Before Roger Stone advised presidential candidate Donald Trump, he pulled a number of levers for businessman Donald Trump early in his lobbying career.
In fact, he even had Atlantic City’s harbor dug deeper so Trump’s mega-yacht could park there.
In their new book The Wolves of K Street, journalist brothers Brody and Luke Mullins talk about the expansive growth of the lobbying industry.
They examine the creation of Black, Manafort & Stone, the Republican Party lobbying firm led by Charles Black and two well-known Trump associates: Paul Manafort and Stone.
Trump, then a real estate mogul in his 30s, was one of the firm’s first major clients in the wake of President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election victory.
Donald Trump (right) and his then-wife Ivana Trump (left) pose in front of their new luxury yacht The Trump Princess on July 4, 1988 after arriving in New York from the Azores.
Trump wanted to park the Trump Princess at the Farley State Marina, but initially it was too shallow to accommodate the 285-foot yacht purchased by Trump in 1987.
Trump tapped Roger Stone (right), a Republican lobbyist who was a strong supporter of President Richard Nixon (left) even after Watergate, who would later advise his presidential campaign.
The Trump Princess is photographed on July 9, 1988 off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Trump wanted to dock it in Atlantic City to please his casino customers
Stone, who remained loyal to President Richard Nixon even after Watergate, had met Trump during the 1980 presidential campaign through Roy Cohn.
Cohn became known after his death as Trump’s right-hand man, but he was best known at the time for serving as lead counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the anti-communist hearings of the 1950s.
Stone sought to build support for Reagan in New York.
“So Roy set me up on a meeting with Donald,” Stone recalled in an interview. “Donald said, ‘OK, give me the pitch,’ and I told him why Reagan would win.”
That was enough to convince Trump to become a Reagan supporter, providing campaign staff with use of his plane, office and phones, the book says.
After Reagan’s election victory, Stone convinced Trump to become a client of his company.
He said the new lobbying firm could serve as his “eyes and ears” in Washington, DC.
The super-yacht included flashing photos of Donald and Ivana Trump projected onto the mirrored ceiling of one of its many rooms.
The Trump Princess had a number of themed cabins, including the red and white striped Ruby Suite.
Chamois-paneled walls in a yellow lounge, designed by Luigi Sturchio, aboard Donald Trump’s yacht, The Trump Princess
A photo of Paul Manafort (left), Roger Stone (center) and Lee Atwater (right) – a top advisor to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush – early in their lobbying careers.
Enter the Trump Princess — a 285-foot yacht purchased for about $30 million by Trump in 1987 from billionaire Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, the uncle of murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The authors describe the yacht as having a “distinctly Trumpian aesthetic” with “onyx floors, mahogany walls, gold-plated piers, a private elevator and an onboard nightclub.”
Photos from this period show that photos of Ivana and Donald Trump were displayed on a mirrored ceiling in one of the cabins.
This room was outfitted with purple couches with large gold pillows.
And the cabin one, the Ruby Suite, was filled with Candyland-style furniture with red and white stripes.
The boat, however, was too big for Farley State Marina in Atlantic City, where Trump wanted to dock it.
The future president poses in one of the golden bathrooms of the luxury yacht The Trump Princess, in 1988.
One of the cabins on Trump’s luxury yacht, The Trump Princess, which was initially too large to park near his Atlantic City casinos
The Trump Princess even included a theater room.
A swimming pool on one of the decks of the Trump Princess, the luxury yacht that the then-real estate developer bought for about $30 million from Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.
That’s when Stone stopped.
He worked with his political contacts and obtained the necessary permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to have Atlantic City Harbor dredged deep enough for the yacht to pass through.
“These permits can take years,” Stone recalled, according to the authors. “I did it in a few months.”
In a 1989 publication for Boat International, Trump said he made the boat available to “very high rollers who spend millions of dollars a year in casinos.”
“There’s quite a market there,” Trump said of Atlantic City, where he once owned three hotel-casinos. “While I was building Farley Marina, I was trying to acquire the boat because I knew it would wow everyone. It would become a spectacle.
Trump sold the yacht a year later, in 1990.
dailymail us
