To hedge his bets he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his s for him. That was much easier to … - Mary L. Trump

Donald needed somebody to take the s when he was at Fordham in order to get into Penn. ...[I]n New York City, the name Joe Shapiro isn't exactly unique.

The full-page screed he paid to publish in the New York Times in 1989 calling for the Central Park Five to be put to death wasn't about his deep concern for the rule of law; it was an easy opportunity for him to take on a deeply serious topic that was very important to the city while sounding like an authority in the influential and prestigious pages of the Gray Lady. It was unvarnished racism meant to stir up racial animosity in a city already seething with it. All five boys... were subsequently cleared, proven innocent via incontrovertible DNA evidence. To this day, however, Donald insists that they were guilty—yet another example of his inability to drop a preferred narrative even when it's contradicted by established fact.'''

Donald learned that in order to be, not just protected from his father but favored by his father, he needed to be this larger than life, great, fantastic... Part of it was the toxic positivity, and part of it was just... having to convince Fred Trump Sr. that... Donald belonged on the planet and... should survive, and should succeed, and he needed to make it clear to Fred that Donald could be of use to him.