Source: Fantasy Island Facebook page, clerk on duty.
On November 7, shortly before Fox News had declared President-elect Joe Biden the victor over President-reject Donald Trump, Trump consigliere Rudy Giuliani held a press conference in the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping in north Philly, apparently believing he had booked a hotel with a similar name.
Much of the social media focus was not on what Mr. Giuliani blathered lies about, but on the colorful setting, which included the Delaware Valley Cremation Center across the street, and just next door, Fantasy Island Adult Books.
The store was offering a 50% discount on The Emperor, based on a plaster casting of Trump himself. This was hardly a bargain given the item’s suggested retail price of $10,000.
T-File visited the store to get a look at this rare item only to be told the whole stock had been sold to a Russian collector. However, the teenage clerk behind the counter, who identified himself as Jeremy Blowjob, did direct us to a framed business card on a wall with signed photos of a surprising number of Philly notables.
Source: Safe in David Pecker’s office at American Media, Inc.
This memo is circa 1991-92*.
In 1992, a gossip column in New York Newsday called The China Club, then located in the basement of the Beacon Theater at Broadway and 75th street, “Donald’s Monday-night nest.”
UPDATE: On August 14, the Washington Post reported that Donald Trump allegedly molested a young wanna-be model in the China Club in the early Nineties.
Kristin Anderson told the paper that she had been seated on a tufted red velvet couch when she recognized the man to her right. “I mean,” she said, “Nobody else has those eyebrows.” As Ms. Anderson talked with friends, Mr. Trump proceeded to casually snake his hand up her miniskirt and poke her vagina though her underwear.
“It wasn’t a sexual come-on,” she said. “I don’t know why he did it. It was like just to prove that he could do it and nothing would happen. There was zero conversation. We didn’t even really look at each other. It was very random, very nonchalant on his part.”
The accusation came a week after the release of a 2005 Access Hollywood tape, in which Mr. Trump is recorded telling host Billy Bush off camera, “when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything … grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
“Mr. Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity,” Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told the Post. “It is totally ridiculous.”
SECOND UPDATE: On October 22, Mr. Trump claimed that the ten women who had come forward accusing him of sexual impropriety were making it up to hurt his campaign. “All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
He further speculated, “It was probably the (Democratic National Committee) and Hillary’s campaign who put forward these liars with their fabricated stories. But we’ll probably find out later through litigation, which we’re so looking forward to.”
THIRD UPDATE: In a cover story in New York magazine in June 2019, writer E. Jean Carroll accused Mr. Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1995 or early 1996.
FOURTH UPDATE: On June 27, Mr. Trump told the political website The Hill that Ms. Carroll was “totally lying.” He explained that he could not have raped her. “She’s not my type,” he said, “OK?”
UPDATE TO SECOND UPDATE: As of April 27, 2022, Mr. Trump has not sued any of the more than two dozen women who have accused him of sexually assaulting them.
In July 2006, Donald Trump attended the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship in Lake Tahoe. All the famous people were there: Dan Quayle, Ray Romano, and other famous people. But one particular luminary caught his eye: Stormy Daniels, star of the award-winning Space Nuts (2003), Porking with Pride 2 (2004), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), and about 75 others.
Mr. Trump invited the actress up to his room and “we talked,” Ms. Daniels later recalled. “He asked me a lot of questions about my business. You know, the business I work in and how it works and how it functions. All like technical questions. He was very curious.”
They also had sex in the missionary position and watched Shark Week*.
Mr. Trump’s interest in Ms. Daniels’ profession was more than cursory pre-fornication chit-chat.** As it happened, he has been exploring that space for more than four decades.
Mr. Trump in the New York Military Academy’s 1964 yearbook, with potential victim.
As their relationship blossomed into more missionary sex, Mr. Trump asked for Ms. Daniels’ help in getting into adult entertainment. His big idea: Trump-branded adult films for the regular guy, with no crazy positions and no cunnilingus. He had already come up with several titles (Man on Top, Missionary Madness, Man on Top 2: Always on Top , Two Scoops of Vanilla, etc.) and had written some dialogue on napkins (“Take it, bitch,” “Not so small now, OK?”, “Call me Sir,” and “¡Olé!,“) . Ms. Daniels convinced him there wasn’t much call for regular sex porn and she didn’t think they could find performers who could do it convincingly. Unfortunately, Mr. Trump had already started manufacturing a line of tie-in sex toys.
Starting in the spring of 2007, ads for Donald Trump Emperor Brand novelties began appearing in select men’s magazines. (Modesty heads have been added.)
Clockwise from left: Hustler’s Barely Legal (March 2007), featuring a “Dominique ‘Lolita’ Nip Slip;” Celebrity Skin: Sexy School Girls (October 2007); Swank (November 2007), featuring a “Teenage *** Queen;” and High Society (November 2007), featuring Ms. Daniels on the cover.Barely Legal spreadDetail of Ad
The line suffered endless setbacks. The Emperor’s New Sheath Chinese Silk Reusable Condom was forced to include a black box warning that it did nothing to prevent pregnancy or disease, and could cause Toxic Shock Syndrome. Only one Trump Tower was ever made and the British duke who purchased it complained that it was clearly pre-owned, with later tests finding it was contaminated with a particularly nasty strain of e colionly found in raccoons. Several thousand units of The Emperor were sold but nearly 90 percent were returned when it proved incapable of penetrating even the most accommodating vagina.
There do not appear to be any Emperor ads after 2007. In March 2010, the Trump Emperor LLC declared bankruptcy, claiming no income and listing $18 million in debt owed to various vendors and prostitutes.
UPDATE: In her 2018 memoir Full Disclosure, Ms. Daniels does just that, writing that the president’s penis as “smaller than average… but not freakishly small” before getting quite specific: “It has a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool… I lay there, annoyed that I was getting fucked by a guy with Yeti pubes and a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart.”
Source: the January-February 2008 issue of Cow International*
(From “The Great Trump Steak Disaster,” by Leo Slye, Lucy Wood Smith and George Hayes. Reprinted with permission.)
When New York City businessman Donald Trump announced his foray into self-branded steaks in May 2007, no one in Premium Beef predicted success. As one industry wag put it at the time, “This is a man who orders his steak burnt and then slathers it with ketchup. He might as well be eating horse hide.”
And so it was no surprise that despite Trump’s reality television celebrity and East Coast hucksterism, the launch was an unmitigated disaster. Available “exclusively” through a gadget catalogue and a cable shopping network, the reputed “World’s Greatest Steaks” sold less than $50,000 worth of its overpriced and subprime product before being discontinued two months later.
A six-month CI investigation has found that Trump’s failure was deeper and more profound than previously thought, involving poor inventory control, resulting in desperate attempts to repurpose suspect meat, and a wanton disregard for the norms of the beef industry.
The Steak Stakes
“When it comes to great steaks, I’ve just raised the stakes!” Trump crowed in a commercial introducing his new beef line in May 2007. “Trump Steaks are by far the best tasting, most flavorful beef you’ve ever had. Truly in a league of their own.”
For some reason Trump decided to forgo the traditional premium meat marketing – first to upscale restaurants and then in the high-end grocery space – and instead chose a mail order model, a curious choice for such a perishable product. His business partner was even more unusual: Sharper Image, the consumer electronics store more known for massage chairs than massaged meat.
“Believe me: I understand steaks,” Trump assured his potential customers.
He did not understand steaks.
Cover Story
The venture seemed doomed before it began. As part of the launch Sharper Image was to feature Trump and his steaks on the June cover of its magazine. Trump micromanaged every aspect of the production, multiple sources told CI. “He was a such a c***,” said one person who was at many of the cover shoots. “Lighting, he would just move the lights about, saying he knew more about lighting than any ‘photo guy’.” Trump insisted on his own hair and makeup, which took four hours and was attended by several technicians wearing lab coats, sources said.
CI has learned the cover had to be reshot several times because Trump was either dissatisfied with his hair or the model he had chosen to appear with him. Then on May 15, Trump called Sharper Image CEO Jerry Levin at 3 a.m. in an agitated state. He had shown the cover to his wife Melania and she felt it would be better without the model. When Levin explained that it was too late, the magazine was already on press, Trump reportedly screamed, “Lose the f*****g girl, OK?!”
More than 28,000 copies had to be destroyed at an estimated cost of $40,000. Trump agreed it would be paid out of the profits.
Unfortunately, there were none.
Perhaps it was the price, ranging from $199 for the Classic Collection (two 6-ounce filet mignons, two 16-ounce cowboy bone-in rib eye steaks and 12 6-ounce sirloin burgers) to $999 for the Connoisseur Collection (four of each type of steak and 24 burgers.) That works out to about $50 a pound. Plus shipping, handling and applicable sales tax, of course.
Perhaps it was the taste. When Trump later went on QVC to hawk the product, he did manage to peddle some of his wears. However, the feedback was brutal, with a majority of one or two-star reviews, of which this was typical.
Other reviewers described the meat as “mealy,””grainy like liver,””bland,” “dry,” “loaded with fat and messy to clean up,” “greasy and tasteless,” “nothing but grease” and “Really greasy, have no flavor, overpriced, and just gross!!”
Or perhaps people who buy True Night Vision binoculars and Precious Moment figurines aren’t into pricey, greasy meat.
“The net of all that was we literally sold almost no steaks,” CEO Levin now says. “If we sold $50,000 of steaks grand total, I’d be surprised.”
Sharper Image pulled the steaks two months later. QVC soon followed.
If that had been the end of it, it would have only been another in a long line of failed Trump-branded products, along with Trump Airlines, Trump the Game, Trump magazine, Trump American Pale Ale, and most recently, Trump Vodka.
That was not the end of it.
Sauce or ?
Trump’s master plan was to sell a line of steak accessories, which would come with a license agreement requiring them to only be used with “Trump-branded steaks and steak derivatives.” Ultimately nothing came of proposals for Trump Golden Grills, Trump Charcoal Supreme, Trump’s Best Tasting Wood Chips and Trump’s So Sharp Steak Knives. CI has found evidence of only one original line extension to reach production, if that is the right word: Trump Steak Sauce.
The sauce was said to based on “an old Trump family recipe,” composed of “red ripe tomatoes, fine vinegars, syrup extracted from 100% American syrup, and a secret and legally protected mix of spices and chemicals.” Expecting massive sales, Trump Steak Sauce had an initial production run of 100,000 cases.
However, before the sauce could go on sale, Trump was warned by his lawyers, and the lawyers who replaced them, that he could not slap a label on top of bottles of Heinz Ketchup and charge $18 for it. Trump reportedly continues to keep these for his personal use, despite the fact that the condiment has begun to separate.
Something is Rotten
Anticipating unprecedented demand for his steaks, in April 2007 Trump ordered the slaughter of 6,200 head of Trump Cattle™, according to a participant who does not wish to be identified because he is ashamed. When the anticipated demand failed to materialize, Trump found himself sitting on 2.7 million pounds of freshly butchered meat.
He scrambled to recoup his losses.
According to three sources, Trump first attempted to offload his steaks to fine restaurants as “aged beef,” unaware that this is not simply meat that has been around for awhile. Then he offered the beef at a 50% discount to multiple chain restaurants, and was incensed when Black Angus, Outback, Chipotle, McDonald’s and even Taco Bell turned him down.
A Dog’s Breakfast
One evening in late July, Trump had a brainstorm when his driver hit a dog of some kind.
But in test markets consumers were confused as to whether the food was for or of puppies. In any case, they were unwilling to pay $50 for a can of dog food.
A few nights later, Trump was in his Trump Tower apartment, adjusting his assets for an urgently needed loan from Deutsche Bank, when he heard his infant son Barron crying in another room. An associate remembers him pointing to his head and saying, “Viola!”
According to an associate who was there, Trump “blew a gasket” when told that safety standards for baby food were even more stringent than they were for pet food, and vowed to eliminate such burdensome regulations “when the change comes.” On September 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration confiscated 8,000 cases of Trump’s Baby Meat as it was being loaded onto a freighter to China, an agency official confirmed.
Desperate Measures
From there, Trump’s attempts to salvage his investment became increasing ill-advised, according to documents supplied to CI.
He hastily put out a line of TrumpBrand™ Wallets, forgoing the usual tanning and marketing them as “all-natural.” The wallets, however, soon began to stink, and Macy’s returned 61,500 of them. (Trump had kept 500 for employee Christmas bonuses.)
Some other products didn’t make it past the prototype stage before federal authorities intervened.
Trump’s Big Bone, untreated and uncooked cow bones incompletely enclosed in generic cling wrap, drew the attention of the USDA, the FDA and the CDC Division for Vector-Borne diseases (For reasons not fully understood the bones were found to contain the eggs and larva of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito responsible for dengue fever. )
The earliest samples of Ole MacTrump’s Half Jerky resulted in a heavily armed response from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, after an undocumented Trump worker showed up at the hospital with both bovine spongiform encephalopathy and anthrax. (Before he died, the employee was fired for theft of company jerky.) Trump avoided bioterrorism charges only through the discovery of Illya Kuryakin, a Russian operative in his employ, who wrote a complete confession before committing suicide by smashing his head repeatedly into a glass coffee table.
A Happy Ending?
The ultimate cost of the Trump Steaks fiasco is difficult to estimate, in terms of both blood and treasure. In bankruptcy, Trump himself walked away with $6 million in nonrefundable licensing fees and $4 million as a meat consultant, while unpaid vendors incurred losses exceeding $23 million. Inside sources claim Trump was able to profit further, buying the remaining inventory for one dollar and then selling it to an unnamed Saudi prince. It is not known what ultimately happened to the more than a thousand tons of rancid meat and meat byproducts.
UPDATE: In 2012, the Trump Steakhouse in Las Vegas was shut down for 51 health code violations, including serving five-month-old duck.
* There is no such magazine. Nevertheless, much of this is true, though not necessarily the parts that make sense. Real quotes and factual details stolen from the New York Post, the New York Daily News, GQ, Rolling Stone, Think Progress, Death and Taxes and Wikipedia.
