CitizenTrumpUpends

#CitizenTrumpUpends
The Oval Office

#FORBES #AND #DONALD #TRUMP. Talk about a complicated
relationship. It’s been so for 35 years, since the birth of The
Forbes 400. First, he was Playboy Trump. Then, The Donald.
Then, Republican-candidate Trump. As New York’s ringmaster
extraordinaire, he loved our rich list—until the newest
one came out. Then he hated it, or at least the number we
pinned on him. It was always too low—or “very low,” as only
he can say it. As legend goes, it was so low one year he had
words with the Forbes family.
Now, as president of the United States, he sent signals he
wanted another Forbes cover (his fourth solo cover), much like
celebrities rack up hosting gigs on Saturday Night Live. In the
midst of a national tragedy, hurricanes and his early morning
Twitter fisticuffs, he was ready to make the time. We were
ready to oblige—in return for an interview focused on the first
business president. Forbes and Trump. Maybe it’s more of a
functional codependency.
Trump is Trump. He will always be so, whether sitting behind
a majestic desk in the Oval Office, where we talked with him
last week, or at the “very best” table at Jean-Georges, a threestar
Michelin restaurant in the Trump International Hotel &
Tower adjacent to Columbus Circle, where he took me to lunch
several years ago. Yet this time he feigned no interest in his
billions. No accountant was in tow to prove his net worth. Surrounding
him this day were paintings, sculptures and writings
of Washington and Lincoln. During our 50-minute interview
he never asked what the number would be, sparing us a tonguelashing
and an inaugural-crowd-like media brouhaha.
America’s CEO for ten months, Trump’s unique C-suite
mind has upended all White House norms, yet his new responsibilities
humbled him for a split second—“Nothing prepares
you for . . . when you send missiles, that means people
are going to die. And nothing prepares you for that.” That can
make it a “lonely” job, he says. He certainly snapped to life as
our camera crew walked in. Remember, he is the master of his
own image and was fixated on the photography.
And he loves his current real estate, even though it can
never really be his. The president joyfully showed our editor,
Randall Lane, and me a bit of his new stomping grounds—a
well-appointed terrace, a now-covered pool, a fabled room
and the beautiful golf-course-like greenery outside his Oval
Office window. He seemed as proud of the landscape as he
is of Mar-a-Lago. From the Big Apple to the nation’s capital,
Forbes and Trump live on