david: i am david gura. this week's issue, we take you inside of the data center run by the donald trump for president campaign and what the biggest obstacle may be for him winning. twitter has one revenue stream. it is the company's firehose. we will tell you more. professional mermaids, yes, mermaids, taking to their business seriously. all of that on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ david: we are here to talk about the cover story on donald trump. my first take away is that donald trump is not the man

sending off a lot of the tweets he fires off. >> not all the time. brad, who runs the data operations for the organization, for the trump company, i mean he fires off. organization, campaign. he is doing some of the tweeting. mr. trump does some. if you wonder during the debates has been manning the twitter, it is brad. carol: he is a big deal in the trump campaign, how did he get there? ellen: he is not a career politician. that is one of the interesting things about the story, it takes you behind the scenes. he works from san antonio and somehow he was hired to do

websites for the trump organization. and for some of the trump related charities. when it came to mount the campaign, he was hired to do the campaign website for $1500. carol: unbelievable. ellen: it was not expensive. you cannot do that in new york or washington. over time, he's worked with kershner for a data operation. david: talk about that operations. it exists within the donald trump campaign and that the work with the republican national committee. what does the apparatus look like? ellen: it is principally sort of the commander, jared kushner -- his son-in-law, he is married to ivanka. he comes from a real estate family and owns "the new york observer," that everybody reads.

he was the one who decided we have to build this up. they used some of the rnc data that reince priebus built up and worked on after the romney defeat. they used some of that data. they combined it with their own analytics that they were developing on their own to really be able to target their likely voters. it is called the alamo project. carol: you said it is not like they were trying to get a lot of broad information out, they targeted there supporters, if you will. he built up a really big base that he ultimately owns, donald trump. ellen: he will own this data. a huge number of names, millions and millions of names. it could be used for any number

of things. if you try to run in 2020, if you wanted to become the maker of a new party or a new movement, or a new network. i know he said he was not interested in a tv network, but there's so much talk about it. he is doing his own independent media. the campaign has been broadcasting on facebook. it is not like he likes tv or anything. this data could be used for commercial purposes. it could be a media empire or breitbart empire. it is a little unclear. it has huge commercial potential and huge political potential. david: dave is not talking, what is your biggest take away?

ellen: i think there are 2. one obvious take away, most people inc. the campaign is his public thing. trump's speeches and his tweets, but they are more sophisticated than they let on a much more professional. i do not think they are doing anything super cutting-edge, but they are on it. while they know it is unlikely they will win, they still have not completely given up. that is one thing. the other is they could commercialize it. the other thing they talked about was voter suppression. and if they are doing research and figuring out what the votes they want to stop. who do they want to keep from, to the polls? it is young women, +african-americans among others. they are putting out ads and messages like bill clinton/women issue to suppress those votes.

you do not often see and that is not maybe the major point of our story, but it jumped. carol: it's a great story. >> we had a pretty good shoot of the command center and the way people who work for the campaign describes it, a very sophisticated, technologically advanced. we leave it up to the readers what they see the photos, it is like, guys sitting around laptops and coffee. we thought it would not necessarily be the way to go on the cover. we wanted to reference the fact it is, trump is this huge personality but it feels like a bit of a scrappy operation. we went with the conceptual idea, which was an old looking

usb drive and post it note. david: how hard was it find? robert: thumb drives a really cool these days. it was harder to get. i had to send an e-mail throughout the whole office. david: trump's plan b, how did you come up with the phrase at how did it come to be? robert: we wanted to get the fact that all of this information and data they have is for what they are planning to do, whether or not he wins or loses. it is not clear what it is, but they have a plan. plan b references in the data is in the usb drive and will implement after the election. david: there is an international edition. the cover story is appease on twitter.

how did you decide to illustrated that? robert: we took a directly from the story. twitter refers to all of the information gathered by their users as a firehose. we went literally. it is like the first picture of a firehose we found and formatted the as a tweet. david: you have a firehose, you want to have a firehose. how do you decide to feature it so it is not taking over the whole cover? robert: we wanted to make it look like a tweet. david: within the character limits? robert: yeah. we made it simple. it was not professionally shot, it feels like a found photograph. david: thank you. carol massar spoke with a reporter who reported that. carol: when i think about twitter, i love it. i feel like it is the place you can have free speech.

that has been a foundation. is that fair? guest: absolutely. part of the mission statement and we of seeing it play out. place like the middle east, arab spring's where the traditional media was regulated. twitter allows people to organize and given people more of a voice. carol: we talk about arab spring's and probably would not have happened without social media. twitter, they put out a lot of information and that information, those tweets can be monitored and they are. ben: absolutely. there is a sort of a cottage industry that has rung up to monitor and tap into social

media data. twitter is the biggest source of this. these companies that do the monitoring, they gather it up and slicing and dicing and put on their own technology. anybody willing to pay for it can cap into this vast knowledge about people. carol: twitter is doing this. tell us what it is called. the firehose? ben: that is what they call their huge a data stream. every day, 500 million tweets. a massive amount of data from all over the world. twitter is making a business out of selling that data. it is a fast-growing part of their business. you have the firehose, which is the full stream of data. and then they sell various levels of it. some people only want one out of 10. you can still get one out of every 100. there are various levels.

carol: he is interesting. you think of twitter as a plays you can put things out there and transparent. it is a business going on at where they are selling to, if you well. from what i've read, it is a growing business. a profitable business. ben: yeah. it is hard to say profitable, but it is growing. twitter right now is struggling a bit. they have layouts coming up. they have not reached profitability. any glimpse of hope is important. one is the data sales this is investors are very keen on this. maybe a way for them to clear recent hurdles. david: macau steals pages from las vegas' playbooks. and chinese takeovers. ♪

david: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." macau takes inspiration from las vegas. carroll spoke with our bureau chief. >> you remember las vegas in the 1990's, steve wynn was knocking it out of the park with these projects. we are seeing a similar ring in macau. we have a ferris will built into the side of a hotel. or even a lake with synchronized fountains. las vegas is being replicated in macau.

david: you had a lot of wealthy chinese going to play back areat. then a corruption breakdown, what happened in macau after that? chris: huge. it was a place for these high rollers to spend incredible amounts of money on baccarat. asked the chinese government crackdown, those people disappeared. the whole city had to adjust to a new type of customer. they are sure to attract a middle crowd. maybe even bring their family. instead of the gucci and prada, they have h&m. it is a different kind of customer. carol: is it working? is it drumming up revenue? is it bringing families? chris: we have to wait and see.

gambling has been up after a more than two-year slump. there seems to be more visitors but not a huge, huge increase. david: you mentioned steve wynn. they are not new to the place. are they pioneering this transition? is this something that out about before the crackdown? chris: i can remember in 2002 when sheldon first started talking about macau. they said they were going to build a strip. it was reclaimed from the ocean. i thought this is crazy. he spent $12 billion building these properties.

he has been way ahead of the curve. he has a sheridan hotel and holiday in. trying to appeal to the mass-market customer they think will come from all over china. carol: talk about the chinese government. chinese growth still enviable about most of the world. but it is slowing. i'm wondering what role they are playing in all of this. chris: a big role. if you look at what happened to las vegas, it happened over 40 years. it was organic growth because casinos were growing over the u.s. and las vegas have to think of a new strategy. in macau, it is opposite. the government said we want non-gambling tourists. they have eliminated the number of gambling tables quite a bit. the new casinos have 100 baccarat tables. they had 400 or 500 when they first started. david: sticking with china, how some chinese firms are calming fears about global buying spree.

carol massar not spoke with mr. campbell. >> we see a big swell in m&a. it is a very large transaction which tends to distort agriculture. we are seeing chinese across entertainment, transportation, hospitality. this really a broad-based away and it is washing up in the u.s. and europe. carol: let's talk about why it is happening. low yield environment and everybody trying to find opportunity. tell me why we are seeing this slow chinese money into european companies. matt: i think there is a hunt for yields and that is true across all investors and countries. in the chinese case, we're seeing a very concerted push by

companies, large and small, encouraged by the government to go abroad in order to acquire technology, ideas, intellectual property, new markets. this is a really industrial strategy as much as it is financial to make chinese companies global competitors. there is a financial motivation, it is about building big global businesses. david: what has the reaction been from shareholders, executives, the governments of the countries which the takeovers are based? matt: it is a mix. we are seeing some chinese companies, alibabas of the world have a relatively straightforward time of it when they try to make larger deals abroad. they are not encountering large amounts of opposition. on the other hand, we have situations like in germany with extra where governments are upset about the prospect as they see as strategic technology

falling and foreign chinese hands. he is not anywhere near a level playing field for chinese companies. they will face suspicion in a lot of countries. there is a critical massive deals getting done. that is a big change. david: when a union isn't a union at least when it comes to over about. one company is emerging. when it comes to uber. ♪

david: welcome back. i am david gura. you can listen to us on sirius xm. in the technology section, or uber is trying to convince new york regulators the drivers have a union. there is a catch as the reporter

told carol massar. >> there is no union in the sense we understand it on during the national labor relations act that wins recognition from the government or from uber to represent is drivers. uber maintains is drivers are independent contractors who do not have the union right. there are however a number of groups around the country that have been trying to organize and mobilize uber drivers. there is a group that uber and the machine is the union of claim represents all of the uber and drivers in new york despite not having formal elected bargaining or some of the rings we associate with a union traditionally. carol: your talk about the independent drivers deal? josh: it is funded in part by uber that does not have collective bargaining.

it was not selected in some formal way by uber drivers, but it has a seat at the table where they meet with uber and provide various perks to drivers. they have some opportunity at least for input to persuade or pressure uber to make policy changes. they have a partnership with the company to lobby for changes like more favorable treatment which they say will go into a benefits fund for uber drivers. and him who to get this, the idg has made concessions. they agree that will not try for traditional union though they could pull out if the legal status of uber drivers was determined to allow that. they have agreed to not to go on strike or challenge uber's practice of treating drivers as contractors rather than employees. there is still controversy.

david: the space race rivalry but to a jeff bezos and richard branson is heating up. carol massar's spoke with the editor. carol: bezos has so many packets -- so many things like getting people into space. >> they had a successful rocket launch. from west texas and the airfield, they blasted off this rocket to other flight accessible places. they added a new twist, the peak of the express, the rocket tested the emergency escape, which will be of comfort to the crew next year when they are aboard.

carol: what is his timeline? jeff: the timeline right now is to man the test craft sometime next year and a year or so after that. carol: i grew up with my dad as in our nautical and involved in the space -- first space race. i feel like we are going into a second space race with well-known billionaires. you have the jeff bezos. you have elon musk. eurozone richard branson. jeff: they are operating 2 parallel trails. musk's is capable of orbital. carol: he is the one was gone really far. jeff: that's right. a lot bigger, which is why it was a big deal in september when the latest space x blowup on the launchpad.

carol: big disappointment. jeff: the blue origin and virgin galactic is trying more quickly than the other two gets reliable system -- to get a reliable system. to get it into 62,000 miles above the earth's surface. it only needs to be about three times as fast as the speed of sound. david: a gold rush in mexico's most murderous state. the hits and misses of brad. the investigation that unraveled his muscle farm business. ♪ david: welcome to"bloomberg

businessweek." i am david gura. still a lot ahead. including the cyber security company that did not get credit for spotting a huge data breach. and how donald trump's family fortune was actually made. all of that ahead on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ carol: there are many must reads in this week's "bloomberg businessweek." we're here with ellen pollock. go back a few years. a tragic collapse in bangladesh.

ellen: something like 1000 workers died in the collapse of this building three years ago. this is the anniversary of the collapse. at the time, all kinds of brands that buy products made in these factories said they would step in and provide safety for these workers. a terrible tragedy. there were a lot of awareness that other factories were in bad shape. david: you said these companies would step in and change things. how much has changed? ellen: some has changed, but a lot of inspections have turned up a lot of problems. and, in many cases, some of the problems have been addressed, but not all. a lot of it comes down to money. these companies are paying factories to produce extremely cheaply. it is not like they have huge margins and can invest in all

sorts of safety measures, because they do not have the money to. in many cases, they are partly done fixing, but not completely. a lot more money needs to be brought in. for the most part -- there are some exceptions -- before the most part, the brands are not kicking in a ton of money. sometimes they do, but to get it done, they have to put in more. carol: and the bangladeshigovernment is not putting pressure on them? ellen: because they want the jobs, and they are doing inspections, but they are far from accomplishing the mission of making sure these factories are safe. david: a coming together of two companies in two industries as well. the deal between at&t and time warner opens the door to regulatory questions. what you explore is the reason for doing it. that content and distribution need to go hand-in-hand.

ellen: that is something nbc and comcast came up with. this takes it further. at&t has programming. you kind of need both. the question is how fast will industries consolidate. it looks like time warner wanted to get in there relatively early. carol: there are a lot of regulatory concerns with this. ellen: a lot. a lot of migratory, a lot of antitrust concerns. whoever wins the white house will have to gear out how they want to deal with it. carol: speaking of content, who would have thought to run political ads? ellen: this is mostly a phenomenon in rural areas. you have more advertising this time of year. lots of candidates want to advertise. but there is not enough content to advertise against. we talked to dan beckmann.

he created programming that he sells to newspapers, websites, that is meant just to put ads. it is targeted programming that the right people will want to watch. in the south, there is a fair amount of content around barbecues. it tours barbecue places. for people interested in barbecues -- and to be honest, i am interested in barbecues -- they click on the content and get the ads. and the candidates want to target those people. david: in cybersecurity, ben cotton was involved in detecting the reach in the office of public management. ellen: the records of many federal employees, all kinds of

personal data, was taken by hackers. and ben cotton came to opm and showed them what was going on. he realized how bad it was. really showed them what the problem was and how to fix it. when publicity came out, he did not get any credit. the people inside opm thought it was embarrassing. they did not want him out there talking about it. and he was trying not to. but he was getting credit anyway. it did not come out he was involved until congressional hearings. david: and we spoke with paul barrett about it. >> ben cotton is the founder and ceo of cytech services, a small cyber forensics firm. he had the unusual experience of having gone to opm to present his products on a day when they were in the middle of discovering that they were the

them of a massive hack. what was going to be his project turned out to identify some of the malware already on the servers of opm. carol: did he find it and help find it or was it a confluence of events? paul: that is where the dispute came in. as far as he is concerned, he helped discover opm was under attack from intruders who were eventually identified as the chinese. strangely, the agency went out of its way to say he had nothing to do with the discovery, because the agency was under tremendous pressure from congress over why it had been so vulnerable to this hack. as it got sorted out, more than a year later, a congressional

investigation was done. it was discovered that the reality was somewhere in between. he had stumbled into this situation and discovered malware on the computers, but opm had already been looking into this, even with another contractor. the upshot is a haphazard process of discovery, which points to the tremendous vulnerability, not just of opm, but the federal government. david: going back to that moment when he showcases his software and this happens, he thinks this will be a great thing for him and his company. he ends up having to fight for his recognition that this happened. paul: that is exactly right. this is a dream come true for a small cyber forensics company. that is a very competitive, growing industry. to be a company associated with the discovery of the vulnerability of a major federal agency, that would be a feather in his cap. he feared he would become a guy

who was falsely taking credit, but he was vindicated or at least partially vindicated. as he and some of his rivals have described, it has given him some visibility. carol: at one point, the office of public management was coming out public he saying he was taking credit, which is kind of a no-no. paul: you're supposed to keep your findings quiet. clients do not want you to expose to the world your degree of vulnerability. this was all being discussed both in the media and in congressional testimony. where officials from opm were testifying that "we discovered this" and omitting any mention of contractors involved.

the larger theme, apart from the interesting, intricate story that involves this one guy and his small company is how haphazard the process it is of discovering an agency is this vulnerable. david: how a good old-fashioned gold rush is transforming one of mexico's most vulnerable states. carol massar spoke with eric mann. eric: guerroro has kind of historically been forgotten. it is a state long center for heroin and opiate production in mexico. but it is also the home to offer acapulco, which was a big hotspot for foreign tourists the likes of frank sinatra, elizabeth taylor, the clintons, who had their honeymoon there.

kind of this tale of two states, which has been a tradition of luxury and draw for tourists, and the rest of the state, many of which have issues with gains and violence and cartels. carol: so you have that going on. that is the dismal, dark side. the more optimistic side has to do with mining deposits. the land in guerrero state is rich when it comes to gold and iron and lead. how rich is it? eric: there is a lot of deposits. it is still being explored, so no one knows how far it goes. a lot of security has discouraged investment completely. but it has gone from being not being on the map in terms of gold production in mexico, to being among the top 10 in 2015. so it has leapt forward, where mining companies are investing. the state is extremely excited.

the governor, in april, appeared at an inauguration event for a torex mine. people are extremely excited about this opportunity to bring jobs to guerrero. they even recently began a gold-mining cluster, which will allow for companies there to share resources more easily, pool investment, leverage it in favor of local communities. an opportunity that the government sees from these miners and companies abroad. david: up next, the trump ancestor who does not get enough credit for building the family fortune. and why some cities in the u.s. want noncitizens to vote in the

upcoming election. and the booming business of being a mermaid. ♪

david: welcome back. i am david gura. in politics and policies, the trump business that started the family fortune. carol massar spoke with an editor. >> friedrich trump came to the u.s. from germany in the 1880's. a lot of germans were coming to the u.s. at that point. he started in new york with a barbershop, then decided he could make more money going west.

it was still the high gold rush period. first he went to seattle and then western washington state. then the gold rush took him to the klondike in canada. he started a restaurant called the arctic in a town called bennett, which was on the trail a lot of miners were taking. a key stopping point on the overland route where people were going to pan for gold. carol: what kind of place was the arctic? allison: it is what you would expect in a frontier gold rush boomtown. they served oysters, had a lot of booze, and had women available for miners who had gold to pay for them. i do nothing the arctic was necessarily unique.

but our writer pulled archival newspaper clippings from the period. there were some reviews that described there were private boxes, where you could pay for "services" from women using your brand-new gold dust you just acquired. it was exactly what you would expect. there were some warnings in these clippings that women of good repute should not go there by themselves. [laughter] carol: we are not going to even touch that now. but he did really well, though, right? made a fair amount of money doing this. allison: sure. a biographer of the trump family said he mined miners. your chances of striking gold were not that high. you went out into the mountains, but your chances of making a lot of money off of these guys, because they wanted to eat, drink, and find women was pretty good. so fred trump and his partner did very well with this restaurant. so well that when bennett got bypassed when the railroad was built through the area and it became a ghost town, they did

well enough that they dismantled the restaurant, put it on a barge, and to get up the river to whitehorse, the next big stopping point for miners. david: staying in politics, donald trump has fanned rumors about immigrants voting in the presidential election. there is a quiet movement underway to get non-u.s. residents to vote in local elections. carol spoke with caroline winter. carol: donald trump made a claim about noncitizen voters being allowed to vote. what did he say? caroline: he said a lot of illegal immigrants would be voting in the election, implying that the election will be rigged. carol: one of his favorite subjects as of late. caroline: true. [laughter] that's very unlikely. but there are some places in the u.s. that do want immigrants to have a vote. and in some cases, those are

legal immigrants, who are residents year. in some cases, that is undocumented immigrants. the latest case is in san francisco. they will vote on to whether to let immigrants, legal and undocumented, vote in school board elections. carol: it is interesting. there is some historical precedent. but what is the thinking about letting noncitizen voters having a say in some issues? caroline: they really want parents to have a say. they say schools will be better if parents are involved. in a lot of cases, you have immigrants who have come here legally but are not yet citizens. that process takes a long time. i spoke with a san francisco assemblyman. he said they have children go through kindergarten through 12th grade without a voice into who is on the school board. david: up next, golf tries to make itself cool again. also how musclepharm went boom

to bust. and if children say they want to grow up to be mermaids, they can. ♪

♪ david: in "features," how musclepharm went swole to twig. i am talking of brad pyatt nutritional company. introduce us to brad pyatt. >> he played a few years in the nfl. no one had really heard of him. a special teams guy. while he was in the league, he decided to start a sports

nutrition brand. his first attempt failed. his second was called "musclepharm." it got big fast. you see a lot of former players go into this. it is supplements, mostly protein, stuff like that. his brand became the fifth-largest in the market. they signed guys like tiger woods, arnold schwarzenegger. big names. he was an interesting character. he seemed like he was succeeding in a way a lot of former athletes, especially those not that famous, do not. carol: go back a little. what came first, the success of the project and then the celebrity? ira: he was super aggressive. initially, he could not afford tiger woods. but he was doing a lot with ultimate fighters.

he would pay them $15,000 to put the logo on their shorts while fighting. carol: so the company was growing. they are getting celebrity endorsements. but they also keep issuing stock. ira: right. this was the problem. to make these big deals and keep this region growing, they were always running losses and always having to raise money. they became a top company and started issuing shares. but they did a lot of deals where it was gets equity, where someone gives money in exchange for shares. and when they sell shares, it drives the price down. pyatt says, "i had to, because i cannot borrow from banks." "i had to take money from whoever i could." but this maybe got the sec looking at the stock. it is unclear, but at one point,

the sec started investigating them, mainly about unreported perks. he and other executives have been getting things like cars, clothes, jewelry, travel to cabo san lucas. carol: all necessary to run the business. [laughter] ira: well, they made the case. you can do that, but you have to tell investors. they were not. so they got in trouble and paid a penalty. david: sports carries over into this week's "etc." section. >> topgolf is a really interesting phenomenon. it is basically a driving range meets nightclub meets sports bar. phenomenon. it is basically a driving range meets nightclub meets sports bar. carol: that is a lot.

>> the facilities are 65,000 square feet. there are three levels to them. they are kind of insane. if you have ever been to a buffalo wild wings or a dave and busters, it is like that but with golf. carol: i understand you go to these places, there are waiting lines to get in. bret: there are 25 in the country. about half of those have been built since the end of last year. it is one of the fastest growing chains of its kind in the country. they are very popular. what they have done is taken the hard or annoying parts of golf out of golf. carol: interesting. it is like a fun experience, kind of a party. ira boudway actually went to one of these with his dad. there was a mixed group of people. men, women, old, young. bret: right. he went. there was a bachelor party. there were a couple of young dates. parents with children. the game you play at topgolf was like an arcade game. you try to hit a golf ball into something that looks like a meteor craters in the ground. it is not like you're trying to get it into the traditional whole, which would frustrate certainly kids and many adults. they made into a game where if you get the ball sort of near the whole and it falls in, you

get some kind of points for it. david: also, an innovative new business model -- professional "mermaiding." carol massar spoke with linden wolbert. >> a professional mermaid is someone who is an ambassador for oceans and brings enchantment to the world. carol: that sounds really good, but you are actually making a living portray or being a mermaid. tell me what you do. linden: what i do is very broad scale, pun intended. i educate children about our oceans, i have all kinds of different things as far as performances. i do events for celebrities, for product launches. i also have my own line of children's swim products and mermaid tails.

carol: talk about the celebrities. well-known celebrities have hired you were events. jessica alba, kelly osbourne. what have you done for them? linden: usually i do events for birthday parties. it was justin timberlake's surprise birthday party i performed that. for other people, i do children's birthdays or surprises or play dates. i am sometimes hired to swim with children for the afternoon, to bring magic into the day. carol: sounds like fun and sounds like you do things for children. talk to me about the product line you developed. linden: body glove and i teamed up about four years ago now. we decided to create mermaid-inspired swimming products or children. the idea was to not only create magic and mystical experiences for children in the water, but encourage them to get into the

ocean, into the water, and learn how we can serve and be part of the oceans. david: "bloomberg businessweek" is available on air and online. more bloomberg television starts right now. ♪ >> the following is a paid

program. the opinions and views expressed do not reflect the opinions of bloomberg lp, its affiliates or employees. >> the following is an important a program about humana medicare advantage prescription drug plan. >> welcome to your medicare, your decision, the program that guides you through the medicare options available from humana. there are many different medicare choices available today. are you sure you have the right medicare plan? are you with the right company? do you wonder if you could save money with a different plan? no matter what medicare coverage