Donald Trump Once Wanted to Go to War With NFL

GOP Presidential candidate and current frontrunner Donald Trump will be featured Thursday on a special “Rachel Maddow” archives show (MSNBC 9 pm EST) that includes footage of the Donald discussing how he wished to go to war with the might National Football League.

That didn’t exactly work out.

Trump is seen in the 1980’s footage discussing his purchase of the New York area's USFL team, the New Jersey Generals.

In 1985, Mr. Trump became the face of the USFL, as Crane Business noted:

It marked his debut as a celebrity.

But Mr. Trump wanted more. He has called the league “small potatoes” and said it didn’t fit his image, even though few people outside real estate had heard of him before he bought the Generals. He wanted to make the USFL big, and fast. Maybe then the NFL would accept a merger, as it did with the American Football League in 1966. That, in turn, could make Mr. Trump a big-time NFL owner.

The NFL refused to entertain a merger. The USFL said it would switch its games to the fall—Mr. Trump called spring football "a wasteland"—and then it went to court, charging the NFL was a monopoly and that it plotted to ruin Mr. Trump’s Generals, among other allegations. The USFL sought $1.7 billion in damages. Although Mr. Trump once said the league had a "great lawsuit" and was the featured attraction at a press conference introducing it, he later insisted he wasn’t behind the case.

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- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com