This is the top story at NYTimes.com right now. The New York Times is shocked, shocked to learn that Trump once lost a lot of money.

Of course, Trump’s financial mistakes in the late 1980s were also top stories in the New York Times over 25 years ago. Trump’s troubles were not exactly secret.

Indeed, in 1997 the New York Times posted the first chapter of Trump’s 1997 book Trump: The Art of the Comeback:

Trump: The Art of the Comeback By DONALD J. TRUMP with KATE BOHNER, Times Books THE BATTLE BEGINS: BARGAINING WITH THE BANKS It never occurred to me to give up, to admit defeat. True, I was billions of dollars in the hole. The real estate market had disintegrated. Bodies were dropping right and left. Banks folded. The junk-bond market was collapsing. There was no end in sight to the bad news. Front-page headlines heralded my downfall. I became the poster boy for the recession. Friends and family called to offer condolences and support. Oddly enough, I wasn’t that miserable. Sure, the chips were down. There were some dark moments. But I never had any doubt that I’d come back. I will never forget what happened on March 26, 1991. Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal had front-page stories predicting my demise, detailing the financial trouble I was in. Anybody with a brain who read those stories would have said I was finished.

The stories were picked up by radio and television and blasted throughout the world. This was by far the worst moment of my life. I was in my office, and there was dead silence.

I followed the business news back then and that was definitely my impression at the time: “I think we’ve heard the last of this publicity hound!”When I heard the topline that Trump had recognized a $900 million loss on his 1995 taxes, I wondered: did he lose another billion in 1995, when the economy was improving? Or is that just the fiscal year when he officially recognized for tax purposes his losses that been world-famous during the early 1990s recession?

If it’s the latter as this new NYT article implies, that undermines the point of playing up the leak:

Hey, did you know that Donald Trump lost a lot of money after the 1980s?

What? You did know that? Are you saying it was huge news 25 years ago?

Some David Letterman Top Ten Lists from 1990-1991: