Trump's Business Record in Russia Is Humiliating

The latest Trump-Russia revelations -- this time concerning a Moscow real estate project scuttled in early 2016 -- fit in well with the comical history of Trump's attempts to do business in Russia. They are the latest proof that, unlike many craftier U.S. entrepreneurs and executives, the current U.S. president never figured out how to deal with Russians.

The story began in 1987, when Trump first visited Moscow, then the Soviet capital, and negotiated with bureaucrats from the State Foreign Tourism Committee who offered him an opportunity to build a luxury hotel in Moscow. In a Playboy interview in 1990, Trump recalled that he told the officials it was impossible to get financing for a development project in which the land was "owned by the goddamn motherland." They offered a lease; he wanted ownership. The Soviets also offered to set up a dispute resolution committee consisting of seven Russians and three Trump representatives, a deal Trump didn't like. He came away thinking, correctly, that the Soviet system was a "disaster." The Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, according to Trump, didn't have "a firm enough hand" -- which didn't prevent the flustered developer from crowing how honored he was when Gorbachev impersonator Ron Knapp paid him a surprise visit in Manhattan a year later.