Ex-roomie: Trump ‘was totally different then’
Retired Houston trial lawyer Tony Rosenstein, now 70, didn’t love military school when he was 18. He thought the leaders were “of modest abilities” and he “communicated that any way I could,” he said.
So, he, a senior, got demoted to the barracks and was made to room with a junior, 17-year-old Donald Trump.
It was 1963 in the New York Military Academy, a posh 1st-12th grade boarding school about 50 miles upriver from New York City. Rosenstein and the future billionaire presidential hopeful lived together for about five months.
“His persona was totally different then,” Rosenstein said in a 32nd floor conference room at Baker Botts in downtown Houston, where he has an office even in retirement. “Don was not the blowhard he is today.”
Rather, Rosenstein recalls Trump, with whom he last spoke more than 50 years ago, as a “normal 17-year-old,” slightly above average in studies and sports who “certainly had no political ambitions at that time.”
During their time together, the two boys were cordial friends.
In many ways, Rosenstein’s account of young Trump draws a stark contrast between the GOP presidential front runner and runner-up, Ted Cruz.
While Trump appears to have changed entirely since his youth, those who knew Cruz best say he has remained the same. Cruz left quite an impression on his first college roommate, Craig Mazin, who has found Twitter fame incessantly tweeting that Cruz was “devious, hypocritical, unethical, pointlessly ambitious, valueless” and also “creepy, unfunny, mean, boring” and other things unsuitable for publication.
In his autobiography, Cruz wrote that his “liberal roommate” took an “immediate dislike” to him, and that their cohabitation was “disappointing.”
Trump, on the other hand, seems unremarkable in Rosenstein’s recollection — a striking contrast with the megacelebrity who is now a stable on every cable news broadcast.
In fact, it was many years after boarding school, even after he came to Houston in 1971, before Rosenstein even remembered Trump again, when he started to see the budding mogul stake his claim to fame on television.
He said his life partner would flip through channels on the TV at home, catch a glimpse of Trump and say, “Look! There’s your old roommate.”
He rates his overall experience with Trump as positive. He even chuckled to recall the time he and Trump were sentenced to be paddled — he didn’t remember why — but the two resisted, refusing to bend over, until the teachers eventually relented.
“It was an indignity that he and I were not willing to be subject to,” Rosenstein said.
In spite of the friendly time he spent with Trump, Rosenstein said he “would not vote for him if my life depended on it.”
“Most of the stuff he says seems to be empty words,” Rosenstein said. “That’s what bothers me about Don: He’s just lowered the level of discourse tremendously.”