Empires of New York (2020): Season 1, Episode 6 - Legacy of the '80s: Greed Is Still Good - full transcript
New York City.
Happy new year!
At the dawn of the '80s,
it was exploding with opportunity.
[Newsreader] Boom times. That's
what the numbers signal today,
an economy that's
on a roll in this country.
A place to seek money,
power, fame.
Amid the glitz and greed,
five titans seized their moment.
But by the end of the decade,
that moment had passed
and we'd put greed behind
us for good. Or had we?
The president
of the United States.
A hot-shot developer was dodging
questions about soaring debt...
Trump, the cash crunch.
And scandalous behavior.
Well, she's a fantastic woman,
but I won't say anymore.
But the tabloids that helped make
him were about to take him down.
You have a lot of very dishonest reporters,
in my opinion.
A hard-charging prosecutor had
become a candidate for mayor.
The word impossible
is just not in my vocabulary.
But some in the city were
growing tired of his crusades.
The people of our town don't want
a prosecutor, they want a mayor.
A celebrity Don was back on trial,
feeding a media frenzy.
The Gotti trial is the
hottest show off Broadway.
And when the verdict was read...
The teflon is gone,
the Don is covered with velcro.
[Newsreader] Hundreds of Gotti supporters,
outraged by that sentence,
tried to storm
the Brooklyn courthouse.
And while the former king of wall
street was finally headed for jail,
the queen of mean was mounting a
last-ditch effort to remain a free woman.
Not guilty, not guilty.
I am innocent.
That was it. I'm gonna take you out,
you're gonna take me out.
This isn't gonna end well.
I've never seen anybody so heartbroken
in my life. She was devastated.
There was almost a daily
feeling of how crazy this is.
These larger than life figures would
forever change our idea of success...
My new game is trump, the game.
And excess...
Forty-two million.
And though, at the end of the 80s,
we may have delighted in their downfall...
[Woman] These are card-carrying,
crashing egotists.
Our celebration of their
values was just beginning.
[Interviewer] But you have said
that if you ran for president, you'd win.
I think I'd have
a very good chance.
[Dramatic music playing]
Okay! [Applause] He's a man who is strong,
smart, he's done very well for himself,
for an ex chippendale dancer.
I've... oh! [Laughs]
A man who, five minutes after he got here,
tried to buy our studio.
So, who is
this famous billionaire?
[Audience] Donald Trump!
He was the man
with the midas touch.
Builder of golden towers, high-rolling
casino operator, bestselling author,
myth maker of epic proportions.
How rich are you,
just basically? [Laughs] Right now?
Well, it depends
on which magazine you read.
I mean, how much you got
in your wallet? I wanna see...
He was also sitting on a mountain of
debt and an explosive personal secret.
But with every breathless news report,
his legend only grew,
until it really did seem like
his potential was limitless.
[Emily fox] He had his buildings,
he had his hotels.
He presented himself,
as he does now,
as a man who was incredibly
financially successful.
Privately, his businesses were having
more trouble than he would let on.
He was a guy who thought
he was invincible,
from a business standpoint and
also from a personal standpoint.
And he gets the idea in his head
that he should be running everything.
[Newsreader] Trump has said,
quite
seriously,
that he's a good enough bargainer
to negotiate a nuclear
disarmament treaty with the Russians.
[David cay johnston] Donald first publicly
talked about being president in 1987.
He knew all he had to do was keep pressing
ahead and he would have a shot at it.
You have said that,
if you ran for president, you'd win.
I think I'd have a very good
chance. I mean, I like to win.
[Michael kruse] Roger stone,
a long-time political operative,
called him a "prime piece
of political horse flesh."
It was his idea for trump to go
to Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
where he gave a talk at a rotary
club and created quite a stir.
This country is being taken such
advantage of, we need strength.
I mean, you think gorbachev is tough. Think
of this character khomeini. [Laughter]
I mean, this son of a bitch is
something like nobody's ever seen!
[Barbara res] Trump wanted to create
the notion that he was so competent,
that he was so great
at what he did
that he could do the hardest,
most important job
in the world
and that's being president.
I love the country, but I think you're
gonna have probably George Bush
as your next president. He's an
excellent guy, an excellent man,
he's a friend of mine
and I'm here for that reason.
That was not a serious idea
in the late 80s,
but it planted a seed that this guy,
a developer in New York, a celebrity,
the author of the art of the deal,
would be trafficking in political ideas.
He was laying groundwork for
what we would see decades later.
Good luck, everyone.
Thank you all for being here.
[Kurt andersen] Donald Trump had
delusions of grandeur from the get-go.
At the same time, big,
legitimate banks enabled Donald Trump.
They kept giving him money.
[Charles bagli] Donald is already starting
to file tax returns that would indicate
he was losing money,
not making money.
[Newsreader] Is Donald Trump in financial
trouble? Some in the financial community
are looking for signs that
trump may be trying to raise cash
because of a current, or anticipated
shortage, caused by heavy debt.
But in the meantime,
there was a constant flow of money
from wall street
and from investors.
So, when the opportunity came
to grab a hold of the biggest,
most luxurious casino
in Atlantic city,
the Taj Mahal, he took it.
Donald Trump today opened the
doors to his billion-dollar gamble,
his new Atlantic city casino,
the Taj Mahal.
[Bagli] It had been under construction
for several years, it was way over budget,
but it was supposed to dominate
the whole Atlantic city gambling scene.
[Newsreader] The Taj Mahal stretches
out over 17 acres along the boardwalk.
There's glitz and glitter galore,
$15 million worth of chandeliers
and 1200 luxury hotel rooms.
[Johnston] He buys it
with entirely borrowed money,
junk bonds $675,
million at 14% interest.
He's got over a quarter million dollar
a day bill just for interest on the bonds
and close to another
million dollars a day to
pay all the other bills
of running the place
and of course, paying out the
few winners that were out there.
Johnston trump executives insist
they can make a million dollars a day
the experts say they'll need
just to pay for the casino.
And that is something that had
never happened at any casino,
anywhere in the world
at that point.
So, it was not just ambitious,
it was stupid.
I do have a risk,
I do have a financial risk,
but I have also a reputation risk
and that's very important to me.
[Johnston] From day one, there are
hundreds of contractors and vendors
who were delivering goods to him
and he's not paying them,
because he doesn't have the income
to support all the borrowing he's done.
And then the day came when Donald couldn't
pay the monthly payments on his debt
and it's very clear
that this is going to collapse.
There was almost a daily feeling
of how crazy this is.
So, a million dollars a day,
while it sounds like a lot of money,
for the building that we're talking about,
it should be very easily made.
We realized that Donald
was uncontrollable.
[Dramatic music playing]
[Giuliani] New York is a
city overwhelmed by crime,
crack,
and corruption. [Man] New York City, 1989.
The fear in our streets, parks,
and subways
all point to a city
that is out of control!
He was the avenging us attorney
with an audacious crime busting record
and he was now closer than ever to his
ultimate goal of winning political office.
With crime rates surging
in 1989,
no one seemed better suited to
become New York City's next mayor.
From a policing perspective,
it's a very violent era.
This was a very constant
topic of conversation,
the level of
violence in the city.
[Kirtzman] Giuliani ran
as the law-and-order candidate
and New York needed
more law and order.
As mayor, I will lead the battle
to take our streets back, hearts back,
subways back from the criminals.
He saw this as an opportunity
to clean up the city.
[Newsreader] Giuliani remains a major
threat to koch's chances for a fourth term,
assuming the mayor survives
the Democratic primary,
particularly the challenge
from David dinkins.
[Kirtzman] David dinkins
had risen though the ranks
to become
Manhattan borough president,
a somewhat powerful job.
[Ken auletta] During
the primary race
relations were very
tender and dinkins came in
as someone
who might be a healer.
I felt the rise of David dinkins
in the context of a series of
racial events through the age.
The Michael Stewart incident...
There was
the Eleanor bumpurs incident...
The Howard beach incident.
The victims were three black
men whose car had broken down.
[Gil Troy] The crime problem, all too often
in New York, is seen as a racial problem,
but it's the incidents
where blacks and
whites interact that
generate the headlines,
that generate the tensions.
A wall street investment
banker remains
unconscious in very
critical condition tonight
after a brutal attack while she
was jogging in central park.
The central park jogger case turned
into one of the biggest rape cases
we have ever seen
in New York City.
A young, white woman was beaten badly,
raped, and left for dead.
[Newsreader] Today, police arrested
four juveniles, ages 14 through 15,
all charged
with attempted murder and rape.
Black and latino kids...
Whatever the police and the
prosecutors said was accepted as fact.
The horrifying crime has sparked
a new call for the death penalty,
this one from billionaire
developer, Donald Trump.
[Byfield] Donald Trump takes out
an ad in all the major newspapers,
calling for the death penalty,
before there's been a trial!
There's not a thing in the world
wrong with hating in certain instances
and you have an instance
here where you have
killers roaming the street,
preying on all of us
he said what he said in that ad and then he
doubled down in a variety of other places.
He gave license to think those
things about those kids, who didn't do it.
Amid this atmosphere
of racial tension,
comes the murder
of Yusef Hawkins in bensonhurst.
[Newsreader] Police
say 30 white teenagers
armed with baseball
bats and at least one gun,
attacked Hawkins
and his three companions.
This confrontation leads to him
being shot to death.
[Newsreader] In the aftermath
of the killing,
racial tensions in bensonhurst
and New York City have mounted.
It rocks the city.
[Crowd chanting] Bensonhurst!
Bensonhurst! This is not Johannesburg!
There are not racists
in this community.
This is not a racist community, we
just don't like black people, that's all.
People were feeling as if the city
was reaching a point of ungovernability.
It's not enough for people
to be angry.
If you don't have somebody bring
a change in policy and procedures,
we'll never get ahead.
Koch was perceived more and more as
a divisive figure, and that David dinkins
might be the solution to this.
In the minds of many,
we weren't supposed to win
but nobody told us that.
After 12 years leading the city of new
York, ed koch will no longer be mayor.
Instead, David dinkins,
the president of the borough of Manhattan,
is in a position to become the first
black mayor of the nation's largest city.
You gave me your votes and even more,
in a tough time, you gave me your trust.
This year, dinkins faces strong opposition
from former us attorney Rudolph giuliani.
On the day I become mayor,
the old political
system that is dragging
this city down is out!
Two candidates were left to
battle it out for the mayor's seat.
One, a seasoned politician with a
message of Harmony and justice.
The other, a righteous ex-lawman
with a message of crime and punishment.
Emphasis on the punishment.
Giuliani was a us attorney
coming in as a hard-line guy.
It's not about being the nice guy,
it's about being the tough guy.
[Kirtzman] For a person who
had mastered the New York media,
giuliani didn't have
his message together.
He had people making all these allegations
relating to the character of dinkins.
It was clear that giuliani would
stoop to low levels to get elected.
Why does David dinkins
always wait until he gets caught?
Rudy giuliani: Experience,
integrity, and nobody owns him.
Rudy was a tough campaigner,
but we were pretty good also.
I think the people of our town don't
want a prosecutor, they want a mayor.
[Guiliani] Well, wait, wait a second. I
think the people of this town want a mayor
who has nothing to fear
from a prosecutor.
I think it became an issue of who
could really keep the city under control
and they both were running
with different philosophies.
The people do not want a city
divided against itself.
New York is a city
overwhelmed by crime.
What can unite us is far stronger than the
forces that can keep us apart. [Applause]
Who can reduce crime better?
I know how he
feels. I come from a
background of people
that have been excluded.
Who can get the drug problem
under control better?
I propose to be mayor
of all of the people.
Take our city back.
Mayor of all the people.
The word impossible
is just not in my vocabulary.
We owe it to our children not to give up,
give in, or turn back.
Biggest of all American cities
has a black mayor, David dinkins.
Dinkins beat republican
Rudolph giuliani tonight.
David dinkins' message of racial
Harmony was the key to that race.
It wasn't the time for a prosecutor,
it was the time for Harmony.
In the end,
it was one of the closest
mayoral elections in
the history of New York.
It was close. You win by one vote,
you're still the winner.
I've just spoken to major-elect
David dinkins.
- [Crowd booing]
- No! No! No! No!
Quiet! Quiet!!
Simply put,
this was David dinkins' time.
In the days ahead,
I will meet with him and I will reach out
to the many others
across this city.
[Kirtzman] In many ways, Giuliani's
run for mayor was an embarrassment.
This was a person who had
a very, very strong reputation.
After the loss to dinkins, he says
that the election was stolen from him
because a lot of blacks and Puerto Ricans
voted illegally in the outer boroughs.
There's no evidence, but one of the
defining characteristics of Rudy giuliani
is vindictiveness, is a desire
to avenge any kind of defeat.
And you can see that in 1989.
One of the fascinating
things about the giuliani
story is that it was
always hard to tell,
on any given day,
whether this was a good man or an evil man.
Through the lens of that time,
you would have said he saw wrong doing
and was determined to punish it
and halt it by any means necessary.
I think you might look back and
decide maybe he is a man who really,
in some ways, is no different
than the people he prosecuted.
He just had different tools in
which to exercise his will to power.
In the totality of Giuliani's career,
there was too much good and bad.
[Journalist] Morning, Mr. Gotti. What
about all this news of more indictments?
You think the government's
gonna frame you?
You guys [inaudible].
Throughout the late 80s, New York's
most notorious gangster had captivated
the nation by strutting for cameras
and skillfully dodging law enforcement.
But, in 1990,
the feds had snagged him again
and this time they had his
own words to use against him.
Secret FBI tapes
of reputed mob boss, John Gotti,
reveal the dark and violent
world of the Gambino crime family.
[Newsreader] Most of the
discussions took place in an apartment
two floors above Gotti's
ravenite social club in little Italy,
an apartment that Gotti had
no idea was bugged by the FBI.
Clearly, the man Gotti considers
his closest ally, according to the tapes,
is this man,
Sam "Sammy the bull" gravano.
About a year or so before
we take them off the street,
John Gotti made Sammy
the underboss of the family.
Sammy had the reputation
of being a shooter and a killer.
So, he made sure that kind
of stuff got done for John Gotti.
Right now, Gotti and gravano were
both behind bars together, awaiting trial,
and Sammy bull had had listened
to some of the tapes.
They got the tapes,
'cause they get to listen to the evidence
that the government's gonna present,
and Sammy started hearing
what John was saying in some of
the conversations that he wasn't part of.
Gotti's bad-mouthing gravano, Sammy's
turning red, he just wants to burst.
Gotti was basically blaming him for
all the murders that he was authorizing.
That was it. He and John were
now on the outs and, you know,
I'm gonna take you out, you're gonna
take me out. This isn't gonna end well.
And that's what,
you know, put it in his
head that he needed
to find another way out.
He pricks your finger.
[Man] Who? Who?
The godfather.
[Newsreader] Since Jo valachi became
the first sworn member of la cosa nostra
to break the code of silence,
only a small handful of low-level hoods
have chosen to follow in violating
that sacred code of omertà .
Well,
the most significant rule in the
mafia,
the rule that enabled them to prevail
and to succeed for as long as they did,
was the rule of omertà , that is silence.
You can't rat anyone out. If you're caught,
you go and do your time,
you keep your mouth shut.
Just now Sammy "the bull"
gravano listened to the tapes.
He knew that his goose
was cooked.
Sammy bull got the sense that
he could get himself a good deal.
Sammy sent word
that he wanted to speak to us.
We had to go to the jail
to take him out.
[McDonald] So,
they bring down Sammy, he
gets in the car and we
drive to a safe house.
I asked Sammy, says, "tell us about
the Castellano body murder." "Okay."
So he just went from
a to z. I remember
drawing a little map
showing east 46th street.
"I was here with John. You're the
shooters," you do the whole thing.
He heard the tapes, he said,
"everything's accurate on it."
I mean,
you guys have us dead to rights, but,
you know,
he put me in those five murders
and I'm gonna do life for it."
He said,
"and you guys, I can trust you
more than I can trust the mob."
He says,
"I wanna join team america."
John found out within that night,
word got to him Sammy had been pulled out
and he knew it was over,
just died inside.
[Newsreader] Sammy "the bull" gravano has
been transferred out of a federal prison
and is reportedly talking
to prosecutors...
[Newsreader 2] John Gotti's closest ally,
facing 50 years in prison,
has joined the ranks
of the squealers.
The decision by Sammy gravano
to testify is certainly a big, big event.
He knows where all the bodies
are buried.
Every news organization
in the city was covering it.
People inside,
people outside the
courthouse, people watching,
people who came.
It was a huge thing.
In New York, the Gotti trial is the hottest
show off Broadway with spectators lining up
as early as two in the morning,
waiting hours
for a chance to get
inside the courtroom.
Mickey Rourke showed up,
Anthony Quinn showed up.
This is one of the great dramas
that's going on today.
A lot of people showed up
to express their, you know,
concern and allegiance
with poor John Gotti,
who was being fingered
by Sammy gravano, the rat.
The trial of reputed mob leader,
John Gotti, has begun in New York City.
[Gabriel] When Sammy came out,
you could have cut the air with a knife.
I mean, it just... the two of
them stared each other down.
I still think John probably felt
sicker than Sammy.
If looks could kill, there were two
people who would be falling down dead.
He was a great witness.
John Gotti barked, I bit.
He owned up to the crimes he
committed and he fingered John Gotti
for the murders that he authorized
and running the crime family in his image.
He nailed him, you know,
to the cross.
Good morning, everybody. Mob boss,
John Gotti, is facing life in prison
after being convicted
of all 13 counts against him.
The jury concluded that he was
responsible for murdering five associates
in the Gambino crime family and
was guilty of racketeering charges.
[Capeci] When the verdict came in,
he just
sat there. He tried to
keep a stiff upper lip,
but he knew
that he was dead in the water,
convicted, and gonna go to jail
for the rest of his life.
The teflon has gone.
The Don is covered with
velcro and every charge
in the indictment stuck.
Outside, hundreds of Gotti supporters,
outraged by that sentence,
tried to storm
the Brooklyn courthouse.
The immediate reaction was a bunch
of lunatics went down to the courthouse
and started overturning cars. And people
started screaming, "free John Gotti."
John Gotti took power
of the mob at the right time.
He was someone who was out there
when the media was looking for a godfather.
[Andersen] There was a kind
of nostalgia aspect
to John Gotti becoming
this famous figure in the 80s.
Mafiosi were regarded as
high-stakes entertainment figures.
They could kill each other, they could
become famous, they wear fancy suits
and be on television all the time.
And like, they're not gonna kill me,
they're not gonna kill
my children, so, like, fine.
[Gabriel] I think John was a product
of what was going on in the 80s.
The page six stuff
was becoming big.
Just being recognized
on any platform was significant
and he fed into that.
I mean, it consumed him.
[McDonald] I don't
know what Gotti was
thinking because nobody
ever gets away with it.
Eventually, they're gonna get caught,
unless they just die in their own beds.
But I guess he enjoyed
his run while he had it.
All that acclaim and notoriety
and attention.
Something that he craved.
Whatever power the mafia had, it's
gone. The mafia would never be the same
once John Gotti was put in
charge and then once he goes away.
Been a big week on wall street all
this week. It flirted with the 3000 Mark,
...
...
Many of the rich and famous now
are not as rich and some are infamous.
By 1990, the stock market may
have recovered from the crash of '87,
but the verdict was in.
Greed was no longer good.
These are card-carrying,
crashing egotists.
The heroes of the 1980s had
become villains right before our eyes.
[Newsreader] Another fallen
mogul with a big ego, Ivan Boesky.
He bribed people to give him
inside information and made millions.
[Auletta] Ivan Boesky, he's not a guy who's
gonna be on a magazine cover ever again.
But he did it. We're not doing it to him,
he did it,
and therefore
should pay a price.
[Newsreader] Boesky served
his time, grew a beard,
and was last seen testifying
against a former friend in court.
Ivan Boesky, or Dennis levine,
or some of the other
perpetrators, they were pariahs.
[Madrick] Ivan Boesky was a tragic figure,
partly because he had talents.
He was very disciplined,
he worked very hard, but in the end,
the lesson of New York
in the 80s is, greed wins out.
As fate set in and former masters of
the universe were shamed by the city
that once worshiped them,
one wasn't giving up without a fight.
Harry and Leona Helmsley,
one of the world's wealthiest couples,
are charged tonight with
cheating on their income taxes.
Accompanied by her husband, Harry,
who wasn't well enough to stand trial,
and pushing her way
through a mob of photographers,
Leona Helmsley arrives
to learn her sentence.
Hang 'em by the toes. [Laughs]
I think she should be given
the maximum.
[Devita] Leona Helmsley was convicted of
income tax evasion and aiding and assisting
in the preparation of false tax returns.
She was also found guilty for mail fraud
relating to the New York state
income tax return.
[Newsreader] Leona Helmsley
won't go to prison right away.
She left court with her husband,
free on bail to prepare an appeal.
I've done nothing wrong.
I have done nothing wrong.
Leona Helmsley felt
she was innocent.
I'm innocent.
And that she was indicted only
because "I'm Leona Helmsley."
That had she been a man in business,
she clearly would have walked
or been elected president.
Once she was indicted,
Leona Helmsley hired Gerald feffer
to defend her. He did not win the case.
Of course, he went from being
her hero to being some awful person,
so she replaced him
with Alan Dershowitz.
[Newsreader] Power defense attorney, Alan
Dershowitz, has promised to take her case
all the way to the supreme court
if necessary.
The joke is over! We're talking
about putting a 71-year-old woman
with an ailing husband in jail!
Enough is enough!
We will file our brief in three weeks
and we will approve and assert...
- We will win.
- Total innocence.
At the urging
of her new attorney,
the queen of mean
embarked on a media tour
to rehabilitate
her public image...
Or at least let them know
how unfairly she'd been treated.
I got a $25 million bail.
There's a man in Milwaukee that
chops up people and eats them.
Revolting story.
He got a million dollar's bail.
I've done nothing and look
what they have done to us.
I did not do anything.
Not guilty, not guilty,
not guilty. I am innocent.
Why she was going on television
was to gain sympathy,
but you have to first apologize,
which she never did.
Leona blamed everybody
for her own problems.
She blamed the prosecutor,
Rudolph giuliani.
Is out to get you, Leona?
Oh yes. Mr giuliani,
there is no question
about it. I was a great
stepping stone for him.
[Bagli] She blamed the ad company that
developed the whole "queen of the hotels."
I think, for those that were more steeped
in leonaism, it was the perfect expression.
The queen of the mean, because
she was such an unloving personality.
She was, in the perception
of society, gratuitously cruel.
She really defined
the archetypal paranoid bully.
And that was her downfall.
[Newsreader] She's 71,
she's given millions to charity.
Her husband is gravely ill
and she's on her way to prison.
[Plaskin] She paid
a seven million dollar
fine,
she was convicted to four years in jail,
and 250 hours
of community service.
[Newsreader] The judge has ordered
her to begin serving her four-year
tax evasion sentence,
ironically, on April 15, tax day.
[Singing] Everything we've heard
about her is absolutely vile.
From the testimony
tit-bits from her terrible
trial. But her reign
of terror is over,
'cause Leona's going to, yes,
any day, she's going to...
Leona's going to jail!
Evl wonder what trump's game,
is this time?
Mr. Trump! Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump, please.
My new game is trump, the game.
Trump, the game. It's not whether
you win or lose, it's whether you win.
- Yes!
- I think you'll like it.
For years, the developer turned
super star had been tempting fate
in matters both professional and personal,
and now they were coming to a head.
In Atlantic city, his casinos
were teetering on the edge,
while his marriage
was on equally shaky ground.
By the late 80s, he wants more and
more and more in terms of objects,
totems of wealth.
But he also wants somebody else.
[Newsreader] We think
that's her on the right,
or at least Donald
trump brought a woman
who looks a lot like Marla to a
party thrown by Ted tuner in 1988.
[Kruse] He was stowing Marla
maples in his casinos, in his hotels.
Eventually this would
all come to light.
The chatter is getting louder and
louder and louder. Then the story broke.
One of the nation's
most publicly married couples
is heading
for a very public divorce.
He was accused of consorting with an
attractive young woman named Marla maples.
Lurid newspaper headlines
made much of that.
There is really nothing more trumpian
than the way their divorce played out.
And it was all dished out
and eaten up by the tabloids.
Marla maples saying,
"the best sex I ever had."
If that was said
about most human beings,
they would not get out of bed that
day. Donald Trump glorified in it.
He said, "this is wonderful!"
Well, she's a fantastic woman,
but I won't say any more on that.
We're here to cover
a boxing match.
I mean,
Ivana was... I've never seen anybody
so heartbroken in
my life as she was.
She was devastated.
Poor thing!
[Newsreader] Some people think
this first celebrity divorce of the 90s
is something serious
being turned into a circus.
No matter who it is,
separations are sad.
Ultimately, I think Ivana won.
She was this sympathetic figure
who had been wronged by her
husband who was bragging about his affair
with another woman. It was not the best
look for him. It was sort of the moment
where he lost control of his ability
to dictate what the narrative would be
and that irked him more
than just about anything.
You have a lot of very dishonest reporters,
in my opinion. And I mean dishonest.
I'm not talking about they're slightly off,
I mean they are totally dishonest,
where they'll report things
knowingly that they're wrong.
It is this demarcation point when we
learn that trump's gonna get divorced
and trump actually is probably
not nearly as rich as we thought.
Stuff starts to unravel pretty
quickly for trump in 1990.
[Johnston] He can't pay
the interest payments
on the Taj Mahal,
his newest casino.
The trump shuttle collapses. He
can't run the Plaza hotel in New York
that he grossly overpaid for.
Within months, this was not
a viable enterprise.
[Newsreader] Donald
could even lose the dome
of his new gambling casino,
the Taj Mahal.
He hasn't finished paying
for it and there's talk
that the contractor
might repossess it.
[Newsreader 2] The trump organization,
one of the glitziest companies
in america, confirmed today
that it is in meetings with bankers
in an attempt to reorganize
its vast debt.
Over 1000 lawyers were working
on this case.
A thousand lawyers trying to
sort out Donald Trump's finances.
The New Jersey casino control
commission has unanimously approved
Donald Trump's bail
out plan. That plan allows
him to use his three
Atlantic city casinos
as collateral
for a $65 million loan.
He borrowed so brazenly that he was,
in effect, too big to fail.
The banks did not let him
go down.
The banks can't afford to let him
go broke. Katie, they would go broke,
so they've got to let the Donald
be the Donald.
After casino regulators approved Donald
trump's out-of-court corporate bankruptcy
that he doesn't wanna call
bankruptcy, what does he do?
He walks out in front of the cameras and
goes, this is a great day for Donald Trump.
This is a huge victory.
We had a great victory,
I'm as happy as hell. Thank you very much.
[Johnston] Well, you know what? It
was! He didn't have to pay people back
and he walked away a wealthy man,
leaving all this damage behind him.
His empire is saved,
at least temporarily.
But his public image
ain't what it used to be.
[Carswell] After he was exposed,
it was time
for america not to
take him as seriously
as we once did in the 1980s.
[Auletta] There was a good reason to think,
by the early 90s,
that Donald Trump's
time had passed. He's
not the success he claims to be,
it was over.
He was not in exile, exactly,
but considered to be
a little bit closer to a clown.
He was just a guy who was famous
and had crazy hair.
[Singing] Green acres
is the place to be.
Farm living is the life for me!
Mr. and Mrs. Donald Trump.
Donald Trump would show up sort of randomly
in cameos in television shows, in movies.
And in one of the home alone sequels,
all of a sudden there's Donald Trump.
Excuse me, where's the lobby?
Down the hall and to the left.
- Thanks.
[Kruse] Anything
to keep himself going.
You know, when people ask me, "well,
what are his virtues?" Indefatigable...
[Announcer] Hey, look at this!
Donald Trump! Donald Trump! [Laughs]
[Schwartz] ...Relentless.
[Announcer] The hostile
take-over of Donald Trump!
Here he was, last man standing,
and that was the story that he told.
And pretty soon, people forgot
about all the problems.
[Kruse] The most important thing Donald
trump learned was not to change his ways.
It was not to be
more responsible with money.
It was, "I can't be killed,
I'm too big to fail."
In spite of all the excesses of the 80s,
he survived in the 90s
because of those excesses.
What a take-away.
Se of us old enough
to remember the 1970s,
when we wander around New York today,
we drive our children crazy.
It used to be so dirty! It used to be
so dangerous. It used to be decaying.
And all of a sudden it's as if
cinderella's fairy god mother came
and eliminated crime and eliminated
grime and made towers grow and made a city
that looked like it was on its way
to becoming the ash heap of history
into the next great center
of civilization.
And yet, those things
come with a cost.
And New York City not only symbolizes
all the great that occurred in the 1980s,
but the underlying hangover
from the 1980s.
[Sorkin] In the 80s, the idea of the
American dream was transported.
It became an individual dream. It was about
individual success and individual power.
And we didn't, unfortunately, care
enough about how they attained that success
and how they attained
that wealth.
The American dream
actually is very deceiving.
The self-flattering idea of america
is a place where you play by the rules
and you're industrious, you'll do
well. Well, here are all these people
who became unreasonably,
fabulously,
financially successful
by breaking the rules
you will lie, you will cheat,
you will steal, you will back-stab
'cause doing it the right way
takes too long.
[Newsreader] Money. Who's got it? Is there
an unelected elite that rules our town?
[Mahler] In the moment, it may seem
as though it was just a temporary change,
that america kind of lost its mind
for a few years there in the 1980s.
That all these people
got their comeuppance.
Whether it's Ivan Boesky,
who became a pariah,
Donald Trump, whose company went bankrupt
before, of course, reinventing himself,
Leona Helmsley, who becomes
a figure of total ridicule,
John Gotti,
who finally gets nailed,
and Rudy giuliani,
who was ruthlessly ambitious,
who lost his first mayoral race
in 1989.
What seemed like kind of a fleeting
moment is in fact a defining moment
because the legacy of those years
are what we are living with now.
This obsession with wealth,
with celebrity. This sort of turning away
from the idea that it's part of your job
as a citizen to take care of other people.
Today, there is so much anger
spilled about the Kardashians
and Instagram influencers,
how they have corrupted society,
how these people don't deserve
to be successful.
It's all based on nothing and based
on a lie. But what we're seeing today,
it started in New York
in the 80s
by people who were also
making up their own realities,
exaggerating
their own successes.
Greedy in a way
that we had never seen before
and willing to do whatever it took
in order to propagate these myths.
Wall street, it's still fueled by
the greed, by fear, by testosterone.
And so we can sit here and talk
about Ivan Boesky and Michael milkin
and young people beside the TV can say,
"who the heck are those guys?"
Well, the same guys that are working
on wall street today, it's all the same.
It's all the same,
just different names.
[James b. Stewart] And,
we had another huge round
of insider trading scandals,
again, in the 2000s.
There is something about it,
about the risk-free potential
to make so much money,
that some people
just find irresistible.
[Sorkin] I think, today,
we see the underbelly of it.
We see that so much of it was about
smoke and mirrors, was a house of cards.
And I think that's been a real
punch to the gut for a lot of people.
[Crowd chanting] We want
the 99 percent!
[Newsreader] Hundreds have occupied
wall street. Protesters gathered...
[Crowd chanting] I can't
breathe! I can't breathe!
[Newsreader] People
spilling into the streets,
their message
underscored with star power.
[Troy] There's so much anger
and so much alienation
and so much fear
and so much partisanship.
That great disconnect of today
is rooted in the 1980s.
It's rooted in the high
and the low.
It's rooted in the great excess that also
meant that we no longer judged ourselves
by normal standards, by our neighbor's
standards, but by celebrity standards,
and it came at the cost
of our souls.
So, as we wander around new
York city in the 21st century,
we start seeing symbols of the
American dream with an asterisk,
the American dream tarnished,
the American dream at what cost?
No, it isn't truth.
Truth isn't truth.
I, Donald John trump,
do solemnly swear...
Happy new year!
At the dawn of the '80s,
it was exploding with opportunity.
[Newsreader] Boom times. That's
what the numbers signal today,
an economy that's
on a roll in this country.
A place to seek money,
power, fame.
Amid the glitz and greed,
five titans seized their moment.
But by the end of the decade,
that moment had passed
and we'd put greed behind
us for good. Or had we?
The president
of the United States.
A hot-shot developer was dodging
questions about soaring debt...
Trump, the cash crunch.
And scandalous behavior.
Well, she's a fantastic woman,
but I won't say anymore.
But the tabloids that helped make
him were about to take him down.
You have a lot of very dishonest reporters,
in my opinion.
A hard-charging prosecutor had
become a candidate for mayor.
The word impossible
is just not in my vocabulary.
But some in the city were
growing tired of his crusades.
The people of our town don't want
a prosecutor, they want a mayor.
A celebrity Don was back on trial,
feeding a media frenzy.
The Gotti trial is the
hottest show off Broadway.
And when the verdict was read...
The teflon is gone,
the Don is covered with velcro.
[Newsreader] Hundreds of Gotti supporters,
outraged by that sentence,
tried to storm
the Brooklyn courthouse.
And while the former king of wall
street was finally headed for jail,
the queen of mean was mounting a
last-ditch effort to remain a free woman.
Not guilty, not guilty.
I am innocent.
That was it. I'm gonna take you out,
you're gonna take me out.
This isn't gonna end well.
I've never seen anybody so heartbroken
in my life. She was devastated.
There was almost a daily
feeling of how crazy this is.
These larger than life figures would
forever change our idea of success...
My new game is trump, the game.
And excess...
Forty-two million.
And though, at the end of the 80s,
we may have delighted in their downfall...
[Woman] These are card-carrying,
crashing egotists.
Our celebration of their
values was just beginning.
[Interviewer] But you have said
that if you ran for president, you'd win.
I think I'd have
a very good chance.
[Dramatic music playing]
Okay! [Applause] He's a man who is strong,
smart, he's done very well for himself,
for an ex chippendale dancer.
I've... oh! [Laughs]
A man who, five minutes after he got here,
tried to buy our studio.
So, who is
this famous billionaire?
[Audience] Donald Trump!
He was the man
with the midas touch.
Builder of golden towers, high-rolling
casino operator, bestselling author,
myth maker of epic proportions.
How rich are you,
just basically? [Laughs] Right now?
Well, it depends
on which magazine you read.
I mean, how much you got
in your wallet? I wanna see...
He was also sitting on a mountain of
debt and an explosive personal secret.
But with every breathless news report,
his legend only grew,
until it really did seem like
his potential was limitless.
[Emily fox] He had his buildings,
he had his hotels.
He presented himself,
as he does now,
as a man who was incredibly
financially successful.
Privately, his businesses were having
more trouble than he would let on.
He was a guy who thought
he was invincible,
from a business standpoint and
also from a personal standpoint.
And he gets the idea in his head
that he should be running everything.
[Newsreader] Trump has said,
quite
seriously,
that he's a good enough bargainer
to negotiate a nuclear
disarmament treaty with the Russians.
[David cay johnston] Donald first publicly
talked about being president in 1987.
He knew all he had to do was keep pressing
ahead and he would have a shot at it.
You have said that,
if you ran for president, you'd win.
I think I'd have a very good
chance. I mean, I like to win.
[Michael kruse] Roger stone,
a long-time political operative,
called him a "prime piece
of political horse flesh."
It was his idea for trump to go
to Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
where he gave a talk at a rotary
club and created quite a stir.
This country is being taken such
advantage of, we need strength.
I mean, you think gorbachev is tough. Think
of this character khomeini. [Laughter]
I mean, this son of a bitch is
something like nobody's ever seen!
[Barbara res] Trump wanted to create
the notion that he was so competent,
that he was so great
at what he did
that he could do the hardest,
most important job
in the world
and that's being president.
I love the country, but I think you're
gonna have probably George Bush
as your next president. He's an
excellent guy, an excellent man,
he's a friend of mine
and I'm here for that reason.
That was not a serious idea
in the late 80s,
but it planted a seed that this guy,
a developer in New York, a celebrity,
the author of the art of the deal,
would be trafficking in political ideas.
He was laying groundwork for
what we would see decades later.
Good luck, everyone.
Thank you all for being here.
[Kurt andersen] Donald Trump had
delusions of grandeur from the get-go.
At the same time, big,
legitimate banks enabled Donald Trump.
They kept giving him money.
[Charles bagli] Donald is already starting
to file tax returns that would indicate
he was losing money,
not making money.
[Newsreader] Is Donald Trump in financial
trouble? Some in the financial community
are looking for signs that
trump may be trying to raise cash
because of a current, or anticipated
shortage, caused by heavy debt.
But in the meantime,
there was a constant flow of money
from wall street
and from investors.
So, when the opportunity came
to grab a hold of the biggest,
most luxurious casino
in Atlantic city,
the Taj Mahal, he took it.
Donald Trump today opened the
doors to his billion-dollar gamble,
his new Atlantic city casino,
the Taj Mahal.
[Bagli] It had been under construction
for several years, it was way over budget,
but it was supposed to dominate
the whole Atlantic city gambling scene.
[Newsreader] The Taj Mahal stretches
out over 17 acres along the boardwalk.
There's glitz and glitter galore,
$15 million worth of chandeliers
and 1200 luxury hotel rooms.
[Johnston] He buys it
with entirely borrowed money,
junk bonds $675,
million at 14% interest.
He's got over a quarter million dollar
a day bill just for interest on the bonds
and close to another
million dollars a day to
pay all the other bills
of running the place
and of course, paying out the
few winners that were out there.
Johnston trump executives insist
they can make a million dollars a day
the experts say they'll need
just to pay for the casino.
And that is something that had
never happened at any casino,
anywhere in the world
at that point.
So, it was not just ambitious,
it was stupid.
I do have a risk,
I do have a financial risk,
but I have also a reputation risk
and that's very important to me.
[Johnston] From day one, there are
hundreds of contractors and vendors
who were delivering goods to him
and he's not paying them,
because he doesn't have the income
to support all the borrowing he's done.
And then the day came when Donald couldn't
pay the monthly payments on his debt
and it's very clear
that this is going to collapse.
There was almost a daily feeling
of how crazy this is.
So, a million dollars a day,
while it sounds like a lot of money,
for the building that we're talking about,
it should be very easily made.
We realized that Donald
was uncontrollable.
[Dramatic music playing]
[Giuliani] New York is a
city overwhelmed by crime,
crack,
and corruption. [Man] New York City, 1989.
The fear in our streets, parks,
and subways
all point to a city
that is out of control!
He was the avenging us attorney
with an audacious crime busting record
and he was now closer than ever to his
ultimate goal of winning political office.
With crime rates surging
in 1989,
no one seemed better suited to
become New York City's next mayor.
From a policing perspective,
it's a very violent era.
This was a very constant
topic of conversation,
the level of
violence in the city.
[Kirtzman] Giuliani ran
as the law-and-order candidate
and New York needed
more law and order.
As mayor, I will lead the battle
to take our streets back, hearts back,
subways back from the criminals.
He saw this as an opportunity
to clean up the city.
[Newsreader] Giuliani remains a major
threat to koch's chances for a fourth term,
assuming the mayor survives
the Democratic primary,
particularly the challenge
from David dinkins.
[Kirtzman] David dinkins
had risen though the ranks
to become
Manhattan borough president,
a somewhat powerful job.
[Ken auletta] During
the primary race
relations were very
tender and dinkins came in
as someone
who might be a healer.
I felt the rise of David dinkins
in the context of a series of
racial events through the age.
The Michael Stewart incident...
There was
the Eleanor bumpurs incident...
The Howard beach incident.
The victims were three black
men whose car had broken down.
[Gil Troy] The crime problem, all too often
in New York, is seen as a racial problem,
but it's the incidents
where blacks and
whites interact that
generate the headlines,
that generate the tensions.
A wall street investment
banker remains
unconscious in very
critical condition tonight
after a brutal attack while she
was jogging in central park.
The central park jogger case turned
into one of the biggest rape cases
we have ever seen
in New York City.
A young, white woman was beaten badly,
raped, and left for dead.
[Newsreader] Today, police arrested
four juveniles, ages 14 through 15,
all charged
with attempted murder and rape.
Black and latino kids...
Whatever the police and the
prosecutors said was accepted as fact.
The horrifying crime has sparked
a new call for the death penalty,
this one from billionaire
developer, Donald Trump.
[Byfield] Donald Trump takes out
an ad in all the major newspapers,
calling for the death penalty,
before there's been a trial!
There's not a thing in the world
wrong with hating in certain instances
and you have an instance
here where you have
killers roaming the street,
preying on all of us
he said what he said in that ad and then he
doubled down in a variety of other places.
He gave license to think those
things about those kids, who didn't do it.
Amid this atmosphere
of racial tension,
comes the murder
of Yusef Hawkins in bensonhurst.
[Newsreader] Police
say 30 white teenagers
armed with baseball
bats and at least one gun,
attacked Hawkins
and his three companions.
This confrontation leads to him
being shot to death.
[Newsreader] In the aftermath
of the killing,
racial tensions in bensonhurst
and New York City have mounted.
It rocks the city.
[Crowd chanting] Bensonhurst!
Bensonhurst! This is not Johannesburg!
There are not racists
in this community.
This is not a racist community, we
just don't like black people, that's all.
People were feeling as if the city
was reaching a point of ungovernability.
It's not enough for people
to be angry.
If you don't have somebody bring
a change in policy and procedures,
we'll never get ahead.
Koch was perceived more and more as
a divisive figure, and that David dinkins
might be the solution to this.
In the minds of many,
we weren't supposed to win
but nobody told us that.
After 12 years leading the city of new
York, ed koch will no longer be mayor.
Instead, David dinkins,
the president of the borough of Manhattan,
is in a position to become the first
black mayor of the nation's largest city.
You gave me your votes and even more,
in a tough time, you gave me your trust.
This year, dinkins faces strong opposition
from former us attorney Rudolph giuliani.
On the day I become mayor,
the old political
system that is dragging
this city down is out!
Two candidates were left to
battle it out for the mayor's seat.
One, a seasoned politician with a
message of Harmony and justice.
The other, a righteous ex-lawman
with a message of crime and punishment.
Emphasis on the punishment.
Giuliani was a us attorney
coming in as a hard-line guy.
It's not about being the nice guy,
it's about being the tough guy.
[Kirtzman] For a person who
had mastered the New York media,
giuliani didn't have
his message together.
He had people making all these allegations
relating to the character of dinkins.
It was clear that giuliani would
stoop to low levels to get elected.
Why does David dinkins
always wait until he gets caught?
Rudy giuliani: Experience,
integrity, and nobody owns him.
Rudy was a tough campaigner,
but we were pretty good also.
I think the people of our town don't
want a prosecutor, they want a mayor.
[Guiliani] Well, wait, wait a second. I
think the people of this town want a mayor
who has nothing to fear
from a prosecutor.
I think it became an issue of who
could really keep the city under control
and they both were running
with different philosophies.
The people do not want a city
divided against itself.
New York is a city
overwhelmed by crime.
What can unite us is far stronger than the
forces that can keep us apart. [Applause]
Who can reduce crime better?
I know how he
feels. I come from a
background of people
that have been excluded.
Who can get the drug problem
under control better?
I propose to be mayor
of all of the people.
Take our city back.
Mayor of all the people.
The word impossible
is just not in my vocabulary.
We owe it to our children not to give up,
give in, or turn back.
Biggest of all American cities
has a black mayor, David dinkins.
Dinkins beat republican
Rudolph giuliani tonight.
David dinkins' message of racial
Harmony was the key to that race.
It wasn't the time for a prosecutor,
it was the time for Harmony.
In the end,
it was one of the closest
mayoral elections in
the history of New York.
It was close. You win by one vote,
you're still the winner.
I've just spoken to major-elect
David dinkins.
- [Crowd booing]
- No! No! No! No!
Quiet! Quiet!!
Simply put,
this was David dinkins' time.
In the days ahead,
I will meet with him and I will reach out
to the many others
across this city.
[Kirtzman] In many ways, Giuliani's
run for mayor was an embarrassment.
This was a person who had
a very, very strong reputation.
After the loss to dinkins, he says
that the election was stolen from him
because a lot of blacks and Puerto Ricans
voted illegally in the outer boroughs.
There's no evidence, but one of the
defining characteristics of Rudy giuliani
is vindictiveness, is a desire
to avenge any kind of defeat.
And you can see that in 1989.
One of the fascinating
things about the giuliani
story is that it was
always hard to tell,
on any given day,
whether this was a good man or an evil man.
Through the lens of that time,
you would have said he saw wrong doing
and was determined to punish it
and halt it by any means necessary.
I think you might look back and
decide maybe he is a man who really,
in some ways, is no different
than the people he prosecuted.
He just had different tools in
which to exercise his will to power.
In the totality of Giuliani's career,
there was too much good and bad.
[Journalist] Morning, Mr. Gotti. What
about all this news of more indictments?
You think the government's
gonna frame you?
You guys [inaudible].
Throughout the late 80s, New York's
most notorious gangster had captivated
the nation by strutting for cameras
and skillfully dodging law enforcement.
But, in 1990,
the feds had snagged him again
and this time they had his
own words to use against him.
Secret FBI tapes
of reputed mob boss, John Gotti,
reveal the dark and violent
world of the Gambino crime family.
[Newsreader] Most of the
discussions took place in an apartment
two floors above Gotti's
ravenite social club in little Italy,
an apartment that Gotti had
no idea was bugged by the FBI.
Clearly, the man Gotti considers
his closest ally, according to the tapes,
is this man,
Sam "Sammy the bull" gravano.
About a year or so before
we take them off the street,
John Gotti made Sammy
the underboss of the family.
Sammy had the reputation
of being a shooter and a killer.
So, he made sure that kind
of stuff got done for John Gotti.
Right now, Gotti and gravano were
both behind bars together, awaiting trial,
and Sammy bull had had listened
to some of the tapes.
They got the tapes,
'cause they get to listen to the evidence
that the government's gonna present,
and Sammy started hearing
what John was saying in some of
the conversations that he wasn't part of.
Gotti's bad-mouthing gravano, Sammy's
turning red, he just wants to burst.
Gotti was basically blaming him for
all the murders that he was authorizing.
That was it. He and John were
now on the outs and, you know,
I'm gonna take you out, you're gonna
take me out. This isn't gonna end well.
And that's what,
you know, put it in his
head that he needed
to find another way out.
He pricks your finger.
[Man] Who? Who?
The godfather.
[Newsreader] Since Jo valachi became
the first sworn member of la cosa nostra
to break the code of silence,
only a small handful of low-level hoods
have chosen to follow in violating
that sacred code of omertà .
Well,
the most significant rule in the
mafia,
the rule that enabled them to prevail
and to succeed for as long as they did,
was the rule of omertà , that is silence.
You can't rat anyone out. If you're caught,
you go and do your time,
you keep your mouth shut.
Just now Sammy "the bull"
gravano listened to the tapes.
He knew that his goose
was cooked.
Sammy bull got the sense that
he could get himself a good deal.
Sammy sent word
that he wanted to speak to us.
We had to go to the jail
to take him out.
[McDonald] So,
they bring down Sammy, he
gets in the car and we
drive to a safe house.
I asked Sammy, says, "tell us about
the Castellano body murder." "Okay."
So he just went from
a to z. I remember
drawing a little map
showing east 46th street.
"I was here with John. You're the
shooters," you do the whole thing.
He heard the tapes, he said,
"everything's accurate on it."
I mean,
you guys have us dead to rights, but,
you know,
he put me in those five murders
and I'm gonna do life for it."
He said,
"and you guys, I can trust you
more than I can trust the mob."
He says,
"I wanna join team america."
John found out within that night,
word got to him Sammy had been pulled out
and he knew it was over,
just died inside.
[Newsreader] Sammy "the bull" gravano has
been transferred out of a federal prison
and is reportedly talking
to prosecutors...
[Newsreader 2] John Gotti's closest ally,
facing 50 years in prison,
has joined the ranks
of the squealers.
The decision by Sammy gravano
to testify is certainly a big, big event.
He knows where all the bodies
are buried.
Every news organization
in the city was covering it.
People inside,
people outside the
courthouse, people watching,
people who came.
It was a huge thing.
In New York, the Gotti trial is the hottest
show off Broadway with spectators lining up
as early as two in the morning,
waiting hours
for a chance to get
inside the courtroom.
Mickey Rourke showed up,
Anthony Quinn showed up.
This is one of the great dramas
that's going on today.
A lot of people showed up
to express their, you know,
concern and allegiance
with poor John Gotti,
who was being fingered
by Sammy gravano, the rat.
The trial of reputed mob leader,
John Gotti, has begun in New York City.
[Gabriel] When Sammy came out,
you could have cut the air with a knife.
I mean, it just... the two of
them stared each other down.
I still think John probably felt
sicker than Sammy.
If looks could kill, there were two
people who would be falling down dead.
He was a great witness.
John Gotti barked, I bit.
He owned up to the crimes he
committed and he fingered John Gotti
for the murders that he authorized
and running the crime family in his image.
He nailed him, you know,
to the cross.
Good morning, everybody. Mob boss,
John Gotti, is facing life in prison
after being convicted
of all 13 counts against him.
The jury concluded that he was
responsible for murdering five associates
in the Gambino crime family and
was guilty of racketeering charges.
[Capeci] When the verdict came in,
he just
sat there. He tried to
keep a stiff upper lip,
but he knew
that he was dead in the water,
convicted, and gonna go to jail
for the rest of his life.
The teflon has gone.
The Don is covered with
velcro and every charge
in the indictment stuck.
Outside, hundreds of Gotti supporters,
outraged by that sentence,
tried to storm
the Brooklyn courthouse.
The immediate reaction was a bunch
of lunatics went down to the courthouse
and started overturning cars. And people
started screaming, "free John Gotti."
John Gotti took power
of the mob at the right time.
He was someone who was out there
when the media was looking for a godfather.
[Andersen] There was a kind
of nostalgia aspect
to John Gotti becoming
this famous figure in the 80s.
Mafiosi were regarded as
high-stakes entertainment figures.
They could kill each other, they could
become famous, they wear fancy suits
and be on television all the time.
And like, they're not gonna kill me,
they're not gonna kill
my children, so, like, fine.
[Gabriel] I think John was a product
of what was going on in the 80s.
The page six stuff
was becoming big.
Just being recognized
on any platform was significant
and he fed into that.
I mean, it consumed him.
[McDonald] I don't
know what Gotti was
thinking because nobody
ever gets away with it.
Eventually, they're gonna get caught,
unless they just die in their own beds.
But I guess he enjoyed
his run while he had it.
All that acclaim and notoriety
and attention.
Something that he craved.
Whatever power the mafia had, it's
gone. The mafia would never be the same
once John Gotti was put in
charge and then once he goes away.
Been a big week on wall street all
this week. It flirted with the 3000 Mark,
...
...
Many of the rich and famous now
are not as rich and some are infamous.
By 1990, the stock market may
have recovered from the crash of '87,
but the verdict was in.
Greed was no longer good.
These are card-carrying,
crashing egotists.
The heroes of the 1980s had
become villains right before our eyes.
[Newsreader] Another fallen
mogul with a big ego, Ivan Boesky.
He bribed people to give him
inside information and made millions.
[Auletta] Ivan Boesky, he's not a guy who's
gonna be on a magazine cover ever again.
But he did it. We're not doing it to him,
he did it,
and therefore
should pay a price.
[Newsreader] Boesky served
his time, grew a beard,
and was last seen testifying
against a former friend in court.
Ivan Boesky, or Dennis levine,
or some of the other
perpetrators, they were pariahs.
[Madrick] Ivan Boesky was a tragic figure,
partly because he had talents.
He was very disciplined,
he worked very hard, but in the end,
the lesson of New York
in the 80s is, greed wins out.
As fate set in and former masters of
the universe were shamed by the city
that once worshiped them,
one wasn't giving up without a fight.
Harry and Leona Helmsley,
one of the world's wealthiest couples,
are charged tonight with
cheating on their income taxes.
Accompanied by her husband, Harry,
who wasn't well enough to stand trial,
and pushing her way
through a mob of photographers,
Leona Helmsley arrives
to learn her sentence.
Hang 'em by the toes. [Laughs]
I think she should be given
the maximum.
[Devita] Leona Helmsley was convicted of
income tax evasion and aiding and assisting
in the preparation of false tax returns.
She was also found guilty for mail fraud
relating to the New York state
income tax return.
[Newsreader] Leona Helmsley
won't go to prison right away.
She left court with her husband,
free on bail to prepare an appeal.
I've done nothing wrong.
I have done nothing wrong.
Leona Helmsley felt
she was innocent.
I'm innocent.
And that she was indicted only
because "I'm Leona Helmsley."
That had she been a man in business,
she clearly would have walked
or been elected president.
Once she was indicted,
Leona Helmsley hired Gerald feffer
to defend her. He did not win the case.
Of course, he went from being
her hero to being some awful person,
so she replaced him
with Alan Dershowitz.
[Newsreader] Power defense attorney, Alan
Dershowitz, has promised to take her case
all the way to the supreme court
if necessary.
The joke is over! We're talking
about putting a 71-year-old woman
with an ailing husband in jail!
Enough is enough!
We will file our brief in three weeks
and we will approve and assert...
- We will win.
- Total innocence.
At the urging
of her new attorney,
the queen of mean
embarked on a media tour
to rehabilitate
her public image...
Or at least let them know
how unfairly she'd been treated.
I got a $25 million bail.
There's a man in Milwaukee that
chops up people and eats them.
Revolting story.
He got a million dollar's bail.
I've done nothing and look
what they have done to us.
I did not do anything.
Not guilty, not guilty,
not guilty. I am innocent.
Why she was going on television
was to gain sympathy,
but you have to first apologize,
which she never did.
Leona blamed everybody
for her own problems.
She blamed the prosecutor,
Rudolph giuliani.
Is out to get you, Leona?
Oh yes. Mr giuliani,
there is no question
about it. I was a great
stepping stone for him.
[Bagli] She blamed the ad company that
developed the whole "queen of the hotels."
I think, for those that were more steeped
in leonaism, it was the perfect expression.
The queen of the mean, because
she was such an unloving personality.
She was, in the perception
of society, gratuitously cruel.
She really defined
the archetypal paranoid bully.
And that was her downfall.
[Newsreader] She's 71,
she's given millions to charity.
Her husband is gravely ill
and she's on her way to prison.
[Plaskin] She paid
a seven million dollar
fine,
she was convicted to four years in jail,
and 250 hours
of community service.
[Newsreader] The judge has ordered
her to begin serving her four-year
tax evasion sentence,
ironically, on April 15, tax day.
[Singing] Everything we've heard
about her is absolutely vile.
From the testimony
tit-bits from her terrible
trial. But her reign
of terror is over,
'cause Leona's going to, yes,
any day, she's going to...
Leona's going to jail!
Evl wonder what trump's game,
is this time?
Mr. Trump! Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump, please.
My new game is trump, the game.
Trump, the game. It's not whether
you win or lose, it's whether you win.
- Yes!
- I think you'll like it.
For years, the developer turned
super star had been tempting fate
in matters both professional and personal,
and now they were coming to a head.
In Atlantic city, his casinos
were teetering on the edge,
while his marriage
was on equally shaky ground.
By the late 80s, he wants more and
more and more in terms of objects,
totems of wealth.
But he also wants somebody else.
[Newsreader] We think
that's her on the right,
or at least Donald
trump brought a woman
who looks a lot like Marla to a
party thrown by Ted tuner in 1988.
[Kruse] He was stowing Marla
maples in his casinos, in his hotels.
Eventually this would
all come to light.
The chatter is getting louder and
louder and louder. Then the story broke.
One of the nation's
most publicly married couples
is heading
for a very public divorce.
He was accused of consorting with an
attractive young woman named Marla maples.
Lurid newspaper headlines
made much of that.
There is really nothing more trumpian
than the way their divorce played out.
And it was all dished out
and eaten up by the tabloids.
Marla maples saying,
"the best sex I ever had."
If that was said
about most human beings,
they would not get out of bed that
day. Donald Trump glorified in it.
He said, "this is wonderful!"
Well, she's a fantastic woman,
but I won't say any more on that.
We're here to cover
a boxing match.
I mean,
Ivana was... I've never seen anybody
so heartbroken in
my life as she was.
She was devastated.
Poor thing!
[Newsreader] Some people think
this first celebrity divorce of the 90s
is something serious
being turned into a circus.
No matter who it is,
separations are sad.
Ultimately, I think Ivana won.
She was this sympathetic figure
who had been wronged by her
husband who was bragging about his affair
with another woman. It was not the best
look for him. It was sort of the moment
where he lost control of his ability
to dictate what the narrative would be
and that irked him more
than just about anything.
You have a lot of very dishonest reporters,
in my opinion. And I mean dishonest.
I'm not talking about they're slightly off,
I mean they are totally dishonest,
where they'll report things
knowingly that they're wrong.
It is this demarcation point when we
learn that trump's gonna get divorced
and trump actually is probably
not nearly as rich as we thought.
Stuff starts to unravel pretty
quickly for trump in 1990.
[Johnston] He can't pay
the interest payments
on the Taj Mahal,
his newest casino.
The trump shuttle collapses. He
can't run the Plaza hotel in New York
that he grossly overpaid for.
Within months, this was not
a viable enterprise.
[Newsreader] Donald
could even lose the dome
of his new gambling casino,
the Taj Mahal.
He hasn't finished paying
for it and there's talk
that the contractor
might repossess it.
[Newsreader 2] The trump organization,
one of the glitziest companies
in america, confirmed today
that it is in meetings with bankers
in an attempt to reorganize
its vast debt.
Over 1000 lawyers were working
on this case.
A thousand lawyers trying to
sort out Donald Trump's finances.
The New Jersey casino control
commission has unanimously approved
Donald Trump's bail
out plan. That plan allows
him to use his three
Atlantic city casinos
as collateral
for a $65 million loan.
He borrowed so brazenly that he was,
in effect, too big to fail.
The banks did not let him
go down.
The banks can't afford to let him
go broke. Katie, they would go broke,
so they've got to let the Donald
be the Donald.
After casino regulators approved Donald
trump's out-of-court corporate bankruptcy
that he doesn't wanna call
bankruptcy, what does he do?
He walks out in front of the cameras and
goes, this is a great day for Donald Trump.
This is a huge victory.
We had a great victory,
I'm as happy as hell. Thank you very much.
[Johnston] Well, you know what? It
was! He didn't have to pay people back
and he walked away a wealthy man,
leaving all this damage behind him.
His empire is saved,
at least temporarily.
But his public image
ain't what it used to be.
[Carswell] After he was exposed,
it was time
for america not to
take him as seriously
as we once did in the 1980s.
[Auletta] There was a good reason to think,
by the early 90s,
that Donald Trump's
time had passed. He's
not the success he claims to be,
it was over.
He was not in exile, exactly,
but considered to be
a little bit closer to a clown.
He was just a guy who was famous
and had crazy hair.
[Singing] Green acres
is the place to be.
Farm living is the life for me!
Mr. and Mrs. Donald Trump.
Donald Trump would show up sort of randomly
in cameos in television shows, in movies.
And in one of the home alone sequels,
all of a sudden there's Donald Trump.
Excuse me, where's the lobby?
Down the hall and to the left.
- Thanks.
[Kruse] Anything
to keep himself going.
You know, when people ask me, "well,
what are his virtues?" Indefatigable...
[Announcer] Hey, look at this!
Donald Trump! Donald Trump! [Laughs]
[Schwartz] ...Relentless.
[Announcer] The hostile
take-over of Donald Trump!
Here he was, last man standing,
and that was the story that he told.
And pretty soon, people forgot
about all the problems.
[Kruse] The most important thing Donald
trump learned was not to change his ways.
It was not to be
more responsible with money.
It was, "I can't be killed,
I'm too big to fail."
In spite of all the excesses of the 80s,
he survived in the 90s
because of those excesses.
What a take-away.
Se of us old enough
to remember the 1970s,
when we wander around New York today,
we drive our children crazy.
It used to be so dirty! It used to be
so dangerous. It used to be decaying.
And all of a sudden it's as if
cinderella's fairy god mother came
and eliminated crime and eliminated
grime and made towers grow and made a city
that looked like it was on its way
to becoming the ash heap of history
into the next great center
of civilization.
And yet, those things
come with a cost.
And New York City not only symbolizes
all the great that occurred in the 1980s,
but the underlying hangover
from the 1980s.
[Sorkin] In the 80s, the idea of the
American dream was transported.
It became an individual dream. It was about
individual success and individual power.
And we didn't, unfortunately, care
enough about how they attained that success
and how they attained
that wealth.
The American dream
actually is very deceiving.
The self-flattering idea of america
is a place where you play by the rules
and you're industrious, you'll do
well. Well, here are all these people
who became unreasonably,
fabulously,
financially successful
by breaking the rules
you will lie, you will cheat,
you will steal, you will back-stab
'cause doing it the right way
takes too long.
[Newsreader] Money. Who's got it? Is there
an unelected elite that rules our town?
[Mahler] In the moment, it may seem
as though it was just a temporary change,
that america kind of lost its mind
for a few years there in the 1980s.
That all these people
got their comeuppance.
Whether it's Ivan Boesky,
who became a pariah,
Donald Trump, whose company went bankrupt
before, of course, reinventing himself,
Leona Helmsley, who becomes
a figure of total ridicule,
John Gotti,
who finally gets nailed,
and Rudy giuliani,
who was ruthlessly ambitious,
who lost his first mayoral race
in 1989.
What seemed like kind of a fleeting
moment is in fact a defining moment
because the legacy of those years
are what we are living with now.
This obsession with wealth,
with celebrity. This sort of turning away
from the idea that it's part of your job
as a citizen to take care of other people.
Today, there is so much anger
spilled about the Kardashians
and Instagram influencers,
how they have corrupted society,
how these people don't deserve
to be successful.
It's all based on nothing and based
on a lie. But what we're seeing today,
it started in New York
in the 80s
by people who were also
making up their own realities,
exaggerating
their own successes.
Greedy in a way
that we had never seen before
and willing to do whatever it took
in order to propagate these myths.
Wall street, it's still fueled by
the greed, by fear, by testosterone.
And so we can sit here and talk
about Ivan Boesky and Michael milkin
and young people beside the TV can say,
"who the heck are those guys?"
Well, the same guys that are working
on wall street today, it's all the same.
It's all the same,
just different names.
[James b. Stewart] And,
we had another huge round
of insider trading scandals,
again, in the 2000s.
There is something about it,
about the risk-free potential
to make so much money,
that some people
just find irresistible.
[Sorkin] I think, today,
we see the underbelly of it.
We see that so much of it was about
smoke and mirrors, was a house of cards.
And I think that's been a real
punch to the gut for a lot of people.
[Crowd chanting] We want
the 99 percent!
[Newsreader] Hundreds have occupied
wall street. Protesters gathered...
[Crowd chanting] I can't
breathe! I can't breathe!
[Newsreader] People
spilling into the streets,
their message
underscored with star power.
[Troy] There's so much anger
and so much alienation
and so much fear
and so much partisanship.
That great disconnect of today
is rooted in the 1980s.
It's rooted in the high
and the low.
It's rooted in the great excess that also
meant that we no longer judged ourselves
by normal standards, by our neighbor's
standards, but by celebrity standards,
and it came at the cost
of our souls.
So, as we wander around new
York city in the 21st century,
we start seeing symbols of the
American dream with an asterisk,
the American dream tarnished,
the American dream at what cost?
No, it isn't truth.
Truth isn't truth.
I, Donald John trump,
do solemnly swear...