AS THE DONALD TURNS

Brash and often outrageous in public, Trump’s defenders say he’s deeper than that

In an appearance on CNN, the celebrity businessman delivered a glowing appraisal of Hillary Clinton as a potential president of the United States. “Very talented, very smart,” he told the cable network in 2007. “I think she’s a very, very brilliant person, and as a senator in New York, she has done a great job.”

Is Clinton ready to be commander in chief ? “I think she is.”

Eight years later, it’s hard to believe that same businessman — Donald Trump, a unique hybrid of real-estate mogul, reality-television megastar and political gadfly — is the most controversial, and popular, among a flock of Republican presidential candidates eagerly catering to the party’s right wing.

Most North Americans know something of the Celebrity Apprentice frontman — bombastic, self-promoting, ostentatious and wildly successful at most of what he touches.

But as he surges from novelty candidate to the head of the GOP field after inflammatory comments about Mexican immigrants, it’s easy to forget some of the surprising twists, turns and contradictions in Trump’s past.

His origin story even has a Canadian chapter: the family fortune traces back to the Klondike gold rush.

More recently, not only was Trump a fan of Clinton, who sat in the front pew at his most recent wedding, but once donated more money to Democrats than Republicans, heartily promoted universal health care and was a registered Democrat for most of the last decade.

In the last few years, he has fought hard to earn his conservative credentials, not least by leading the fringe “birther” movement that questioned Barack Obama’s right to be president.

“One thing you have to know: Donald is not a rigid ideologue,” says Chris Ruddy, head of the conservative Newsmax magazine and friend of Trump. “He adapts and changes and reflects, and he positions differently over time … Donald has always been a free thinker. You’re not going to be able to pigeonhole him.”

Skeptics wonder, however, if Trump’s current political incarnation and foray into the presidential race isn’t about something else: magnifying his own outsize image for profit. Ruddy says he doubts that, estimating the fallout from the Mexican-immigrant comments has probably cost Trump businesses US$50 million.

But even Conrad Black, the former press baron who still calls Trump a loyal friend and a trustworthy business associate, is not sure why the man is trying to become president.

“In his public initiatives, it is rarely clear from the outside if he is seeking what he apparently aspires to, or is building his brand,” Black said.

That brand certainly seems to be everywhere, including on a luxury hotel in downtown Toronto, high-end condo towers, casinos, cologne, steaks and top-flight golf courses from New Jersey to Scotland.

Trump’s mother actually was Scottish, his paternal grandfather an immigrant from Germany — originally named Fried- rich Drumpf — who eventually made his way to the American West. Reinvented as Fred Trump, he trekked north of the border in 1898, opening the New Arctic Restaurant and Hotel to cater to the flood of prospectors hoping to strike it rich in Yukon’s Klondike gold rush.

The family ended up in Queens, N.Y., with the hotelier’s son, also Fred, becoming a wealthy real-estate developer, specializing in apartments for middleclass residents of the outer boroughs.

If Trump’s father was his doorway into the world of business, his mother Mary, with her “flair for the dramatic,” was a model for personal style, says biographer Gwenda Blair.

Donald’s own flamboyance would become apparent as he ventured into the more glamorous world of Manhattan real estate in the 1970s, quickly becoming the city’s most famous builder.

His investments in Atlantic City casinos almost spelled the end of his burgeoning empire, though, pushing him close to personal bankruptcy in 1991.

Meanwhile, two high-profile divorces — his first wife, Ivana, dubbed him The Donald — only added to the fame.

Then, of course, there was his golden dive into television and the hugely popular Apprentice programs.

“I always tell him he won the Triple Crown of American life,” says Ruddy. “He’s at the top of the business world, the entertainment world … and also politics.”

The result, according to a financial summary his campaign released this week: he claims he is now worth US$10 billion.

That blend of extreme wealth and unvarnished, New York personality certainly seems attractive to some Americans. Buzzfeed quoted a Trump aide in 2011 as saying he appeals to blue-collar voters who think, “Wow, if I was rich, that’s how I would live.”

Yet Trump is far from universally loved, even in a country that prizes swagger and individuality.

The constant braggadocio and inelegant commentary have led naysayers to label him boorish and abrasive. There is another Donald Trump, though, that comes out in person, and off camera, Ruddy insists.

“Everybody I’ve ever introduced to him, they can’t believe how down to earth, what a nice guy (he is),” the media entrepreneur said in an interview. “There is a certain amount of humility that people are missing.”

Black is unhesitant in praising Trump, who bought the Chicago SunTimes building from Black’s former company Hollinger, and came to the defence of the National Post founder during his legal troubles.

“Donald Trump is a loyal friend, a brilliant raconteur, a man of impeccable ethics in my dealings with him and a quality builder and developer,” Black says.

Some of the ideas espoused by America’s most celebrated capitalist in his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, also seem at odds with today’s image.

Although much of the manifesto was broadly conservative, he called for a universal, single-payer health-care system, abortion rights, and a one-time tax on the wealthy to help pay down the debt.

One thing you have to know: Donald is not a rigid ideologue

It is, he said, “only reasonable to shift the burden to those most able to pay.”

In that 2007 CNN interview he also blasted the U.S. war in Iraq as “one of the greatest catastrophes of all time,” founded on the Bush administration’s “lies.”

Trump has steered right since, repeatedly slamming Obamacare, calling for reduced taxes and arguing Iraq should actually pay back the U.S. in oil for the “favour” of bringing it freedom.

He has suggested climate change is a “hoax,” vaccines might cause autism and Obama was born in Kenya.

Larry Sabato, a presidential politics expert at the University of Virginia, is appalled such a volatile figure is a leading candidate to be president of the United States, and foresees him hurting the Republicans before ultimately losing the nom- ination.

“This is just absurd, in so many different ways,” says Sabato. But American presidential selection “has always been a little bit insane.”

Trump’s contentious rhetoric has, in fact, sent shivers through the Republican establishment, with a senior official urging him to tone things down.

That came after Trump’s campaign launch, in which he said Mexico is “sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Several business partners, including NBC, have severed ties with him over the remarks — at odds with statistics showing illegal aliens are, if anything, less likely to commit violent crimes — but Trump’s views appear to be resonating with the Republican base.

A poll for USA Today by Boston’s Suffolk University this past week put him at the front of the pack with 17-per-cent support.

Regarding the Mexican comments, meanwhile, Black maintains Trump “is not a bigoted or intolerant person.”

But don’t expect the blunt opinions to stop if Trump advances in the race to become president, says Ruddy.

“It could hurt him politically, but I don’t think he wants to be political,” he says.

“He’s talking Donald Trump just from the heart, and he doesn’t care if people don’t like it.”