Mrs. Bush, who was 92 when she died last April , gave Susan Page, author of "The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty," access to volumes of her diaries, which she began keeping in 1948. The former first lady recounts in a January 1990 entry about reading a news article on Trump speaking at a Los Angeles charity awards dinner for Merv Griffin. Former President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, attended the gala, and Trump needled the former president over pricey speeches he had given in Japan.