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A journalist who profiled President Donald Trump in 1984 said he was so upset by a detail in the story that he ordered his staff to buy up every copy they could find.
Former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, 75, told MSNBC that he profiled Trump over 40 years ago for GQ, and hung around the real estate developer for “three weeks” to learn about him. But he wasn’t happy about everything in the article, Carter told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough Thursday.
“There were a few things he didn’t like about it, including the fact that I said it looked like his hands were too small for his body,” Carter said. “He didn’t like it at all — he liked the cover, but he didn’t like anything else.”
So he “has his staff buy up every copy they could find in the newsstands in New York,” Carter added.
Carter’s profile offered several details about Trump’s appearance: “6-foot-2-inch frame, is trim but well-nourished. The hands small and neatly groomed. The suit is blue and stylish – maybe a little too flared in the leg for someone who lives east of the Hudson,” he wrote.
“About the only thing that gives away this striver from an outer borough are his cufflinks: huge mollusks of gold and stone the size of half-dollars,” the profile continues.
The detail about Trump’s hands didn’t go unnoticed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio used the detail to hit at Trump when he ran against him in the 2016 Republican primary: “You know what they say about guys with small hands – you can’t trust ‘em.”
That’s not all people say about guys with small hands.
Carter explained that his profile triggered something of a butterfly effect.
GQ’s owner “thought this guy is a star… because the sales of that issue of GQ were so strong,” Carter explained. “So he ordered up a book, which became The Art of the Deal.”
The Art of the Deal, released in 1987, was Trump’s first book. The business advice book, written with journalist Tony Schwartz, helped Trump’s popularity skyrocket.
Schwartz, now a dedicated Trump critic, called ghost-writing the book his "greatest regret in life, without question,” and said the book about Trump’s skill at making deals should be called fiction. Both Schwartz and the book's original publisher, Howard Kaminsky, have said that Trump wrote nothing in the book. He didn’t write as much as a “postcard for us,” according to Kaminsky.
Carter told Scarborough he moved out of the country for most of the Republican president’s first term. Carter, once a friend of Trump’s, has since become a staunch critic of his over the last ten years.
“Having that ocean as a sort of buffer is like having a mattress when you're in a gangland gunfight war,” Carter said. “This is the darkest time I think since the 1950s,” he added.
