The Day The Donald Did Auckland

The property mogul and future President spent nine hours in the Queen City spruiking a casino bid.

- Redmer Yska

He came, he saw, he vowed to learn te reo. On a wet and blustery August morning in 1993, Donald Trump breezed into Auckland, a business mogul in town to push his company’s bid for an Auckland casino.

The Donald stayed for nine hours. He ate brown M&M’s, and a single piece of fruit (a banana) from the bowl in his lavish presidential suite at the Hyatt. He told reporters that his central railway station site would be an “absolute diamond” in the queen city’s crown.

“What a shame if this site wasn’t chosen,” he said. “It could bring vibrance. You have an opportunity to do something dramatic. The world could be talking about it,” he said, in the same extravagant tones he uses in his tweets as US President.

At that time, 46-year-old Trump was a dark horse with flamboyant form. He was a Big Apple tycoon, shaking off a string of bankruptcies, but we knew less about his business affairs than about his divorce from first wife, Ivana. There had been speculation he would bring his new partner, Marla Maples, who was quoted in a 1990 front-page splash in the tabloid New York Post as saying her relationship was the “best sex I ever had”, although she has repeatedly denied saying it. They would wed that Christmas.