Donald Trump was once friends with the Clintons, even donated to Hillary's senatorial campaigns!

 

Trump, Hillary and Bill Clinton with a friend at an event in 1990s

                               

Donald Trump realized that golf was his entree if he wanted to pal around with Bill Clinton, whom he considered a kindred spirit in some ways — a great man who attracted jealous haters. “Bill is kind of Trump with a dictionary,” one author who has written about New York real estate says. Trump had been obsequious in trying to lure Ronald and Nancy Reagan to his business empire, and tried just as hard with the Clintons. He happened to have his own country club with a golf course in Westchester, which he bought out of foreclosure in the late 1990s. He closed the club in 1999 to redevelop it from top to bottom and reopened it as Trump National Golf Club in 2002. It was six miles from the Clintons’ house, and Trump could play with him, ingratiating himself further by hanging photos of Bill on the wall. As of June, Bill still had a locker at Trump’s golf club.

Trump once told me that he rebuilt the club, in part, because he knew Bill Clinton would need a place to play. As Don Van Natta Jr., an ESPN senior writer, wrote in his book about presidents and golf, “First Off the Tee,” Trump enjoyed playing with the ex-president. “He’s got a lot of golf talent, but he really likes those mulligans,” Trump told Van Natta. “If he misses a shot, he wants to take another crack at it. It’s like life.”

Trump greased the wheels of his relationship with the ex-president and the senator, giving the Clinton Foundation a $100,000 gift from his own foundation. According to “Trump Revealed,” by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, Trump donated to Hillary’s Senate war chest six times between 2002 and 2009, for a total of $4,700, and between 1999 and 2012, he switched his registration among the Republican, Democratic and Independence parties seven times.

The friendship, on both sides, was a transaction. Not personal, as they say in the “The Godfather” — just business. Trump’s life in New York was all about promoting the brand and making money for the family business. It was the same for the Clintons. A former Clinton White House official puts it more bluntly: “This was a classic Clinton go-where-the-money-is move.”

“They all played the same game in the same town with the same thing in mind,” says Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, who was invited to Trump’s third wedding and served prison time for tax fraud and other felony charges. “Better your relationships and build the business. It’s all about money and getting ahead and hedging your bets and playing the angles.”

Trump wasn’t on the dinner-party circuit. He lived in a narrow alternate universe called Trumpworld, and his favorite way to spend the evening was ordering a steak or cheeseburger (well done) from Fresco by Scotto, eating quickly and watching a sporting event on TV. “Trumpworld is a world he weaves for his own needs and desires, depending on what they are and when they are,” says Louise Sunshine, a former Trump Organization vice president, noting that Clintonworld is much broader and more global.

Though the Clintons might show up at some events and galas and friends’ birthday parties, they were never really around enough to become part of the society dinner-party circuit, either. When I asked Trump last summer to describe his relationship with the Clintons, he was neutral: “As a businessman, you have to get along with all politicians,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it was a close relationship.”

Hillary presents the trip to Trump’s wedding as a lark. “The dates worked,” a friend says. But some of her aides expressed surprise that she was going to such a gaudy affair; they believed Hillary rearranged her schedule because she thought Trump was a more important donor than he was.

Extracted from The New York Times Magazine.

A Brief History of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton’s Friendship

Before he ran for president, Donald Trump often defended his pal, Bill Clinton.

By Michele Gorman  

Donald Trump laughs with Bill Clinton and Billy Crystal during the 2008 Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation Golf Classic at Trump National Golf Club in Briarcliff Manor, New York, on July 14, 2008. Clinton and Trump were once longtime friends. But they've distanced themselves now that both men are on opposite sides in the presidential election.Rick Odell/Getty

Despite recent rhetoric regarding the former U.S. president, years before he secured the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election—a feat acknowledged Thursday—Donald Trump and Bill Clinton were longtime friends.
But now as a Republican contender, Trump is being criticized for his ties to the Clintons—Democrats and fellow New Yorkers who celebrated his 2005 marriage to Melania Knauss with him. Hillary Clinton was granted a front-row seat at the ceremony, and her husband later joined the reception at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. A snapshot taken of the Clintons and the newlywed Trumps has been widely circulated during the primary season; the wedding was dubbed the event that explains the 2016 election. During the first GOP debate in August, Trump said the couple “had no choice” but to attend his third wedding, because he had donated generously to the their charitable foundation, as well as to Clinton’s Senate campaigns and her first presidential bid. Never mind that their daughters, Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton, are also known to be friends.

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Nine months ago, The Washington Post reported that on a private, casual phone call last spring, Bill Clinton encouraged Trump to play a larger role in the Republican Party. That conversation reportedly took place in May 2015, a month after Hillary Clinton declared her 2016 presidential bid and just weeks before Trump announced his.
Prior to his sweeping primary wins that began in February, Trump was known to defend the former president on multiple occasions. Meanwhile, Clinton has admitted the billionaire was “uncommonly nice to Hillary and me.”
“I like him. And I love playing golf with him,” Clinton said in a May 2012 interview with CNN, according to transcripts. He spoke highly of Trump, despite the real estate tycoon’s prominent role in the so-called “birther” movement, wherein he spent months publicly questioning President Barack Obama’s original birth certificate. Trump, speaking to Fox News earlier that same year, said he thought Clinton was “a really good guy.”
Donald Trump laughs with Bill Clinton and Billy Crystal during the 2008 Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation Golf Classic at Trump National Golf Club in Briarcliff Manor, New York, on July 14, 2008. Clinton and Trump were once longtime friends. But they’ve distanced themselves now that both men are on opposite sides in the presidential election. Rick Odell/Getty
But Trump’s recent words regarding the 42nd president might make you think he no longer considers him a friend. The GOP candidate has stepped up attacks against both Clintons since early May, when his two remaining competitors, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, both dropped out of the race. Now, he’s eyeing a November general election matchup with Clinton, the Democratic front-runner who likely will be her party’s candidate. And the election season likely will only get uglier, as will his attacks against Bill Clinton.
But it wasn’t always like this. The Trump-Clinton relationship has evolved as the billionaire transitioned from a longtime private citizen to a first-time presidential contender.

The Lewinsky Scandal

Then. Clinton’s sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky took over the narrative of his presidency in January 1998. Seven months later, and days after Clinton admitted to his actions with the White House intern, Trump seemed to express sympathy in his view that Clinton should have refused to answer questions about his sex life.
“It’s a terrible thing for a president to take the Fifth Amendment, but he probably should’ve done it,” Trump said in an interview with CNBC in August 1998. “I don’t think he could’ve done any worse than what’s happened. It’s such an embarrassment to him.”
Then, a decade later, Trump repeated his views, saying the Lewinsky scandal was overblown.
“Look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant, and they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense,” the businessman said during an interview with CNN in October 2008. He continued, comparing what he called the “lies” then-President George W. Bush made about weapons of mass destruction that eventually led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq