In May 2016, Washington Post writer Callum Borchers reported on the imaginary friends of then 70-year-old Donald Trump who was running for president.
Trump’s imaginary friends remain his closest and most intimate friends.
Trump even named his son Barron after one of the former president’s imaginary friends.
The Post story chronicled how journalists would call the Trump Organization to interview Trump and be transferred to John Barron (sometimes his name was spelled “Baron), who sounded just like Trump himself.
John Barron and John Baron were actually Trump himself, who, The Post said appeared to “have been Trump’s go-to alias when he was under scrutiny, in need of a tough front man or otherwise wanting to convey a message without attaching his own name to it.”
Trump also has used the names David Dennison and “John Miller,” or “Jon Miller,” to deflect his responsibility to own up to personal transgressions.
It is of course a common trick among 5-year-olds to deflect responsibility when asked if he or she knew what happened to the cookies that were on the kitchen.
The child might point to their stuffed dog “Ruffie” and implicate it.
But Trump is not a 5-year-old boy.
Trump is, as a childhood toy said in the movie Toy Story, “a sad, strange little man and . . . you have my pity.”
The earliest reference to John Barron came in 1980, the Post article said, when Barron responded to criticism of Trump for destroying two Art Deco statues he had promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Trump again called on Barron to explain why he failed in his original plan to build Trump Castle in New York instead of Atlantic City.
Trump, when he was owner of the New Jersey Generals in the short-lived United States Football League called on other owners to help pay the contract for Doug Flutie, the quarterback he signed for his team. The Post quoted Barron, who was identified as vice president of the Trump Organization, as saying that “when a guy goes out and spends more money than a player is worth, he expects to get partial reimbursement from the other owners.”
Marc Fisher and Will Hobson wrote that People magazine writer Sue Carswell called Trump’s office in 1991 asking to interview the real estate developer to discuss his much-publicized divorce with his first wife Ivana, his romance with actress Marla Maples, and his rumored liaisons with other actresses that appeared – with the help of John Barron, John Baron, or John Miller – on the gossip pages of New York City tabloids.
Carswell’s call was transferred to John Miller, who, Carswell thought, sounded a lot like Trump because, well, it was Trump.
Miller then told Carswell that Trump, who was now single, was in high demand among Hollywood actresses.
“Actresses,” Miller said, “just call to see if they can go out with him and things.”
Madonna, Miller said, “wanted to go out with him.”
In addition to living with Maples, Miller said that Trump had “three other girlfriends.”
The article did not address whether those girlfriends were real or imaginary.
When Carswell pressed Miller on whether he was really Trump, Trump came clean. Carswell said Trump told her “it was a joke that went awry.” She then included his apology in a story.
Trump then denied that he was Miller and Miller was him.
“It shows he’s a liar,” Carswell said. “Yes. It shows he’s a liar right now. And that distresses me.”
https://abc7chicago.com/sue-carswell-donald-trump-john-miller-spokesperson/1339189/
Callum Borchers’ article in The Post said that Trump later admitted he used Barron’s name while testifying under oath in a trial about his use of undocumented labor in the building of his Trump Tower project.
Michael D’Antonio wrote in his biography of Trump, Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Excellence, that the future president “borrowed the phony-spokesman trick from his father, Fred Trump, who used the name Mr. Green to address unwelcome inquiries.”
https://fortune.com/2016/05/18/donald-trump-fake-names/
The Associated Press published a follow-up story on a real-life man, John Baron, a partner in a Denver management consulting firm, who had heard of Trump’s “name game,” as The Post called it, and had written Trump.
“I ask only that you consider inviting my mother, the estimable Betty Baron, to lunch in New York as a way of thanking her,” Baron wrote. “After all, it was she who came up with the name by which we both have prospered.”
Another Jon Baron, a CEO of a cypersecurity technology firm, was less forgiving, writing in a column that the things he demanded in his business associations were “honesty, integrity, and fairness.”
His column was headlined, “I’m proud of my name. Since it’s not yours, Trump, don’t use it as your own ever again . . ..”
“So imagine how I felt on several levels when I initially became aware that someone has used my name to pump up their personal ‘brand,’ the real Jon Baron said. “And imagine also how insecure and unethical that person must be to inflate their image and personal net worth by talking to the press using an alias?”
Trump’s use of an imaginary publicist was regarded as a joke.
But it was not a joke to Baron.
“My Dad took the Baron name with him as a member of the 101st airborne division in WWII fighting against a dictator in Europe. It’s there where he lost his right leg in Operation Market Garden. And he was far from ‘a loser’ as Trump has labeled our military members.”
Trump niece, Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, described her uncle as a “sociopath.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/8/7/mary_trump_how_dysfunctional_family_shaped
Psychology Today defines “sociopathy” as referring to “a pattern of antisocial behaviors and attitudes, including manipulation, deceit, deceit, aggression, and a lack of empathy for others. Sociopathy is a non-diagnostic term . . . Sociopaths may or may not break the law, but by exploiting and manipulating others, they violate the trust that the human enterprise runs on.
Mary Trump added this about her uncle.
“Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for,” Mary Trump writes in her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.
