Trump bragged about private calls with world leaders, Australian businessman recounts

Donald Trump and Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/60 Minutes Australia)

published 23 October 2023

Former President Donald Trump "says outrageous things nonstop," runs his business "like the mafia," wanted Melania Trump to show off in a bikini at Mar-a-Lago "so all the other guys could get a look at what they were missing," and talked about private conversations with world leaders, Australian cardboard magnate Anthony Pratt said in secret recordings obtained by "60 Minutes Australia" and The New York Times and broadcast Sunday night.

It isn't clear who Pratt is speaking to, but ABC News reported earlier this month that he told at least 45 people, including journalists, about sensitive U.S. military information Trump had allegedly shared with him.

Pratt paid $200,000 to join Mar-a-Lago soon after Trump was elected president, and he was pretty open about the transactional reasons he wanted to befriend him, the Times detailed. The relationship was mutually beneficial: Pratt poured money into Mar-a-Lago, credited Trump for creating jobs when he opened a new plant in Ohio and praised Trump in paid newspaper advertising; Trump's 2017 tax cuts increased Pratt's personal wealth by more than $2 billion, The Australian Financial Review estimated.

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For his largess and flattery, Pratt got insider information, the recordings suggested. In December 2019, "it hadn't even been on the news yet," and Trump "said, 'I just bombed Iraq today and the president of Iraq called me up and said, you just leveled my city,'" Pratt recounted in one recording. "And he said, 'I said to him, okay, what are you going to do about it?'" Trump also suggested his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy, the focus of his first impeachment, was actually pretty mild. "That was nothing compared to what I usually do," Pratt recalled Trump saying.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.