The Making of Donald Trump

What happens when power, ego, and media manipulation collide in a single person? In The Making of Donald Trump, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist David Cay Johnston invites you into the decades-long story of a man who mastered the rules of fame, wealth, and intimidation—then broke them to his advantage. Rather than offering partisan attacks, Johnston reveals through investigation how Donald Trump crafted his myth of success, often through deception, litigation, and connections with corrupt figures. Trump’s career, Johnston argues, embodies not just one man’s ambition but a modern American fascination with wealth, celebrity, and ruthless self-promotion.

Johnston contends that Trump’s rise wasn’t luck or genius—it was persistence in exploiting loopholes, laws, and social insecurities. He portrays Trump as a master of the art of manipulation: a businessman who calls himself self-made despite being buoyed by family wealth, government favors, and partnerships with mob-controlled firms. To Johnston, Trump is less an anomaly than a mirror for American culture—a society that rewards spectacle over substance, branding over competence. The book unfolds chronologically, building a portrait of inherited privilege reshaped into a persona of crude charisma and relentless aggression.

A Legacy of Power and Lawlessness

Johnston begins with Trump’s ancestors, tracing a family pattern of opportunism and ethical flexibility from Friedrich Drumpf’s bordellos in the Klondike to Fred Trump’s shady dealings with government housing programs. This legacy of bending rules, Johnston explains, set the tone for Donald’s worldview: that the only real crime is getting caught. From a young age, Trump learned that social power and wealth insulated him from consequences—a theme Johnston returns to repeatedly when recounting his tax evasions, business frauds, and later political tactics.

Money as a Measure of Worth

Trump’s obsession with wealth permeates every page. Johnston reveals that Trump has used wildly fluctuating net worth claims—often tied to his feelings rather than facts—to project power. The author exposes how Trump fabricated the illusion of success through real estate deals backed by debt, government bailouts, and branding arrangements. Trump’s empire, he writes, thrives on pretending growth where losses multiply—a dynamic resembling corporate “image-making” explored by journalists such as Jane Mayer in Dark Money.

The Professor of Public Mythmaking

What Johnston finds most fascinating isn’t Trump’s business acumen but his command of the media. Decades before Twitter, Trump used planted stories, fabricated alter egos like “John Barron” and “John Miller,” and lawsuits to control his narrative. Whether boasting about his wealth or feuding with celebrities, he learned that outrage guarantees attention. Johnston likens this mastery of modern publicity to the showmanship of P.T. Barnum—where the spectacle itself is the product. Yet behind this theatricality lies a disturbing lesson: in America’s media economy, attention can eclipse accountability.

The Moral of the Investigation

Johnston’s goal isn’t just to expose wrongdoing but to ask why it worked. He challenges readers to question how illusions of success shape American ambition. Trump’s story, the author suggests, is a cautionary tale about what happens when self-interest and vengeance replace civic duty. His motto, “Always get even,” turns business and politics into warfare, making compromise seem like weakness. Through decades of investigation—including tax cases, casino scandals, and familial feuds—Johnston pieces together a portrait of a man who learned to manipulate law, media, and emotion as instruments of personal gain. And by extension, he asks us to reflect on ourselves: why do we admire those who break the rules as long as they look confident doing it?

Across the book’s 24 chapters, Johnston pairs factual detail with narrative momentum, unveiling Trump’s complicity with mobsters, tax evasion, real estate deceit, Trump University fraud, and family vendettas. Ultimately, The Making of Donald Trump is less about one person than about the America that enabled him—a nation dazzled by gold-plated ambition and hypnotized by spectacle. It reminds you that every myth of success hides a system of manipulation underneath—and that seeing the machinery is the first step to resisting its pull.

To understand Donald Trump’s worldview, Johnston begins with Trump’s family—immigrants whose pursuit of prosperity was entwined with evasion, opportunism, and secrecy. Friedrich Trump, Donald’s grandfather, fled Germany to avoid military service, and built wealth through restaurants and brothels in the American frontier. His son Fred Trump transformed that adventurous amorality into a corporate art form, exploiting government housing aid while disguising profits to appear both generous and self-made.

From Friedrich to Fred: The Genesis of Shady Prosperity

Friedrich Trump’s enterprise in Seattle and the Klondike—running establishments that catered to sex and liquor—set a precedent for bending norms when profits beckoned. Johnston highlights how Fred inherited not only money but a flexible morality. Fred’s housing empire grew during wartime contracts and postwar public financing, all while skirting quality standards and inflating costs. In Congress, he was accused of having $4 million in excess profits on federally funded housing. His creative accounting—claiming profits weren’t real because they remained in the bank—would foreshadow his son’s later denials of wrongdoing in tax and business cases.

The Father’s Influence: Ruthless and Showy Instruction

Fred Trump taught his children the hierarchy of cruelty and ambition. Donald absorbed his father’s values early: competitiveness, racism, and contempt for weakness. Johnston digs into records showing Fred’s arrest at a Ku Klux Klan rally and discriminatory rental practices, even immortalized by folk singer Woody Guthrie’s angry song “Old Man Trump.” Fred’s conviction was simple—loyalty over truth—and he taught Donald that defiance was power. Sent to military school for behavioral issues, young Trump learned to mask violence with control. The father’s expectation that his sons earn but never empathize nurtured an ethic where money measured morality.

A Dynasty of Entitlement

Johnston shows that Trump’s “self-made man” image dissolves under scrutiny: born into trust funds that paid him equivalent to four times the average family income before adolescence. Yet in Trump’s retelling, the wealth became proof of divine favor rather than nepotism. He learned to blur fact and fiction as family tradition. His older brother Fred Jr.’s decline—an alcoholic whose sensitivity clashed with family authoritarianism—cemented Donald’s belief that compassion is weakness.

By tracing this lineage, Johnston delivers more than genealogy; he reveals psychological inheritance. Donald Trump inherited not just wealth but an ideology—the conviction that success justifies every act. It is an inheritance that would later shape his casinos, his politics, and even his revenge against family members who crossed him. As Johnston writes, “The Trumps were builders not just of homes, but of myth.” Understanding that myth helps you see how Trump turned privilege into spectacle—and morality into a transaction.

One of Johnston’s most striking insights is how Trump redefined business ethics into a strategy of domination. To Trump, business wasn’t about service, innovation, or trust—it was about fear and exploitation. His public speeches and books teach revenge as business policy, slogans like “Always get even” and “If somebody screws you, screw ’em back ten times harder.”

Revenge as Strategy

In a 2005 motivational speech in Colorado, Trump used profanity and petty grievances instead of advice. He mocked employees and competitors while telling audiences to trust no one. Johnston cites a woman Trump later vilified for refusing an improper favor—someone he fired, slandered, and publicly celebrated when her business collapsed. Trump’s model of success was not cooperation but retaliation. “I love getting even,” he declared in his own book Think Big.

The Myth of Genius

Johnston exposes how Trump’s self-proclaimed financial genius is mostly illusion. In litigation over his net worth, Trump admitted under oath that his value “fluctuates based on feelings”—not facts. His accountants confirmed they never audited his numbers. This emotional valuation turns the businessman’s confidence into quantifiable deceit. For Trump, sincerity matters less than spectacle: if you say you’re a billionaire often enough, people will treat you like one.

Profit Above People

Johnston’s investigations into Trump’s casinos and construction projects reveal systematic exploitation: unpaid workers, immigrant laborers without safety gear, and vendors conned into endless lawsuits. Trump’s reputation for endless litigation wasn’t defensive—it was proactive intimidation. He filed suits not to win money but to silence critics. This pattern, Johnston notes, forecasts how he uses verbal aggression politically—threatening lawsuits and vendettas as substitutes for policy.

In this portrayal, Trump’s “ethic” is amoral capitalism distilled to vengeance. Johnston contrasts him with business thinkers like Peter Drucker, who emphasized value creation and social responsibility. Where Drucker taught that management is about human effectiveness, Trump turned it into personal dominance. The result is a business empire fueled not by competence but by fear, both within his organization and among those who cross him.

Johnston devotes several chapters to Trump’s disturbing alliances—with mobsters, crooked lawyers, and con artists who facilitated his deals. Some of Trump’s closest associates, such as Roy Cohn, Felix Sater, and Joseph Weichselbaum, had documented ties to organized crime. Instead of distancing himself, Trump embraced their loyalty and intimidation as valuable assets.

Roy Cohn: Mentor in Ruthlessness

Cohn, best known for his role in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunts, became Trump’s lawyer, mentor, and role model. Johnston shows that Cohn taught Trump two lessons he never forgot: never admit wrong, and attack relentlessly. When federal investigators sued Trump for housing discrimination in 1973, Cohn advised him to countersue the government for $100 million. The case settled with Trump agreeing to end discriminatory practices—but he spun it as victory. Cohn’s tactics shaped Trump’s future approach to conflict: deny, attack, and redefine defeat as triumph.

Felix Sater and Joseph Weichselbaum

Johnston’s exposé on Sater—an ex-con with mafia and Russian mob ties who later became a Trump Organization “senior advisor”—illustrates Trump’s willingness to overlook criminal pasts for profit. Likewise, in Atlantic City, Trump wrote a letter seeking leniency for Weichselbaum, a drug trafficker who managed Trump’s helicopters. Even after Weichselbaum’s conviction, Trump rented luxury apartments to his associates and maintained dealings that could have cost him his casino license under state law. These episodes weren’t anomalies; they reflect Trump’s consistent pattern of favoring loyalty and profit over legality or morality.

Mobbed-Up Construction and Casino Deals

Trump built his empire—literally—with concrete controlled by the Mafia. His Manhattan skyscrapers were supplied by S&A Concrete, co-owned by mob bosses Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano. Workers called Trump Tower’s demolition crew the “Polish Brigade”—undocumented immigrants underpaid and exposed to asbestos. Johnston’s revelation is that government regulators often looked the other way, favoring Trump as “too big to fail.” When his casinos collapsed under debt, state commissions approved bailout deals instead of revoking his license.

These stories form the spine of Johnston’s argument: Trump didn’t just associate with criminals—he learned from them. His method of operating mirrors mob logistics: hierarchy, fear, loyalty, and secrecy. And where laws threatened profit, influence served as his shield. For Johnston, this isn’t incidental corruption—it’s a worldview turned into an empire.

According to Johnston, Donald Trump’s most successful enterprise was never real estate—it was Donald Trump himself. His persona became an economic engine: a brand built through self-promotion, manipulation, and lies. Johnston traces how Trump created his public myth through media performances, false identity calls, and self-given awards that masquerade as external recognition.

Inventing Publicists and Lovers

Trump often called reporters pretending to be “John Baron” or “John Miller,” flattering himself as a charismatic billionaire courted by celebrities like Madonna and Carla Bruni. When caught, he denied the impersonations, even after admitting them to journalists decades earlier. These alter egos allowed him to cultivate rumor and intrigue, populating tabloids with stories that kept his name—and ego—alive.

Manufacturing Honors

Johnston uncovers Trump’s relationship with Joseph “Joey No Socks” Cinque, a convicted felon who ran the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences—a glorified awards-for-sale firm that gave Trump’s hotels and golf courses “Diamond Awards.” Trump himself sat on its board and even signed his own plaques. In accepting honors from institutions he controlled, he reinforced his self-image as world-class achiever while sidestepping accountability. “If a guy’s going to give you an award, you take it,” Trump explained.

Turning Fiction into Political Narrative

Johnston argues that these mythmaking methods became political tools. When challenged, Trump deflects truth with emotional conviction—“It doesn’t sound like me on the phone” or “I don’t recall.” This blend of denial and bravado manipulates media logic, turning fact into ambiguity. On television, charisma outweighs documented evidence. (Note: political psychologists often liken this technique to “gaslighting”—making people doubt their own perception.)

Johnston’s portrait of Trump’s self-fabrication aligns him with conmen in literature—Jay Gatsby’s glamor built on illusion or P. T. Barnum’s hoaxes packaged as entertainment. Trump’s genius, Johnston concludes, was realizing that in America, image not only sells—it governs.

By the book’s end, Johnston extends Trump’s story beyond personality, using it as a lens on modern America. Why do millions admire the ruthlessness exposed in these pages? Because Trump represents a cultural shift from substance to spectacle. Johnston argues that Trump’s rise mirrors a society captivated by the illusion of success and the glamor of aggression.

A Country of the Spectacle

In the epilogue, Johnston compares Trump’s myth-making to America’s growing appetite for celebrity over citizenship. Trump’s vengeance-based philosophy—“Hit harder than you’re hit”—transforms democracy into television drama. He rides a symbolic escalator from business into politics, surrounded by paid supporters posing as enthusiasts. Johnston warns that this fusion of entertainment and power exposes how fragile democratic culture becomes when truth bends to personality.

From Business Tactics to Political Strategy

In Johnston’s analysis, Trump’s political behavior—threatening lawsuits, deflecting questions, vilifying opponents—echoes his business methods. Where business taught him to weaponize publicity, politics let him turn it into ideology. His apparent ignorance on policy (as seen in debates where he misunderstood the nuclear triad) isn’t incidental—it’s consistent. Substance is irrelevant when dominance is the goal.

The Larger Lesson

Johnston closes with a meditation on values. Trump, he writes, chooses wealth over honor; Johnston chooses honor over wealth. The book’s purpose is not hatred but warning: when a society rewards deceit with admiration, power drifts toward those most willing to exploit it. The making of Donald Trump is thus the making of a mirror—reflecting not just his ambition, but our complicity in mistaking dominance for greatness.