Andy Warhol’s painting of Trump Tower, which Donald Trump rejected in the 80s at auction

An Andy Warhol portrait rejected by Donald Trump more than 40 years ago is up for auction – and the famous artist’s diaries reveal his first impressions of the future president.

When Trump met Warhol in 1981, the former was a budding business mogul and the latter was among the most famous American artists of the 20th century.

Trump Tower on 5th Avenue was under construction at the time, and Donald was looking for artwork to put up in the lobby — the same one he would descend via the golden escalator to announce his first bid for the White House in 2015.

Trump commissioned a series of paintings from Warhol depicting his new 58-story skyscraper, but ultimately declined to buy the portraits, angering the painter, who later claimed he “hates Trumps.”

Fast forward more than 40 years to today, when the artwork will be sold at a Park Avenue auction house for an estimated $700,000.

While the painting awaits the highest bidder’s paddle, diary entries from the Prince of Pop Art provide a unique insight into the New York high society that brought Trump to international fame—and the artist’s real-time impression of the young real estate titan.

“Had to meet Donald Trump in the office,” Warhol wrote in April 1981, according to auction house Phillips. “Donald Trump looks really good.”

The unlikely pair were introduced by then-interview magazine art director Marc Balet, who was working to catalog the stores that would open in the Trump Tower atrium.

It was Trump’s then-wife Ivana who suggested he meet with Warhol to discuss painting portraits of the building to hang inside, Ballet told Gothamist from his home in Connecticut.

“It was so strange, these people are so rich,” Warhol wrote of Trump and his wealthy friends at their first confab. “They were talking about buying a building yesterday for $500 million or something.”

“They were raving about Balducci’s lunch, but they just want it,” he recalled of their meeting at the since-closed Manhattan gourmet market.

“I think because they go around to so many things where there is food. And they didn’t have drinks, they just had Tabs all together,” he continued, referring to the popular diet pop of the 1980s.

“He’s a butch guy. Nothing was decided, but I’m going to make some paintings anyway and show them to them,” Warhol concluded in his notes.

Trump ultimately decided to hire Warhol, so the artist visited his office to photograph the model of what Trump Tower would look like when it was finished.

He painted two different sets of the paintings, which he called “New York Skyscrapers” — four in gold and four in silver, and intended to sell each set for $100,000, Balet told the outlet.

Warhol tried to capture the building’s modernity and glamor with black, silver and gold hues — even coating the surface with “diamond dust” and sprinkling stained glass onto the wet paint, according to the auction house.

But when Mr. and Mrs. Trump visited Warhol’s factory, they were disappointed by the lack of color coordination. They decided not to buy the paintings and never paid Warhol for his work.

“The Trumps came down … I showed them the paintings of Trump Tower that I had done. … (I) it was a mistake to do so many, I think it confused them,” Warhol wrote in August 1981.

“I think Trump is a little cheap, but I get that feeling,” Warhol continued. “And Marc Balet, who created it all, was kind of shocked.”

Balet claimed the paintings were rejected because they did not meet Trump standards.

“So then Andy took it out on me,” Balet told Gothamist. “He was furious that he was working for nothing and was super mad at me, and then he got over it.”

But Warhol seemed to hold his grudge against the Trumps for years.

When he ran into Ivana in February 1983 at a birthday party for notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, the socialite seemed embarrassed when she saw the artist and asked what had happened to the portraits.

“I had this talk in my mind about telling her, and I was in doubt whether I should let her have it or not, and she tried to get away, and she did,” Warhol writes.

A year later, when he was asked to judge cheerleading tryouts for Trump’s short-lived New Jersey Generals team, he recalled that he was deliberately late to stick it to the billionaire couple.

“I still hate the Trumps because they never bought the paintings I did of Trump Tower,” he wrote at the time.

The six-figure price tag on the one-of-a-kind painting to be sold Tuesday could be worth even more than the auction house expected in light of the 2024 election, according to Phillips auction house vice chairman Robert Manley.

“I talked to a collector two weeks ago and his opinion was that if Trump lost it wouldn’t sell and no one would buy it and if Trump won it would sell for a huge price,” Manley said to Gothamist.