Donald Trump blew through Washington on Monday as only Trump could: touting his forthcoming hotel, defending the size of his hands to the Washington Post editorial board, and threatening to reduce the U.S. role in NATO.

At the same time, Trump sought to conform to some of the capital’s mores by meeting with lawmakers and, later, addressing a pro-Israel event using prepared remarks, a rarity for the unpredictable candidate who prefers to speak off-the-cuff.

“I didn't come here tonight to pander to you about Israel,” Trump said at the event, AIPAC, before vouching his support for the group’s key policy priorities anyway.

The celebrity businessman’s whirlwind day in Washington seemed to crystallize the tension he now faces, as the Republican front-runner and would-be nominee, between his hallmark bombastic style and the more subdued conventions of politics.

Certainly, Trump is still Trump. During an hour-long interview Monday with the Washington Post editorial board, he could not resist engaging in an extended debate on the size of his hands, a subject that has repeatedly riled him.

“My hands are fine,” Trump insisted. “You know, my hands are normal. Slightly large, actually.” During the same meeting, he declined to go into as much detail on matters of policy, although he did unveil a preliminary list of foreign policy and national security advisers — just “page one,” as he later characterized the roster to reporters.

How those advisers have guided Trump is not yet known, but Trump told the editorial board he would cut back U.S. involvement in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an offbeat position. "We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore," Trump said, adding later, "NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money."

A few hours later, Trump conducted a press conference not to discuss his campaign for president, but to tout progress on his “super luxury” hotel a few blocks from the White House. “As people who love this country, I think you’re going to be very proud of it,” he assured reporters assembled in the building’s unfinished atrium.

Standing behind a lectern bearing a “Trump Hotels” sign and flanked by hotel staff and mock-ups of the project, Trump did not rein in his rhetoric. He referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “the Indian,” a nod to her claim of Native American heritage; and he offered a job to a woman seated with media, who gushed about his support for veterans and asked whether he would hire veterans to work in his hotel.

It was an odd scene with the Republican front-runner at its center, a 3D illustration of some of the qualities in Trump that give GOP leaders serious pause. Was Trump taking any steps to reach out to those party stalwarts, once reporter asked?

“I started today,” Trump said.

Trump convened Monday at a law firm with a group of former and current members of Congress and senators, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The meeting, organized in part by Sen. Jeff Sessions, sought to give the impression of Republican leaders reaching out to Trump, and vice versa.

“Mr. Trump is continuing his outreach to Washington and there has been an overwhelming positive response,” Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told the Washington Post in advance of the meeting.

But that meeting did little to showcase GOP leaders coalescing around Trump’s candidacy and did not involve much outreach to Republicans at all. The small crowd in attendance consisted primarily of lawmakers who have already thrown their support behind Trump; meanwhile, party leaders kept their distance.

Trump has projected confidence in the face of deep misgivings from the very party he would represent, invoking recent telephone calls with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. And Trump claims many more Republicans, even those who speak ill of him in public, have assured him privately that they support him.

He wouldn’t talk Monday about whom those Republicans might be, if they exist at all. At his press conference, there were more important matters to address.

“Oh, let’s take a tour!” Trump said in closing. “Nobody asked about the hotel.” And he walked briskly off to do just that, with a tangle of cameras and reporters close behind.