Donald Trump, the man who attributed his successes to his mental strength

The New York that gave birth to Trump was a quagmire of corruption and malpractice. The filth extended from the seats of executive power to some media outlets to the very sector in which the Trump family had built its wealth. At the end of the 20th century, New York was a place where tribal racial politics dominated entire spheres of public life. Those politics, which barred black members of the municipal government until 1989, inspired media coverage of crime and public service and dictated what was built where and who got paid for it. The world of New York developers was a hotbed of shady characters, cross-brawls and fierce financial struggles. Often, if you wanted to do business, that was the price you had to pay. But Trump was particularly insolent to the journalists who reported on him—and he was a swindler. They had a hard time pointing to another developer who shamelessly admitted to using an alias — under oath — in a lawsuit filed against him for hiring poorly paid, undocumented workers to build Trump Tower.

He wanted to see how far he could take a presidential campaign that would define the last years of his life. It is true that he had considered running before and had done a lot of legwork to build relationships in the key states for the primaries, but his advisers acknowledge that he never gave much thought to what the job would entail. Because he did not understand how government worked and had no interest in learning, he recreated around himself the world that had created him. (…)

He is obsessed with other people’s secrets. He is great at finding weaknesses and taking advantage of weak points.

When he arrived in Washington, Trump drew on the wisdom accumulated over decades and decades of business and personal ups and downs. In his early days, he had relied on a handful of crucial advisers and mentors. Norman Vincent Peale, who preached the “power of positive thinking” and an embryonic version of the prosperity gospel, made his apprentice believe that things could be created just by wanting them; when something went well, Trump attributed it to his mental strength. The irascible owner of the New York Yankees, George Steinbrenner, had a habit of kicking people out on the street without mercy, something that fascinated fans and drew as much attention from the press as the team’s own results; in him, Trump found a model of hypermasculinity that he imitated much during the rocky 1980s, when HIV terrorized the country. From Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani, he learned the art of political showmanship. And from Meade Esposito, the ruthless boss of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, he learned how great political allies could be expected to behave. (…) But leaving aside his father, the greatest influence on the future president was Roy Cohn, who taught him to build his entire life around three cornerstones: proximity to power, evasion of responsibility and the creation of media schemes. We cannot know how many of the displays of that rough personality were intended to prevent people from deciphering the scheme. Perhaps not even Trump himself knows. If old patterns governed his conduct, so did deep-rooted rivalries and grudges. In all the feuds that filled his presidency, those who had been around him for a while saw the results of the grievances suffered by the Trump Organization. (…)

Although his legend is steeped in intrigue — some speak of his unpredictability and others describe him as an agent of chaos — the irony, say those who have known him for years, is that throughout his adult life he has used only a few tricks. He can counterattack, make up a quick lie, dodge the issue, distract or give misleading information, fly into a rage, feign anger, do things or make statements to make headlines, vacillate and cover it up with a lunge, badmouth one adviser to another adviser to drive a wedge between them — the hard part is knowing what trick he is using at any given moment.

When advising someone, Trump typically prioritizes the individual looking “good.” It’s as if he thinks life is a TV show and he picks the cast. Trump is obsessed with other people’s secrets. He’s great at finding weaknesses and exploiting weak points, and he’s also great at encouraging people to try to please him by putting themselves at risk on his behalf so he can claim immunity from repercussions. (…)

He is highly suggestible. He seeks out ideas, thoughts and statements from others and adapts them to make them his own; campaign advisers once called him a “sophisticated parrot.” He has shown himself willing to believe everything is true, and also to say that everything is true. He has some basic ideological instincts, but he is often willing to suppress them if it serves another purpose. His statements are ethereal and you can put any meaning into them, so that two opposing factions could claim to have his support. Trump is usually just reacting. He has no project. But by misleading people, Trump makes them believe that he has an ulterior strategy or a secret plan. His intentions are framed within what he sees as a game, with rules and objectives that only he sees as meaningful. (…)

Very suggestible, he looks for ideas, thoughts and statements from others and adapts them to make them his own.

Among his most recurrent attributes are: the desire to crush opponents; his aversion to embarrassment or to voluntarily avoiding a fight; his conviction that, whatever the case, everything will work out in the end; and his refusal to accept the traditional model of business or politics. These qualities have been his strong point, as has been the ability to proudly display what others tried to hide. Over time, his resentment grew, especially as he had to face new investigations from both the Attorney General’s Office and his political rivals. In any case, the cause of this resentment was the least of it. One of the basic principles of the Trumpist movement has been to find valid targets against which to vent pre-existing rage. This rage helped identify his followers, whose connection to him was not so much based on ideology as on shared enemies: liberals, the media, technology or regulatory agencies. (…)

His business career before winning the presidency was no mirage. He built a towering tower on Fifth Avenue and opened three casinos in Atlantic City. He also persuaded banks and public officials to help him do it. But he was never a businessman of the caliber of the other New York titans of finance and real estate to whom he sought to be compared. In his hometown, many executives scoffed at Trump’s appearance of having more money in his bank account and more real estate than he actually had; they laughed at his eagerness to lend his name to almost any licensing deal. After he left office, a criminal investigation was launched into whether he had inflated the value of his properties to fool lenders. But outside the New York bubble, Trump had for decades been regarded as the personification of wealth. In the rest of the country, he was simply someone who had built tall towers with gold letters on the door. To understand Donald Trump, his presidency and his political future, people need to know where he comes from.

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