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He understands Trump’s sleeping patterns and how he likes his steak (“It would rock on the plate, it was so well done”), and how Trump insists — despite the hair salon on the premises — on doing his own hair.

Senecal knows how to stroke his ego and lift his spirits, like the time years ago he received an urgent warning from Trump’s soon-to-land plane that the mogul was in a sour mood. Senecal quickly hired a bugler to play “Hail to the Chief” as Trump stepped out of his limousine to enter Mar-a-Lago.

Most days, though, he greeted Trump with little fanfare, taking the suit he arrived in to be pressed in the full-service laundry in the basement.

The next morning, before dawn and after about four hours’ sleep, Trump would meet him at the arched entrance of his private quarters to accept a bundle of newspapers including The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post and the Palm Beach papers. Trump would emerge hours later, in khakis, a white golf shirt and baseball cap. If the cap was white, the staff noticed, the boss was in a good mood. If it was red, it was best to stay away.

On Sundays, Trump would drive himself to his nearby golf course, alternating each year between his black Bentley and his white Bentley.

Senecal tried to retire in 2009, but Trump decided he was irreplaceable, so while Senecal was relieved of his butler duties, he has been kept around as a kind of unofficial historian at Mar-a-Lago. “Tony, to retire is to expire,” Trump told him. “I’ll see you next season.”