Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, swindle, or steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge.

Today we're talking about an excellent new book released just two weeks ago, White House

Inc. how Donald Trump turned the presidency into a business.

The author, my guest today, is a senior editor at Forbes, where he's

written a great deal about the businesses owned by Donald Trump. Dan Alexander, thank you so much

for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. The opening scene of your book is going to be

really interesting to our listeners. It has something for everybody. Can you start by describing

then? One of the main mysteries

inside Donald Trump's business is who is paying him rent. Because of some loopholes and federal

disclosure rules, he does not have to list any of the companies that are paying a millions of dollars a year in rent. And it's

hard to figure out who the companies are and how much they're paying. But I really wanted to

piece together that part of the puzzle because it's the most important part of Donald Trump's

business. And if you look at his business as sort of one giant math equation,

where he's got all this revenue coming in and then lots of that turns into profit,

then the critical component is the commercial real estate. And so therefore, while there's

all this focus on who's staying at the DC Hotel and that sort of thing.

The real money question and the real thing that matters for his money is who's renting

in these buildings.

I started searching around and I eventually came across a document that listed all of the

tenants inside the two hardest to access buildings in Trump's empire.

These two buildings called 1290 Avenue of America, which is in New York, and 555, California

...