Donald Trump

Donald Trump enters Andy Warhol’s diary through a mix of celebrity, business, and social observation. Their encounters begin with Trump among the guests at Roy Cohn’s crowded birthday party, develop into a proposed commission for a portrait of Trump Tower, and end in Warhol’s bluntly recorded resentment after the paintings are not bought. The diary offers no account of Trump’s private life; instead, it records how his wealth and public presence shaped a series of encounters in Warhol’s orbit, and how an unrealized art transaction changed Warhol’s view of him.

A Presence in New York’s Social World

At Roy Cohn’s black-tie birthday party at the armory, Trump was one of roughly two hundred guests. Warhol grouped him among a conspicuous assembly that included Carmine DeSapio, the D’Amatos, Gloria Swanson, Rupert Murdoch, and John Kluge. The party’s scale and guest list establish Trump as part of a world where political, business, media, and entertainment figures mixed. Warhol could recall so many names because Joey Adams gave a speech mentioning the people in the room. Trump’s appearance is therefore part of a larger social tableau, not yet a personal relationship or a business arrangement.

Warhol’s first recorded business encounter with Trump came through Marc Balet, who had arranged a meeting at the office. Balet, formerly an architect and now an art director, was designing a catalogue for the stores in the atrium at Trump Tower. He proposed that Warhol make a portrait of the building to hang over the entrance to its residential section. Trump came down to discuss the idea with Balet and Warhol, accompanied by a woman named Evans and another woman. Warhol’s attention moved between the proposed work and the visible signs of wealth around the meeting: the visitors had discussed buying a building for about $500 million, praised the Balducci’s lunch while barely eating it, and drank Tab rather than alcoholic drinks. Warhol also recorded his immediate physical impression of Trump as exceptionally good-looking.

The Trump Tower Portrait Proposal

The meeting did not settle the commission, but Warhol decided to make paintings and show them to the Trumps. Balet then arranged the project so that one of Warhol’s paintings would become the cover of the catalogue he was designing; in turn, the Trumps would receive a painting of their building. Warhol regarded this arrangement as a clever idea. It linked the artwork to a commercial publication and offered a route for the building’s owners to acquire a portrait, but the diary records a plan rather than a completed agreement.

By August, Warhol had made eight views of Trump Tower. He chose black, gray, and silver, which he thought would look chic in the lobby. When Trump and his wife came to see them, Trump objected that the paintings were not color-coordinated. The discrepancy was practical as well as aesthetic: the building’s interior decoration was being handled by Angelo Donghia, and the Trumps planned to bring fabric swatches so Warhol could make paintings to match the pinks and oranges. Warhol thought that making so many versions may have confused the presentation. His record captures a mismatch between his own restrained palette and the coordinated interior scheme the clients wanted.

The paintings did not lead to a purchase. Warhol nevertheless left open the possibility that the visit might prompt interest in a portrait of Mrs. Trump: he had shown the couple portraits of Lynn Wyatt behind the building paintings, apparently hoping that the examples might suggest another commission. In the diary, however, this remains a tentative hope, not evidence that the Trumps commissioned or acquired a portrait. The episode closes without a settled sale, while Warhol’s account preserves the effort, the display, and the clients’ specific objection to the colors.

Encounters Beyond the Commission

Warhol met Trump again soon after the initial business discussion, this time at Can Can, where Warhol and Jon Gould had good seats in the same row as Ethel Merman. Trump was there with the city’s dollar-a-year man for the building company Walsh and their wives. Warhol enjoyed seeing Trump again in a different setting and chatted with the Czechoslovakian wife, while Gould talked with Trump. The diary’s emphasis is less on what the men discussed than on the social scene and Warhol’s pleasure in going out with Gould, whose company made the evening feel like a real date. Trump’s presence thus recurs as part of Warhol’s movement between professional appointments and nights out.

The later encounter at Trump Tower was more formal and more consequential for Warhol’s opinion of the family. In January 1984, he served as a judge at the final cheerleading tryouts for the New Jersey Generals, the team Trump had bought. The tryouts took place in the basement part of Trump Tower. Warhol had been expected at noon but went to church first and arrived around two, when the judges had already seen fifty contestants and only twenty remained. Another judge had been filling in; Warhol took over that person’s pad but admitted that he did not know how to score the contestants. He found that the girls did not look distinctive without a spotlight, though a camera flash sometimes made one stand out. LeRoy Neiman, another judge, said he voted for anyone who could kick. Warhol also noted that the contestants were unpaid and that people around the event discussed the possibility of their attracting football players. The scene shows Trump’s team and building as the setting for an entertainment spectacle, while Warhol’s attention turns to the judges’ improvised standards, the contestants’ varied bodies, and the prospects attached to the role.

The Uncompleted Transaction and Its Aftermath

Warhol’s later entries make clear that the unbought paintings remained a grievance. By the time he wrote about the tryouts, he said he still hated the Trumps because they had never bought his Trump Tower portraits. The complaint recurs alongside a separate irritation: taxis waiting on the upper level of their hotel, which Warhol blamed for worsening traffic around Grand Central and making his journey home longer. He described the hotel as ugly and connected his dislike of the family to the inconvenience the cab activity caused him. The diary does not present these as a measured judgment of Trump’s business practices; it records the accumulation of a personal disappointment and an everyday annoyance.

That accumulation changes the tone of Trump’s appearances. At first, Warhol registers an attractive, wealthy man at a meeting and takes pleasure in seeing him again socially. The portrait proposal briefly makes Trump a possible patron and Warhol an artist preparing work for a highly visible building. Once the paintings remain unsold, Trump becomes instead the object of explicit resentment. The later judging assignment does not repair that disappointment; Warhol attends because he has been asked to judge, but his account makes his lingering dislike part of the occasion. Trump’s role in the diary is consequently defined less by an extended personal bond than by a short arc from social visibility, through an unrealized commission, to the remembered grievance that the unfinished business leaves behind.