Photo: AP

Donald Trump has admitted under oath (but now denies) that he spent decades commenting on himself in the press under the guise of a Trump spokesperson named John. But until this week, the uninitiated could only imagine how ridiculous it must have sounded. Now, thanks to the Washington Post, there’s audio of one of those interviews.

The tape was recorded by People reporter Sue Carswell in 1991, not long after Trump’s divorce from his first wife, Ivana, was made official. According to the Washington Post, Carswell had been assigned to write an article about the divorce, his relationship with then-girlfriend Marla Maples, and a host of other celebrities Trump was rumored to be dating at the time.

“Within five minutes” of calling to request comment, Carswell received a call from Trump pretending to be a very well-informed man working as Trump’s publicist—something Trump apparently did often, despite his presumably demanding schedule.

(Journalists have long described receiving calls from men with Trump’s voice claiming to be publicists intermittently named John Miller and John Baron, which also happens to be the name of Trump’s youngest son. Trump also admitted in a 1990 court case that “he and one of his executives have used the name John Baron in some of their business dealings.”)

On the tape recording released this week, Trump tells Carswell he’s a Trump employee named John Miller.

Donald Trump: How are you.

Sue Carswell: Good, how are you. What’s your name again?

Donald Trump: John Miller

Sue Carswell: And you work with Donald Trump?

Donald Trump: Yes, that’s correct.

Later, he tells Carswell, “I’m sort of new here... I’m sort of handling PR because he gets so much of it.”

“I basically worked for different firms, I worked for a couple of different firms, and I’m somebody that he knows, and I think somebody that he trusts and likes,” Trump, as Miller, explains. “So I’m going to do this a little part time and then go on with my life too.”

Over the course of the fourteen-minute interview, Trump—in character—boasts about declining sexual advances from his ex-wife Ivana, his then-girlfriend Marla Maples, Madonna, Carla Bruni, and other “actresses and people you write about.”

“He’s somebody that has a lot of options. And frankly, he gets called by everybody. He gets called by everybody in the book, in terms of women,” Trump says. “[Madonna] called and wanted to go out with him, that I can tell you.”

But the most incredible exchange was yet to come, when Trump claimed Carla Bruni—the Italian model who would go on to marry former French president Nicholas Sarkozy—had left Mick Jagger for him. Emphasis ours:

Donald Trump: I heard Carla—I mean, I’ll give you the—this is getting to be a little different from what I normally discuss. This is, I think, an interesting point. Carla is a very beautiful girl from Italy, whose father is one of the wealthiest men in Europe.

Sue Carswell: Who is her—what’s the name of her father?

Donald Trump: Well, her father’s name is—her name is Carla Bruni Tedeschi.

Sue Carswell: How do you spell that?

Donald Trump: I don’t know. Tedeschi. She doesn’t use the last name because it’s too complicated. But anyway, her father is one of the wealthiest men in Europe.

Carla is extraordinarily beautiful and didn’t want to be a model, except that every time she’d go to a show to look, people like Ralph Lauren and various people would say, “Carla, you have to be in the show, et cetera, et cetera.” So she does all of the top shows, and she’s always very busy and very successful, et cetera, et cetera.

She was having a big thing with Mick Jagger. Did you hear about this?

Sue Carswell: Well, I’ve just been reading about it.

Donald Trump: What happened is, she was going with Eric Clapton.

Sue Carswell: Mick Jagger, who was married at that point?

Donald Trump: Mick Jagger, as of three months ago, she was having a big thing. But she just doesn’t want to be in the limelight. What she—and she was having a very big thing with Mick Jagger, and then what happened, she was going with Eric Clapton. And Eric Clapton introduced her to Mick Jagger. And then Mick Jagger started calling her, and she ended up going with Mick Jagger. And then she dropped Mick Jagger for Donald. And that’s where it is right now.

And again, he’s not making any commitments to Carla either, just so you understand.

Sue Carswell: What kinds of things have they done? I mean, do they go out?

Donald Trump: Well, they just get along very good, and she’s very pretty and all of that stuff. But you know, he doesn’t have any idea who she is, right? When he meets the right woman, it’s going to be a great relationship and it’s going to be a very, you know, because he believes strongly in the marriage concept.

Trump was forced to address the recording this morning during a phone interview with the Today Show. Despite admitting in a 1990 court case that he’d used the alias, he insisted Friday that the voice on the phone wasn’t his.

“I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time and it doesn’t sound like my voice at all,” Trump said. “I have many, many people that are trying to imitate my voice and then you can imagine that, and this sounds like one of the scams, one of the many scams—doesn’t sound like me.”

Then he explicitly denied it: “It was not me on the phone. And it doesn’t sound like me on the phone, I will tell you that, and it was not me on the phone. And when was this? Twenty-five years ago?”

John Miller could not be reached for comment.

—
Here’s a full transcript of the tape:

Donald Trump: How are you.

Sue Carswell: Good, how are you. What’s your name again?

Donald Trump: John Miller

Sue Carswell: And you work with Donald Trump?

Donald Trump: Yes, that’s correct.

Sue Carswell: John Miller. Can you sort of uh, I guess we’re going to try and put a story together and we have a deadline of today, because our magazine closed, well, basically yesterday, but we’ll probably get something together today. But it’s been on the cover of the New York Post.

Donald Trump: Yeah, I saw that.

Sue Carswell: What kind of comment is coming from, you know, your agency or from Donald?

Donald Trump: Well it’s just that he really decided that he wasn’t you know, he didn’t want to make any commitment. He didn’t want to make a commitment. He really thought it was too soon. He’s coming out of a uh, you know, a marriage, and he’s starting to do tremendously well financially. As you saw, he got his licenses five to nothing the other day, and totally unanimous. And he’s really been working hard and doing well. And probably, as you know there’s a real estate depression in the United States, and he’s probably doing as well as anybody there is. And frankly, he wants to keep it that way. And he just thought it was too soon to make any commitment to anybody.

Sue Carswell: So what is going to happen. Is she being asked to leave or is she going to be allowed to stay?

Donald Trump: Well she—he treats everybody well and you don’t know him, but he’s a—

Donald Trump: No, I have met him.

John Miller: Have you met him? He’s a good guy and he’s not going to hurt anybody. The one article said he was going to throw her out of the apartment, it’s total nonsense. He’s going to always treat her well, as he treated his wife well. I mean, he paid his wife a great deal of money. He did it in a very bad period of time, and ultimately that was settled. There are those that say that that was even put that way, I don’t know if you heard that, but that Trump became poor until he got his divorce. And then all of the sudden he’s been doing very well. And I guess you probably heard that too. But he treated his wife well, and he treated—and he will treat Marla well. He’s somebody that has a lot of options. And frankly, he gets called by everybody. He gets called by everybody in the book, in terms of women.

Sue Carswell: Like who?

Donald Trump: Well, he gets called by a lot of people.

Sue Carswell: What about—I mean, this Carla Bruni. How important is she right now?

Donald Trump: I think it’s somebody that—you know, she’s beautiful. I saw her once quickly, and she’s beautiful and all. But I think that he’s got a whole open field, really. And a lot of the people that you write about, and you people do a great job, by the way, but a lot of the people that you write about really are—I mean, they call. They just call. Actresses, people that you write about, just call to see if they can go out with him and things.

Sue Carswell: He can’t say like, did Madonna ever really call?

Donald Trump: He was so set up with that. You know, Madonna called, and what happened. I mean, I don’t know if you want to listen to this.

Sue Carswell: No, I do.

Donald Trump: Do you? Do you have a second?

Sue Carswell: Yeah, obviously.

Donald Trump: What happened is it was a benefit at the Plaza Hotel, which he owned, for Vreeland. Diane Vreeland. And, oh, no. For Martha Graham. And it was, you know, a ball benefit for Martha, actually just before she passed away. And Madonna was there, and she came in a beautiful evening gown and combat boots. She was wearing combat boots. And Trump was asked to go over and meet her. He was there just for a little while to say hello and to make a speech, to make it like an introductory speech. Madonna was in the room, and so somebody from Madonna’s entourage—because she comes in with an entourage with dancers and everything else—and somebody from Madonna’s entourage came over and said, “Would you go over and say hello to Madonna?” And so he went over and said hello to Madonna, and he gave his autograph to the dancers. She said, “These are fans and all this, will you give them the autograph?” So he said, “Best wishes,” or something. And then all of the sudden—that was the end—and then he said goodbye to her, and that was literally the end. He’s got zero interest in Madonna, it was literally the end. And the next day in the newspapers they had a story that he wanted to go out with her and everything else. Besides that, she was sitting there with her boyfriend. I think his name was Ward or something.

Sue Carswell: Yeah, Tony Ward.

Donald Trump: And she was sitting there right with her boyfriend. So, I mean, it wouldn’t be appropriate. Then the next day, there was a story that Trump went to Rex and Madonna was supposedly at Rex, and that was another total nonsense story. So, somehow there was a thing. And then she called recently about this fight and wanted to go out. You know, she’s got this PR machine that I guess you people play to very well, but it’s, it really was nonsense. So, anyway.

Sue Carswell: I don’t we ever reported that about Madonna and Donald.

Donald Trump: Well, she called and wanted to go out with him, that I can tell you. And one of the other people that you’re writing about—by the way, I’m sort of new here. And I’m—

Sue Carswell: What is your position there?

Donald Trump: Well, I’m sort of handling PR because he gets so much of it. And frankly, I mean, I could tell you off the record. Until I get to know you, and talk a little bit off the record, I can tell you that he didn’t care if he got bad PR until he got his divorce finished. So when he got a lot of bad financial stuff, he liked it because, you know, it was good, because he could get a divorce finished. Once his divorce is finished, if you noticed since then, he’s doing well financially, and he’s doing well in every other way. The licensing was five to nothing. And people are saying how come all of the sudden he’s doing so well? And then I guess Newsday about two weeks ago did a story on that. So I’ve sort of been put in here to handle, because I’ve never seen anybody get so many calls from the press.

Sue Carswell: Where did you come from?

Donald Trump: I basically worked for different firms, I worked for a couple of different firms, and I’m somebody that he knows, and I think somebody that he trusts and likes, so I’m going to do this a little part time and then go on with my life too.

Sue Carswell: He is trying to—I mean, is Marla trying to reconcile all this, or is this—

Donald Trump: Marla wants to be back with him, and he wants to be with her, but he just, he just feels it’s too soon.

Sue Carswell: What about the ring?

Donald Trump: Well, it was never an engagement ring, because that was my first question. It was never an engagement ring. It was a ring—I mean, he wouldn’t buy the engagement ring. Actually, he bought the ring at the Taj Mahal at Tiffany’s. The only place that Tiffany’s has that’s in a hotel is because of his relationship with Tiffany being the neighbor next door to Trump Tower, and Tiffany decided to open up a store at the Taj Mahal. And this was a way of giving Tiffany some business in addition to getting Ivana—getting Marla—something that would be nice. So he did that, and as I told him and other people told him, when you want to buy a present, don’t make it a ring the next time. But it was a little confusing.

Sue Carswell: Make it a chain.

Donald Trump: Make it anything. Anything but a ring, I guess.

Sue Carswell: Do you think there’s any fear that Marla will spill everything at all, or?

Donald Trump: It doesn’t matter to him. He truly doesn’t care. I’ve never seen somebody that’s so immune, that he gets immune to—you know, some people would say he got bad press three or four months ago. Now he’s starting to get good press where, I mean, I don’t know what you call this but this is a big press. But I’ve never seen somebody so immune to—he actually thrived on the bad press initially. And once the divorce was over, he said, “We have to change this,” and it’s very interesting. Frankly, if he got good press during the divorce, he’d be in court right now. Because she settled because she thought that she better believe the press and she settled. And now he’s doing great, and now she would like not to settle. Ivana, when she didn’t settle, she felt she made a huge mistake and she’s now having a huge fight with her lawyer, Michael Kennedy, over why they made the settlement. And it’s over. He sort of laughs at everything.

Sue Carswell: How did Donald feel about Ivana’s appearance on Barbara Walters?

Donald Trump: Well, he—he—it was a total violation of the—I mean, I could tell you—

Sue Carswell: Yeah, but then that was uh—I mean, did the judge, Phylis what’s her name—

Donald Trump: Gangel-Jacob, yeah, but that’s going to be—the judge felt that when Donald got Ivana to sign that agreement, that Donald got Ivana to void her rights. And that the judge was wrong, because there’s so much caselaw on that. And what happened is the judge said—by the way, she can take that clause out. She just said she’s not going to hold Ivana in contempt. In other words, if somebody, if she violates, then she’s not going to put Ivana in jail for violating. Okay? So she didn’t void that clause. Now Donald’s got a decision as to whether or not he wants to pay her any more money, because by violating that clause, he in theory doesn’t have to pay her any more money.

Sue Carswell: Being the good guy that he’s trying to be, I mean..

Donald Trump: I think he—I’m not sure what he’s going to do. Again, you could say that she shouldn’t have done that either. I mean, you sign an agreement, you go through months and months, so she couldn’t say she didn’t know this one. And what he did was smart, because he got not only Ivana to sign the agreement, but he got Ivana’s lawyers to sign the agreement. That she’d do it, that she speaks English perfectly, that everything in the agreement is known and studied and everything else. So in theory, I think he could probably, you know, I think that could have cost her many millions of dollars. I don’t know that he’s going to enforce it or not.

Sue Carswell: What about this whole thing that was brought up int he news whether Marla wouldn’t sign any sort of prenuptial? Did that have anything to do with the ending of the relationship?

Donald Trump: No, nothing.

Sue Carswell: Was that true? I mean, was he trying to get her to sign anything?

Donald Trump: Well I can tell you this, just off the record, there’s no way he gets married without a prenuptial agreement. You understand that. It was painful but worked in the Ivana case. Because, you know, while it was challenged, it still ended up being upheld and worked. And frankly, she got not exactly one penny, she didn’t get one penny more than what the agreement called for. You know. So that’s that. And she spent a lot of money on lawyers and a lot of money on everything and that was the year of the circus, but they do stand up. I can tell you there was never any talk of marriage from Donald’s point of view. I can also say that Marla would have liked to get married, obviously, but it was just something he didn’t want to do. It’s just too soon. And he, you know, hopefully he’ll maintain a good relationship with Marla. But it’s just too soon.

Sue Carswell: What about this Ivana thing? It says in the Newsday Trump also told friends that when he and Ivana met last week, she indicated that she would be interested in a reconciliation?

Donald Trump: Ivana wants to get back with Donald, but she—

Sue Carswell: After saying on Barbara Walters that she never would?

Donald Trump: Well what’s she going to say? She’s going to say, when he’s with somebody else and had other people lined up, is she going to say “Yes, I want to get back, I want to get back”? You know, she’s a pretty savvy woman, and she’s not going to say—I mean, he’s living with Marla and he’s got three other girlfriends and she’s not going to say, “I really want to get back,” you know. She wants to get back. She’s told it to a lot of her friends, and she’s told it to him, but it’s so highly unlikely. That’s off the record. He left. I mean, it was his choice to leave, and he left.

Sue Carswell: He left for Marla.

Donald Trump: No, he didn’t leave. No. See that’s the biggest misconception of this whole thing. The second question I asked about after the ring was—the biggest misconception is he left. He didn’t leave for Marla. He really left for himself. He didn’t leave for Marla. He was going to leave anyway. Marla was there, but he was going to leave anyway whether there was a Marla or not. He was going to leave anyway. So now he has somebody else named Carla who is beautiful and I guess you have something on her. I don’t know if you do or not.

Sue Carswell: No, they won’t talk about her. He didn’t say anything about her. I mean, she’s a daughter of who?

Donald Trump: Well, she’s a very successful model, et cetera, et cetera. But again, he didn’t leave Marla for her. He just wants, he does things for himself. He leaves himself, he does things for himself. When he makes the decision, that will be a very lucky woman. But he’s not going to do that until he makes the decision. You know, when he makes the decision, he’s very capable of a total commitment, when he makes the decision. But he felt it’s too soon. Off the record, he probably felt Marla wasn’t the right one, or whatever, but he just felt that it was too soon.

Sue Carswell: How did he meet Carla?

Donald Trump: At the Plaza Hotel, she was doing a Carolina Herrera fashion show.

Sue Carswell: Was Ivana there, do you think? Does she go to fashion shows?

Donald Trump: Well, she goes to them, but less so since, you know, since—

Sue Carswell: When did he meet Carla there?

Donald Trump: Probably a few months ago.

Sue Carswell: Have they been able to see each other with Marla?

Donald Trump: Well not really. And again, I heard Carla—I mean, I’ll give you the—this is getting to be a little different from what I normally discuss. This is, I think, an interesting point. Carla is a very beautiful girl from Italy, whose father is one of the wealthiest men in Europe.

Sue Carswell: Who is her—what’s the name of her father?

Donald Trump: Well, her father’s name is—her name is Carla Bruni Tedeschi.

Sue Carswell: How do you spell that?

Donald Trump: I don’t know. Tedeschi. She doesn’t use the last name because it’s too complicated. But anyway, her father is one of the wealthiest men in Europe. Carla is extraordinarily beautiful and didn’t want to be a model, except that every time she’d go to a show to look, people like Ralph Lauren and various people would say, “Carla, you have to be in the show, et cetera, et cetera.” So she does all of the top shows, and she’s always very busy and very successful, et cetera, et cetera. She was having a big thing with Mick Jagger. Did you hear about this?

Sue Carswell: Well, I’ve just been reading about it.

Donald Trump: What happened is, she was going with Eric Clapton.

Sue Carswell: Mick Jagger who was married at that point?

Donald Trump: Mick Jagger, as of three months ago, she was having a big thing. But she just doesn’t want to be in the limelight. What she—and she was having a very big thing with Mick Jagger, and then what happened, she was going with Eric Clapton. And Eric Clapton introduced her to Mick Jagger. And then Mick Jagger started calling her, and she ended up going with Mick Jagger. And then she dropped Mick Jagger for Donald. And that’s where it is right now. And again, he’s not making any commitments to Carla either, just so you understand.

Sue Carswell: What kinds of things have they done? I mean, do they go out?

Donald Trump: Well, they just get along very good, and she’s very pretty and all of that stuff. But you know, he doesn’t have any idea who she is, right? When he meets the right woman, it’s going to be a great relationship and it’s going to be a very, you know, because he believes strongly in the marriage concept. In all fairness, he was married for 12 years. And he was happily married for 12—for many of those years, I guess. And he believes in it, especially in this society today, I can tell you. But he believes in it.

Sue Carswell: Where is he living now? I mean, is he—

Donald Trump: He lives in Trump Tower. He has the apartment at the top of Trump Tower.

Sue Carswell: Okay, and Ivana also has an apartment at Trump Tower?

Donald Trump: She has an apartment at Trump Tower, but the court order is she has to leave within a period of less than a year.

Sue Carswell: Right. Okay. Listen, can I—

[The tape cuts off. Carswell tells the Washington Post Trump also described rebuffing advances from Kim Basinger before the interview ended.]