>>Also fwiw, last week I met a woman who says she's been in real estate for years and has worked with Trump's firms, as have many of her associates. Her comment was "we have no respect for him."
>
>As I said once before here:
>There is business
>There is the real estate business
>There is the New York real estate business
>There is the New York City real estate business.
>If there anything beneath people who deal in the latter category, I don't want to know about it.
>We did a system for a vendor who dealt with these people.
>The statute of limitations is probably up, but I'd still rather not discuss what I saw there.
>This actual anecdote might give you just a clue:
>I was playing golf with two NYC real estate guys when they waved at someone playing in another foursome.
>One real estate guy, a look of awe on his face, said to the other, pointing at the other group:
>"His checks are good."
>
>Just imagine.
>Trump got to the top of that heap.

Around Y2K Trump was involved in a company saying to plan a building - first Berlin, then Frankfurt, later on Stuttgart.
He flew at least once into my city to meet the mayoress, but nothing was ever built.
If this was because he wanted building restrictions lessened/lifted as was in the grapevine here, not certain.

But his partner over here back then, Ulrich Marseille (who is now badmouthing Trump), even back then was somewhat under suspicioun of hiking calculations/bills of his/companies under his tutelage, calculating prices not at arms length when billing "own" effort to the companies he owned a large percentage of and fleecing gov programs.

As I have no idea where contact was initiated, not really something to damn Trump on. But if you classify someone by the company he keeps, back then both should have been handled with asbestos gloves only. I still think most of his personal worth came from pressuring weaker people, sometimes in gov (for instance getting tax deals) which probably is not a good role model for POTUS.

I am not already putting him into a certain bin - but I would prefer more info. The sentiment of not wanting to know, even if only a figure of speech, is IMO totally out of place for his next role ;-)