And what do you serve? What’s the food? What’s the drink?
The mantra from day one 10 years and running is this 100-point Robert Parker wine and Champagne. This year’s theme was a Spanish theme, so we had wines from Spain, reds and whites, that were all in the 100-point category.
Riojas?
Yeah, exactly. And, look, I mean you know I know that I’m nouveau riche, so I’m not cheap, right? You know, because I’m nouveau riche. But most of these people are—rich people are inherently cheap, so they love coming to drink 100-point Robert Parker wine on someone else’s dime. You know that.
Any boldface names you can share?
Most people attend that thing. You know what I mean? So, whoever was here, most of these people attended. [Goldman Sachs CEO] David Solomon was there. Mike Corbat was there from Citi. [Author] Nouriel Roubini was there. [Morgan Stanley CEO] James Gorman. Lots of journalists, high-profile journalists.
Trump?
No, of course not. You know that. No, he’s not coming.
Why is your party so popular at Davos?
One of the things that Trump is causing through all the rampant lying is a search for authenticity. And I need to be careful. Somebody asked me today, “Well, you brought up the fact you were fired from the White House. Did that traumatize you?” And I looked at the woman, I said, “Did it traumatize me?” I said, “What do you want me to say right now? That it didn’t traumatize me?” I mean of course it traumatized me. And the point being, if I said it didn’t traumatize me everyone in here knows I’m being disingenuous. Let me ask you, who wouldn’t that traumatize, right? I think the value of being able to talk that directly, it’s helped us get very high attendance at our SALT conference [in Las Vegas, in May] and I think people are expecting that culturally, if you’re coming to a SkyBridge-backed event, there’s going to be that level of fun-based authenticity I hope. I hope that people think that. [Talking straight] gets me in trouble but I don’t care. My 27-year-old son is here. I brought him as my guest. He graduated from Stanford Business School. As I said to him, “Hey, man, you know, you’re going to eat, you’re going to have enough clothing, let’s do the virtuous things that need to be done. If people like us, great, and if they don’t like us who cares?” Ultimately there’s a quiet respect around that.
What does Trump do when everybody else is out partying?
That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer. I don’t know. I’ll give you a little piece of trivia. You want to hear a little piece of trivia? Who introduced Trump to Klaus Schwab? In December of 2016, at the great protestation of Steve Bannon, I brought Klaus in to meet with Trump, and where I will give the president credit is that he recognizes that there’s value for him to be here. As an example, that speech he gave yesterday. If he gave that speech from the White House it would’ve been overlooked, but because it was here in this global community, in the Global Forum, it was very well rated. It had high ratings for that speech. The tragedy of Trump is that there’s great showmanship, there’s great branding, there’s a way to create entertainment, to create ratings; if he could only marry that to some level of self-awareness and self-confidence and intellectual curiosity he would’ve been in the mid 60s [in percent of public approval] but you have those skills that he has, those attributes linked to self-loathing and self-hatred and all of that insecurity is clear. You don’t attack people’s wives or your fellow citizens from the presidential Twitter feed if you had any measure of self-confidence.
