'OUR TRUMP DUMP'...'New York​​ Magazine's look back on the GOP prince's days as an NYC clown.'

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A long read. 2016 article from New York Magazine. with lots of interesting stories and anecdotes about Trump's clownish rise from obscurity, documenting the media coverage that made Trump a household name.

"Last April, when President Obama delivered his annual roast at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, he homed in on a familiar target for ridicule. 'And Donald Trump is here,' the president said. 'Still!' "

"He still is! Nine months later, the New York developer has transformed himself into a heartland populist, a nativist fearmonger, and a surprisingly skilled politician with a commanding lead in the Republican primary campaign. One piece of collateral damage: New York City has lost one of its great tabloid characters. Yes, journalists still enjoy writing about Trump (many more than ever before) but it’s easy to forget that he was once a figure of local absurdist fun — the city’s very own billionaire circus clown with a short temper and shorter fingers."

"Trump went into business in 1968, the same year New York came into being. 'The first time anyone heard much about Donald Trump was about five years ago,' contributing editor Marie Brenner wrote in a 1980 profile. 'And it all sounded very fishy.' But over the succeeding years, this magazine got to know Trump intimately, chronicling his deals, his bankruptcies, his marriages, his affairs, his casinos, his yacht, his children, his vendettas, his television show, his marketing schemes, and his presidential campaigns. He occasioned and survived multiple bans by editors skeptical that there was anything about Trump left to say. He graced the magazine’s cover numerous times, most recently in September, when he was digitally placed in the guise of George Washington."

"And so, as hordes of Iowan Republicans race to declare Donald Trump their pick to be the nation’s next president, we went into New York’s archives to find our favorite Trump moments. Perhaps you remember the day the Post put Trump’s smirking face on its front page, next to the headline 'Best Sex I’ve Ever Had,' plugging a rave review that came from his newly discovered mistress, Marla Maples. But how about the time he floated a fake rumor that he was sleeping with Carla Bruni to make Maples jealous? Or the time he exchanged expressions of mutual admiration with Richard Nixon, or the time Puff Daddy ran around naked at the beach of his Palm Beach compound, or the time Mayor Ed Koch called him 'Piggy, piggy, piggy'? Trump has trespassed on the historical stage with surprising regularity: He was at Studio 54 on opening night, in Moscow at the dawn of perestroika, in Tyson’s corner before his knockout of Michael Spinks. And so we complemented our own archival material with a review of some of the biographies and autobiographies (there are many!) and got a few people on the phone to recall their encounters from decades past. Below, you’ll find our favorite moments of Trump’s career to date — a portrait of a man charging shamelessly into the future, leaving victories and disasters in the dust, shifting personas the way other men change ties, but never, ever, evolving."

Complete article at link:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/01/donald-trump-timeline.html