特朗普的祕密武器是親筆信
In one letter, Donald J. Trump ranted about the crisis of unsightly hot dog vendors on his beloved Fifth Avenue. “Having ketchup and mustard splattered all over the sidewalk,” he wrote, “is disgraceful.”
在一封信裏，唐納德·J·特朗普(Donald J. Trump)怒斥有損市容的熱狗小販給他鐘愛的第五大道帶來了危機。“把番茄醬和芥末撒得滿人行道都是，”他寫道，“簡直有失體統。”
In another note, he paid flowery tribute to his young wife, whom he referred to as “my little darling.” “You’re everything I hoped for,” he wrote.
在另一封短信裏，他把年輕的妻子喚作“我的小心肝兒”，並用華麗的辭藻讚美對方。“你是我渴望的一切，”他寫道。
In a different missive, he offered a rare admission of weakness, declaring, “I am nothing more than a frustrated writer of little talent.”
在另一封信函裏，他難得地承認自己也有弱點：“我只是一個才華匱乏、灰心喪氣的寫作者。”
Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is a master of modern media, exploiting Twitter and television to punish his enemies, energize his allies and promote himself.
穩獲共和黨總統候選人提名的特朗普精通現代媒體的運作，常常利用Twitter和電視臺懲罰敵人，激勵盟友，並進行自我推銷。
But perhaps his most powerful and memorable form of communication is the old-fashioned ritual of a personal letter, written on embossed paper or scrawled across a newspaper clipping, signed by hand and sent from the 26th floor of Trump Tower.
但他採用的最有效也最令人難忘的溝通方式，或許是遵循老派的禮儀寫下私人信函。有的信寫在壓紋紙上，有的則潦草地寫在報紙上，附帶手寫的簽名，寄信地址是特朗普大廈(Trump Tower)26樓。
Churned out prolifically from a computer-free desk, they are letters of gratitude, hate, flattery and revenge, dispatched to teenage admirers and big-city mayors, professional athletes and magazine editors. The tone can range from florid to juvenile, pleading to poisonous.
大量此類信函都是在一張並未擺放電腦的書桌上寫就的，用以傳達感激、憎惡、奉承、仇恨之意，會被送到十幾歲的仰慕者、大城市的市長、專業運動員、雜誌編輯各色人等手中。文風或華美或孩子氣，言辭或懇切或惡毒。
Tightly clutched and prominently displayed even by those who despise him, the epistles have become keepsakes and mementos for hundreds of people across the country. Viewed as a collection from the 1970s to now, they offer an unusual archive of his emotional ups and downs.
即便是鄙視他的人，也會把這些信件牢牢攥在手裏，擺放在顯眼的位置，它們已經被全國各地成百上千人當成了紀念品。在把這些信函當做1970年代至今的一系列信函收藏時，它們以一種獨特方式記錄了特朗普的情緒起伏。
The 2009 letter that Mr. Trump sent to Mike Tollin, a movie director, makes for painful reading: It denounced Mr. Tollin’s film about the collapse of the United States Football League, and about Mr. Trump’s role in the demise, as “third rate” and “extremely dishonest.” In a final, fulminating flourish, Mr. Trump wrote: “P.S. You are a loser.” Nevertheless, Mr. Tollin had the letter framed and he keeps it on a shelf in his office, next to photographs of his family.
在2009年，特朗普給電影導演邁克·託林(Mike Tollin)寫了一封絕對會令對方不快的信。託林拍了一部關於美國橄欖球聯盟(United States Football League)解體以及特朗普在其中所起作用的電影。特朗普在信中把科林的這部電影斥爲“三流”作品，稱其“極不誠實”。他在信末寫道：“另，你是一個失敗者。”儘管如此，科林還是把這封信裱了起來，擺在辦公室裏的一個架子上，就在他的家庭合影旁邊。
“People come by and immediately want to see it, touch it and hold it,” Mr. Tollin said with pride.
“人們來到這裏，立刻就想看到它、觸碰它、拿起它，”託林頗爲得意地說。
Today, as Mr. Trump tries to make peace with hostile figures in his party, the candidate renowned for his rhetorical flame throwing is deploying a conciliatory style of letter writing as his chief weapon.
如今，特朗普正竭力和共和黨內對他懷有敵意的人物搞好關係。因此，這位以言辭激烈著稱的候選人開始把書寫語帶安撫的信函當成自己的大殺招。
His handwritten overtures have started to arrive in the mailboxes of seemingly implacable foes, like Charlie Sykes, a conservative radio host in Milwaukee, who has described Mr. Trump as a “whiny, thin-skinned bully.”
他手寫的示好書箋，已經開始抵達看似與其有着不共戴天之仇的一些人士的信箱。比如曾管特朗普叫“愛抱怨的薄臉皮惡霸”的密爾沃基市保守派廣播主持人查理·賽克斯(Charlie Sykes)。
“Charlie,” began Mr. Trump’s note, scribbled with a thick black pen on the front page of The New York Times, next to an article about skeptical Republicans warming to Mr. Trump, “I hope you can change your mind.” Ever attuned to incentives, the real estate mogul dangled an offer: “Look forward to doing your show,” he wrote, adding, “I will win!”
“查理，”便箋的開頭，特朗普以粗黑筆體在《紐約時報》(The New York Times)頭版關於持懷疑態度的共和黨人開始接納特朗普的文章旁邊龍飛鳳舞地寫道，“我希望你能改變想法。”這位慣於採取激勵措施的地產大亨還在信中拋出了誘餌——“期待上你的節目”，並表示“我一定會贏！”。
It did not change Mr. Sykes’s dim view of Mr. Trump. But he was, he conceded, impressed by the gesture. “Give him credit that he’s doing this,” Mr. Sykes said. “He’s willing to do some things that might be somewhat at odds with his public image.”
這封信沒有改變賽克斯對特朗普的不良看法。但他承認，特朗普的姿態讓人印象深刻。“這樣做會給他加分，”賽克斯說。“他現在願意去做一些在某種程度上可能與他的公衆形象不太相符的事情。”
The letters — culled from personal and public archives — reveal Mr. Trump’s insecurities, but also his perceptiveness about power, ego and what motivates people. From early on, he seemed to intuitively grasp the potency of his praise when lavished on like-minded men.
這些信件——有些是私人收藏，有些則來自公共檔案館——揭示了特朗普的不安全感，但也表明他對權力和自我頗具洞察力，他清楚地知道什麼能給人以激勵。從很早開始，他似乎就本能地知道，自己對志同道合者的大力讚美有着怎樣的效力。
In the 1990s, Mr. Trump occasionally fawned over New York’s brash mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani. In one letter, Mr. Trump tore out a page from a magazine interview in which he had called Mr. Giuliani “the greatest mayor that the city’s ever had.” In case Mr. Giuliani missed the homage, Mr. Trump drew two bold arrows, each pointing at the glowing passage, and reiterated the message in a handwritten note: “Rudy, you are the greatest!” he wrote, adding, “see you soon.”
在1990年代，特朗普時不時會奉承一下盛氣凌人的紐約市長魯道夫·W·朱利安尼(Rudolph W. Giuliani)。在一封信裏，特朗普附上了從某本雜誌上撕下來的一頁報道——他接受該雜誌採訪時說朱利安尼是“這個城市有史以來最偉大的市長”。爲了防止朱利安尼錯過他的致敬，他畫了兩個粗粗的箭頭，指向那段讚美之詞，並在手寫的便箋中重申了這層意思：“魯德(Rudy)，你是最偉大的！”然後加上一句“回頭見”。
There is never any question about authorship: Mr. Trump’s style of writing sounds virtually identical to his hyperbolic manner of speech, with a healthy sprinkling of the words “great” and “tremendous,” abundant displays of self-regard and over-the-top claims of success or doom.
從未有人懷疑這些信函的出處：特朗普的文風看起來和他誇張的說話風格幾乎完全一致，頻繁出現“偉大”、“極棒”之類的字眼，充分展現他自視甚高的一面，充斥着對於成功或毀滅的無節制描述。
He could write with striking tenderness to Ivana, according to notes reviewed by The Times. “I adore and love my little darling,” he wrote to her in one. “I truly believe that you are the greatest,” he wrote in another.
《紐約時報》查閱到的信件顯示，他寫給伊萬娜(Ivana)的信散發着動人的柔情。“我仰慕並熱愛我的小心肝兒，”他在給她的一封信中寫道。“我真心實意地認爲你是最棒的，”他在另一封信中寫道。
On the page, anyway, Mr. Trump was even capable of humility, describing himself as a scribe of “little talent” in a 1985 note to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, then the publisher of The Times. (Mr. Trump had an agenda: to complain about a reporter he disliked.)
不管怎樣，在紙頭上，特朗普甚至可以表現得頗爲謙遜。1985年，他在寫給時報時任發行人阿瑟·奧克斯·蘇茲伯格(Arthur Ochs Sulzberger)的便箋中，自稱“才華匱乏”的寫作者。（特朗普的真正目的是投訴一個他不喜歡的記者。）
Mr. Trump traces his epistolary habits to his attempt to win over Franklin M. Jarman, who controlled a Manhattan department store that Mr. Trump wanted to buy in the 1970s to make way for Trump Tower. Mr. Jarman rarely replied to Mr. Trump’s letters, but he had, in fact, read them, Mr. Trump wrote in his book “The Art of the Deal,” laying the groundwork for an agreement. “The letters I wrote eventually did have an impact,” Mr. Trump said.
特朗普說他寫信的習慣可以追溯到1970年代。當時他想買下一家百貨商場，以便修建特朗普大廈，於是便寫信給該商場的控制人富蘭克林·M·賈曼(Franklin M. Jarman),試圖說服對方。賈曼很少給特朗普回信，但他的確閱讀了所有信件，特朗普在《交易的藝術》(The Art of the Deal)一書中寫到，這爲交易的達成奠定了基礎。“我寫的那些信最終的確發揮了作用，”特朗普說。
For years, Mr. Trump sent his letters the old-fashioned way, by mail. But over time, members of his staff dragged him into the internet era — sort of. He still writes by hand, brandishing the favored tool of teachers’ corrections and athletes’ autographs, a black Sharpie. Now his aides often turn the letters into digital files, scanning them and sending them by email.
在很多年裏，特朗普一直以郵寄這種老派的方式發出信件。但隨着時間的推移，他身邊的一些工作人員在某種程度上把他拖進了互聯網時代。他依然手寫信件，用的是老師批改作業、運動員給人簽名時最愛用的那種黑色記號筆。現在，他的助手常常把這些信件轉成電子版，先掃描再發電子郵件。
But he refuses to let anyone else do the writing. “If I had a secretary to do them,” he said in an interview, “they wouldn’t be nearly as effective, they wouldn’t be nearly as sharp.”
但他拒絕讓任何人替他寫信。“如果我讓祕書代筆，”他接受採訪時說，“那它們絕不會如此有效，也絕不會如此犀利。”
Each letter concludes with his extravagant signature, which resembles a city skyline or “a seismograph,” as Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair and a repeat recipient of Mr. Trump’s screeds, described it.
他會在每封信的結尾附上極具設計感的簽名，看起來好像城市的天際線，或者如《名利場》(Vanity Fair)編輯格雷頓·卡特(Graydon Carter)所說，像“一個地震儀打出的線條”。卡特不止一次收到過特朗普寫來的洋洋灑灑的信件。
