Evicted By Trump: A Conversation with The Nation's Joan Walsh

Jennifer Weisselberg didn't know that she was living on the Donald's dime. So when she gave her divorce documents to prosecutors, she had no idea that he would make her homeless

Today inaugurates a new mixed-media feature where I go behind the scenes to dig a little deeper into a recent news story. It’s not part of the podcast series—just a 10-15 minute sound clip with an author or expert, and a little sample of the article. Have fun with it! And, of course, if you have a friend who loves to dish all things Trump, please:

“Woman on a Bench,” Mary Cassatt, 1881. Image credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Wikimedia Commons

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Joan Walsh has a long and distinguished career as a journalist. A native New Yorker, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin, where she wrote for The Daily Cardinal, and began working her way up the ladder in journalism. She was the first news editor for Salon when it launched in 1998 and has worked as a pundit for MSNBC and CNN. Now national affairs correspondent for The Nation Walsh is, along with Katha Pollitt, my number one reason for subscribing to this longstanding left-wing publication. I am also eager for a new book she has written with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen, Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America (The New Press, 2023.) 

As I opened my digital subscription to The Nation a few days ago, I saw that Walsh had stumbled open a story about an imperfect whistleblower who has been under our Trump-detecting radar. The story starts with Walsh and a friend eating lunch outdoors in New York; together, they notice “a woman across the restaurant’s patio lugging around three suitcases and an adorable puppy. She was trying, and failing, to charge her phone at an outlet and was growing increasingly upset.”

We all have bad days, but this upper middle-class woman was having a worst day than most: she had just been evicted from her Upper West Side apartment. “In sweatpants, her frosted blond hair piled on top of her head, she looked like an Upper West Side mom having an extremely rough day,” Walsh writes.

I apologized to my friend for semi-ignoring him as I got more distracted by the plight of the golden retriever, which was alternately straining to get away and trying to comfort its frazzled mama.

“Let me hold on to her while you go inside and do what you need to do,” I eventually pleaded with the woman, as she realized her phone wasn’t charging at the outdoor outlet. She thanked me profusely, left me her four-month-old puppy, Willow, and went inside. Willow tried to eat my friend’s hamburger, but then settled for water and lay down at my feet.

Be it established: I am a dog lover more than a humanitarian. It was only when Willow’s human came back for her, after about 45 minutes, that I recognized her absolute distress. My friend and I asked her if she was OK. She said no. After a bit, she told us through tears that she was a witness in a case against Donald Trump and that she had just been evicted from her apartment around the corner. Suddenly I recognized her. She was the ex-wife of Barry Weisselberg, the son of the Trump Organization’s CFO, Allen Weisselberg. She had provided documents from her divorce to prosecutors and the media. The astonishing September fraud judgment against the Trump Organization, Trump himself, and his two adult sons resulted in sanctions that included Allen Weisselberg.

“You’re Jennifer Weisselberg!” I exclaimed.