Chasing the presidency is Donald Trump's ultimate ego trip
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump was angry: A reporter had the gall to suggest that ego was behind his purchase of New York's famed Plaza Hotel.
To understand why, consider the billionaire's ego not just as mere mortals might see it (an outsized allotment of conceit) but also as Trump himself understands it (an extraordinary drive for excitement, glamour and style that produces extraordinary success.)
The race for the White House, then, may be Trump's ultimate ego trip, guided by the same instincts he's relied on in a lifetime of audacious self-promotion, ambition and risk-taking.
"The same assets that excite me in the chase often, once they are acquired, leave me bored," he told an interviewer in 1990, as his boom years were sliding toward bust.
[...] his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has sketched out a limited level of presidential engagement for Trump in discussing a strong role for the candidate's vice presidential choice.
Military school helped channel his energy, but Trump's rebellious streak remained.
Trump followed his father into real estate, but chafed within the confines of Fred Trump's realm in New York's outer boroughs.
Trump, who stresses his Ivy League education, revels in juvenile jabs, labeling his adversaries stupid, ''dumb and bad.
Through years of boom, bust and more than a decade of reality-TV celebrity on "The Apprentice," the deals kept coming and the price tags (and, often, the debt) kept growing — as did the hype.
— Trump, visiting Scotland in 2012 to fight the government's proposed wind farm off the shore of his new golf resort there.
Trump was asked during a parliamentary inquiry to provide evidence for his claim that the "monstrous turbines" would hurt tourism.
The businessman rang up Obama adviser David Axelrod in 2010 to volunteer to fix the BP oil spill that was gushing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and had confounded the world's leading experts.
Ivanka Trump tells of her "incredibly empathetic" father reaching out to help strangers he sees mentioned in the news whose stories of adversity touch him.
— A Mississippi man remembers Trump picking up the phone when his father wrote to ask for a loan to build a hotel back in 1988.
— Pro golfer Natalie Gulbis tells of Trump encouraging her early in her career and coaching her on how to negotiate equal pay with male competitors.
Not senator and war hero John McCain, not the disabled, not Mexicans, not Muslims, not even those people who make up a majority of the country (and the electorate): women.
Aubrey Immelman, a political psychologist at Saint John's University in Minnesota who has developed a personality index to assess presidential candidates, puts Trump's level of narcissism in the "exploitative" range, surpassing any presidential nominee's score in the past two decades.
Talking about "Citizen Kane," his favorite movie, Trump spoke with unusual introspection about the accumulation of wealth.