Donald Trump posed as a fake spokesman for an entire decade

(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

published 21 March 2016

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump didn't always have a spokesman on hand. So he conjured one.

For an entire decade, Trump posed as John Barron to reporters. Let The Washington Post explain:

In a LexisNexis search, the first mention of the name appears on June 6, 1980, in a New York Times report about Trump's controversial decision to destroy two Art Deco sculptures he had conditionally promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In that instance, Trump used the alias to stall for three days before finally giving an interview under his own name; when he did, he told the Times that he had been out of town and unavailable (!). [The Washington Post]

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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.