Andy Warhol had only briefly met the ‘butch guy’ who came to see him at a birthday party in the spring of 1981.

So when Donald Trump, then a 34-year-old making his mark on the Manhattan skyline, marched into Warhol’s Factory on Broadway, the pop artist was fascinated.

“It was so strange, these people are so rich,” Warhol reflected on the meeting. Trump, who was accompanied by former architect Marc Balet, was completing the building that would define his empire, Trump Tower.

Ivana and Donald Trump, whom Warhol described as ‘cheap’

BOB SACHA/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES

“They were talking yesterday about buying a building for $500 million or something like that,” Warhol wrote in his diary. ‘He’s a tough guy. Nothing has been arranged yet, but I am going to make a few paintings and show them to them.”

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