Alabama

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It’s June 16, 2015, a muggy Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, and the air inside Trump Tower hums with anticipation. The atrium—a gleaming cathedral of marble, brass, and excess—feels like a movie set waiting for its star. Tourists mill about, snapping photos of the cascading waterfall, a five-story monstrosity that screams money louder than any billboard ever could. Shoppers drift in and out of the Gucci boutique, their bags crinkling like status symbols. The escalators churn upward, ferrying the curious to the upper floors where the real estate king turned reality TV titan keeps his court. But today, the escalators are about to become something more—a runway, a stage, a launching pad for one of the most audacious marketing stunts in modern history.

At 11:00 a.m., the man himself appears. Donald J. Trump, all six-foot-three of him, steps onto the descending escalator with the practiced ease of a game show host. His suit is navy, his tie a loud red, and his hair—well, it’s that hair, a golden helmet defying gravity and good taste. Beside him is Melania, statuesque in a white dress, her presence a silent nod to the glamour he’s peddled since the 1980s. The crowd below—some staffers, some paid extras, most just gawkers—cranes their necks. Cameras whir. Reporters scribble. A Muzak version of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” blares incongruously over the speakers, a detail so absurd it’s almost poetic. Trump doesn’t smile—he smirks, that half-cocked grin that says he knows something you don’t. And maybe he does.

He’s 69 years old, a billionaire by his own relentless accounting, though the Forbes list pegs him closer to $4 billion than the $10 billion he’ll soon claim. He’s survived bankruptcies, tabloid scandals, and a decade of firing contestants on The Apprentice. He’s a punchline to some, a hero to others, but today, he’s about to become something else entirely: a presidential candidate. As he glides down that escalator, the golden machinery humming beneath his feet, he’s not just announcing a campaign—he’s dropping a bomb on the American psyche, a grenade of pure, unadulterated attention. And it’s about to explode.

When he reaches the lobby, the podium awaits—a slab of wood festooned with microphones like a porcupine on a bad hair day. The backdrop is a wall of American flags, a visual so on-the-nose it’s almost satirical. He steps up, adjusts his stance, and launches into a speech that’s less a policy platform and more a performance-art rant. “Our country is in serious trouble,” he begins, his Queens accent thick as asphalt. “We don’t have victories anymore.” He rails against China, Mexico, and “the politicians”—a nebulous enemy he’ll wield like a cudgel for the next 18 months. Then comes the line that will echo across the globe: “I’m officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again.”

The room erupts—some cheers, some jeers, a cacophony of reaction that’s pure Trump. The press, caught off guard, scrambles to live-tweet. CNN cuts in. Twitter ignites. Within hours, the escalator ride is a meme, a GIF, a late-night monologue zinger. Pundits scoff—“A circus act!” they cry. “He’s got no shot!” But the numbers tell a different story. By nightfall, Google searches for “Donald Trump president” spike. Cable news ratings soar. His name, already a brand, becomes a virus—spreading, mutating, impossible to ignore. The escalator, that gaudy conveyor of his ambition, isn’t just a prop. It’s a symbol. And Donald Trump, love him or hate him, has just pulled off one of the greatest marketing coups of the 21st century.

This book isn’t about politics—at least, not in the way you might think. It’s not a hagiography or a hit piece. It’s not here to tell you whether Trump was a good president, a bad one, or something in between. That’s for the historians, the partisans, the barstool philosophers. No, this is about something else: the man’s uncanny, almost feral genius for marketing. That escalator ride wasn’t a fluke. It was a distillation of decades spent perfecting the art of attention—grabbing it, holding it, bending it to his will. From the glitzy 1980s, when he turned skyscrapers into tabloid bait, to the 2010s, when he turned tweets into headlines, Trump has played the game like no one else. And on that June day in 2015, he took his playbook to the biggest stage imaginable.