It's forcing the media to have a conversation that they've never wanted to have, and never have had, which is about Donald's psychological health. - Mary L. Trump

By 2004, when The Apprentice first aired, Donald's finances were a mess (even with his $170 million cut of my grandfather's estate when he and his siblings sold the properties), and his... "empire" consisted of increasingly desperate branding opportunities such as , , and . That made him an easy target for Burnett. Both Donald and his viewers were the butt of the joke that was The Apprentice, which, despite all evidence to the contrary, presented him as a legitimately successful tycoon.

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 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.