It’s kind of embarrassing. Donald J. Trump was my business and character reference for my investigations firm, Union Associates, when, in the 1980s, I applied for government contracts.
But Frank Sinatra put an end to it.
My business partner at the time was the brilliant Joel Jacobson, who was on the New Jersey Gaming Commission. We teamed up to expose white collar crimes and fraud. Don’t laugh: the young Donald Trump was seen as an honest, progressive entrepreneur who would help Joel keep the mob out of Atlantic City.
Joel, then decades my senior, was an ace journalist, and union leader who would become New Jersey’s first Energy Commissioner. Joel had real balls: He got into a very nasty war with oil companies gouging heating customers. He’d also served as Chairman of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, where he body-blocked electricity rate overcharges — and put a stop to a crazy-ass nuclear industry scheme to build floating nuclear reactors off the Jersey shore! I can’t make this up.
Back to Old Blue Eyes. After Sinatra finished a performance at the Trump Casino, he liked to play a few hands of blackjack. Trump and Jacobson watched Sinatra win a hand. Then another. And another.
Sinatra was just a bit too lucky for Joel, who watched Trump’s dealer slip cards out of special deck with a wink and a nod from Trump.
“You’re out, Frank,” Joel told Sinatra.
As Joel recounted it, he had Sinatra escorted from the casino and informed the singer that he will never again perform in the Trump Casino, nor any other casino in Atlantic City. Ever. He was banned for life. (Sinatra claimed he chose not to perform in Jersey after that. But, to quote the maestro himself, “Fairy tales may come true.…”
Trump was furious at Jacobson for bouncing his prize talent.
But Jacobson was the toughest son of a bitch you’d ever meet. He stared down death threats from Jersey mobsters as well as gangsters who tried to take over the Teamsters union where he was Trustee.
Our firm was set up to show government how to root out racketeers, corporate conmen, knuckle draggers and other scum balls in the gaming and power industry.
Trump was testing Joel: fix the game for Sinatra and the next thing you know you’re fixing the casino industry for Gambino.
Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to know that just one time in Donald Trump’s life, someone told him, “You’re not getting away with this.”
So, if you’re applying for a job with Donald Trump, don’t use my name, and certainly don’t use Joel’s.
Joel, who passed away in 1989, left me with these words: Bullies only have the power we give them.
Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
Hope you all had a Happy May Day full of joy and resistance. Here is a photo memory of my happiest May Day ever, when I was arrested on May 1, 1971 in Washington DC. That’s me with too much hair staring at the camera while under arrest.
After a night in jail (with 7000 others), a cop wanted me to help him fill out a phony arrest report (phony because he wasn’t the guy who arrested me). So he asked, “What did you do that got you arrested?”
I answered, “Nothing. I was just standing there.” Which was true.
So, the cop asked what, then, was I doing in Washington?
“I’m here to overthrow the government!”
And we did. We ended the war in Vietnam.
And now when I read the papers I think of Pete Seeger singing, 55 years ago, “We’re waste deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on.”
Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, Armed Madhouse, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and the book and documentary, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
His latest film is All Washed Away: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans and Texas. Palast is currently working on a new documentary Long Knife, exposing the Koch Brothers' theft of Osage oil, to be released in 2025.
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