INSIDE TRUMP’S (JOLLY MESSY) TEMPLE OF NARCISSISM
The hOPeLeSSLY cluttered desk is littered with books and magazines bearing the image of a very famous man. On just one wall, next to items of personal memorabilia hang ten framed photographs of the same, instantly recognisable individual.
On the gold-plated windowsill sit yet more glossy shots of the man himself and his immediate family. Next to them are several dozen sporting trophies and business awards, while in pride of place is a replica antique firearm.
Who could possibly live in a house like this? Why, Donald J. Trump, of course.
ever since his election he has been holed up in this lavishly decorated room on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, a skyscraper next to Central Park in New York, where the 70-year-old lives in a vast penthouse apartment with third wife Melania, 46, and their son Barron.
The palatial office, carpeted in the style of a mid-market cruise liner, was photographed this week when Trump was interviewed by the journalist and Tory MP Michael Gove.
The result provided a fascinating insight into the psyche of the man who intends to Make America Great Again.
As befits an individual who chooses to put his own name on tall buildings and aeroplanes, the room is in many ways a temple of narcissism.
In addition to the magazine covers and photographs of Trump posing with celebrities, the walls are covered in framed medals and certificates proclaiming various good deeds.
On the Brazilian rosewood desk are multiple copies of books and magazines bearing his image, along with yet more pictures of himself. Just behind his leather armchair (and out of shot) is a bottle of empire by Trump, his personal cologne.
Sold as ‘the perfect accessory for the confident man determined to make his mark with passion, perseverance and drive’, the scent is claimed to have a ‘compelling’ aroma of ‘peppermint, spicy chai and a hint of apple’ which has been designed to ‘leave a lasting impression’.
UNDer the desk, though, is a cardboard box stuffed with rolled-up posters and junk. In an interview, Trump conceded that the room was ‘a little bit junk-y’ but explained that he can’t help but acquire new belongings, as he is continually being sent them by friends and admirers.
One corner of the room contains Trump’s collection of sports memorabilia — a New england Patriots American football helmet worn in the Super Bowl by his chum Tom Brady, who is married to the supermodel Gisele Bundchen, along with boxer Mike Tyson’s championship belt.
To those who have described the room as rather chaotic, Trump retorts that clutter is a corollary of success.
‘It’s actually very neat,’ he once claimed. ‘I know where everything is. But if you look around, I mean there’s a lot of stuff. People who are very successful, in many cases have a lot going on, on their desk.’
equally noteworthy is what is absent from the room.
Perhaps reflecting his advanced years (he will be the oldest incoming president in history), Trump rarely uses a computer — although he is adept with a mobile phone, as his regular forays on Twitter prove.
Believed to dislike email, he is regularly handed paper printouts of web pages by his aides. On the rare occasions when he must use a computer, he taps away with one finger on an Apple MacBook.
In days, he moves into the White house and, like all new presidents, he will be allowed to design a large customised rug for the Oval Office floor.
President Obama’s carried quotations from the civil rights leader Martin Luther King. George W. Bush’s had an image of the sun, to reflect optimism.
President Trump’s will perhaps be woven in gold thread and adorned with a large picture of... President Trump.
MOUNTED replica War of Independence musket named after a U.S. soldier and spy executed by the British aged 21 in 1776, who said: ‘My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country.’ The Nathan Hale Patriot Award was given to Trump by the Citadel Republican Society, a student group at a military college in South Carolina.
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CERTIFICATE that lists Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc on the New York Stock Exchange. Issued in 1995, it is framed alongside a 1923 picture of the stock exchange building. Trump’s firm later filed for bankruptcy — dismissed by him as merely ‘a technical thing’ to help restructuring — and then changed name to Trump Entertainment Resorts.
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A VINTAGE magazine article about the Bank of Manhattan Building — the 71-storey New York skyscraper nicknamed ‘the Crown Jewel of Wall Street’ when completed in 1930 and then renamed The Trump Building after he bought it in 1995.
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AN EMBROIDERED certificate in recognition of his support for the charity the Jewish National Fund. He once said: ‘This is the Tree of Life, which is a very big award in terms of everything that I stand for. It means so much to me, and a lot of times I’ll have friends come in, Jewish, and they’ll see the Tree of Life and say: “Wow, what a great thing!” ’
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A SMALL-SCALE version of the hull of a boat which is a memento of his estimated multi-million-dollar sponsorship of the U.S. crew in the America’s Cup in 1987. After their victory, he paid for the crew to have a ticker-tape parade up New York’s Fifth Avenue.
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HIS DAD, Fred — to whom he owes his fortune. The shrewd property magnate was the son of German immigrants and, like Donald, a showboating self-promoter. Once arrested while wearing white robes at a Ku Klux Klan rally, he died aged 93 in 1999. This photo has not previously been seen on Trump’s desk — suggesting it was placed there for this photo for PR reasons.
THE recently published debut novel Beautiful Country by 21-yearold Harvard student John Randolph Thornton. It’s about a 14-year-old American tennis prodigy sent to train in China, which the blurb says is ‘a country in transition’ — very different from Trump’s view that China is ‘raping’ America’s economy.
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TEN copies of Time magazine published last month which chose Trump as its ‘person of the year’ — adding him to a roll-call which includes Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and every other modern U.S. president.
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COPIES of Britain’s Financial Times — which recently said he has ‘a thin skin and a questionable temperament’, a ‘fatal flaw in his character’ and accused him of having ‘demonstrated contempt towards American democracy’. No wonder these copies seem unread, although Trump is an FT subscriber.
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A CAR bumper sticker massproduced during the election campaign with his catchphrase ‘Make America Great Again’. Originally, there was a pile on the desk but visitors have been given them as souvenirs, so only a few remain.
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A SHELF crammed with family photos. They depict daughters Ivanka and Tiffany; youngest son Barron; eldest boys Eric and Donald Jr, and third wife Melania. The rest of the windowsill (out of shot) holds a collection of trophies, some of which Trump won playing golf.
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TWO copies of Unprecedented: The Election That Changed Everything, which recounts his victorious campaign. Published by TV network CNN, which he accused of ‘fake news’ last week after its report about the dodgy dossier about his alleged misbehaviour in a Moscow hotel. The cover has a quote from his victory speech: ‘Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division.’
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HIS enemies may wish him to be dumped into the waste bin of history, but this is where he puts his own rubbish. Most unglamorous for a man whose £80million penthouse drips with gold, the plastic liner is messily tied with a knot.
SECOND PICTURE
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‘MERIT in Civic Architecture and Urban Design’ award for the Trump Tower Retail Atrium — a five-storey atrium featuring a 60ft waterfall in the 68-storey tower — presented by City Club Of New York.
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THE Sholom Humanitarian Award said to be presented by ‘the Jewish community’. However, a gong of that exact name does not seem to exist — unlike a Beth Sholom Humanitarian Award, made annually by a Canadian Jewish organisation, but Trump’s name is not on its published list of recipients.
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CERTIFICATE ‘in gratitude and recognition of outstanding commitment and financial support given to The Fund for America’s Future’, a lobby group supporting candidates who back ‘limited government, strengthening the American family, a strong national defence and common sense, conservative reform’. George H.W. Bush, then Vice-President, gave it to Trump in 1986.
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SIGNED photograph of beauty pageant contestants believed to be from a Miss USA contest. Trump owned the Miss Universe Organisation, which included Miss USA and Miss Teen USA, for nearly two decades but sold up in 2015 when judges, sponsors and broadcasters quit in protest after Trump characterised Mexicans as rapists and criminals.
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MOST of this section of the wall is covered by magazine cover stories featuring Trump, published since 1980. The GQ headline says ‘Success — how sweet it is. Men who take risks and make millions.’
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JUST visible behind Trump is a photo of him and Ronald Reagan at the White House. ‘I had a very good relationship with him,’ he recently claimed. ‘Not a big relationship, because I was young, but he liked me and I liked him.’
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COVER of Playboy’s March 1990 issue featuring Trump with 18-yearold ‘Playmate of the Month’ Brandi Brandt. The issue carries an interview with Trump in which he says: ‘I don’t want to be president. I’m 100 per cent sure.’ For her part, Brandt was jailed for being involved in a drugs ring which hid cocaine in plane toilets bound for Australia in 2014.
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A MOUNTED boomerang presented in 1995 by the Forum Club, a networking organisation, for achieving the ‘Comeback of the Decade’ — becoming solvent after being millions in debt following the Eighties collapse of property prices.
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A COVER of the daily showbiz magazine Variety from 2004, when the final of the Trump-hosted American version of The Apprentice was the No.1 show on U.S. TV, with 28 million viewers. Ratings later dwindled. He quit the programme in 2015 to run for president.
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PICTURED with JFK’s playboy son John F. Kennedy Jr, who died in a plane crash in 1999 aged 38.
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A PLAQUE presented to Trump as founder of the Alexis De Tocqueville Society, a version of the Rotary Club and named after the 19th-century French sociologist whose book Democracy In America is a trenchant treatise on equality and individualism.