Even for Donald Trump, the distance is still fun
to think about, up here in his penthouse 600 ft. in the sky, where it’s hard to
make out the regular people below. The ice skaters swarming Central Park’s
Wollman Rink look like old-television static, and the Fifth Avenue holiday
shoppers could be mites in a gutter. To even see this view, elevator operators,
who spend their days standing in place, must push a button marked 66–68,
announcing all three floors of Trump’s princely pad. Inside, staff members wear
cloth slipcovers on their shoes, so as not to scuff the shiny marble or stain
the plush cream carpets.
This is, in short, not a natural place to refine
the common touch. It’s gilded and gaudy, a dreamscape of faded tapestry,
antique clocks and fresco-style ceiling murals of gym-rat Greek gods. The throw
pillows carry the Trump shield, and the paper napkins are monogrammed with the
family name. His closest neighbors, at least at this altitude, are an
international set of billionaire moguls who have decided to stash their money
at One57 and 432 Park, the two newest skyscrapers to remake midtown Manhattan.
There is no tight-knit community in the sky, no paperboy or postman, no bowling
over brews after work.
President-elect Donald
Trump photographed at his penthouse on the 66th floor of Trump Tower in New
York City on Nov. 28.
And yet here Trump resides, under dripping
crystal, with diamond cuff links, as the President-elect of the United States
of America. The Secret Service agents milling about prove that it really
happened, this election result few saw coming. Hulking and serious, they
gingerly try to stay on the marble, avoiding the carpets with their uncovered
shoes. On his wife Melania’s desk, next to books of Gianni Versace’s fashions
and Elizabeth Taylor’s jewelry, a new volume sits front and center: The
White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families.
For all of Trump’s public life, tastemakers and
intellectuals have dismissed him as a vulgarian and carnival barker, a showman
with big flash and little substance. But what those critics never understood
was that their disdain gave him strength. For years, he fed off the disrespect
and used it to grab more tabloid headlines, to connect to common people. Now he
has upended the leadership of both major political parties and effectively
shifted the political direction of the international order. He will soon
command history’s most lethal military, along with economic levers that can
change the lives of billions. And the people he has to thank are those he calls
“the forgotten,” millions of American voters who get paid by the hour in shoes
that will never touch these carpets—working folk, regular Janes and Joes, the
dots in the distance.
It’s a topic Trump wants to discuss as he
settles down in his dining room, with its two-story ceiling and marble table
the length of a horseshoe pitch: the winning margins he achieved in West
Virginia coal country, the rally crowds that swelled on Election Day, what
he calls that “interesting thing,” the contradiction at the core of his appeal.
“What amazes a lot of people is that I’m sitting in an apartment the likes of
which nobody’s ever seen,” the next President says, smiling. “And yet I
represent the workers of the world.”
The late Fidel Castro would probably spit out
his cigar if he heard that one—a billionaire who branded excess claiming the
slogans of the proletariat. But Trump doesn’t care. “I’m representing them, and
they love me and I love them,” he continues, talking about the people of
Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the struggling Rust Belt necklace
around the Great Lakes that delivered his victory. “And here we sit, in very
different circumstances.”
The Last, Greatest Deal
For nearly 17 months on the campaign trail, Trump did what no American politician had attempted in a generation, with defiant flair. Instead of painting a bright vision for a unified future, he magnified the divisions of the present, inspiring new levels of anger and fear within his country. Whatever you think of the man, this much is undeniable: he uncovered an opportunity others didn’t believe existed, the last, greatest deal for a 21st century salesman. The national press, the late-night comics, the elected leaders, the donors, the corporate chiefs and a sitting President who prematurely dropped his mic—they all believed he was just taking the country for a ride. More at Time
For nearly 17 months on the campaign trail, Trump did what no American politician had attempted in a generation, with defiant flair. Instead of painting a bright vision for a unified future, he magnified the divisions of the present, inspiring new levels of anger and fear within his country. Whatever you think of the man, this much is undeniable: he uncovered an opportunity others didn’t believe existed, the last, greatest deal for a 21st century salesman. The national press, the late-night comics, the elected leaders, the donors, the corporate chiefs and a sitting President who prematurely dropped his mic—they all believed he was just taking the country for a ride. More at Time
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