Was he always so lucky? Yes. Was wealth an aphrodisiac? No. In October 1980, Donald Trump, 34 years old, slender and soft-spoken, had answered a series of such questions from the gossip columnist Rona Barrett when he suddenly shifted the conversation onto a very different plane. When Ms Barrett asked about his destruction of some celebrated Art Deco reliefs as he made room for a new apartment building—he would name it Trump Tower—he praised himself for making a hard decision, and then went on to say the country could use such leadership. He said it would earn America the respect it lacked in the world.