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Trump and the Persian Gulf Have a Long, Surprising History

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Down in the basement of the venerable American Library in Paris I pulled out an issue of Newsweek dated September 28, 1987, and as it happened, Donald Trump was on the cover.

He was 41 years old, wearing a red tie (at normal length): “A Billion Dollar Empire and an Ego to Match,” read the cover, “Citizen Trump” headlined the article. And he was, even way back then, thinking about a run for the presidency. To launch his tentative undeclared campaign he’d just paid $94,801 to run full page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Boston Globe.

In an “open letter,” Trump attacked the foreign policy of then-President Ronald Reagan: “The world is laughing at America’s politicians,” he wrote, for protecting “ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need destined for allies who won’t help.”

Read entire article at Daily Beast