From Under Siege to the Comeback

I can tell that you’re in Florida. I can see the beautiful palm trees behind you.
Yes. I’m in Palm Beach.

Have you moved away from New York, or are you still stationed in Trump Tower?
New York is the place where I was born, and I still love it, but when Letitia James started coming after us, and all the animals began weaponizing the state offices to come against us, I said, “What are we doing here?”
When my father went into Walter Reed Hospital because he had Covid, I got a call from my kids’ school saying, “Either you or your wife have to pick up your kids. Our community is petrified to get Covid from your family.” And I’m sitting there saying, “I live 230 miles away from Washington, DC. Do you mean to tell me that because my father has Covid I’m going to somehow spread it even though I haven’t seen him in a week?”
I got sick and tired of the nonsense, so I bought a beautiful house in Florida. I moved my family down here. I was just one of many who saw New York going downhill. I still have an office in New York, but our main headquarters is now based in Florida. It destroyed me to have to leave the state that I love, but that city was simply out for blood. If your name was Trump you didn’t stand a chance, and I had to get out of there.

One of my most memorable interviews was when I spoke with you in Trump Tower.
That’s very nice of you.

You were really under siege at the time.
Very much so.

You’ve come a long way since then.
Yes. I call it the law of unintended consequences, and I use that phrase a lot. I probably named this guy [pointing to the book] Under Siege near the time when we started talking, or maybe a little bit before. They thought they could take us out. They thought they could bankrupt us. They thought they could take out our family. They thought they could turn us against each other. They thought they could deprive us of time and resources. They wanted to strip the name off of every Trump building. They wanted to take us down, and they tried to kill my father twice. They debanked us and took us off every social media platform. Then there was a judge who was putting gag orders on my father to try to take away his voice. They filed 91 indictments; they wanted to put him in jail. I became the most subpoenaed person in American history. And that was after they spied on his campaign and after Russia Gate and the first impeachment and the second impeachment and what they did to everyone in his ecosystem. And man, did the American people see exactly what was happening.
That’s why I say that it’s the law of unintended consequences. It was so logical for people to say, “Let’s just hit him so hard that it takes him out. Let’s make his life so uncomfortable that he no longer wants to be in politics. That’s how we’re going to sideline him.” In reality, every day that he sat in that courthouse with me—we sat together every single day—the American people said, “This is a sham.” That included a lot of communities that had been so broadly persecuted over the years. They said, “We like this guy. This is really tough. He’s not backing down and won’t quit.” I think a lot of that got him elected.

When I saw your title, I thought it was almost rabbinical, because once we’re free we like to look back at the time when we were still slaves. Every Passover we relive the servitude we suffered in Egypt. I would have expected your book to be called something like “Triumphant,” but Under Siege seems to still be part of your persona, even though I don’t want to sound like a psychologist. It clearly had a profound effect on you.
It did. I think you and I discussed that I started a charity a long time ago. It became a big part of my life and a major calling. The first subpoena I ever got was after I’d raised $50 million for St. Jude Children’s Hospital at an 8% expense ratio. When Hillary was getting killed for her charity, the New York attorney general subpoenaed me, and it was crushing. I started this foundation when I was a 21-year-old kid. I had done so much good and saved so many kids’ lives. We built the largest ICU for children in the world, and I could go on and on. Then I get a subpoena where they’re effectively accusing me of embezzling money that’s supposed to go to childhood cancer, and I’m sitting there and saying, “How? My expense ratio is 8%, half of which was credit card processing!” It wasn’t that there was anything there; it was that they wanted to have a counternarrative to what was happening with Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. That bothered me so much.
Then I got the next subpoena, and it stung a little less. Then I got the next one, and it stung less than that because you realize that it’s all a game and lies. You realize that they’re trying to take you down because you had become a loud and powerful voice. I was being parodied on “Saturday Night Live” every week. I realized that the more influential I became, the better I did on stage, and the more crowds I spoke in front of, the harder they would hit me.
So it did change me, and the change was that my level of maturity kept increasing, and it strengthened my backbone and willingness to fight. It made me fully understand that the world isn’t sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, which is what I thought it was early on in my career. But I think it makes you better, smarter and tougher, and it certainly gave me armor that I would never have imagined and that very few people have.

Your family is now in control of the executive branch of the federal government, so you aren’t angry at the American system, but you want to weed out the problems that exist. Is that a correct observation?
I’ve been to virtually every developed country in the world, and a lot of the undeveloped ones as well. I’m probably one of the most traveled people you’ll ever meet, and that’s because of the nature of our business, real estate, plus a lot of other factors in my life. I’ve been virtually everywhere. America has the best system in the world, and it’s not even close. Let’s start there.
Now, there are people who tried to weaponize and break that system and use it for their own personal needs. Just look at Russia Gate. Everyone knew that there was no collusion with Russia. I got a call from the FBI, “Eric, we hear you have secret servers communicating with the Kremlin in the basement of Trump Tower.” I said, “Guys, we don’t have servers in the basement, and we don’t know anyone in Russia. Stop it. Come over and I’ll personally take you on a tour.” They weaponized the government against their political adversaries. They did that with Letitia James, Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg and Comey, and they spied on my father’s campaign. I’m angry.
Unfortunately, people can still corrupt great systems, and that’s what we have seen. If you give enough power to dishonest people, they will corrupt any system. I love America. I love the red, white and blue, and it’s so nice to see a man in [the White House] who won’t put up with the dishonesty and corruption. Every American heart felt it, regardless of what side of the political aisle you were on. People knew it wasn’t right that Donald Trump was charged with 34 felony counts for doing absolutely nothing wrong in the middle of an election cycle when the guy had never gotten so much as a speeding ticket before. It’s nice to see the pendulum swing back and right itself. We have to rid this country of corruption, because frankly, it’s what makes us the number one superpower in the world.
Why do you think every country wants its economy pegged to the US dollar? It’s because we have the great rule of law, we have honesty, and our institutions can be trusted. We have fairness, we have checks and balances, and we have moral decency. You can’t find that anywhere else on earth. That’s why everyone is attracted to the United States, and our capital markets and currency are winning.

You mentioned Comey, and I’d like to ask you about his indictment. Do you view that as payback or part of cleansing the system?
It’s certainly about cleansing the system. The guy lied in front of Congress. If you and I were to think for five minutes, we could come up with 30 people on the Republican side who were charged with perjury based on comments they made in front of the House, whether or not they were actually perjury. Then all of a sudden Comey gets to go and lie to Ted Cruz and no one does anything about it? I’m confused.
I’ve been listening to some of the narrative over the last few days, with people accusing the administration of trying to weaponize the government. Weaponize the government? You raided Mar-a-Lago! You raided our home! You made up the dirty dossier. You had us removed from Twitter and Instagram and had the federal government censor every post. The Jewish community, and certainly the Orthodox community, was on the frontlines of being censored. You gagged us. You weaponized the DOJ and the FBI. You impeached us multiple times. You took us off the ballot in Colorado and Maine. You raided Melania’s closet and planted classified folders at Mar-a-Lago. You went after every employee we had and weaponized the entire media against us, and you’re talking about political revenge? Give me a break.

Bring us into your book for a moment.
The first couple of chapters before the siege are really the run-up to that. They’re about how we grew up, my father putting us on construction sites every summer, spending time in Communist Czechoslovakia, my grandparents’ relationship with each other, the loss of my mother, how my parents raised us to be good members of society, how they put us through school and what my father expected from us when we started working in the business. I talk about what that grind was like and the work that went into it. Everything we did, from the company to the hotels to the golf course and “The Apprentice” and ultimately politics was done together as a family. We’ve always stood firm as a family unit. I tell some of the great stories of my youth, and I sprinkle so many of my father’s lessons that he imparted to us throughout the book. I also go through some of the best moments, as well as the absolute darkest ones.

You said you were writing it when we met, when you were really under siege, but it’s only being released now. Do you think that the world has moved on now that your father has made this major comeback and the whole system has changed, or does it still contain a lesson to be learned?
Let me correct something you said. I didn’t write the book then; I came up with the name because of what they were doing to us at the time. They were trying to destroy our entire empire. I only finished writing it about a month ago, right before I released it.
But what happened was that the name became more and more appropriate. We were under siege when they were doing all that stuff, but then they tried to kill my father. I took tremendous heat when I said on Sean Hannity’s show, “They’ve tried everything. They’ve tried everything to take us down as a family, a movement and a person. I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to inflict serious physical harm.” Six weeks later they tried to kill my father, and then they tried to kill him again at the golf course in Florida. They also tried to kill Kavanaugh and they shot Steve Scalise, and you obviously know what they just did to Charlie Kirk. The name of the book became more apropos every day as the siege got worse and worse.
The book has all the inside stories. For every one thing you saw in the news, there were 100 attacks behind the scenes. And by the way, I weathered the vast majority of them because I was the guy who ran the company. I was a civilian without constitutional protection. It’s very hard to actually get at the executive branch because it has constitutional protections. I didn’t, which is why I became the most subpoenaed person in American history. If they couldn’t get to Donald Trump, they went after the guy who ran the company and was a lot of the glue that held everything together.
As someone who has never gotten a speeding ticket, never touched a drug and has a beautiful family and believes in his faith, I was no Hunter Biden. There was no laptop or scandalous deals. I wasn’t selling finger paintings to the Chinese for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece. And yet, I became the most targeted person ever because I sat at the right hand of my father and refused to cower or back down. They didn’t like that.

The first time we met, our conversation was about how they accused you of being anti-Semitic.
I forgot about that. I should have included that in the book.

There will have to be a postscript.
When I write my next book, Triumphant, I’ll start there. As a guy with an Orthodox Jewish sister and with 90% of the Trump Organization’s employees being Jewish or even Orthodox, I somehow became anti-Semitic. And by the way, as a family we’ve done more to save Israel than all families combined over the last 100 years of American politics.

Going back to Under Siege, what was your lowest point? When did you think to yourself, It’s over?
We were coming out of the courtroom after the 34 felony indictments, and I got into the car with my father. He said, “I don’t know how we’re going to win.” I looked at him and replied, “We either win or we’re all going to be in jail, because that’s what these people will do to us for doing absolutely nothing wrong.” There’s no question that that was a low point. Judge Merchan’s daughter was working for the other side. It was a sham trial, and everyone who sat in that courtroom every day knew it. Butler would have certainly been a low point. Watching your father almost lose his head on high definition live TV…
But when we won the election, that was a high point. Seeing all the amazing good that’s being done right now because of our tenacity and perseverance is a high point. When you see him stopping wars every single day… My father has personally stopped six or seven wars, and I’ve been in the room when he was talking to world leaders to make sure their kids wouldn’t go into battle. The number of lives he has saved and the peace he’s been bringing around the world…
There’s also the fact that America is no longer getting ripped off by every country around the world, the fact that they’re no longer weaponizing the IRS against religious institutions, and the fact that we actually have a Cabinet that shows up at work
Under Biden, there was a work-from-home mandate during Covid, but they kept that in place well after it was over. There was no one working for the American people. The only thing working for the American people was the autopen, and I’d argue that it wasn’t working for the American people. If you look at the markets, the wealth that’s being created and the amount of foreign money that’s coming into the United States, we’re winning so many races. We’re winning the crypto race and the AI race. America is winning on all fronts again. Had we not fought as hard as we could, we wouldn’t be winning in any of these areas, and there’s going to be more to the story. I can only imagine how they’re going to come after my father again after he leaves office, but right now we’re in a beautiful place, and I think these are the glory days.

What are your takeaways after reflecting on all that?
My takeaway is that we’re in the greatest country in the world, and they weren’t able to break the system or us. You had a family that didn’t need this job and didn’t need to get into this fight. I don’t have to be doing interviews. I could be running a real estate empire and making a lot more money without being distracted by politics. The fact that they tried to take my father and the MAGA movement down and didn’t succeed just shows the greatness of America. It shows the power and resilience of our country, and how Americans could see right through it.
That’s why we won all seven swing states, and it’s also why a Republican won the popular vote for the first time in a long time. Every single state has moved further to the right. We won 11 counties in California that had never been won before. We even won Miami-Dade County in Florida, which hadn’t gone Republican in 36 years. The end result is that we can now correct the mistakes that were made and go back to having the greatest nation on earth. We can fight for our First Amendment, fight for freedom of religion and freedom of speech, and fight for safety in our communities. All of that is happening right now, and it’s happening at laser speed because we have the right guy in office. My father always said, “Success will be my revenge.”

Most people would say it was the resilience of Donald Trump and the Trump family that were responsible for the turnaround, but you’re probably too humble to say so. Do you think that the Trumps simply have more resilience in the fiber of their being? Because this was surely one of the greatest comebacks in history.
I’m generally humble when talking about myself, but I would say that my father is the most resilient person I’ve ever seen. He’s like the Energizer Bunny dressed in a red tie and a suit. We’ve certainly got that DNA. If it had been Sasha or Malia Obama or Jenna Bush, they would have broken in a heartbeat. No one could have withstood the attacks we faced.
Of course, some of that is environmental. We grew up in the spotlight. We grew up on The Apprentice and were well known on TV. The genetic part is that when we were attacked, all it did was make us work harder, be smarter and punch back.
If you had asked me ten years ago what my father would want to be remembered for, I would have said, “Being a great real estate developer and builder.” Now he will certainly be remembered for that and for being a great president, but there’s no question that he will ultimately be remembered for giving a voice to people who didn’t have one. In 2016, people would come up to me and whisper, “We’re voting for you.” I would ask them, “Why are you whispering?” But in 2024 no one was whispering anymore. Your community wasn’t whispering. All of a sudden, people had a voice for the first time.
Two days ago, a flight attendant came up to me and was practically yelling, “I love you guys! I love your family! I’m so sorry that I was so quiet for so long. I should have been more vocal.” She was so loud that the entire plane could hear her; she was practically yelling. People aren’t quiet anymore.
I think my father has given a voice to the entire nation, especially in terms of the controversial topics like immigration, the treatment of religious classes, Israel, crime in our country and corruption in government. There’s an unvarnished honesty that he bestowed upon the American people that’s going to serve our country well for many years to come.

When we last spoke, I asked you what the second Trump administration would look like. You thought about it for a minute and then said that it would be Trump One on steroids. Now that Trump Two is in office, is it Trump One on steroids, or are you seeing something a little different?
There is no question that this administration is Trump One on steroids. But going back for a second to what I said about the law of unintended consequences, I cannot tell you how much it hurt when we “lost” in 2020, even though we knew that there was probably some funny business and things that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. We had outworked them, and we definitely had the momentum. However, I can now tell you that 2020 was the greatest thing to happen to my father and to us as a family. He wouldn’t have had the House or the Senate, he wouldn’t have had JD Vance, and he wouldn’t have had a Cabinet of really amazing people. It took him leaving for four years and then running again to have all of that.
This administration is getting so much done that the Democrats don’t even have a counternarrative. The credibility of the mainstream media is absolutely dead. The Democrats’ approval rating is the lowest it’s ever been by a huge factor, and my father is doing phenomenally well. So I would say that my prediction was correct.

Tell me about the state of the Trump Organization.
We’ve never been bigger and we’ve never done better. I’m doing 26 jobs around the country and the world, and I’m incredibly proud of all of them. I’m also about to announce one that I think you’ll like very much, and I’m very excited about it. It’s the best company we’ve ever had. We have virtually no debt, tremendous cash flow, and we have the greatest people on earth working for us. Because we’re now in Florida, we’re paying about 16% less tax, because Florida doesn’t have a state tax like New York, which robs everyone blind.
Also, when I started getting debanked I went crypto in a very big way; that was our solution. I started a public company called American Bitcoin. It’s done unbelievably well, and we’re having a lot of fun. I also started a company called World Liberty Financial. I’m very focused on those two projects right now. Crypto is the future of finance and it’s coming fast. It’s growing faster than the Internet, so I’m spending a lot of time in that space.

I know that Forbes had a great review of your business. Everyone is busy counting Eric Trump’s money and how much he’s earning.
I’ve seen a lot of those. I am very blessed. I have two beautiful kids and an amazing wife. I also know who my friends are now: the people who were there in the bad times. Back in 2016, you weren’t exactly sure.

What would you say was the biggest lesson your father ever taught you?
There are a lot of them. First of all, there is no drinking, no drugs and no smoking on our property. My father expected perfection, and I spend a lot of time in the book talking about what makes him so unique. It’s his attention to detail, his management style, and how we kind of continued that legacy walking in his footprints. You can’t walk into a single one of our hotels that isn’t immaculate. Even a room that will never be seen by the public is perfect. When I was 33 years old, my father looked at me and said, “I know you’re young, but I want you to take on the Trump Organization. You’re the person I want running the entire company.”
I took on a $12 billion company at the age of 33 thinking it would be smooth sailing. I could operate hotels and build residential and commercial buildings and golf courses. Little did I know that 95% of my time over the next five years would actually involve defending us from the unthinkable. He put a tremendous level of trust in me.

This may be a tough question, but what do you think your father saw in you?
The way he has always worked is that he gives you a task, and if you accomplish it he gives you a bigger one, and if you accomplish that, he gives you an even bigger one. By that point, I had built a lot of our projects and was running most of our management team. If I wasn’t good at what I do, I wouldn’t be in this role. That’s not who Donald Trump is. I also think that nepotism ended up being one of the greatest things in our case. The word is usually used derogatorily, but no one in the world would have gone through what I did for a salary. They would have simply left and gone anywhere else. But I wasn’t fighting for a salary; I was fighting for our family. I was fighting for our company and for every building around the world that bore our name.
There’s a great New York Post cover on which he wrote a beautiful message: “Eric, the company is all yours.” I’ve never let him down, and I never would. I would work myself to death before doing so. My whole job is to make sure that problems never roll onto his plate. I solved every problem I could for the family and kept us all together. I love my father more than anything.
In the late 1980s, when he was the same age I was when I took over the company, he wrote a book called The Art of the Deal. A couple of years later, he had one of the biggest turndowns in American history. This was in 1989, when there were 20% interest rates. Lots of people went out of business, but he fought really hard and then wrote The Art of the Comeback.
The Art of the Deal happened again with politics in 2016—and you’d better believe that in the years after 2020 The Art of the Comeback happened again. Not only did it happen for him, but it happened for me too. There is no question that at least some of my life is shadowing his in terms of the highs and the lows in both business and politics. I’m always amazed by the foresight of those two books. I do think that over the course of history and in our religious texts, G-d sometimes took strong people and broke them down to their core, only to rebuild them to create great leaders. I believe that a lot of that has manifested in this journey.

You said that your life is shadowing your father’s. Will we ever see Eric Trump as a political candidate?
I almost want to use the answer my father gave to Oprah Winfrey 25 years ago: “Only if it got so bad that I had no other choice.” Well, it got so bad that he ended up jumping in. If no one else was taking things in hand I would have to consider it, but it’s already taken a toll on my family. That’s how the system works, unfortunately. Hopefully, my father will do a great job of fixing the system. But you do need to be cognizant of the other people in your life, because they’re often more in the bullseye than the person who’s running.

How are your wife and kids doing?
Lara has the number one show on Fox right now. She’s doing great. And my kids are amazing. They have a lot of Trump genes in them. They’re definitely type A.

Most people aren’t Trumps, but they feel that there’s a lot of strength to be derived from your father’s story.
That’s certainly a message that resonates throughout the entire book, his internal fortitude. I think that for anyone who is struggling and thinks the world is overbearing, the book will quickly reveal that there are other people who have had the walls caving in on them in a very big way, and they were able to come out on top. That’s a huge piece of everything I write about. Hopefully, it’s a message that reaches everyone in the country and is also projected onto our future leaders.
For the longest time we didn’t have competent people, but for the first time there’s a whole generation of up-and-coming leaders. Look at what Charlie Kirk created; students are suddenly inspired. When I was in college, if someone said “George Bush,” I wasn’t inspired. But there are a lot of people in this country who are now inspired, which is great for the future of this nation.

Do you have a message for the Jewish community?
We love you and we care about you. I think you’re seeing a totally different world than we saw under Biden and really under Barack Obama, two of the most anti-Semitic presidents we’ve ever had. You are wonderful people, and I feel like I’m part of you in all the ties I have. I probably have more Jewish friends than non-Jewish friends, and definitely more Jewish employees. A large segment of my family is Orthodox. I respect the traditions tremendously. I often say that I need to start keeping the Sabbath because I would probably be much better off if I put down my phone for 24 hours. I would be a far better person and probably much more engaged with my family.
We love the Jewish community, which came out in such a big way for us. I can’t tell you how many rabbis I met, including some of the grand rabbis in New York. There were entire communities that came out 100% for Trump. They moved congressional districts that moved seats. You have an amazing community that will never waiver on faith, and hopefully my family will continue to make you proud.
I am deeply honored that you’re writing about this book and by the way you have always treated my family.

I wish you the best. The first time we spoke you shed a few tears, but this time it’s only smiles, so there’s a big difference between then and now.
Thank you for your kindness. I’m always here for you. ●