The Trump Files: Donald Said His Life Was “Shit.” Here’s Why.

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This post was originally published as part of “The Trump Files“—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current president—on September 7, 2016.

“I’d often say, loud enough…for anyone standing in the hall outside my office to hear me, ‘My life is shit,'” wrote Donald in Surviving at the Top, his 1990 book. It was understandable. At the time, he was fighting to keep his businesses from falling apart under huge debts. But that wasn’t the calamity that was making Trump’s life pure hell. It was having to attend high-society social events.

“My nine-to-five day fascinated and energized me,” Trump wrote of his burdens. “But then, late in the afternoon, I’d often get a call from Ivana, reminding me of that night’s engagement. ‘You’ll be sitting next to Lord Somebody-or-Other at such-and-such an event,’ she’d say—and I’d suddenly feel like a low-level employee who’d just been handed some meaningless, mind-numbing assignment.”

The pair would fight and Trump would usually cave, he wrote, “because I didn’t want to disappoint or embarrass her.” Then Donald would hang up the phone and proclaim his life shit for all his staff to hear. Eventually, being forced to go out at night helped convince Trump that the marriage wasn’t working: “You have only one life, and that’s simply not how I wanted to live mine,” he wrote.

 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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