Back in 1980 I met Donald Trump. He came to a finance class to talk about real estate finance.

I have no recollection of his talk. But I DO remember the visit and, given what I’ve read about Mr. Trump, some readers may find my recollection an interesting footnote.

Ivana
To set the scene, this was a graduate MBA course in finance, at a top business school – Wharton – with maybe a couple of dozen almost all male students in the class.

Trump was then about 12 years out of Wharton undergrad, and had notched a major success with the Grand Hyatt in mid-town Manhattan in 1976. Trump partnered with the Pritzker family on that project, and after a falling out, sold his half for $140 million in 1996.

What WAS memorable was that he brought a tall, slim, blond. He introduced her as his wife Ivana and a former Czech Olympic skier (evidently not true). Mrs. Trump spent the entire time with a deer in the headlights look, as if someone might ask her about finance.

No one did.

The StorageMojo take
Maybe the professor thought Mr. Trump would say something useful. Or he wanted a day off.

In retrospect though, the only reason to bring Ivana was as a prop. Given that Mr. Trump had actually pulled off a major success in the tough Manhattan real estate market, that was unnecessary.

Draw your own conclusions about what this says about the young Mr. Trump. Based on what I’ve seen of the old Mr. Trump, he would be a disaster for America and the world as President of the United States of America. There’s a reason we rarely elect business people as Presidents: politics requires totally different skills.

Courteous comments welcome, of course. Yes, this is off-topic for StorageMojo. Back to our regularly unscheduled programming soon.