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The Walt Disney Company owns Marvel - and has done for the past 15 years. But beneath the layers and layers of a big company like that is a unique bit of information, which opens the door to a near-30-year relationship the company has with former President and... well, now future President again Donald Trump. Trump has been involved with Marvel on and off since the late '80s, sometimes as a celebrity depicted in its comics, but also as an actor, and - for the past few years - discreetly as a landlord.

Yes, really: for the last five years, Donald Trump has been a landlord for Marvel... something that happened decades after Marvel made a reference to Trump also being Tony Stark's former landlord.

In 2019, Marvel moved its New York headquarters in New York City to 1290 Avenue of the Americas. Proudly proclaimed by the Trump Organization as one of its marque real estate holdings, the building is headquarters to several entertainment businesses you know well. According to Bloomberg, the Trump Organization owns a 30% stake in the 1290 Avenue of the Americas building - as well as partial and full ownership in various other properties in the NYC area. 

And while Marvel's office move to a Trump property during his US presidency was kept out of the papers for the most part (thanks in part to the actual move date occurring in 2020 during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic), the decision to do business with Trump was but the latest in a series of Marvel/Trump team-ups that goes back to the late '80s - and seem largely tied to a friendship between a former Marvel owner.

Donald Trump's appearances as a Marvel character

In Marvel Comics, Trump was first referred to in 1987's Iron Man #227 when Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) walked by a Trump Towers building and revealed he once rented a whole floor from Trump even then. Since then Donald Trump has cropped up over two dozen times in the years since, as a business tycoon, TV star, and even as President of the United States. But his affiliation with Marvel wasn't limited to comics, even early on. Years before he became a political figure and years before Marvel became a Hollywood juggernaut with the MCU, Trump's connection to Marvel began to run deep - and it coincided with one-time Marvel majority owner Isaac 'Ike' Perlmutter's involvement with the company.

Trump and Perlmutter's relationship was described by Rolling Stone in 2023 as being part of "the unofficial New York City plutocrats club" which would extend beyond the South Florida zip code of the Mar-A-Lago Club in which they are both residents and back to New York City where both individuals became millionaires in the '80s. Although it's unclear when Perlmutter and Trump came to know each other, after Perlmutter became an owner of Marvel Entertainment in the mid '90s Donald Trump found his way into an early Marvel television show soon after.

In a 1997 episode of the shortlived syndicated live-action series NightMan, Donald Trump played a shapeshifter named E. Haskell Bridges who morphed into Donald Trump after seeing his real-life book Trump: The Art of the Deal. Why? To bilk a bank out of money. Although based on a comic by Malibu, NightMan was acquired by Marvel - as well as the entire Malibu Comics company - three years prior, and Marvel was involved with the production of NightMan.

Years later, Trump even became a part of the MCU, being referred to and shown as early as 2016's Captain America: Civil War and noted as being elected as US President following the fictional US President in the MCU, Matthew Ellis. Trump was then referred to frequently in the Netflix Defenders shows and ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Donald Trump's role in Marvel business

But Trump's ties to Marvel are more than just being a former US President or even just a celebrity figure at the level enough to appear in the backgrounds of one of Marvel's many, many monthly comics. 

In 2004, a former Disney exec named David Maisel approached Perlmutter with a radical strategy to get out of licensing its characters for other studios like Warner Bros., Sony, and Disney to make movies but instead for Marvel to become a studio. Where did that pivotal first meeting take place? Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago.

"It was over lunch at the Mar-a-Lago Country Club. I remember Donald Trump came by the table to say hi to Ike, and Ike introduced me to Mr. Trump at the time," Maisel told the Wall Street Journal podcast the Journal in 2023. "And I remember him, Ike, saying I was from Hollywood, and I think this was right before Apprentice started in 2004, and Donald saying something about his upcoming television show."

Five years later, Maisel was the liaison that broached the decades-old behind-closed-doors talk about Disney acquiring Marvel - partly because Maisel was a co-worker and confidante of Iger back during their time together at Disney in the late '90s. According to regulatory filings, Iger (based in California) had multiple meetings with Perlmutter (who lives primarily at Florida's Mar-A-Lago), but in each case it was held in New York City.

Following Disney's acquisition of Marvel in 2009, Perlmutter enjoyed relative autonomy with Marvel under the Disney brand for years. Although Marvel Studios was moved out of his portfolio in 2015, Perlmutter continued to run Marvel Entertainment - which includes Marvel Comics, Marvel Games, and an earlier iteration of the Marvel Television brand. It was during this time that the Perlmutter-run Marvel Entertainment decided to move to a Trump-owned building.

It's also during this time that Marvel Entertainment decided to move offices a paltry half-block away from the 135 W. 50th Street offices it moved to in 2010 when Disney first acquired it, and over to 1290 Avenue of the Americas (also known as 1290 6th Avenue). With a lease finalized in 2019, Marvel began moving just as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold - even commissioning a mural from superhero painter Alex Ross called 'Timeless' that would later be re-used as comic book variant covers and licensing art.

This came during the culmination of Perlmutter and Trump's collaboration together. Early on in Trump's presidential ambitions, Perlmutter was known to be one of his mega-donors. Later on he became known as one of his unofficial advisors, then part of his 2016 inauguration committee, and then most publicly as being involved on an administrative basis with the Department of Veterans Affairs while Trump was US President.

Marvel Entertainment's offices in the Trump building 1290 Avenue of the Americas

Marvel formally moved into 1290 Avenue of the Americas in 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of the company's NYC-based employees didn't begin working there full-time until early 2023. While Marvel is known as the House of Ideas, it is but one of the tenants in the Trump co-owned building, which is also the headquarters for the streaming service Fubo TV, the web journalism company G/O Media, as well as Hachette, one of the 'Big Five' book publishers in North America.

While longtime Trump ally Ike Perlmutter was laid off from Marvel (and Disney) in March 2023, Donald Trump remains as one of the landlords to Marvel's literal House of Ideas. 

While there was speculation a few years back by some comics pundits about Disney moving the Marvel offices to a planned mega-office campus it was building in Florida (That was later aborted), I would presume it's not that easy to break a multi-year lease - especially in New York City. While the length of Marvel's current lease isn't known, its deal for its previous offices lasted nine years.

Disney recently completed construction on a 22-story building in NYC meant to consolidate some of its properties in the city such as some of its ABC talk shows as well as ABC World News, but hasn't made mention any plans to move Marvel over there. That could also be impinged by an assumed multi-year lease Marvel has for 1290 Avenue of the Americas.

No matter who the landlord is, however, fans shouldn't plan on visiting Marvel's offices anytime soon. Although it once held fan tours of its offices decades prior, Marvel is extremely private these days about its offices - to the point of deferring meetings with some of its business partners and comic creators in its offices itself in favor of meetings downstairs in the building's Starbucks.

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights:

• Marvel Studios has accidentally created a new Phase that predates Phases 1 - 6: the MCU Phase Zero
• Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel's X-Men can't evolve past their '90s commercial peak
• The biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios' movies & TV shows
• Donald Trump is the landlord for Marvel's House of Ideas
• Marvel Studios swapping out Doctor Doom for Kang offers the chance to jettison the Multiverse Saga
• What Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is saying (and not saying) about the MCU X-Men franchise says a lot about the future of the Mutant Saga
• If Marvel is going to bring Loki back for Secret Wars, it's time to give him an upgrade
• With Daredevil, and spinoffs from Black Panther, What If, and more, Marvel Studios' 2025 Disney+ slate is bigger than ever, and that might be a big deal for the future
• If Kraven the Hunter flops, Sony's Spider-Man Universe could look for a Marvel-assisted reboot
• In 2021, Sony's boss said people won't miss Spider-Man in its Spider-adjacent movie. Turns out, they do.