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]
The jig was up when Trump testified under oath in a 1990 lawsuit: "I believe on occasion I used that name."
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The alias idea apparently came from Trump's father, Fred, according to the 2015 book Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success.
The Donald's defense for it?
"Lots of people use pen names," he once told a reporter. "Ernest Hemingway used one."
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