So, of course Donald Trump has a book titled Trump Tower that is being described as unabashedly sexist and poorly written. Does anything about that sentence truly surprise you at this point? That's what I thought.
The Huffington Post has dug up a bizarre piece of the presidential candidate's past that, somehow, has gone overlooked until now. The novel — about the scandalous personal lives of residents and employees of Trump Tower — was published in 2012, with best-selling writer Jeffrey Robinson listed as the author.
However, The Huffington Post claims to have obtained original marketing materials showing that, prior to publication, there was another iteration of Trump Tower. This one reportedly bore a different ISBN number — and credited Donald J. Trump as the primary author on the cover (along "with Jeffrey Robinson"). That version never hit bookshelves.
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But whether or not Trump wrote the book, hired a ghostwriter, or merely sanctioned the novel, he displayed the book prominently in the gift store of Trump Tower, as evidenced by a 2015 photo showing the book sitting on the top shelf of the shop.
So, how's the book? R29 does not have a copy, but according to The Huffington Post, it's a sexist read that routinely objectifies women. Sound like anyone you know?
"Just about every single female character’s level of attractiveness is described, while male characters get little physical description," writes Huff Post. "Bust-size is repeatedly mentioned with lines like, 'She was dressed in white, with her blouse open to her navel, which did nothing to hide her small breasts.'" Hm.
Apparently the novel contains quite a bit of eroticism, including descriptions of nudity, sex, and BDSM. "The red room of pain in Fifty Shades of Grey would fit right into Trump Tower," the New York Post wrote in 2012. “Trump Tower is a fun read about the depths of degradation residents go to in order to live in the Midtown building — like a supermodel who suffers through bondage routines with a movie star and gets compensated with real estate and offshore bank accounts for dalliances with an Italian count and a Kuwaiti prince," the Post recounted. And according to the Huffington Post, there is one passage in which a female tenant is "held against her will in an act that’s depicted as sexy BDSM but is not consensual... [a] clear moment of sexual assault [that] is presented nonchalantly in the book."
Had enough? Us too. We just learned more about Trump Tower than we ever wanted to know.