I meet Trump for our official interview around 5 p.m. in the “living room” — a cavernous, ornate chamber at the center of the complex with high gold ceilings, massive chandeliers, and a collection of flamboyantly baroque furniture spread throughout the premises. Trump leads Nunberg and me to a large dining hall, where the staff is setting the table for a wine dinner to be held later tonight. He introduces me to an older, German-accented gentleman who appears to be in charge of the event.

“He’s the biggest blogger in the world,” Trump tells the man. “You look at him, and he’s sort of handsome, but his power is immense.” He turns to me. “Isn’t that right?”

Before I can answer, he is facing the German gentleman again. “Have you heard of BuzzFeed?”

The man doesn’t want to say no, but it’s clear he’s unfamiliar.



“It used to be the New York Times, now it’s BuzzFeed,” Trump explains. He pauses a beat, and then adds, almost wistfully, “The world has changed.”



Before Nunberg leaves us to our interview, he tells Trump he has “good news.” “CNN, Fox, and MSNBC all covered your speech,” Nunberg reports.



“That’s good!” Trump replies, straining to conceal his excitement. He nods approvingly as the aide describes each network’s treatment, and when the briefing ends, Trump seems satisfied: “Good.”



We retreat to a den off the main room, this one with walnut-paneled walls and a large portrait of a young, sweater-clad Trump staring down at us. I ask him why he believes the media are so interested in him. “I don’t know, but they have been forever,” he says emphatically. He claims that even when he played baseball as a teenager at a military school in upstate New York, his talents were the talk of the town. “If I got a hit, I got bigger stories than other people who got a hit.” (Exactly which news outlets were clamoring to cover his high school baseball heroics, he does not specify.) Later in life, the legendary boxing promoter Don King told Trump, “You have the look. You are the only one who has the look.” Trump doesn’t explain what this means, but it appears to have stuck with him. “Maybe it’s what I say, maybe it’s a look — you never know what it is. But I get a lot of press.”



“I mean, you see it today,” he continues. “It’s all over the place on television. The speech is all over. Every time I turn on the news I see myself on television. I mean, I’m not looking for it. You know, I’m watching CNN, I’m watching MSNBC, I’m watching Fox, and it’s all over the place. And it had a big impact.”



While it is thrilling to watch Trump concoct his spin in real time — whipping a few raw data points into an oozy lather of absurd hyperbole and fast-talking salesmanship — it is clearly not the whole truth. One of the least believable plotlines in Trump’s self-styled personal narrative is his dutiful endurance of a spotlight he claims to never seek. He labors to exhibit nonchalance when I ask questions about his relationship with the media. “I don’t have a press agent, you know,” he says. And in 1997, he told the New Yorker, “I think the thing I’m worst at is managing the press.”



But in fact, Trump’s preternatural ability to hold the media’s attention is arguably his most impressive and enduring talent, one that has been central to his long career as a showman. His most elaborate, and perversely effective, political performance in 2012 was his yearlong “birther” crusade, during which he riled up the right-wing fever swamps with a conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born outside the United States and engaged in a large-scale cover-up so that he would appear constitutionally eligible to run for president. Trump championed the theory in front of every camera he came across, and he claimed to have sent investigators to Hawaii to unearth the truth. The message appealed to the worst instincts of the conservative fringe and drew charges of racism from many corners, but it proved irresistible to cable news bookers. (For the record, he denies that his accusations were racially motivated: “I am so not a racist, it’s incredible,” he says.) Later, Trump tried to up the ante by publicly offering to donate $5 million to a charity of Obama’s choice if he would release his college transcripts and passport paperwork — but by then, even many of his fans were rolling their eyes, and reporters who had once covered his various stunts with gusto were now openly mocking him. Stephen Colbert seemed to capture the general sentiment when he responded by offering to donate $1 million to Trump’s favorite charity “if you will let me dip my balls in your mouth.”



I ask Trump if he has ever heard the word “trolling,” and at his request, I define it for him. He mulls it over for a second, and then confesses, “I do love provoking people. There is truth to that. I love competition, and sometimes competition is provoking people. I don’t mind provoking people. Especially when they’re the right kind of people.”



A large part of his success in working the press is rooted in the strategic relationships he has cultivated with prominent media personalities. He is not a news junkie per se, but a collector of journalistic alliances. When I ask him who his favorite reporters are, he ticks off 18 names in rapid succession. They include Times columnist Maureen Dowd (“a terrific person”); Diane Sawyer (also “a terrific person”); New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser (“a firecracker” who “actually is a legitimate reporter”); Good Morning America co-host George Stephanopoulos (“he has treated me really, really fairly”); CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer (“such a professional”); Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski (“they have a wonderful show”); the entire Fox News primetime lineup; Rush Limbaugh; Mark Levin; and, of course, Mark Halperin.



“It’s funny; I have a tremendous hit show on NBC, and the NBC guys…” he pauses to choose his words carefully. “Chuck Todd does not treat me nicely… Brian Williams is not someone who treats me well.” But, he hastens to add, “That’s his prerogative.”



Eventually, he arrives at the template he uses to judge reporters. “I go by two things: I go by how well they treat me, and I go by if they are fair and if they are right.”



Trump explains that he doesn’t necessarily “like” the members of the press so much as he “respect[s]” them. More to the point, he understands them — how to feed them, how to flatter them, how to use them, how to put on a show for them, and how to intimidate them. Sometimes, he does all of it in one interview.



At one point in our conversation, I check my iPhone to make sure the app I’m using to record the interview is still working. Trump glances down at the screen and asks, “Who’s that?”



I tell him it’s a picture of my wife and 1-year-old daughter.



“Wife and baby? Wow! Congratulations!” he emotes. “I was just looking down and saying, ‘Wow, that’s a good-looking woman!’”



But later in our interview, he feels compelled to fire a warning shot. “If I am treated unfairly, I will go after that reporter,” he tells me. Trump, who doesn’t use email, has been known to print out articles about himself that he doesn’t like and scrawl handwritten hate notes across the top before mailing them to reporters.



“Are you going to come after me when this article comes out?” I ask.



“Maybe.”



Near the end of our conversation, I try to press him on the unsolved mystery of his motivations. I tell him flatly that I’m skeptical he will ever actually run for president — or governor of New York for that matter — and that I’m confused about why he’s so intent on keeping up the pretense. He insists that he’s serious, and I insist that he’s not. Running for office, I tell him, would mean spending months or even years enduring the joyless slog of the campaign trail — giving speeches to small, sweaty audiences, maneuvering through crowded diners, sucking up to obscure state senators. And, in the end, the house awarded to the winner would be an undeniable downgrade from his current digs.

“It’s not glamorous,” I tell him.



“Not like this,” he says, extending his arms in recognition of our surroundings. “The endgame would be that I think I could do an incredible job. I think this country has great potential. I want to make this country strong and rich again.”



It’s a stump speech. Isn’t it possible he’s simply bored with real estate and reality TV, that he’s searching for stimulation?



Trump shrugs. “Who knows what’s in the deepest part of my mind? That could be possible.”



This seems to be about as introspective as Trump is willing to get, so I wrap up our interview and thank him for his time and hospitality. But as we make our way back through the living room, where white-shirted servers nod deferentially as we pass, I keep thinking about something he told me during one of his long diatribes about the burdens of fame. He was recalling the swarm of fans that surrounded him in Manchester earlier this morning asking for pictures and autographs. “You know, it’s a lot of work to smile for an hour and a half,” he said. “At the same time, I always say to myself, how would it be if I stood there and there was nobody wanting it? That wouldn’t be so nice either.”



Within the bubble of luxury and loyalty Trump has created for himself, he hears about his own greatness every day from people on his payroll, or people who profit from his TV show, or people who are simply excited to see a famous person in real life. In this context, his mission to make me and my colleagues in the political press take him seriously seems to have little to do with answering a call to public service, or even a juvenile cry for attention. It’s about satisfying his insatiable thirst for validation from a world where people don’t reflexively call him “Mr. Trump.”



By the time we step outside, the sun has almost set behind the well-placed palm trees that populate Mar-a-Lago’s carefully manicured grounds. Trump says it’s a shame my wife couldn’t join me here.



“Yeah,” I agree. “She’s very jealous.”



We chat briefly about family, and for the first time all day, he momentarily seems more like a human being than a cartoon character. I tell him I’m eager to see my daughter again.



“Enjoy that,” Trump says. “There’s nothing better. Trust me, there’s nothing better.”

Later that night, Nunberg and I are dining on shrimp salad and steak at a table near the outdoor bar when Trump spots us.



“Have you begun doing your work?” he asks me, jabbing his index fingers into the air, in an action I think is supposed to resemble typing.



“I just started transcribing,” I tell him.



The conversation turns to the blizzard in New York, and we inform him that the earliest flights home we could book were for tomorrow evening. Trump waves down our waitress and instructs her to open up the spa store so that we can pick out suitable beach attire for the following day. “Whatever they want, give it to them. On the house!”



I thank him, but decline, again citing my company’s ethics policy. He ignores me. “Stay as long as you want.”