The Donald Trump Conversation: Politics' . We're settling in for a late- night chat at his Beverly Hills house, a 1. Colonial mansion directly across from the Beverly Hills Hotel. He's here for the final presidential primary, a California coronation of sorts, after rallies in Orange County (where violence broke out and seven people were arrested). He is, as he has been for much of our conversation — and perhaps much of the last year — marveling at his own campaign.
And he's just returned from a big donor fundraiser in Brentwood for the Republican Party at the home of Tom Barrack, the investor and former Miramax co- owner. They had a neighborhood roped off, four or five blocks away from this beautiful house. Machine guns all over the place.
Tobias Wolff's first published story. I wanted to know boys whose fathers ran banks and held Cabinet office and wrote books.
He may be the most threatening and frightening and menacing presidential candidate in modern life, and yet, in person he's almost soothing. His extreme self- satisfaction rubs off. He's a New Yorker who actually might be more at home in California (in fact, he says he usually comes to his home here — two buildings on Rodeo Drive — only once a year). Trump is an optimist — at least about himself. He's in easy and relaxed form campaigning here in these final days before the June 7 California primary, even with Hillary Clinton's biggest backers and a city that is about half Latino surrounding him. Earlier in the day, I'd met with Trump at a taping of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live!
He meant this, the Trump phenomenon. Circumventing any chance that I might dampen the sentiment, he quickly answered his own question: . In other words, Trump could be the most famous man in the world right now. It's its main subject — the one you can't argue with. You can argue about issues, but you can't argue with success. Hence, to Trump, you're really foolish to argue with the Trump campaign. Other people spent $2.
You know what I'm saying? That phenomenon is, of course, Trump himself, about whom Trump spends a lot of time talking in the third person. You can try, but it's hard to resist this admiration for himself.
The certainty of it, the enthusiasm for it and the lack of not just doubt, but of any negativity. It's all upbeat and positive. The dark, scary, virulent heart of American politics is having the best time anyone has ever had. Trump at a May 2. Anaheim. Violent clashes between protesters and police followed him through California. If onstage he calls people names, more privately he has only good, embracing things to say about almost everybody. Genuinely seems to love everybody — at least everybody who's rich and successful (he doesn't really talk about anyone who isn't).
Expressing love for everybody, for most of us, would clearly seem to be an act. But with Trump, it's the name- calling and bluster that might be the act. I offer that there are quite a number of people in New York, some we know in common, who are puzzled that the generous, eager- to- be- liked and liking- everyone- in- return Donald has morphed into a snarling and reactionary public enemy, at least a liberal enemy. This, I suggest, might be a source of the continuing dialectic — or to some, wishful thinking — that he does not necessarily believe what he says. I might detect the most mild sort of annoyance here.
Trump says it's that he just never talked about his beliefs in the past — after all, he wasn't a politician. The point is not about politics, or policies, but about how people, about how many people, have responded to him. It's too big to ignore the bigness. In fact, you might logically see the Kimmel show as a devastating attack on Trump's views and claims.
Kimmel flat out doesn't believe him. That recording of the PR person alleged to be Trump sounding like a PR person? I say I like everybody. Kimmel is tickled to have such a good sport to poke fun at, and Trump is tickled that Kimmel is tickled.
Michael Wolff; Birth name: Michael Blieden Wolff: Born July 31, 1952 (age 64) Victorville, California, U.S. Origin: New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. From the epic movie '300' - based on the famous graphic novel of Frank Miller.
There are no phonies here. Or everybody here is honest about being a phony. Nobody is taking anyone very seriously — forget what might be at stake in a presidential election. If Trump is the subject of the conversation, then Trump is happy. If Kimmel has Trump as a guest, he's happy. Surely a big part of the answer lies in the nature of Trump's performance, an unself- consciousness so extreme that he has passed through hurdles of humiliation that would have destroyed nearly all others to emerge as though free of a private self.
Trump is only fully alive in public. But another aspect is that, differentiating himself from every other candidate, he has a long, intimate relationship with nearly every significant player in the media and, indeed, lavishes copious praise on almost all of them.
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He may know few people in Washington, and care about them less, but he knows his moguls and where they rank on the modern suck- up- to list. On Murdoch: . And I think Rupert respects what I've done.? But I think he respects what I've done and he's a tremendous guy and I think we have a very good relationship. Terrible it comes to this, but a good run. He'd give me anything. We're on the same page.
Despite his tweets about the . I ask him to rate them. I know Roger very well. And, less well, but I think Andy has done a very good job.
Emanuel and Trump, while at seeming odds politically, might in fact be even better united in a kind of hyper salesmanship. I call him a lot and we talk.
Even though he's not political, he's political. You're shocked to hear that, right? Does he represent you? He's been at this since either 4 a.
I then had to give a speech to a big group, then I had to give a speech at 1. Then I had to drive to Anaheim and give a speech in front of thousands of people. Then I came back and did more meetings, then I did a fundraiser tonight, then I did Kimmel. You're not a two- minute interview guy. He reclines, still in his standard boxy suit, tie slightly loosened, with his Haagen- Dazs on an overstuffed couch in the living room (he asks me not to put my water bottle on the fabric- covered ottoman). If there's any pattern to his conversation, it's that he's vague on all subjects outside himself, his campaign and the media. Everything else is mere distraction.
But I press him about Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire who, earlier in the day, has admitted to funding the $1. Hulk Hogan lawsuit against Gawker.
Thiel also is his most prominent Silicon Valley backer and will go to the convention in July as a pledged delegate. But Trump needs reminding who he is, and then concludes he must be a friend of his son- in- law Jared. So he funded it for Hulk Hogan? You think Hulk Hogan would have enough money, but he probably doesn't. On Twitter, I have 8. On Instagram, I have over a million people.
I'm inching on 2. I have friends, somebody that's a great writer, where they write a book and call me up and say, 'Can you do me a favor, can you tweet it?' . Lewandowski recites the latest polls (as of press time, they show Trump inching to within a few percentage points of Clinton in a head- to- head matchup), and Trump, with something beyond confidence, seems to declare de facto victory. I broach his problems with women and Hispanics and the common wisdom that he'll have to do at least as well with these groups as Mitt Romney did in 2. He believes, no matter what positions he holds or slurs he has made, that he is irresistible. I ask if he sees himself as having similarities with leaders of the growing anti- immigrant (some would say outright racist) European nativist movements, like Marine Le Pen in France and Matteo Salvini in Italy, whom The Wall Street Journal reported Trump had met with and endorsed in Philadelphia. His shamelessness is just so .
So how much, I ask — quite thinking he will get the nuance here — is the Trump brand based on exaggeration? He responds, with perfect literalness, none at all. How much about being a successful person involves ? How much of success is playing games? But as a politician, he's OK as a salesman. Trump says he's reading Edward Klein's book Unlikeable: The Problem With Hillary.
In this, he sees himself — and becomes almost eloquent in talking about himself — as a sort of performer and voter whisperer. He is, he takes obvious pride in saying, the only politician who doesn't regularly use a teleprompter. With a prompter, he says, you can't work the crowd.
Have you ever seen me speak in front of a large group of people? Have you ever watched? He cites a well- known actor (whose name he asks me not to use, . Trump was never fed lines on The Apprentice, he says. I find myself urging him not to, precisely for the theater of it all. Who would want to miss that? What he's saying is very interesting.
If in public he needs to treat her as his cause, in private he doesn't want her taking up his time. Eh, I don't want to say who I voted for. These two '8. 0s guys were undoubtedly once quite in sync. The anti- Christ Trump, the Trump of bizarre, outre, impractical and reactionary policies that most reasonable people yet believe will lead to an astounding defeat in November, is really hard to summon from Trump in person. He deflects that person, or, even, dissembles about what that person might have said (as much, he dissembles for conservatives about what the more liberal Trump might have said), and is impatient that anyone might want to focus on that version of Trump.
It does then feel that the policies, such as they are, and the slurs, are not him. They are just a means to the end — to the phenomenon.
To the center of attention. The biggest thing that has ever happened in politics. The biggest thing is the theme.
It's what he always wants to come back to. Bigness is unavoidable and inevitable. Bigness always wins. Before Trump trundles off to bed — actually, before that, never too tired, he plans to watch himself on Kimmel — I ask that de rigeur presidential question, which does not seem yet to have been asked of him.
I'm reading a book that I've read before, it's one of my favorite books, All Quiet on the Western Front, which is one of the greatest books of all time. But what the hell.