Trump: The Art of the Deal

If there is an overarching message in The Art of the Deal, a lesson that Donald Trump urges his audience to understand, it is that there any publicity is good and often essential. Trump goes out of his way to court publicity in all its forms, talking to any media outlet that will listen and hosting press conferences for events which do not seem worthy of so much attention. Even when Trump is being criticized in the press, such as when architecture critics from major newspapers criticize his vision, he gleefully quotes them in his book. Their criticism does not matter; he is delighted that they are talking about him. As he states in the book, “from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells” (176). This idea—that visibility itself is a form of power—has been a common strategy in business and media-driven industries. By keeping his name in circulation, Trump ensures that he remains a key figure in public discourse, regardless of whether the attention is favorable. 

While Trump believes in the fundamental importance of publicity and PR as a cornerstone of the business world, others do not. Often, when Trump criticizes his rivals, he does so because they have failed to understand the importance of encouraging media attention. The Museum Tower opens as a similarly lavish rival to Trump Tower, he says, but they absolutely failed to generate any publicity about the project. As a result, Trump Tower emerged as the obvious winner in the rivalry. Likewise, developers like Franco Macri struggled to get their development projects off the ground because they failed to court the attention of the press. After making his mark by establishing himself in the press as a media personality, Trump makes sure to never forget this. His most urgent message throughout the book is that any budding businessperson needs to get people talking. This philosophy extends beyond real estate, as Trump applies it to a variety of ventures, from casinos to sports ownership. His approach suggests that generating public interest can be as critical to success as the quality of the business itself.

The many successes described in The Art of the Deal are contrasted with the rare failings. When Trump does delve into his less successful projects, he blames the marketing and publicity for these failures. When he describes the USFL, for example, he is disgusted with the way in which the league marketed itself. Once he became the owner of the New Jersey Devils, his first course of action was to get people talking about the league. He recruited big stars and declared war on the NFL, a media campaign that was designed to reverse the failings of his media-shy fellow owners. Trump believes that he did what he could to arrest the narrative of the league, but blames his failure on other people’s inability to court publicity. This reinforces his belief that media perception can shape the trajectory of an enterprise, sometimes outweighing internal management or financial realities. 

The issue with the rent-controlled tenants is slightly different. Even though he employed his typical approach of talking often and loudly to the press, Trump could not get a hold of the narrative. He came out looking like the villain, even though he goes to great lengths in the book to explain why the narrative of the greedy landlord against the poor tenants is not quite accurate. That he is still trying to correct this narrative hints at how much this failure in publicity grates, as Trump lost in the court of public opinion. This is the only instance of his belief in the importance of publicity backfiring against him. Rather than proving him wrong, however, Trump believes that he was simply outmatched by people who handled the publicity better rather than any moral or legal failure on his part. This example underscores a recurring challenge in business and politics—while controlling a narrative can be powerful, certain stories take on a life of their own in the public sphere.

The importance of publicity to the Trump ethos is that it creates a self-sustaining cycle. Once Trump has established himself as a man who gets things done, then this is the way the media talks about him. He may be controversial (though only alludes to it in passing), but he is talked about. When he is asking the New York government to allow him to handle the redevelopment of the Wollmann ice skating rink, for example, the press that he has courted for so long takes his side against the Mayor. Trump places himself at the center of the media frenzy and rides the wave; since his has talked about himself as a powerful real estate developer who will not be encumbered by criticism and regulations, this is the framing that the media uses when he suggests that he cut through the red tape that has held back the Wollmann project for so long. The image that Trump has created through the press is what lands him the project, which then allows him to dominate the press and bolster this image further. The cycle continues, carrying Trump from project to project rather than vanishing into obscurity. This self-reinforcing dynamic reflects a broader trend in media culture, where figures who command attention—regardless of the reason—often maintain influence simply by remaining in the public eye.