THERE ARE INTERESTING STORIES, there are moving stories, and there are funny stories. And there are stories that are simply bizarre. Last week, Donald Trump, after years of edging ever closer, seems finally to have landed squarely in the last category.On June 26, the tabloid New York Post ran a front-page headline announcing that Trump, 45, had dumped his longtime sweetheart, Maria Maples, 27, and taken up with an Italian model named Carla. A curious PEOPLE reporter called Trump's office to ask if the story were true. Five minutes later, a man identifying himself as John Miller called back, said he was handling publicity for Trump and confirmed everything, in detail. Yes, said Miller, it was over with Maria. "It doesn't matter to [Donald] if Maria talks; he truly doesn't care." As for that diamond ring Trump bought Maria several weeks ago, "It was never an engagement ring," said Miller, who went on to brag about the army of women he said were rabidly chasing The Donald: Madonna was one, he said, Kim Basinger another. "Important, beautiful women call him all the time," said Miller. It was a fascinating interview, made all the more fascinating when the reporter realized that the man she was talking to seemed to be...no, it couldn't be...yep, it apparently was: Donald Trump, posing as a fictitious PR man.Is it possible to be sure? Probably not. But the reporter had taped the phone call and played the tape for people who know Trump. Said columnist Cindy Adams: "There is no John Miller. That's Donald." Said a former close associate who also ID'd the voice: "Is he whacked out, or what?" Astoundingly, and sadly, the most telling response came from Marla Maples herself. After she listened to a fragment and identified Trump, she was flabbergasted. It was the first time she had heard him publicly declare the relationship over. "I'm shocked and devastated," she said. "I feel betrayed at the deepest level. My friends and family have been praying for me for a long time, and this may be the answer to their prayers." Still, she added, "No matter what, I came into this for love, and I hope he finds happiness."Maples's shock is understandable, given all that the loquacious "John Miller" had to say. Some samples: "The biggest misconception was that Donald left [ex-wife Ivana] for Maria. He didn't. He leaves for himself." On marriage: "When he makes the decision, then that will be a very lucky woman." On his new girlfriend, Carla: "Her name is Carla Bruni Fredesh. I don't know how to spell the last name. She dropped [a big rock star, who is married] for Donald. And that's where it stands." On Kim Basinger: "She wanted to come up and discuss a real-estate transaction. And you know, she wanted to go out with him. That was the reason she came up. Competitively, it's tough. It was for Maria and it will be for Carla." On the controversial "engagement" ring: "This was [about] giving Tiffany some business and getting Ivana, uh, getting Maria something that would be nice."Apprised of all this, Maples appeared distraught and genuinely confused. "Two weeks ago he was asking her when she wanted to get married," says a close friend of Mar-la's. "She didn't know they were ending like this."When the reporter called Trump's office for an explanation, she was told that John Miller had gone home and that Trump would have no comment. ||||| In a 1991 recording obtained by The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher, a man who claims to be a spokesman for Donald Trump named John Miller tells a People magazine reporter about Trump’s first divorce, his romance with France’s future first lady and his messy breakup with Marla Maples. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) 
 
 In a 1991 recording obtained by The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher, a man who claims to be a spokesman for Donald Trump named John Miller tells a People magazine reporter about Trump’s first divorce, his romance with France’s future first lady and his messy breakup with Marla Maples. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) 
 
 The voice is instantly familiar; the tone, confident, even cocky; the cadence, distinctly Trumpian. The man on the phone vigorously defending Donald Trump says he’s a media spokesman named John Miller, but then he says, “I’m sort of new here,” and “I’m somebody that he knows and I think somebody that he trusts and likes” and even “I’m going to do this a little, part time, and then, yeah, go on with my life.” 
 
 A recording obtained by The Washington Post captures what New York reporters and editors who covered Trump’s early career experienced in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s: calls from Trump’s Manhattan office that resulted in conversations with “John Miller” or “John Barron” — public-relations men who sound precisely like Trump himself — who indeed are Trump, masquerading as an unusually helpful and boastful advocate for himself, according to the journalists and several of Trump’s top aides. 
 
 In 1991, Sue Carswell, a reporter at People magazine, called Trump’s office seeking an interview with the developer. She had just been assigned to cover the soap opera surrounding the end of Trump’s 12-year marriage to Ivana, his budding relationship with the model Marla Maples and his rumored affairs with any number of celebrities who regularly appeared on the gossip pages of the New York newspapers. 
 
 Within five minutes, Carswell got a return call from Trump’s publicist, a man named John Miller, who immediately jumped into a startlingly frank and detailed explanation of why Trump dumped Maples for the Italian model Carla Bruni. “He really didn’t want to make a commitment,” Miller said. “He’s coming out of a marriage, and he’s starting to do tremendously well financially.” 
 
 Miller turned out to be a remarkably forthcoming source — a spokesman with rare insight into the private thoughts and feelings of his client. “Have you met him?” Miller asked the reporter. “He’s a good guy, and he’s not going to hurt anybody. . . . He treated his wife well and . . . he will treat Marla well.” 
 
 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in his office at Trump Tower. (Mary Altaffer/AP) 
 
 [Read the full text of the ‘John Miller’ interview] 
 
 Some reporters found the calls from Miller or Barron disturbing or even creepy; others thought they were just examples of Trump being playful. Today, as the presumptive Republican nominee for president faces questions about his attitudes toward women, what stands out to some who received those calls is Trump’s characterization of women whom he portrayed as drawn to him sexually. 
 
 “Actresses,” Miller said in the call to Carswell, “just call to see if they can go out with him and things.” Madonna “wanted to go out with him.” And Trump’s alter ego boasted that in addition to living with Maples, Trump had “three other girlfriends.” 
 
 Miller was consistent about referring to Trump as “he,” but at one point, when asked how important Bruni was in Trump’s busy love life, the spokesman said, “I think it’s somebody that — you know, she’s beautiful. I saw her once, quickly, and beautiful . . . ” and then he quickly pivoted back into talking about Trump — then a 44-year-old father of three — in the third person. 
 
 In 1990, Trump testified in a court case that “I believe on occasion I used that name.” 
 
 In a phone call to NBC’s “Today” program Friday morning after this article appeared online, Trump denied that he was John Miller. “No, I don’t think it — I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time and it doesn’t sound like my voice at all,” he said. “I have many, many people that are trying to imitate my voice and then you can imagine that, and this sounds like one of the scams, one of the many scams — doesn’t sound like me.” Later, he was more definitive: “It was not me on the phone. And it doesn’t sound like me on the phone, I will tell you that, and it was not me on the phone. And when was this? Twenty-five years ago?” 
 
 Then, Friday afternoon, Washington Post reporters who were 44 minutes into a phone interview with Trump about his finances asked him a question about Miller: “Did you ever employ someone named John Miller as a spokesperson?” 
 
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 The phone went silent, then dead. When the reporters called back and reached Trump’s secretary, she said, “I heard you got disconnected. He can’t take the call now. I don’t know what happened.” 
 
 Trump has never been terribly adamant about denying that he often made calls to reporters posing as someone else. From his earliest years in business, he occasionally called reporters using the name “John Barron.” 
 
 A “John Baron,” described as a “vice-president of the Trump organization,” appeared in a front-page New York Times article as early as 1980, defending Trump’s decision to destroy sculptures on the facade of the Bonwit Teller department store building, the Fifth Avenue landmark he was demolishing to make way for his Trump Tower. Barron was quoted variously as a “Trump spokesman,” “Trump executive” or “Trump representative” in New York magazine, The Washington Post and other publications. 
 
 Trump’s fascination with the name “Barron” persisted for decades. When he was seeing Maples while still married to Ivana, he sometimes used the code name “the Baron” when he left messages for her. In 2004, when Trump commissioned a dramatic TV series based on the life of a New York real estate mogul like him, his only request to the writer was to name the main character “Barron.” And when Trump and his third wife, Melania, had a son, they named him Barron. 
 
 [Watch a scene from the drama series based on Trump’s life] 
 
 In the 1991 recording, Miller sounded quite at ease regaling the reporter with tales of Trump hanging out with Madonna at a ball at the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. Asked about the rumored Madonna-Trump friendship, Miller, unlike every other PR man on the planet, neither batted the question away nor gave it short shrift. Rather, he said, “Do you have a second?” 
 
 Carswell, the reporter, sounded a bit startled: “Yeah, obviously,” she replied. 
 
 Whereupon Miller offered a detailed account of the Trump encounter with Madonna, who “came in a beautiful evening gown and combat boots.” The PR man assured the reporter that nothing untoward occurred: “He’s got zero interest that night.” 
 
 Miller also revealed to Carswell why Trump seemed to relish any and all media coverage, even the most critical. “I can tell you that he didn’t care if he got bad PR until he got his divorce finished,” Miller said. The more the press wrote about Trump’s money troubles, the greater advantage he would have in negotiations toward a financial settlement with his then-estranged wife, Ivana. Then, “once his divorce is finished,” Miller said, you would see stories about how Trump was “doing well financially and he’s doing well in every other way.” 
 
 Carswell this week recalled that she immediately recognized something familiar in the Queens accent of Trump’s new publicist. She thought, “It’s so weird that Donald hired someone who sounds just like him.” After the 20-minute interview, she walked down the hall to play the tape to co-workers, who identified Trump’s voice. Carswell then called Cindy Adams, the longtime New York Post gossip columnist who had been close to Trump since the early 1970s. Adams immediately identified the voice as Trump’s. 
 
 “Oh, that’s Donald,” Carswell recalled Adams saying. “What is he doing?” 
 
 Then Carswell played the tape for Maples, who confirmed it was Trump and burst into tears as she heard Miller deny that a ring Trump gave her implied any intent to marry her. 
 
 Carswell, now a reporter-researcher at Vanity Fair, said the tape cuts off mid-interview, leaving out the part in which Miller said that actress Kim Basinger had been trying to date Trump. Hearing the tape for the first time in decades, Carswell said, “This was so farcical, that he pretended to be his own publicist. Here was this so-called billion-dollar real estate mogul, and he can’t hire his own publicist. It also said something about the control he wanted to keep of the news cycle flowing with this story, and I can’t believe he thought he’d get away with it.” 
 
 [Trump’s past crude sex talk collides with his White House bid] 
 
 The Post obtained the recording from a source who provided it on the condition of anonymity. Carswell shared the microcassette of the call with the source shortly after the interview. 
 
 From the start of his career as a builder in New York, Trump worked the press. He believed in carrots and sticks, showering reporters with praise, then pivoting to a threat to sue them if they wrote something he considered inaccurate. He often said that all publicity, good or bad, was good for his business. 
 
 He made himself available to reporters at nearly any time, for hours on end. And he called them, too, to promote his own projects, but also with juicy bits of gossip. 
 
 “One thing I’ve learned about the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better,” Trump wrote in “The Art of the Deal,” his bestseller. “The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.” 
 
 Trump did not describe using false identities to promote his brand, but he did write about why he strays from the strict truth: “I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.” 
 
 Carswell was far from the only reporter who received calls from suspiciously Trumpian characters. Linda Stasi, then a New York Daily News gossip columnist, said Trump once left her a voice mail from an “anonymous tipster” who wanted it known that Trump had been spotted going out with models. And editors at New York tabloids said calls from Barron were at points so common that they became a recurring joke on the city desk. 
 
 After Carswell’s story appeared — headlined “Trump Says Goodbye Marla, Hello Carla . . . And a Mysterious PR Man Who Sounds Just Like Donald Calls to Spread the Story” — Trump invited the reporter out for a night on the town with him and Maples. Carswell said Maples persuaded Trump to issue the invitation as an apology for tricking her. A few weeks later, when People ran a story about Trump and Maples getting engaged, Trump was quoted saying that the John Miller call was a “joke gone awry.” 
 
 Carswell had been skeptical all along. On the recording, she challenged Miller: “Where did you come from?” 
 
 “I basically worked for different firms,” he replied cryptically. And then he marveled at his boss’s ability to withstand critical news coverage: “I’ve never seen somebody so immune to . . . bad press.” 
 
 Miller was also impressed by his client’s social life: “I mean, he’s living with Marla and he’s got three other girlfriends. ” But the PR man wanted the reporter to know that Trump believed in “the marriage concept” and planned to settle down, on his own terms: “He does things for himself. When he makes a decision, that will be a very lucky woman.” ||||| Donald Trump denied reports on Friday that he impersonated a publicist named “John Miller” on behalf of himself in a 1991 recording of a phone interview with a reporter. 
 
 The report published by the Washington Post pointed to several instances in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s when journalists called for interviews with the businessman and spoke on the telephone with supposed spokesmen who sounded remarkably similar to Trump. But the GOP presumptive nominee called the article a “scam.” 
 
 “No, I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said on NBC’s “Today” in response to the Post’s report. “It doesn’t sound like my voice at all.” 
 
 This latest scuffle with the Post comes a day after Trump accused the newspaper’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, of attempting to evade taxes on his e-commerce company. Trump claimed Bezos bought the paper for “practically nothing,” and assigns the reporters to dig into and report stories that are “wrong.” 
 
 “He’s using that as a tool for political power against me and against people,” Trump said in a Thursday interview on Fox News’ “Hannity.” “I’ll tell you what, we can’t let him get away with it.” 
 
 The Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, has denied any claims that Bezos influences the newspaper’s content and coverage.
– In what may be the weirdest story yet in the weirdest election season yet, the Washington Post is out with a piece accusing Donald Trump of posing as his own boastful PR person in phone calls to reporters years ago. As Exhibit A, it shares a 14-minute recording from 1991 of a Trump spokesman who identifies himself as John Miller talking with People reporter Sue Carswell. Miller sounds like Trump as he says things like, "He’s a good guy, and he's not going to hurt anybody. ... He treated his wife well." In fact, it is Trump, declares the Post, who was given the recording by an unnamed source who knew Carswell. Speaking to NBC's Today show Friday morning, Trump denied it. "No, I don’t know anything about it," he said, per the LA Times. "It doesn't sound like my voice at all." Carswell played the recording for several people at the time, including Trump's girlfriend Marla Maples, all of whom identified Miller as Trump. The sub-headline on the resulting interview reads, "And a Mysterious PR Man Who Sounds Just Like Donald Calls to Spread the Story." The Post piece says Trump did this regularly back in the day, using the name of John Miller or John Barron or Baron. In fact, it became a running joke in the New York tabloids, with the latter turning up in Trump-related stories as early as 1980, says the Post. Trump was quoted in a subsequent People story describing the Miller call as a "joke gone awry." And the Post notes that in a 1990 court case he testified, "I believe on occasion I used that name," in reference to John Miller. (Expect more friction between Trump and the Post.)