In 1988, The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee interviewed Donald Trump, about whom she wrote, “[His g]litz, greed, glamour and an ambition so colossal that it will probably not rest until he rules the world – which one day he just might.”

So what do you do when you’re only 41 and you have made more money than you could ever spend? He is lionised in a city of lions. People try to touch him in the street, as if some of the gold might come off, the Man with the Midas Fist. ‘What else is there?’ he asks. ‘It’s all a game. I’m young, and I’m just coming up to the best part.’

Maybe now, I naively suggest, he can apply his talents to solving the appalling problems of the city he half owns? Even as his ten million dollar apartments multiply, just around the corner is the West’s worst squalor, danger, decay and disgrace. If he’s looking for new challenges, they are all around him. He has, after all, just taken on the renovation of the Wollman Ice Skating Rink in Central Park, which had run into such catastrophic problems under mismanagement by the city council. He couldn’t bear to watch it out of his window, so he did it himself, to resounding applause and adulation. Had that given him a taste for taking on New York’s disaster areas?

‘Challenges?’ he said. As people always do, I had underestimated the scope of his ambition. It certainly wasn’t centred on solving New York’s housing crisis. ‘I hate what’s happening to this country,’ he says, with a trace of fervour. ‘We’re getting kicked around by the Japanese, and they’re making the United States look foolish. Our politicians don’t know what they’re doing. Japan is shaming us out of our dignity. They are buying up everything. So is Europe and the United States is becoming the whipping post of its allies.’ So the carefully placed rumours are true, Donald J Trump does want to stand for President? The faintest of smiles: ‘Not for a period but I am involved politically. You could do it from where I am.’ It is said he once said: ‘If I want to be President, then I’ll be President.’

He is beginning now to sound approximately like a politician. What would his platform be? ‘Respect,’ he says and pauses heavily. ‘Respect.’ He sounds like the Godfather. ‘We’re a second rate economic power, a debtor nation. We’re getting kicked around.’ I try to imagine the kind of deals he would make with Gorbachev, and fail. I choose an issue. What would he do about Iran, for instance? ‘I’d be harsh on Iran. They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools. One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it. Iran can’t even beat Iraq, yet they push the United States around. It’d be good for the world to take them on.’ [Continue reading…]