steve hilbert

Indianapolis was once proclaimed the “world’s tanning-bed capital.”

“I told my people I wanted to go to Indiana,” Trump told an estimated 3,000 attendees gathered in the half-full pavilion. “Indiana is going to be very important.”

“That was trial by ambush,” says Buck. “Sure, go ahead and bring in the assistant pro from the golf course, who was doing the wife in the sand traps. Just bring him in. It was all part of the game.”

Then there’s the house, the most visible manifestation of Steve Hilbert’s megabucks lifestyle. Built over several years by Hilbert and his ex-wife, it embodies the sort of wealth that even some nations would envy.

With Donald Trump and wife Melania Trump dragged into the fray, the feud was no longer just a regional skirmish pitting a flamboyant Hoosier millionaire against a meat-and-potatoes billionaire from America’s Dairyland. It was a critical mass of heavyweight egos, with jealously guarded private lives hung out on the courthouse clothesline.