Trump’s first media controversy is a really great story
It happened in 1980, and follows a now-familiar pattern for the Republican presidential candidate.
Two stone bas-relief sculptures high on the façade of the Bonwit Teller Building under demolition on Fifth Avenue – pieces that had been sought with enthusiasm by the Metropolitan Museum of Art – were smashed by jackhammers yesterday on the orders of a real estate developer.
— New York Times (June 6, 1980)
With this sentence, printed on page B5 of the Times on a late spring day 36 years ago, Donald Trump’s tempestuous relationship with the media began...
...When first questioned about the fate of the sculptures, Trump spokesman John Barron claimed that three independent appraisers had declared them to be “without artistic merit” – an assessment that flabbergasted Ashton Hawkins, vice president and secretary of the board of trustees of the Met
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In 1990, Donald J. Trump took the stand to testify against charges that his company had knowingly employed—and withheld payments from—undocumented Polish workers during construction of the aforementioned Trump Tower. In court, the lawyer for the workers, John Szabo, said that he had received a call from someone who identified himself as "Mr. Baron," who threatened to sue him for $100 million if he didn't drop the lawsuit.
So, after years of secretly hiding behind the pseudonym, Trump finally had to explain himself. He admitted to the court that yes, he and one of his assistants had used the name "John Barron" in business matters. "Lots of people use pen names," he later told a reporter outside of courtroom. "Ernest Hemingway used one."
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