Lucky Loser How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success

Ross Buettner wrote this book called Lucky Loser about Donald Trump's money.

This is not one of those Donald Trump books. It's like, Orange Man Bad, which he has 200 pages. And we're out. This is deep, deep research about his finances.

We were able to get to that figure because as part of the reporting for that story, Mary Trump who is Donald Trump's niece provided us with more than 100,000 pages of documents that just opened up a door that we never thought we would, a room we would ever get into into Fred Trump's wealth and she had all this information.

He got a ton of money and he's still... So George Costanza situation, like if you believe it, it becomes true type of thing with Trump.

That's Donald Trump's magic, right? A lie repeated over and over he hopes becomes fact.

It's still going on, there's no small time builder here. There's no, oh I just got a small loan and it was all me.

The banks showered him with money. The press almost deified him, but Monopoly is a tricky game. When you borrow as much money as Donald Trump did, nearly $2 billion and the economy goes into a tailspin and you can't pay the interest on your loans, the bankers move in and they have.

He was certainly to start with born lucky. He was born into a very wealthy family and he inherited hundreds of millions of dollars,

He was born, born into luck. And he, he ended up being able to use his father's connections and his father's money to get his start in Manhattan.

He hasn't built that much. When you look at the skyline from almost anywhere, you're not going to see Donald Trump's buildings along there.

The new book is entitled Lucky Loser, How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.

The game of Monopoly could have been invented for Donald Trump wheeling and dealing from his office on Fifth Avenue surveying his realm from his personal helicopter striding through his casino like Moses parting the Red Sea.

The banks showered him with money. The press almost deified him, but Monopoly is a tricky game. When you borrow as much money as Donald Trump did, nearly $2 billion and the economy goes into a tailspin and you can't pay the interest on your loans, the bankers move in and they have.

He was certainly to start with born lucky. He was born into a very wealthy family and he inherited hundreds of millions of dollars, but he grew up, he, he, Fred Trump, his father was an incredibly successful builder in the outer boroughs. And Donald Trump took over that empire and he was born, born into luck.

He hasn't built that much. When you look at the skyline from almost anywhere, you're not going to see Donald Trump's buildings along there. There are other builders that are much bigger and have had a bigger role, especially in the last 40 years.

And now he is facing potentially crushing fines, hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. Just think of the New York attorney general's case. We don't know how that's going to play out if that case is on appeal, but that bill could be coming due.