I actually found it through that washington post article, I was skimming for anything out there.
No worries dood. Now I know you don't always read the links you post.
And you could take a $1,000,000 loan and transform it into billions? I suspect you are overestimating your abilities if so...
First, I'd like the chance.
Second, if Trump started with the same million today, he couldn't grow it into what he has now, for a couple reasons. Primarily, he got lucky. I'm actually giving him credit for that. The whole "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" of the 1980s was perfect for him and his personality. In some ways, he was the progenitor of reality TV, or at least an early adopter.
At a business level, though, he leveraged the million into many more millions of debt. He didn't even "have" the million - the banks had it tied up. But, he made money for them early, so they stuck with him and loaned him more. That is unlikely to happen now because of reserve requirements that are different. On top of that, when he failed, he declared bankruptcy under rules that are different now. So, it isn't clear that he would've emerged from those incidents with as much money to leverage more debt from, etc.