Some aspects of the Donald Trump experience are almost—but not quite—immune to parody. Throughout a year in which he has had some strange and deep effect on American politics, he has done a number of interviews here at his desk on the twenty-sixth floor of Trump Tower, Central Park stretching out in the distance behind him. Many of these encounters relay the same Trumpian idiosyncrasies—the way he always has impressive hot-off-the-press poll data to share, for instance, or the pleasure he takes in showing off the packed wall of Donald Trump magazine covers going back over 30 years (“cheaper than wallpaper,” he told 60 Minutes), or the hyperbolic descriptions of his lifetime achievements.

And no matter how many articles make note of these habits, or try to lampoon them, he's not giving them up. As I enter his office and take a seat at the opposite side of his desk—I don't offer a handshake, nor does he—he immediately hands me a sheet of paper. “Okay, that's for you,” he says warmly. “Nice poll. Just came out.” Between us, lined up along the front of his desk, are stacks of all of the recent magazines with his face on the cover—Rolling Stone, Time, People, Newsweek, New York, multiple copies of each, as though as an additional sideline he has opened the world's most narrowly focused newsstand.

As I settle in, his 27-year-old communications director, Hope Hicks, informs him that an article they have been expecting for a while about his time in military school has just been published.

“Are we gonna be the cover story, do you know? Or not? We should be, we should be. Based on merit, we should be. But we'll see. Not sure I want it. You're going to ask a positive question before the interview's over, right?”

“Good or bad?” he asks.

“Great,” she says.

“ ‘Good athlete,’ all that stuff?” he checks.

“ ‘Best athlete’…‘ladies’ man'…,” she says.

“Really?” he says, clearly pleased.

“…‘best student’…,” she continues.

“Yeah, I was a great student,” he says in a meditative tone. “I was good at everything.”

“Yeah, that's what they said,” she confirms.

He asks her to give a copy to me. (As it happens, I've already read it online this morning; Ms. Hicks's summary is accurate.) “That's nice, huh?” he muses, and tells her he needs to write to his old classmates. “I heard they have some really nice quotes, and I haven't seen them in a long time.” He turns to me. “We get older, Chris, right? That's the bad part.”

I entered the room using a cane, and he now asks, quite kindly and gently, a few questions about my problematic ankle. I tell him that it's pretty much fine now, though not what it once was.

“Well, hey, what is?” he says. “Anyway, go ahead.”

The conversation that follows—he makes clear at several points—isn't always to Trump's liking. At times I think his affront may be tactical, a way to better control the situation, but just as often he seems genuinely perplexed and annoyed that someone like him, a nice guy who is trying to give his best to the American people and who is riding high in every early poll, who is giving up his Monday lunchtime to share his considerable charm, should be asked to explain himself like this. In these moments, I have to remind myself of the remarkable and extensive catalog of incendiary comments he has made, and positions he has taken, as he has blitzkrieged the ill-prepared and undefended barricades of the American political process.

But I start by discussing a small personal peculiarity.

GQ: You don't shake hands, do you? (1)

DONALD TRUMP: Oh yeah, no, I do shake hands. Well, I've been saying, and it's been borne out…if you have a cold, you pass the cold along to other people, or a flu. But no, I shake hands very gladly politically. I don't think you could be a politician if you didn't shake hands. Can you imagine if I refused to shake anybody's hands? [“No,” chimes in Ms. Hicks, who will be remaining here for our interview.] No—bottom line, I shake hands.

But if you go the whole way, you're going to have to touch a lot of dirty hands between now and next November.

I've been doing it. [Ms. Hicks: “He's been doing it. Thirty thousand people at a rally the other week—he shook a lot of hands.”] I've been shaking thousands and thousands of hands on a daily basis, actually.

Does it make you shiver a little bit inside?

No, it's part of what I have to do to make America great again.

Are you having fun?

I'm having a good time. Because of the success of it, perhaps. It makes it a lot easier than some people that are not doing well. But I've really enjoyed it. I really have.

Many years ago you said, “The fun is in the getting, not the having,” and I guess some people wonder whether that's your attitude toward the presidency.

No, actually in this case I don't think there's fun involved. It will be constant work to turn the country around because we have 50 million people on welfare, we have tremendous poverty levels at record numbers. We have almost a hundred million people out of work, out of the workforce. (2)

Putting it in the most basic way, there's a lot of people who really like you, but there's a lot of people who are deeply skeptical of your motives. Some people think it's a campaign driven by egotism, aimless ambition, and arrogance.

[slightly indignant half laugh] This doesn't sound like a nice question! Look, I just have one thing in mind, and that's doing a great job for the country. Everybody has their detractors. Some people say arrogance, or whatever they may say. I only have one thing in mind and that's doing a great job for the country.

Whenever you explain why you'd be a very fine president, a lot of what you say seems to boil down to: Look, just shut up and trust me—I'd be really good at this. I know I would.

Well, I have been issuing a lot of policy over the last two-week period. But there is a certain amount of truth to that. I mean, I've had tremendous success, and I've just done it. And a lot of my supporters agree with that.

You've broken many of the rules of how candidates usually act....

That's true. That, I agree with you. They say there's never been anything like this.

For instance, in recent times you've referred to other people as: a loser, a total loser, a massive loser, grotesque, a moron, an obvious moron, a spoiled brat, a totally incompetent jerk, a stiff, a dummy, a bimbo, a clown, a low-class slob, a perv sleazebag, a major sleaze and buffoon, a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain, a goofball atheist, a dope, a dummy dope, a dopey clown, a dog, and so on.

Well, other people have said a lot of things about things, too. They've said plenty of bad stuff.

But you've got a vocabulary and an approach that's different.

Probably. Probably that's why people are here, that's why I have this, you know. [He gestures to the stacks of magazines lying between us.] Every magazine cover. And maybe we'll have another. Are we gonna be the cover story, do you know? Or not? We should be, we should be. Based on merit, we should be. But we'll see. Not sure I want it. You're going to ask a positive question before the interview's over, right?