Donald Trump: A history of hand-scrawled rage
BY JUSTIN SPEES
AP/Palm Beach Post, Gary Coronado
Donald Trump attends the South Florida Tea Party's third annual tax day rally.
Jerry Seinfeld this week pulled out of a scheduled appearance at a benefit event organized by Donald Trump's son, Eric. The elder Trump responded by sending Seinfeld a letter that contained some .... choice words:
"I agreed to do, and did, your failed show, 'The Marriage Ref,' even though I thought it was absolutely terrible . . . Despite its poor ratings, I didn't cancel on you like you canceled on my son and St. Jude. I only wish I did."
This, of course, comes on the heels of two other angry and highly-publicized letters from The Donald to writers that, in his view, wronged him with their words. (One was to the New York Times' Gail Collins and another to Vanity Fair's Juli Weiner). It isn't a new habit, either. Trump actually has a lengthy history of using colorful hand-scrawled notes (which often reort to juvenile name-calling) to express his pique with members of the media. We've rounded up a collection of some of his best public letters of condemnation.
January 1988 to March 1989 - The Spy magazine saga
Spy contacts Trump about doing a story on his new wife, Ivana. Trump agrees to participate, on the condition that the magazine sticks straight to the facts, and threatens litigation for any perceived libel. What follows is the exhausting process, documented by the magazine, that culminates in Trump sending a letter to Alvin Schragis, father of an investor in Spy, denying he that he ever agreed to help with the story, and assuming (incorrectly) that Schragis is in any way connected to it:
Now I hear through the grapevine that you are doing an extremely inaccurate and dishonest story on Ivana and that the story is being written because I have said no to SPY Magazine going on the Shuttle flights.
September 11, 2005 - Letter to the New York Times Book Review
After the Times' reviews a new collection of essays from Mark Singer, Trump writes in to take shots at the New Yorker writer, who had produced a profile of him years earlier:
Most writers want to be successful. Some writers even want to be good writers. I've read John Updike, I've read Orhan Pamuk, I've read Philip Roth. When Mark Singer enters their league, maybe I'll read one of his books. But it will be a long time — he was not born with great writing ability. Until then, maybe he should concentrate on finding his own "lonely component" and then try to develop himself into a worldclass writer, as futile as that may be, instead of having to write about remarkable people who are clearly outside of his realm.
The rest:
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/04/22/donald_trump_letters_seinfeld&source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%20Newsletter%20%28Not%20Premium%29 7 30 110