Within five minutes, Carswell got a return call from Trump’s publicist, a man named John Miller, who immediately jumped into a startlingly frank and detailed explanation of why Trump dumped Maples for the Italian model Carla Bruni. “He really didn’t want to make a commitment,” Miller said. “He’s coming out of a marriage, and he’s starting to do tremendously well financially.”

Miller turned out to be a remarkably forthcoming source — a spokesman with rare insight into the private thoughts and feelings of his client. “Have you met him?” Miller asked the reporter. “He’s a good guy, and he’s not going to hurt anybody. . . . He treated his wife well and . . . he will treat Marla well.”

Some reporters found the calls from Miller or Barron disturbing or even creepy; others thought they were just examples of Trump being playful. Today, as the presumptive Republican nominee for president faces questions about his attitudes toward women, what stands out to some who received those calls is Trump’s characterization of women whom he portrayed as drawn to him sexually.

“Actresses,” Miller said in the call to Carswell, “just call to see if they can go out with him and things.” Madonna “wanted to go out with him.” And Trump’s alter ego boasted that in addition to living with Maples, Trump had “three other girlfriends.”

Miller was consistent about referring to Trump as “he,” but at one point, when asked how important Bruni was in Trump’s busy love life, the spokesman said, “I think it’s somebody that — you know, she’s beautiful. I saw her once, quickly, and beautiful . . . ” and then he quickly pivoted back into talking about Trump — then a 44-year-old father of three — in the third person.

In 1990, Trump testified in a court case that “I believe on occasion I used that name.”

In a phone call to NBC’s “Today” program Friday morning after this article appeared online, Trump denied that he was John Miller. “No, I don’t think it — I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time and it doesn’t sound like my voice at all,” he said. “I have many, many people that are trying to imitate my voice and then you can imagine that, and this sounds like one of the scams, one of the many scams — doesn’t sound like me.” Later, he was more definitive: “It was not me on the phone. And it doesn’t sound like me on the phone, I will tell you that, and it was not me on the phone. And when was this? Twenty-five years ago?”

Then, Friday afternoon, Washington Post reporters who were 44 minutes into a phone interview with Trump about his finances asked him a question about Miller: “Did you ever employ someone named John Miller as a spokesperson?”

The phone went silent, then dead. When the reporters called back and reached Trump’s secretary, she said, “I heard you got disconnected. He can’t take the call now. I don’t know what happened.”

Trump has never been terribly adamant about denying that he often made calls to reporters posing as someone else. From his earliest years in business, he occasionally called reporters using the name “John Barron.”

A “John Baron,” described as a “vice-president of the Trump organization,” appeared in a front-page New York Times article as early as 1980, defending Trump’s decision to destroy sculptures on the facade of the Bonwit Teller department store building, the Fifth Avenue landmark he was demolishing to make way for his Trump Tower. Barron was quoted variously as a “Trump spokesman,” “Trump executive” or “Trump representative” in New York magazine, The Washington Post and other publications.

Trump’s fascination with the name “Barron” persisted for decades. When he was seeing Maples while still married to Ivana, he sometimes used the code name “the Baron” when he left messages for her. In 2004, when Trump commissioned a dramatic TV series based on the life of a New York real estate mogul like him, his only request to the writer was to name the main character “Barron.” And when Trump and his third wife, Melania, had a son, they named him Barron.

In the 1991 recording, Miller sounded quite at ease regaling the reporter with tales of Trump hanging out with Madonna at a ball at the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. Asked about the rumored Madonna-Trump friendship, Miller, unlike every other PR man on the planet, neither batted the question away nor gave it short shrift. Rather, he said, “Do you have a second?”

Carswell, the reporter, sounded a bit startled: “Yeah, obviously,” she replied.

Whereupon Miller offered a detailed account of the Trump encounter with Madonna, who “came in a beautiful evening gown and combat boots.” The PR man assured the reporter that nothing untoward occurred: “He’s got zero interest that night.”

Miller also revealed to Carswell why Trump seemed to relish any and all media coverage, even the most critical. “I can tell you that he didn’t care if he got bad PR until he got his divorce finished,” Miller said. The more the press wrote about Trump’s money troubles, the greater advantage he would have in negotiations toward a financial settlement with his then-estranged wife, Ivana. Then, “once his divorce is finished,” Miller said, you would see stories about how Trump was “doing well financially and he’s doing well in every other way.”

NorthOfNorth wrote on Mar 8^th, 2017 at 10:28am:


I don't even understand how it's bad press. It's news.

Big Donger wrote on Mar 8^th, 2017 at 10:55am:

Yes... Although they, themselves would have considered it bad press (and sometimes it was bad press)...

BTW according to certain reporters, Obama did not appreciate being lampooned and having his statements twisted for comical or political effect and would tell the reporter as much and in an animated way... However, it was always done privately and not via a neurotic twitter-storm... And it wasn't over every issue large or trivial.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Mar 8^th, 2017 at 11:56am:


Well yes, but did he declare a "war on the media"? Did he declare them "enemies of the American people?" Did he accuse them of telling porkies? Did he refuse them entry to White House press briefings?

That would be the sensible thing to do, shurely.

But I'm curious. Can you see evidence of any bias or fake news in the article I've quoted above?

Can you understand why anyone might consider it to be an unreasonable attack on a presidential candidate?

NorthOfNorth wrote on Mar 8^th, 2017 at 11:56am:


Well yes, but did he declare a "war on the media"? Did he declare them "enemies of the American people?" Did he accuse them of telling porkies? Did he refuse them entry to White House press briefings?

That would be the sensible thing to do, shurely.

But I'm curious. Can you see evidence of any bias or fake news in the article I've quoted above?

Can you understand why anyone might consider it to be an unreasonable attack on a presidential candidate?

“As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations,” writes Wikileaks.

After the death of journalist Michael Hastings in 2013, who contacted Wikileaks just hours before his death to inform them that he was under FBI investigation, speculation swirled as to whether his apparent high speed car crash in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles was actually a targeted assassination.

Hastings sent an email hours before his death stating he was “onto a big story” and needed “to go off the rada[r] for a bit.” It later emerged that the story was likely to have been an exposé of the CIA.

Friends and colleagues confirmed that the journalist was “very paranoid” about being under government surveillance and had received death threats. A separate close friend of Hastings also told Infowars that the journalist’s home was visited by agents from an unnamed federal agency the day before his death.

Former counter-terror czar Richard Clarke subsequently went on record to remark that the crash involving Hastings was “consistent with a car cyber attack.”

The fact that the CIA was exploring car hacking techniques in October 2014 obviously suggests that the technology has been an area of interest for the agency.

EVERY politican gets lampooned. It is part of the job. The problem comes when the politician performs so badly and so offensively that mere lampooning is not enough; where no comical approach even gets close to how bad they are.