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Talk about an embarrassment of riches! I could start quoting at the very beginning of the 85-page lawsuit Donald Trump filed in Florida yesterday against The New York Times — and Penguin Random House Publishers’ book Lucky Loser, by Ross Buettner, Suzanne Craig, and two other Times writers — and not stop till I got through the lawyers’ signatures. 

In fact, here’s just one jewel from one of the last pages of the lawsuit: 

The value of President Trump’s one-of-a-kind, unprecedented personal brand alone is reasonably estimated to be worth at [sic] over $100,000,000,000.

If you have the same trouble I do with all those zeroes, here’s how much that is: One hundred billion dollars.

Donald Trump is President of the United States — “the most powerful man in the world,” as he might describe himself. According to his own calculations — not Forbes magazine, not the Times, not The Wall Street Journal … himself — he’s worth enough to ante up at Texas Hold’em with all the rich guys on the planet, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison included. 

Upon reading that Trump had filed the lawsuit, the first question I had was… Why bother?

Silly me. It’s not a lawsuit. It’s an 85-page tantrum. Do you want to know how much of a tantrum it is? Trump spends page after page whining and complaining that the Times published an article in September of 2024 titled “The Star-Making Machine That Created ‘Donald Trump.’” Why, you might ask, is Trump so upset with that particular article? Well, in it, the authors say that Mark Burnett, the producer of The Apprentice, the television reality show Trump starred in, “discovered” Donald Trump.

That’s it. As close as I can determine from reading the entire lawsuit, that’s the single word that set Trump off. He spends line after line, paragraph after paragraph, page after page “proving” that he was a really, really big deal long before Burnett came along and offered him millions to go on TV, so how could Burnett have “discovered” him, when he was right there ruling over New York City all along?

How, Trump whines, could The New York Times have written that Donald Trump had to be “discovered” as if he was just some schmuck who showed up for a casting call, when he was famed around the world for building the New York skyline?

As proof of Trump’s genius, here is just one claim in the suit: “President Trump built much of New York City’s famed skyline, owning and operating many of the key New York landmarks.” This, after claiming that the Trump name is “synonymous with worldwide excellence, luxury, and opulence” and “the highest standards of class, quality, and consumer satisfaction.”

How, Trump whines, could The New York Times have written that Donald Trump had to be “discovered” as if he was just some schmuck who showed up for a casting call, when he was famed around the world for building the New York skyline? 

And how could the Times have reported that Donald Trump was “discovered” and made a star by Mark Burnett when the Times itself, as far back as 1986, “wrote of ‘big time real estate entrepreneurs such as Donald Trump,’ while another newspaper included the phrase ‘the nation’s firmament of big developers — the Donald Trumps’”?

Think about that for a minute. The year 1986 was 39 years ago. How many paralegals or law firm associates did it take to dig up that quote from the Times so Trump’s lawyers could throw it in there to “prove” that The New York Times knew he was a big deal 39 years ago? 

That’s what Trump uses to prove “actual malice,” that they knew or should have known that Trump was a rock star long before the Times says he was “discovered” by Burnett. 

Here is how the lawsuit puts it: 

Clearly indicating Defendants’ actual malice, the Book and the First Article center on the absurd, fanciful, and false story that President Trump somehow owes his public persona and celebrity status to Burnett and other NBC executives.

What appears to have driven him over the edge was a quote from the Times article published in 2024: “Mr. Trump had mostly luck to credit for being discovered, at age 57, by Mark Burnett, then the hottest name in the hottest new television genre.”

See that? They used the word “luck,” when as the lawsuit puts it: 

NBC and all of the producers are indebted to President Trump for making The Apprentice a smash hit in a way that no other celebrity could have accomplished. The Book and the First Article revolve around this false, malicious, and defamatory premise that Burnett and NBC “discovered” and made President Trump, despite the authors’ admission that before The Apprentice, President Trump was already charismatic and famous.

Because of course he was. Trump has sued a newspaper, a publisher, and four writers not for defamation, but for insufficient adulation. 

All the way through the lawsuit, Trump insistently corrects what he considers the record. He complains about a judge who said Mar-a-Lago is worth $18 million, when according to Trump, it is “worth 100 times that amount.” Mar-a-Lago has “ten times the acreage of Palm Beach’s most expensive home.” Even Robin Leach featured the place on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” way back in the 1980’s, yet another reason Mark Burnett could not have “discovered” Donald Trump, because Robin Leach had already done it.

I waded through page after page of this, Trump alternately bragging about how rich he is, what a business genius he is, how successful he was winning the election of 2016 and then winning again in 2020, only to have it “stolen” from him, and winning yet again in 2024. Even recounting the moment he came down the “golden escalator” in 2015, the punch line in jokes on late night television for ten years, but here treated like the rolling back of the stone on Calvary Hill.

Then I came to this: “President Trump coined the iconic catchphrase ‘You’re Fired!’”

That sealed the deal for me. How could anyone have written anything less than a paean to Trump’s sheer genius, when he was the first man on earth to tell someone they were fired?

He wants $15 billion for all the damage that has been done to…what, exactly? 

He’s the president. The Times reported today that Trump and his sons have turned a couple of crypto deals and a license to sell AI chips to the Emirates into a couple billion bucks just in the last month or two. 

He’s been in office only nine months. They’re working on converting his $800 million palace in the sky into Air Force One, which he will be taking with him when he leaves office. He’s gold-leafing, at taxpayer’s expense, everything at the White House but the grass on the South Lawn. His two older sons are making so much money there is gold plated snot running from their noses. 

How much do you figure he’ll make from being President of the United States by January of 2027? A hundred billion? What does the man have to complain about?

He’s on track to make himself the wealthiest man in the world, but his delicate ego can’t take it that The New York Times and its writers said that Mark Burnett “discovered” him. Hand that man the crying towel. His makeup is running.

Adapted, with permission, from the Lucian Truscott Newsletter. A graduate of West Point, Lucian K. Truscott IV has had a career spanning five decades as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter.