One of the things I’m most proud of about that building is that the person I put in charge of overseeing construction was a 33-year-old woman. I made that decision in 1983, when the fight for gender equality in business was really beginning.
None of the people who whine about the way I talk to women mention the fact that I voluntarily promoted gender equality in a male-dominated industry. The women who work and have worked for me will vouch for the fact that I was as demanding of them as I was of their male counterparts.
That’s the kind of “gender equality” we need: Leadership that inspires the best in people, male or female, not a wishy-washy former secretary of state who doesn’t understand the lunacy of having her own private e-mail server.
Laying off thousands of workers and leaving companies in a mess is also not an accomplishment, at least not one to be proud of or to pretend qualifies you to run our country.
I always think big. I start with a plan to build the biggest, the most beautiful, and the highest-quality projects. If you don’t begin with big dreams, you can never fulfill them. Trump buildings are all over New York, from 40 Wall Street to the West Side Railway Yards. From Columbus Circle to the Trump Palace on the East Side, and downtown to the SoHo Condominiums.
That’s just for starters.
Eventually, we started building outside the city, and currently the Trump name is on buildings in nine states, from New York to Hawaii, from Florida to Washington, and in ten other countries, from Uruguay to India. Many large-scale and even massive projects are in the pipeline and ready to roll.
At 52 stories tall, 555 California Street is the second-tallest building in San Francisco, and the largest in terms of usable floor space. Originally the Bank of America’s world headquarters, that building has been used in films, including Dirty Harry and The Towering Inferno.
It would certainly make anyone’s day to be in it.
Trump World Seoul consists of six condominium buildings throughout Seoul and its neighboring cities. The glass-clad Trump Tower at Century City, featuring 220 condos, is one of the tallest buildings in Manila, Philippines.
The 72-story Trump Ocean Club in Panama City is Panama’s first five-star development. We’re building luxury hotels and residences all over the world. We’re representing the best of America throughout the world with some of our best hotels and projects ready to be announced.
I understand “foreign policy” from the practical standpoint: I know how to make deals, bring foreign governments to the table, and negotiate deals that don’t give everything away. In fact, the Chinese have their biggest bank in Trump Tower. They want to be part of Trump wherever they can.
That’s why when I hear politicians talking about some trade bill they voted for or how they balanced the budget, I really have to laugh. Maybe they have political experience, but they certainly don’t have common sense or real-world experience.
Every construction project, every deal, is totally unique. Each project is an unbelievable balancing act; I have to bring together the business community, the financial community, and the local officials. I’ve learned to work with great architects and designers. I’ve worked out deals with the unions and the trades.
I care about every detail. I read the small print, unlike the negotiators of the Iran nuclear “agreement,” who don’t seem to know what’s in the “side deals,” which Iran struck with the agency that is supposed to be responsible for verifying Iran’s compliance.
When it came time to expand, I got interested in golf resorts. When I was a kid, my father would take me golfing with him. He didn’t play much, but he had a beautiful swing. I looked around, and who did I see on the golf courses? Successful people; great businesspeople.
What were they doing as they played? They were talking about deals. I couldn’t begin to guess how many great deals were made on a golf course. So I decided to build the best golf courses and resorts in the world, and that’s what we’ve done.
People think it’s hard to create a building? Try putting in a new golf course in New York City. In 2015 we opened Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point in the Bronx, and it instantly became one of the greatest public golf courses in the world. It’s the first public golf course opened in New York in over half a century.
It was under construction for many years—a real mess.
Nobody else could get it done. People were running in the other direction. Nobody wanted to take on this project’s completion.
The city had wanted a golf course built for decades, but nobody could figure out how to do it. After the politicians had screwed up this deal for many years, they brought in a businessman, me, to clean up their mess.
I created a magnificent golf course.
It’s been a huge success for the city and for the Trump Organization. I promised that golfers would come from all over the world to play a round of golf in the Bronx, and that’s exactly what has happened.
I don’t just want to bring golfers to America. We need to bring all kinds of businesses back to America, especially those that are American-owned.
If we create the proper tax climate and cut the endless red tape restricting American businesses large and small, then we’ll have a real job resurgence, which will help to create “full employment.”
Full employment means we don’t have 20 percent of the population either out of work or underemployed. Full employment means that every new worker can feel good about going home to his or her family with the pride of having done a hard day’s work.
Full employment benefits unions and employers; together they can rebuild our country’s infrastructure.
Full employment means that people who are now mortgaged beyond their means can get out from under the oppressive burden of worrying if their homes are secure. As credit loosens up from banks, the new and renovated housing industries will boom as well.
We are at a critical turning point in our history, not only for you and me but for our children as well. America may be struggling, it may be crippled, but we can rise again. Our time has not passed, it is here, and the potential is amazing.
America’s best days are still to come. Why? Because of our people. Together we can Make America Great Again.
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