特朗普的秘密武器是亲笔信

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在一封信里，唐纳德·J·特朗普(Donald J. Trump)怒斥有损市容的热狗小贩给他钟爱的第五大道带来了危机。“把番茄酱和芥末撒得满人行道都是，”他写道，“简直有失体统。”

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.

在另一封短信里，他把年轻的妻子唤作“我的小心肝儿”，并用华丽的辞藻赞美对方。“你是我渴望的一切，”他写道。

In a different missive, he offered a rare admission of weakness, declaring, “I am nothing more than a frustrated⁵ writer of little talent.”

在另一封信函里，他难得地承认自己也有弱点：“我只是一个才华匮乏、灰心丧气的写作者。”

Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee⁶, is a master of modern media, exploiting Twitter and television to punish his enemies, energize⁷ his allies and promote himself.

稳获共和党总统候选人提名的特朗普精通现代媒体的运作，常常利用Twitter和电视台惩罚敌人，激励盟友，并进行自我推销。

But perhaps his most powerful and memorable⁸ form of communication is the old-fashioned ritual of a personal letter, written on embossed paper or scrawled⁹ across a newspaper clipping, signed by hand and sent from the 26th floor of Trump Tower.

但他采用的最有效也最令人难忘的沟通方式，或许是遵循老派的礼仪写下私人信函。有的信写在压纹纸上，有的则潦草地写在报纸上，附带手写的签名，寄信地址是特朗普大厦(Trump Tower)26楼。

Churned out prolifically¹⁰ from a computer-free desk, they are letters of gratitude¹¹, hate, flattery and revenge, dispatched to teenage admirers and big-city mayors, professional athletes and magazine editors. The tone can range from florid to juvenile¹², pleading to poisonous.

大量此类信函都是在一张并未摆放电脑的书桌上写就的，用以传达感激、憎恶、奉承、仇恨之意，会被送到十几岁的仰慕者、大城市的市长、专业运动员、杂志编辑各色人等手中。文风或华美或孩子气，言辞或恳切或恶毒。

Tightly clutched and prominently displayed even by those who despise him, the epistles have become keepsakes and mementos¹³ 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.

即便是鄙视他的人，也会把这些信件牢牢攥在手里，摆放在显眼的位置，它们已经被全国各地成百上千人当成了纪念品。在把这些信函当做1970年代至今的一系列信函收藏时，它们以一种独特方式记录了特朗普的情绪起伏。

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 collapse¹⁴ of the United States Football League, and about Mr. Trump’s role in the demise¹⁵, 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，特朗普给电影导演迈克·托林(Mike Tollin)写了一封绝对会令对方不快的信。托林拍了一部关于美国橄榄球联盟(United States Football League)解体以及特朗普在其中所起作用的电影。特朗普在信中把科林的这部电影斥为“三流”作品，称其“极不诚实”。他在信末写道：“另，你是一个失败者。”尽管如此，科林还是把这封信裱了起来，摆在办公室里的一个架子上，就在他的家庭合影旁边。

“People come by and immediately want to see it, touch it and hold it,” Mr. Tollin said with pride.

“人们来到这里，立刻就想看到它、触碰它、拿起它，”托林颇为得意地说。

Today, as Mr. Trump tries to make peace with hostile figures in his party, the candidate renowned¹⁶ for his rhetorical flame throwing is deploying¹⁷ a conciliatory style of letter writing as his chief weapon.

如今，特朗普正竭力和共和党内对他怀有敌意的人物搞好关系。因此，这位以言辞激烈著称的候选人开始把书写语带安抚的信函当成自己的大杀招。

His handwritten overtures¹⁸ have started to arrive in the mailboxes of seemingly implacable foes¹⁹, like Charlie Sykes, a conservative radio host in Milwaukee, who has described Mr. Trump as a “whiny, thin-skinned bully²⁰.”

他手写的示好书笺，已经开始抵达看似与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“爱抱怨的薄脸皮恶霸”的密尔沃基市保守派广播主持人查理·赛克斯(Charlie Sykes)。

“Charlie,” began Mr. Trump’s note, scribbled²¹ with a thick black pen on the front page of The New York Times, next to an article about skeptical²² Republicans warming to Mr. Trump, “I hope you can change your mind.” Ever attuned²³ to incentives²⁴, the real estate mogul dangled²⁵ an offer: “Look forward to doing your show,” he wrote, adding, “I will win!”

“查理，”便笺的开头，特朗普以粗黑笔体在《纽约时报》(The New York Times)头版关于持怀疑态度的共和党人开始接纳特朗普的文章旁边龙飞凤舞地写道，“我希望你能改变想法。”这位惯于采取激励措施的地产大亨还在信中抛出了诱饵——“期待上你的节目”，并表示“我一定会赢！”。

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 odds²⁶ with his public image.”

这封信没有改变赛克斯对特朗普的不良看法。但他承认，特朗普的姿态让人印象深刻。“这样做会给他加分，”赛克斯说。“他现在愿意去做一些在某种程度上可能与他的公众形象不太相符的事情。”

The letters — culled²⁷ from personal and public archives — reveal Mr. Trump’s insecurities, but also his perceptiveness²⁸ about power, ego²⁹ and what motivates people. From early on, he seemed to intuitively grasp the potency³⁰ of his praise when lavished³¹ on like-minded men.

这些信件——有些是私人收藏，有些则来自公共档案馆——揭示了特朗普的不安全感，但也表明他对权力和自我颇具洞察力，他清楚地知道什么能给人以激励。从很早开始，他似乎就本能地知道，自己对志同道合者的大力赞美有着怎样的效力。

In the 1990s, Mr. Trump occasionally fawned³² 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 homage³³, Mr. Trump drew two bold arrows, each pointing at the glowing passage, and reiterated³⁴ the message in a handwritten note: “Rudy, you are the greatest!” he wrote, adding, “see you soon.”

在1990年代，特朗普时不时会奉承一下盛气凌人的纽约市长鲁道夫·W·朱利安尼(Rudolph W. Giuliani)。在一封信里，特朗普附上了从某本杂志上撕下来的一页报道——他接受该杂志采访时说朱利安尼是“这个城市有史以来最伟大的市长”。为了防止朱利安尼错过他的致敬，他画了两个粗粗的箭头，指向那段赞美之词，并在手写的便笺中重申了这层意思：“鲁德(Rudy)，你是最伟大的！”然后加上一句“回头见”。

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 doom³⁵.

从未有人怀疑这些信函的出处：特朗普的文风看起来和他夸张的说话风格几乎完全一致，频繁出现“伟大”、“极棒”之类的字眼，充分展现他自视甚高的一面，充斥着对于成功或毁灭的无节制描述。

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.

《纽约时报》查阅到的信件显示，他写给伊万娜(Ivana)的信散发着动人的柔情。“我仰慕并热爱我的小心肝儿，”他在给她的一封信中写道。“我真心实意地认为你是最棒的，”他在另一封信中写道。

On the page, anyway, Mr. Trump was even capable of humility³⁶, 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.)

不管怎样，在纸头上，特朗普甚至可以表现得颇为谦逊。1985年，他在写给时报时任发行人阿瑟·奥克斯·苏兹伯格(Arthur Ochs Sulzberger)的便笺中，自称“才华匮乏”的写作者。（特朗普的真正目的是投诉一个他不喜欢的记者。）

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.

特朗普说他写信的习惯可以追溯到1970年代。当时他想买下一家百货商场，以便修建特朗普大厦，于是便写信给该商场的控制人富兰克林·M·贾曼(Franklin M. Jarman),试图说服对方。贾曼很少给特朗普回信，但他的确阅读了所有信件，特朗普在《交易的艺术》(The Art of the Deal)一书中写到，这为交易的达成奠定了基础。“我写的那些信最终的确发挥了作用，”特朗普说。

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, brandishing³⁷ 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.

在很多年里，特朗普一直以邮寄这种老派的方式发出信件。但随着时间的推移，他身边的一些工作人员在某种程度上把他拖进了互联网时代。他依然手写信件，用的是老师批改作业、运动员给人签名时最爱用的那种黑色记号笔。现在，他的助手常常把这些信件转成电子版，先扫描再发电子邮件。

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.”

但他拒绝让任何人替他写信。“如果我让秘书代笔，”他接受采访时说，“那它们绝不会如此有效，也绝不会如此犀利。”

Each letter concludes with his extravagant³⁸ signature, which resembles a city skyline or “a seismograph,” as Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair and a repeat recipient³⁹ of Mr. Trump’s screeds, described it.

他会在每封信的结尾附上极具设计感的签名，看起来好像城市的天际线，或者如《名利场》(Vanity Fair)编辑格雷顿·卡特(Graydon Carter)所说，像“一个地震仪打出的线条”。卡特不止一次收到过特朗普写来的洋洋洒洒的信件。

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