Before Roger Stone advised Donald Trump as a presidential candidate, he pulled several levers for Donald Trump, the businessman, early in his lobbying career.
In fact, he even got the Atlantic City Harbor dug deeper so Trump’s megayacht could park there.
In his new book The Wolves of K StreetJournalist brothers Brody and Luke Mullins write about the expansive growth of the lobbying industry.
They analyze the creation of Black, Manafort & Stone, the Republican Party lobbying firm run by Charles Black and two well-known Trump associates: Paul Manafort and Stone.
Trump, then a real estate mogul in his 30s, was one of the company’s first big-name clients following President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election victory.
Donald Trump (right) and his then-wife Ivana Trump (left) pose in front of their new luxury yacht The Trump Princess on July 4, 1988 after their arrival in New York from the Azores.
Trump wanted to park the Trump Princess at Farley State Marina, but it was initially too shallow to support the 285-foot yacht Trump purchased in 1987.
Trump enlisted the help of Roger Stone (right), a Republican lobbyist who was devoted to President Richard Nixon (left) even after Watergate, who would later advise his presidential campaign.
Princess Trump is photographed on July 9, 1988 off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Trump wanted to dock it in Atlantic City to attract customers to his casinos
Stone, who remained devoted to President Richard Nixon even after Watergate, met Trump during the 1980 presidential campaign through Roy Cohn.
Cohn became known after his death as Trump’s right-hand man, but was best known at the time for being Senator Joseph McCarthy’s lead lawyer during the anti-communist hearings of the 1950s.
Stone sought to rally support for Reagan in New York.
“So Roy set me up with Donald for a meeting,” Stone recalled in an interview. “Donald said, ‘Okay, give me the proposal,’ and I told him why Reagan would win.”
That was enough to convince Trump to endorse Reagan, providing campaign staff with the use of his plane, office space and phones, according to the book.
After Reagan’s election victory, Stone convinced Trump to register as a client of his company.
He said the new lobbying firm could serve as his “eyes and ears” in Washington, DC.
The superyacht included photographs of Donald and Ivana Trump projected onto the mirrored ceiling of one of its many rooms.
The Trump Princess had several themed staterooms, including the red and white striped Ruby Suite.
Suede leather paneled walls in a yellow living room, designed by Luigi Sturchio, aboard Donald Trump’s yacht, The Trump Princess
A photograph of Paul Manafort (left), Roger Stone (center) and Lee Atwater (right), a top adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, in the early days of his lobbying career.
Enter the Trump Princess, a 285-foot yacht purchased for about $30 million by Trump in 1987 from billionaire Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, uncle of slain Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The authors describe the yacht as having a “distinctly Trumpian aesthetic” with “onyx floors, mahogany walls, gold-plated pillars, a private elevator and an onboard nightclub.”
Photos from that period show that images of Ivana and Donald Trump appeared on a mirrored ceiling in one of the cabins.
That room was equipped with purple sofas with large golden pillows.
And one of the staterooms, the Ruby Suite, was filled with red-and-white-striped Candyland furniture.
The ship, however, was too big for Atlantic City’s Farley State Marina, where Trump wanted to dock it.
The future president poses in one of the golden bathrooms of the luxury yacht The Trump Princess, in 1988
One of the staterooms on Trump’s luxury yacht, The Trump Princess, which was initially too large to park near his casinos in Atlantic City.
The Trump Princess even included a movie theater.
A swimming pool on one of the decks of The Trump Princess, the luxury yacht that the then real estate developer bought for about $30 million from Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.
That’s when Stone entered.
He worked with his political contacts and obtained the necessary permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the Atlantic City Harbor deep enough for the yacht to make it out.
“Those permits can take years,” Stone recalled, according to the authors. “I did it in months.”
In 1989 diffusion for Boat InternationalTrump said he made the ship available to “high rollers who spend millions of dollars a year in casinos.”
“There’s a whole market there,” Trump said of Atlantic City, where he once had three of the casino hotels. ‘While he was building Farley Marina, he was trying to get the boat, because he knew it would blow everyone away. It would become a spectacle.
Trump sold the yacht just a year later, in 1990.