Nor is it the first time that his business dealings have put him in direct conflict with what he claims are his political beliefs and forced him to lie about those transactions.
Trump launched his first presidential campaign in Miami in November 1999, seeking the nomination of the Reform Party. There, at a luncheon hosted by the Cuban American National Foundation, an organization of Cuban exiles, he proclaimed he wanted to maintain the American embargo against Cuba and would not spend any money there so long as Fidel Castro remained in power. Florida, then and now a critical electoral state, has a large number of Cuban-Americans who are virulently opposed to the Castro regime.