Last night, the Republican National Convention featured as a speaker one of the best-known names in the commercial real estate industry—Thomas J. Barrack, Jr., founder and CEO of Colony Capital, a publicly-traded real estate investment firm. According to Barrack, he and Trump have been close friends for 40 years. That familiarity might explain why the version of Trump Barrack extolled in his speech came off as somewhat different from the public persona many of us know from the media.
Barrack touched briefly on Trump’s track record in the commercial real estate business, including the time when Barrack was just starting out in the industry and was charged with negotiating a hotel sale to Trump. To Barrack’s surprise, Trump agreed to pay the asked-for price off the bat, but ensured that the seller disclosed all the pre-existing issues with the property and fixed them before Trump took possession of the hotel.
“He practices an unbelievable sense of discipline. He shows up on time, he doesn’t confuse efforts with results, he befriends the bewildered, he pushes everyone around him through comfort barriers that they thought they would never, ever shutter. He really is better than the billing that you just, just as an administrator, as an executive,” Barrack noted.
Barrack also revealed that after Trump’s father passed away, the Presidential hopeful shared that he wanted to build on the legacy Fred Trump created “brick-by-brick.”
Most of Barrack’s speech, however, focused on Trump’s strength as a man, including how his children and his wife Melania were reflection on his excellent character and how Trump would help fix the issues plaguing the world today, starting with the U.S., creating a “necklace of prosperity and tolerance around the world.”