''Everywhere inside the Trump Organization headquarters, the walls were lined with framed

[Gabi Hayes]

magazine covers,''

each a shot of Trump or someone who looked an awful lot like him. The profusion of these images—of a man who possessed unusual skills, though not, evidently, a gene for irony—seemed the sum of his appetite for self-reflection. His unique talent—being “Trump” or, as he often referred to himself, “the Trumpster,” looming ubiquitous by reducing himself to a persona—exempted him from introspection.

........

Months earlier, I’d asked Trump whom he customarily confided in during moments of tribulation.
“Nobody,” he said. “It’s just not my thing”—a reply that didn’t surprise me a bit. Salesmen, and Trump is nothing if not a brilliant salesman, specialize in simulated intimacy rather than the real thing. His modus operandi had a sharp focus: fly the flag, never budge from the premise that the universe revolves around you, and, above all, stay in character.

via this new yorker article from 20 years (and 70 lbs) ago. some things never change, except for the worse:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/05/19/trump-solo



among the gems in the story, I found this to be the most revelatory. everybody knew he was BROKE twenty years ago:

Ivana had hoped to nullify a postnuptial agreement whose provenance could be traced to Donald’s late friend and preceptor the lawyer-fixer and humanitarian Roy Cohn. Though the agreement entitled her to fourteen million dollars plus a forty-six-room house in Connecticut, she and her counsel decided to ask for half of everything Trump owned; extrapolating from Donald’s blustery pronouncements over the years, they pegged her share at two and a half billion. In the end, she was forced to settle for the terms stipulated in the agreement because Donald, at that juncture, conveniently appeared to be broke.

[elleng]

1. lawyer-fixer and humanitarian Roy Cohn!

[Gabi Hayes]

2. they don't get much worse than that guy. one of his favorite tricks was to

conspicuously help himself to big bites of other peoples' plates

trump was one of cohn's only friends (or so Cohn thought), only to ignore him at the end, leaving him to die a miserable-almost-completely-alone death to the HIV, contracted during his closeted homosexual existence

http://www.dcdave.com/article4/roy%20cohn.htm

in which his prosecution/persecution of gays is discussed