to him?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: I'd say, well, how long until we have a constitutional crisis. Donald does not understand the powers, limits, and duties of our president under the Constitution. He talks like the president is a dictator.
He said he will order our military to engage in illegal acts and if you're a senior United States military officer, my guess is you are reading up very carefully on how you refuse an unlawful order from the commander-in-chief, an order to use nuclear weapons in Europe or our friends are which Donald has talked about in order to torture people.
You know, we executed Japanese soldiers after World War II for waterboarding and that would be the big concern. The second one would be if Donald is the president of the United States, I'm absolutely certain that I will have trouble with somebody in federal law enforcement. He will find some way to make my life difficult because that's what Donald is.
Donald's philosophy which he's written about at great length and spoken about and lectured about and had been interviewed about is get revenge. Destroy anybody. If someone just won't do you a favor, destroy their life and take pleasure in that. That should make you really, really happy.
He says when he destroys people's lives, it just makes him so happy. So if he gets elected, I'm going to have trouble.
BRIAN LAMB: What would you say the same group if Hillary Clinton is elected?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: You know, I haven't thought a lot about that. I mean, you know, Hillary Clinton like John Kasich is competent to be president. She knows what the job is and how to do it. I don't see indication she's going to pursue policies that are inimical to the long-term interest of the country. I don't like a lot of her policies but…
BRIAN LAMB: But you've been an investigative reporter.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes.
BRIAN LAMB: And you must have looked at what's going on with the foundation and all.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: No and the reason is I can't do everything. I don't know Hillary Clinton. When I left the "LA Times" if I had gone to Little Rock, I'd be writing a book about Hillary Clinton. There's a lot there.
I went to Atlantic City and I met Donald Trump. There are good books about Hillary Clinton, well-written books. There's also some garbage on both of them. But there's some well-written books and I encourage people in my book to go read those books.
I've written about Hillary Clinton twice in my life. I've never spoken to her, anybody on her staff. In 1997 in the "New York Times" I pointed out that the Clintons paid more than twice as much federal income taxes the law required despite spending almost $9,000 or $10,000 a year having their tax returns prepared.
And it was because she mishandled this tax matter, the royalties from her book, it takes a village. She said she give them all the way. Well, she took them as income, paid the taxes and gave away the differences.
She was furious about this. She went absolutely nuts about it. The "New York Times" actually didn't publish my story the first year so I had to wait a year and redo it after I had some editors lined up about it.
And then the next year, I went to the White House to get the president's tax returns and I said, there's nothing here about the new book, what is it and I think (Jodie Ender from Night River) hollered out letters to buddy and socks and I go, yes, about the pets.
And the spokesman says, well, the Clintons gave the copyright to a public charity which is the implicit advice to my story and I said, really, and the spokesman said, yes, and the White House wants to be on record, the Clintons did not take their advice from the "New York Times" which went everybody erupted to laughter because they obviously did that and it meant more money for charity and less for the government.
BRIAN LAMB: How many years were you with the "New York Times", what was your beat and when did you leave it?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: I was with the "New York Times" for 13 years. I left in April of 2008. I came there to show that we could cover taxes in a different way and examine how the system actually works as opposed to what politicians and others say about it which is why I did it out of New York in my home in Rochester, New York and not Washington.
I also changed the way all journalists cover executive compensation by showing things that were right in front of us that we weren't paying attention to. But principally, I did taxes and, you know, as measured by Congress, my work resulted in over a quarter trillion dollars of tax dodges being stopped and a lot of people went to prison.
BRIAN LAMB: Who's the biggest?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, the biggest was President Bush had in his tax plan that he wouldn't show us before the election, a stealth provision that would allow very, very…
BRIAN LAMB: Which President by the way?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: President George W. Bush.
BRIAN LAMB: OK.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: In his tax plan, there was this -- well, I call this stealth provision because he wouldn't show us the plan before the election that would repeal the gift tax and that was an idea that conservative Republicans put into the law in the 1920s.
And when the White House was -- White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was asked about this, he expressed that, you know, I knew my stuff about taxes and then they quietly withdrew this provision that Congress later -- staff report showed that it would have cost just in the first 10 years about a quarter of a billion -- a trillion dollars, quarter of a trillion dollars
And there was the Bermuda mailbox scam and a lot of other -- Professor Schmalbeck who teaches tax law at Duke has called me the de facto chief tax enforcement officer of the United States.
BRIAN LAMB: And you have told the -- maybe just for a start, you got a book -- you're planning on taxes?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes. The book I was working on when I dropped for this is tentatively called "The Prosperity Tax", an entirely new federal tax code for the 21st century economy. We have a really great tax system in America for 1960 and we no longer live in the industrial age where we have an industrial age tax system and we need to have a tax system for the current economy and this book will have the actual statutory language.
I'm not a lawyer but I've learned how to write statutory language and I expect it to be less than a hundred pages and it will -- it uses things that are all in the law already. There's virtually -- there's only one thing I have in there that's not already in the law. It's much simpler, very few people will have to file a tax return. Nobody has to. There's a group that can choose to.
Corporations will have a much easier time. It will be much more efficient. We can shrink the IRS down and I've set up a mechanism by which if you want to cheat on your taxes, you have to engage in a criminal conspiracy with the other person. The other person is liable for the taxes and you're both going to go to prison
BRIAN LAMB: What's the publishing time for this?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, if I -- I'm not teaching this year so I can finish it. So I'm hoping the book will be out in 2018.
BRIAN LAMB: Speaking of tax, how much tax has Donald Trump paid from what you know?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, we know as a matter of fact that he paid no income taxes in '78, '79, '84, '92, and '94. We know that in recent years, he's adjusted gross income, that's the last line in the front page of your tax return, was less than $500,000.
Now the tax law has all sorts of provisions that allow some people at the top to live tax free or virtually tax free. Private equity managers like Mitt Romney, hedge fund managers, and people who are fulltime real estate professionals like Donald Trump. There is good reason to believe because of those rules that Donald probably has paid no income taxes or maybe a couple years a little bit since 1978.
BRIAN LAMB: And do you think he will…
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Release his returns?
BRIAN LAMB: Yes.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Never. Not a chance. It is never going to happen. And when Donald and his son said, there's nothing there, there's nothing there, you know, you couldn't tell anything from tax returns, you give me Donald Trump's complete tax return for one year and I'll back engineer and tell you the value of his hard assets, I'll tell where his income sources, I'll tell you a lot about him.
BRIAN LAMB: You mentioned earlier about Donald's religion -- Donald Trump's religion, excuse me, and also is Bible reading, here's Jerry Falwell, Jr. who spoke at the convention this year on his behalf and he has been supporting him.
(Video begins)
Jerry Falwell: But my family and I have grown to love and respect the Trumps for other reasons. We have never met such a genuine and loving family. I truly believe Mr. Trump is America's blue collar billionaire.
(Video ends)
BRIAN LAMB: Yes?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, you know, I've known and spent time with mobsters who were good family men. I mean, I'll- that part does impress me. What troubles me are the pastors who are saying that Donald Trump is a good Christian man.
Donald Trump in his own words is aggressively antithetical to Christianity. First of all, he denigrates communion. Well, you get your little water and your little cracker.
When he's asked as he's been many times to site a favorite passage from the Bible because he says nobody reads the book -- the Bible more than Donald Trump, he gives a con man answer. Well, there's so many, there's so many, there's just so many, and the one time he tried which I recount in the book, he got it wrong and he was out of Leviticus, an eye for an eye, and he didn't even understand what that concept actually means.
I'm sorry, in the Sermon on Mount, Matthew 5 especially Matthew 5, 39 to 45, Jesus' message was you turn the other cheek, you are kind to other people, Donald rejects that. He says that people who do that, your fools, your idiots, your smacks. And he didn't just do it in passing, this is not a gap, this is a well-established record.
So to the pastors who are endorsing Donald Trump, if they want to endorse him and say, look, he's better than the other person, I don't have problem with that, that makes perfect sense. But do not deceive your flocks. Do not allow this man to beguile you with flattery. Do not tell people this falsehood.
And I've e-mailed a couple of them and offered my book and a short description of what's there, only one got back to me through an assistant to basically say, well, thanks. If we want to know anything, we'll get in touch with you.
Ministers have an absolute duty not to deceive their flocks and not to tell them the man who's own lengthy statements and actions are aggressively anti the message of Jesus Christ is a good Christian man and to vote for him for that reason. That's -- that's an awful development and I -- I want to -- these pastors call to account. Their -- the members of their flocks and other religious leaders should be raising Cain about this.
BRIAN LAMB: Do you have any sense of why Jerry Falwell, Jr support him? They have the largest, I believe, Christian University in the United States with their online service.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I hope it's because he's badly informed. That's my hope. My concern is that he's more interested in political outcomes than he is in following the message of Jesus Christ.
BRIAN LAMB: You have a story in your book about a man named Satter, S-A-T-T-E-R…
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Satter.
BRIAN LAMB: Excuse me, Satter.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Satter.
BRIAN LAMB: S-A-T-T-E-R but you say sometimes his name was S-A-T-E-R.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Felix Sater is the son of the reputed Russian mob boss who, by the way, has threatened now twice to sue me over writing about him. He was Donald Trump's senior adviser. He had a business card, senior adviser to Donald Trump. He had his office. It was right in the main suite of Trump Organization Offices in Trump Tower. He and Donald traveled all over together, Loveland, Colorado; Denver, Phoenix, Fort Lauderdale, New York. They were involved in putting building projects together.
Felix Satter is a defendant in a Private Attorney General Action in the State of New York accusing of running a quarter billion dollar tax fraud, so only an accusation. It is a tax fraud that could not have taken place but for a letter that Donald Trump signed that authorized changes that made it possible. And this tax fraud goes through Icelandic banks to Russian oligarchs.
And Felix Satter is a convicted violent felon. He put a -- the broken end of a margarita stemmed glass so deeply into a man's face, it took 110 stitches in his face so it'll never be right and he's a convicted stock swindler with a help of four mob families in New York, he ran a $40 million stocks scam that he's plead guilty to.
Donald is not supposed to be, when he had a casino, associating with these folks. Secondly, they're borrowing money from banks and they hid this. The reason Felix Satter sometimes put an extra T in his name was so journalists and others wouldn't find out about his background.
Donald Trump had a duty to investors and the bankers he borrowed from to inquire into this man's background. And he has told, I think it was the AP, Jason Horowitz, he's done a very good job at the AP, I think was the one that he said this to, he said I hardly know the man. If he was in the room, I wouldn't recognize him. I've got video and photographs and interviews they did together. I mean, that's absurd. He knows this guy very, very well.
And this is part of these not fully developed understanding we have of Donald's connection to the Putin regime and to the Russian oligarchs that should be very much the subject of a lot of inquiry by my peers. They should be deeply digging into what is -- what is it that Donald Trump is advancing the primary foreign policy of Vladimir Putin weaken NATO, he won't say a single critical word about him. He's been pain millions of dollars by Russian oligarchs. He's boasted I had everyone of them in the room n Moscow, I think this was eight years ago.
He's tried to do all sorts of deals in Russia. There's a 47-storey building in one of the former soviet empire countries with his name on it and there's this tax -- this alleged tax fraud and Satter is at the center of all of this. What is Donald Trump doing, spending years in very close relationship with this convicted violent felon and stock swindler and there are bunch of lawsuits about it including hiding this man's criminal background from investors that damaged their interest as a result.
BRIAN LAMB: What marks would you give your peers that you mentioned?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, overall, I think the American news media has done an awful job. And I know some people listening to this will mainly say, well, nobody vetted Barack Obama. Actually, they did. You just have to go look and read the news about it.
I mean, I know about women he dated and kids he went to grammar school with and high school with and lots about Barack Obama. What his professor said about him and fellow students at Columbia and at Harvard where he was incredibly highly regarded.
This is an example of this. In Donald Trump's case, you're only now starting to see an inquiry into him. Now "The Washington Post" had about 20 reporters on this and I helped them with some things. I gave them documents and stuff as I often do for other reporters which most journalists don't do but I do.
And they've done some pretty good stories but they're written in the way that highbrow newspapers now do this so unless you're a sophisticated reader, you don't get the point. "The Wall Street Journal" has done nothing of any consequence. The "New York Times" has recently done some very good stories but the same thing, they've written this very high-brow fashion that you can easily not grasp what's going on.
BRIAN LAMB: What about television?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Absolutely appalling. Brian, I've been on the national networks, broadcast networks in Australia, Canada, Britain, France, Germany repeatedly, I haven't been on a single U.S. broadcast network, none of the Sunday morning talk shows. They've had people on who don't know anything, talking about things about Donald Trump and speculating when I can give them hard facts when…
BRIAN LAMB: Why do you think they're doing that?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, first of all, and most importantly, Donald Trump is great television. I mean, you can't turn it off. And Fox News has said, you know, that when they turn off or one of their agents has said when they turn -- when they turn off Donald Trump, people turn their TVs off. It's like -- it's like not just watching a car wreck, it's like watching this incredible car wreck. And so people want to see it. So there's a commercial interest.
Secondly, newsrooms have been shrunk enormously. I mean, basically, the fastest disappearing white-collar job in the America in the last 15 years has been journalist. And the resources aren't there.
I mean, I once spent $10,000 of the "Los Angeles Times'" money on one paragraph. Today, to get $10,000 to do a story, you'd have to really convince editors there were something substantial there and then I think more importantly, the duty of journalists which is to tell you that which people don't want to tell you has been in decline because of all the attacks from people who don't want to hear things and they mount attacks and both the left and the right about this.
BRIAN LAMB: Here's his dad -- this is 1985, getting Horatio Alger Award in New York.
(Video begins)
Fred Trump: I used to watch other successful people and -- that did good and that did bad and I follow the good qualities that they had to perfect myself. Shakespeare said, never follow an empty wagon up here, never follow an empty wagon, because nothing ever falls off.
(Video ends)
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: I don't remember reading that Shakespeare. Maybe that's there. But Fred Trump was an incredibly industrious guy. He was really hardworking but he also was a guy who profiteered on GI housing after the war and President Eisenhower, when he found that out that Fred Trump had $4 million of excess profits, threw a fit in the White House and the proof of that is a 100 federal investigators reported on Fred Trump and a few other developers.
And when he was hauled before the Senate Finance Committee, you know, and this is indicative of the future under Donald Trump, he said, this is all just a misunderstanding. I didn't profiteer. I haven't taken any money. Yes, I have $4 million more but it's in the bank. I didn't take it. So I'm not a profiteer.
And Fred Trump, honest? Well, let's see. They color coded applications for rentals so when a black or a Puerto Rican renter would show up with solid finances to rent an apartment, they would be steered to a building for blacks or Puerto Ricans. They would be steered away from Beach Haven. And I have the lyrics to a song about Fred Trump's racism by Woody Guthrie because of the generosity of the Guthrie Family in the book.
And he was well known for his association with the mob guys through Willie Tomassello, his partner who was a mob associate.
BRIAN LAMB: Speaking of that, there's a documentary that has been held up for a long time and here's an excerpt of it. This thing is called, "Trump: What's the Deal?" You can buy it on YouTube for $2.95…
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: I think you rent for that, buy it for about 10.
BRIAN LAMB: Well, I mean you can watch it for $2.95. But here -- here's just a little excerpt and I want you to explain it after we see this.
(Video begins)
Male: It was the biggest high stakes game on the boardwalk in years. The players, entertainer, Merv Griffin, and billionaire businessman, Donald Trump. The price, Resorts International and the unfinished Taj Mahal.
I won. I won. I won. He is still, you know, a year later standing in New York. I won, I won, I won, I won. He wants to make sure everybody in America knows he won. And so I looked at him and say, Donald, you won. Now, do you feel better? Now, eat.
(Marvin): He had called me after he had negotiated to sell the property to Merv Griffin. And he said, didn't I do -- didn't I do the best deal? Didn't I get the best of Merv, Marvin? And I said, Donald, I think it was great that you sold a property but I think you made a mistake. I think -- I think buying the Taj Mahal is a -- is going to be a very bad thing for you. Well, what do you mean? I mean, I think the Taj Mahal is going to be the greatest success ever, you just don't understand.
(Video ends)
BRIAN LAMB: So what happened to the Taj Mahal and what about this documentary?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I covered all of that back then and these were terrible deals. I wrote that they were both going to fail promptly and they couldn't pay their bond interest which is exactly what happened.
This documentary by Libby Handros was a terrific job of telling you who Donald Trump was. It was only shown twice and Donald's threats of litigation shut it down. Donald has shut down many things with threats of litigation. I wrote a proposal for a Tim Burton movie about Donald Trump and his threats of litigation meant that it never came about.
Finally, Libby Handros decided when he was running for president, I've got to put this out there. They updated it just a little bit in the opening because people need to see this. And it's 80 minutes and it's a great quick lesson on Donald Trump. I'd rather you buy my book but Libby's movie is very good.
This particular deal was indicative of the fact that Donald doesn't have the business skill he says he has. He cannibalize his own market. He took over this white elephant of a property, the Trump Taj Mahal. His name will now disappear on October 10th from Atlantic City because his casinos are gone and he goes around saying that it's terrible in Atlantic City. Well, you know, there are casinos in Atlantic City to this day who are making nice, fat profits, above average profits for the country for all businesses.
BRIAN LAMB: Why didn't he?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Because he was a -- his company was terrible managed. When he had competent executives, three of them were killed in a helicopter crash, unfortunately. But every other case, he eventually drove out his competent executives because he was demanding and bullying and mistreated people and if you're competent, you know, why are you going to put up with this for, you go somewhere else.
And he put in place yes man. And, by the way, to your earlier question, a Donald Trump administration will be full of people, many of whom you probably never heard of who's distinguishing characteristic will be total loyalty to Donald Trump, not to the constitution, not to the American people, not to the long-term welfare of the country, but to Donald Trump, personally.
BRIAN LAMB: We're running of time and I've got a couple names I want to bring up. (Bob Leboutte)? Is that…
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: (Bob Leboutte) was the biggest loser in Atlantic City. He was a con man and a mob guy, not a made guy but a mob associate who I spent a lot of time with and Donald was fined for removing black women and Asian dealers and cocktail waitresses because he thought it was curating favor with (Bob) because (Bob), when he was losing money, would let loose, just vile language, crazy language, in many cases, and (Bob Leboutte), when I interviewed him, he goes, hey, I didn't know Donald was doing that. That's outrageous. I would never remove somebody. You know, I say these terrible words but -- but, you know, I'm not the racist, Donald Trump is the racist. (Bob Leboutte) calls you a racist, that's pretty bad.
BRIAN LAMB: Where is he now? He's dead. He died a few years ago.
Donald tried to seduce his daughter and Steve Hyde, he was running the casino, so he was very competent, told (Bob Leboutte) who told the story to me that you got to keep Donald away from your daughter because you're going to kill him and I'm going to lose my best customer and (Bob), as he told the story to me, went to Donald and said after Donald had given her a cream-colored Mercedes and had a video made for her birthday and other things that if you approach my daughter again, I will castrate you without a benefit of a knife.
By the way, you mentioned in the book about his germophobia?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes.
BRIAN LAMB: But now he's shaking hands with people.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes. That's -- that's a surprise.
BRIAN LAMB: What happened to that?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: I don't know. That's very interesting. I actually did shake hands with Donald once a long, long time ago and I noticed he was immediately, you know, doing this and disappeared into the bathroom. But he's now shaking hands. I think somebody has told him it doesn't look good if you don't do that.
BRIAN LAMB: I'm going to let you pronounce the name. Akio?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Kashiwagi. Akio Kashiwagi was the biggest gambler in the world and I'm the only journalist who watched him gamble at the rate of $14 million an hour. $200,000 of bet, 70 bets an hour.
And Donald Trump lured him twice to Atlantic City. He completely mishandled this guy. He should have won $12 million off of him and instead he lost about six. And I recount in the book that story of what happened here and Donald hired Jess Marcum who was a teenager who helped invent radar and went on to be a cofounder of the Rand Corporation, one of the great geniuses of the last century, to watch the game because he was convinced the guy was cheating.
And I recounted in the story that I'm the person who figured out there was a half million dollars of chips missing that nobody else noticed and it turned out that Kashiwagi had, in fact, scammed him for the half million dollars worth of chips.
But the story is mostly about how if Donald had understood the game of baccarat and the math, he would have realized that there have came a point where it was an 87 to 1 odds that he would wipe the guy out and instead, he gave him an excuse to walk away from the table and Donald lost money as a result and that's indicative of the fact that Donald just doesn't know anything.
BRIAN LAMB: By the way, go back to the lawyers and this book. What did they -- what they did excised from the book?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Nothing was excised. There were a couple of places where we just reworded things a little bit, a very minor, light, editing. I mean, I've been doing this for so many years, almost 50 years now, that I know how to write things so that they're legal and they're fair.
BRIAN LAMB: How did you get on the "New York Times" Bestseller List?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: A lot of people bought the book.
BRIAN LAMB: How did they find out about it? Television hasn't had…
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, because I have a pretty good sized Twitter following. They -- Melville House is very good at marketing and they were out telling people about the book. The initial orders we got from bookstores were just nothing because there are a bunch of Trump books and my fear was what would happen to my last two bestsellers, they ran out of books. Well, that happened. A lot of bookstores ran out of books first week in and then they've started ordering lots of books. So it's now readily available.
But that was just devastating to me the first time around. I'm going up the "New York Times" Bestseller List and they don't have enough books. This time, the people of Melville House have been extraordinary in their understanding of how you market a book and get people to buy it.
BRIAN LAMB: Was there any other title besides the "The Making of Donald Trump"?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: I wanted to call the book the "The Art of Deception." They didn't want to do that. That's not a neutral title and it turns people off. I've actually had people post things on the internet because they think this is a pro-Donald Trump book and it was designed to be neutral and to tell you what it's about and it's essentially how -- where does this guy come from, who is he, and it's -- I start with, you know, his grandfather who was a German draft dodger who made a fortune running whorehouses on through Donald's development, his education, and then all of these associations that he does want you to know.
But my goal was to balance Donald Trump's masterful PR image of himself with all the things Donald does not want you to know.
BRIAN LAMB: Our guest has been David Cay Johnston. You can find him at the University of Syracuse. You can find him in Rochester, New York. And if they want to see you on Twitter, what's your handle?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: It's my middle name plus the letter J. So, David, C-A-Y J.
BRIAN LAMB: Thank you very much for joining us.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Thank you, Brian.