Insults, Lawsuits And Broken Rules: How Trump Built A California Golf Course
Editor's Note: This story includes language that may be offensive to some readers.
When Donald Trump arrived in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., in 2002, he was welcomed as a "white knight," says former City Councilman Tom Long.
Trump bought a golf course there that had gone bankrupt after the 18th hole literally fell into the ocean in a landslide.
Long, a Democrat, says residents looked forward to Trump's promises of repairing the course and generating revenue and attention for the city.
Despite that goodwill, the relationship got off to a rough start.
In fact, the story of the Trump National Golf Club, Los Angeles, is part of a pattern in how Trump did business in these small towns and cities. In many ways, it mirrors how Trump now approaches the presidency.
The way he did business in Rancho Palos Verdes was to fight. He sued the local public school district and the city government and publicly insulted an opposing lawyer, who now happens to be on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has been crucial to legal battles over Trump's policies as president.
Lawsuit against the public school district
A year after he arrived in Rancho Palos Verdes, Trump sued the local public school district over a land dispute. The Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District had essentially been leasing part of its land to the previous owner of the golf course. When Trump took ownership of the property — and thus took over that agreement — he fought the district over how much that land was worth, and when the golf course would start paying fees. In late 2003, Trump sued.
Ira Toibin, the superintendent of the school district at the time, says the district worried about the lawsuit's effect on its budget, especially when the schools needed to make repairs to aging facilities. After almost a year, Toibin says, the lawsuit had cost the district at least $100,000 in legal fees — the equivalent of two teachers' annual salaries.
Attorney Milan Smith, who represented the school district in the lawsuit, "just rubbed [Trump] the wrong way," Toibin says.
Smith also had some choice words for the future president.
In an interview at the time with the Easy Reader News, a small Southern California news outlet, Smith called Trump "pompous" and "arrogant."
"I have never had any contact with any human being who appears to be so self-absorbed and so impressed with himself," Smith said, according to the Easy Reader. "He's kind of like a big bag of wind."
The suit was settled in 2004, and the Trump Organization agreed to pay the district $5 million in return for ownership of the land.
Trump later said that he "won" the lawsuit "through a very favorable settlement."
A public celebration ends with a public insult
The money was settled, but for Trump, the grievance with attorney Milan Smith was not. And when Trump had a chance to revisit the lawsuit in front of the media, residents and local officials, he took it.
It was supposed to be a day of celebration on Jan. 14, 2005: Trump was hosting a ribbon-cutting for new luxury homes at the golf club. About a half-dozen TV cameras from outlets like CNBC and E! Entertainment Television stood in the back of a packed room, their lenses on Trump, who sat alongside the hopeful and excited local mayor and members of City Council.
Then Trump started talking about the old lawsuit and called Smith "an obnoxious a******."