Quotes from Michael D'Antonio

For the most part, you can't respect people because most people aren't worthy of respect. —DONALD TRUMP In

When it comes to racism and racists," Trump said, "I am the least racist person there is." When

Gleefully aggressive, Trump looks for opportunities to take offense and then wrestle a supposed enemy into the gutter.

One man's real estate crisis is another's opportunity. All markets work in this way, providing investors with cash the chance to buy—stocks, bonds, real estate, and commodities—when prices are depressed. This reality is devoid of emotional weight and is the basic truth that keeps capitalist economies working.

He had envisioned a river of rent payments from apartments and businesses that would eventually pay off his financiers and yield millions of dollars in net revenues even as inflation drove up the value of the property. This formula—investment + time = revenue and higher value—was the magic of real estate. By following it, Fred Trump had amassed assets that allowed him to develop ever bigger projects while simultaneously reducing the risk to his personal fortune.

If Donald Trump is squealing like a stuck pig," replied Koch, "I must have done something right." Trump called the mayor a "moron," and Koch taunted him with "Piggy, piggy, piggy." The

When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same. The temperament is not that different. —DONALD TRUMP Perched

The youngest of ten children, Mary Anne MacLeod was born in 1912 in her parents' home in the village of Tong on the rugged Scottish Isle of Lewis, which is closer to Iceland than London. She was descended from two clans, the Smiths and MacLeods, with deep roots in the Hebrides.

converting celebrity into profit. (No matter how many billions he has, we are still talking about billions.) Somehow he has done this even as a substantial proportion of the population, arguably more than 50 percent, consider him a buffoon if not a menace. What does it say about Trump that he is so undeniably successful by the two measures that matter the most to him—money and fame? And what, pray tell, does it say about us? * * *

An intensely competitive young man who believed he was superior to others, Trump accepted that people would seek advantages wherever they could find them.