In January 2018, I joined the New York Times team for a tour of my grandfather’s empire. We visited Trump buildings I’d never even heard of. After eight hours of driving around Queens and Brooklyn, there were still more than a dozen we hadn’t seen.
After that, whenever I showed up at the building on Fifth Avenue for what I’d come to call day-drinking with Maryanne, I activated my phone’s voice memo recorder as soon as I sat down across from her. She never noticed.
Maryanne had finally decided to sell her house in Palm Beach.
“When Grandpa died,” she told me, “I finally had some money, so I bought a little cottage.”
Her “cottage” was on the market for twenty-four million dollars, but because of its proximity to Mar-a-Lago, Donald was interested in buying it from her.
“First, he tried to get me to take papers [give him a loan directly without his having to go to a bank to get a mortgage], and I laughed in his face. Well, he had to try.” She smiled. “Now he’s trying to Jew me down.”
When the hell is she going to ask me if it’s time for a glass of wine? I thought.