I had likened him to a male hangingfly, a type of insect that catches and kills other insects, then uses its prize to seduce a passing female. While she dines on his nuptial gift, he gets to mate with her. The bigger the gift, the more leisurely the mating.

Some male hangingflies aren’t all that interested in leisure, though, and this is the part that reminded me of Mr. Trump. They grab back the nuptial gift after a bit and carry it off to seduce other females. It was like Mr. Trump giving his second wife, Marla Maples, a prenuptial agreement that would eventually have provided her with a serious piece of his fortune — then dumping her just months before her entitlement was to come due. Had I known about his $916 million business loss in 1995, I might also have mentioned certain other male insects that are thought to suck all the nutrition out of the nuptial gift first, seducing females with little more than the wrapping.

But then the notorious 2005 “Access Hollywood” video made it abundantly evident that Mr. Trump regarded himself as the gift, splendidly desirable to all women, and entitled, in the event of resistance, to various forms of sexual assault. He was, to be frank, lower than a hangingfly.

I began to entertain the terrible thought that Mr. Trump had not actually read my book. I wasn’t even sure the ghostwriter he’d hired had read it. They merely plundered it for quotes, skipping over the part about how he was born rich but still managed to mock other scions of inherited wealth as members of the “lucky sperm” club, and also the part about how his father incessantly urged him on, chanting, “you are a killer … you are a king.”

The thing in my book that caught Mr. Trump’s eye was a line about the advantages of looking like a lunatic. It’s right up front in his introduction: “Almost all successful alpha personalities display a single-minded determination to impose their vision on the world, an irrational belief in unreasonable goals, bordering at times on lunacy.” He also liked the idea that it was possible to win the game of chicken by convincing opponents that “he might actually enjoy a head-on collision.”