September 14, 2020

The Trump Files: Trump Wanted a TV Show of Him Ogling Women

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This post was originally published as part of “The Trump Files“—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current president—on October 31, 2016.

“Donald Trump Presents the Most Beautiful Women in the World” isn’t a joke headline or a Trump campaign pledge. Believe it or not, it’s the actual name of a TV show Trump pitched to ABC in 1993.

In 2016, Slate published a letter found by University of Iowa professor Travis Vogan in which the real estate mogul, still recovering from a string of bankruptcies and business failures in the early ’90s, told ABC’s Roone Arledge that a 60- to 90-minute special featuring Trump interviewing beautiful women from around the world would be a ratings hit. “This program will be done on a yearly basis and will get huge ratings,” Trump wrote. “I will promote it heavily—along with everything else I do.” Another unnamed mystery network was of course “very interested,” so ABC would have to act fast, he said.

Trump included a handy list of beautiful women he could interview, made up mostly of supermodels. He also included Princess Diana—”whom I know and I think will speak to me,” he insisted—as part of his long-running campaign of creeping on the beloved British royal.

It’s not clear if Arledge even acknowledged the letter, and the show was never made. As we know, Trump is always at his most charming and respectful when addressing attractive women on TV, so ABC likely turned down a gold mine.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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