ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Sunday when my coworker friend and I were flying into Philadelphia, on our second flight we were sitting next to this nice older man who introduced himself to us and struck up a conversation. In the course of our discussion with him, we learned that he was a pilot. Not a commercial pilot, but a private pilot for famous people. “Oh sure,” he said. “I was Merv Griffin’s pilot until a couple years ago when I went to Iraq with the National Guard. Too bad about him, he’s a nice guy.” We were impressed.

It turned out he also worked for Donald Trump in the 80s. “Half the time I worked for him, I had more money than HE did!” the man said. “But the banks couldn’t afford to put him into default - they’d loaned him too much. They had to gamble that he’d come back. And he did!” When quizzed about what the Trumps were like, he said that he thought very highly of Mr. Trump and his children, who were very well-mannered and well brought up. “But that Ivana,” he said, leaning toward us conspiratorially. “That Ivana’s a bitch!”

He went on to describe how Ivana Trump would go to the casinos in Atlantic City and every time she went she would always fire someone. But since the casinos knew she was full of shit and a bitch, the employee would just go work at another one of the casinos after that since any termination initiated by Ivana was always completely baseless.

And apparently Diana Ross is a crazy bitch, too. The man told us that when she went to go see the Trumps in Atlantic City, he had to keep a helicopter fully staffed and ready to go at a moment’s notice for a whole week–just in case she decided she wanted to do some shopping. She never did.

I liked that man.