2014: Trump blocks Jon Bon Jovi's bid to buy Buffalo Bills franchise via a "whisper campaign."

[Miles Archer]

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/jon-bon-jovi-buffalo-bills-donald-trump/

GQ traces the scheme to the spring of 2014, when Trump hired political strategist and media consultant Michael Caputo to collapse the Bon Jovi bid — partly by turning public sentiment against the investor group by insinuating that they planned to move the team to Canada.

Because Caputo was already publicly tied to Trump through their previous political work together, Caputo enlisted a man named Chuck Sonntag as the public face of the anti-Bon Jovi organization they concocted — a decision the article describes as "a stroke of cunning" because Sonntag is "a double amputee cancer survivor" whose condition would prove useful to the seemingly grassroots group on more than one occasion.

As it turned out, Trump's involvement with this effort came to a relatively quick end; once he officially entered his own bid for the team, he reportedly backed off. "I can't talk to you anymore because of the NDA I signed," Caputo quotes Trump as saying. "Have a good time."

With Trump officially out of the picture, Caputo said he "immediately made it far more aggressive and anti-Toronto," a tactic that quickly proved so successful that Bon Jovi was prompted to write an open letter trying to convince fans there weren't any plans to move the team. It ultimately worked, although not to Trump's advantage; the team was eventually sold to Terry and Kim Pegula, whose holdings already included the Buffalo Sabres hockey team.

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/jon-bon-jovi-buffalo-bills-donald-trump/