在白宫与特朗普面对面

Shortly after 3.30pm, we are summoned into the Oval Office. The president is sitting behind the Resolute Desk, where Harry Truman planted the sign “The Buck Stops Here.” Three aides flank Mr Trump. He forgoes the handshakes and gestures to his three FT visitors to sit down.

下午三点半刚过，我们被叫进椭圆形办公室。特朗普总统正坐在“坚毅桌”后面，昔日哈里•杜鲁门(Harry Truman)在这间办公室里时，他的桌子上摆着一块刻有“推卸责任止于此”(The Buck Stops Here)的牌子。三名助手站在特朗普身边。他跳过了握手环节，直接示意来自英国《金融时报》的三名访客就座。

“You folks want a little something to drink?” the president inquires, as an aide brings a Coca-Cola. I order the same, with ice. The president pushes a red button on the desk. “We are going to get it for you. It’s just sorted . . . So, go ahead.”

“各位想喝点什么?”总统问道，这时一名助手端来一杯可口可乐。我也要了可乐，加冰的。总统按下桌上的一个红色按钮。“一会儿给你拿上来，刚刚弄好……那么，开始吧。”

And so began one of the most fascinating interviews I have conducted during my 32-year career at the FT. Mr Trump was charming, at times combative, always ready to shoot from the lip.

我供职英国《金融时报》32年中做过的最有趣的采访之一就这样开始了。特朗普先生富有魅力，有时显得好斗，总是想说什么就说什么。

Overall, he showed himself to be alert, attentive and far removed from the cartoon character depicted on social media and television (not helped, it has to be said, by his own addiction to Twitter).

总的来说，他表现得机警、专心致志，并且迥异于社交媒体和电视上描绘的那个卡通人物式形象(老实说，他这么爱上Twitter对纠正这一形象也没起什么好作用)。

Here are my main impressions, based on the 25-minute interview in the Oval Office and several other conversations with Mr Trump’s top team at the White House.

根据在椭圆形办公室所做的25分钟的采访，以及在白宫与特朗普高层团队的另外几场对话，我得出以下几点主要印象：

1. Mr Trump may at times be thin-skinned but in the end it all comes down to business. The president, an FT subscriber, knows very well that we are not his greatest fans. He made his views clear at the outset (“You lost, I won”).

1.特朗普有时或许很敏感，但他终归还是以正事为重。作为英国《金融时报》的订户，他很清楚我们不是他的铁杆粉丝。他一开始就表明了态度(“你们输了，我赢了”)。

As his aides made even clearer, he decided to talk to the FT because it offered his administration a medium through which to speak to an influential global audience, and because he could expect a fair crack of the whip. Or as Potus himself might put it: no fake news in the FT!

他的助手们更明白地表示，他决定跟英国《金融时报》对话，是因为这为他的政府提供了向全世界一群有影响力的读者喊话的媒介，还因为他可以预料会获得公平的机会。用总统本人的话来说或许是：英国《金融时报》上面没有假新闻!

2. Mr Trump delights in the unconventional. His gruff manner and his physical presence are calculated to destabilise and intimidate. These are the means to gain leverage before delivering the (often outrageous) opening gambit ahead of a negotiation. As a top Wall Street banker who has known Mr Trump for three decades, says: “Trump will ask for 100 per cent and then immediately start retreating. He will then see where his opponent settles. It’s a form of price discovery.”

2.特朗普以打破传统为乐。他粗鲁的态度和他的仪表都是有意为之的，为了给人造成冲击、使人心生畏惧。这些是为了获得优势的手段，然后他就会实施谈判前的开局策略(这些策略往往有些出格)。正如一位认识特朗普30年的华尔街顶尖银行家所说的：“特朗普会要求得到整块蛋糕，然后马上开始后退。这样他就会看到对手能接受的底线在哪里。这是探知价格的一种方式。”

3. The power structure in the Trump administration is more like a medieval court than a conventional US presidency. There are powerful factions, the family and the irascible Emperor. Let’s begin with the factions. While fluid and tactical, they roughly divide between the realists led by Jared Kushner, the president’s influential son-in-law, Gary Cohn, former number two at Goldman Sachs and now head of the National Economic Council, and Wilbur Ross, the private equity billionaire turned commerce secretary; the other camp is led by Steve Bannon, the economist nationalist, ideological firebrand, and the political brain behind the president.

3.特朗普政府的权力架构更像是一个中世纪宫廷，而不是传统的美国总统制度。这里面包括强大的派系、王室和脾气暴躁的皇帝。让我们从派系开始吧。尽管派系并不稳定、受到策略性因素左右，但这套架构内部现在大致分为两派，一派是务实主义者，领导者有特朗普颇有影响力的女婿贾里德•库什纳(Jared Kushner)，前高盛(Goldman Sachs)总裁、现任国家经济委员会(National Economic Council)主席的加里•科恩(Gary Cohn)和私募行业亿万富翁、美国商务部长威尔伯•罗斯(Wilbur Ross);另一派系的领导者是史蒂夫•班农(Steve Bannon)，他是经济学家民族主义者、意识形态煽动者，也是特朗普的政治智囊。

In this structure, Mr Kushner is perhaps more influential than Rex Tillerson, secretary of state; Mr Cohn is arguably more important than Steve Mnuchin, the ex Goldman executive who is now Treasury secretary; and Mr Bannon is more powerful than Reince Priebus who nominally occupies the most important post as White House chief of staff.

在这套架构中，库什纳的影响力或许超过美国国务卿雷克斯•蒂勒森(Rex Tillerson);科恩的重要性或许超过前高盛高管、现任美国财政部长的史蒂文•姆努钦(Steven Mnuchin);班农的权力超过莱因斯•普瑞巴斯(Reince Priebus)，从名义上来说，后者担任最重要的职位——白宫幕僚长。

4. Mr Trump likes to cast himself as a populist in the mould of Andrew Jackson who served two terms as president between 1828 and 1836. (A newly installed portrait of Old Hickory hangs on the wall to the left of his desk). In truth Jackson and Trump share little in common beyond a Scots-Irish heritage. Jackson was no plutocrat; he was a war hero (he helped to defeat the British in 1812) and he served as a judge, state governor as well as US congressman and senator. Mr Trump is the first American president to have no government experience, in the military, Congress or statehouse. He has changed party allegiance five times. Rhetorically he is a populist, but in reality he is more of an opportunist, albeit a talented one. He saw off two political dynasties (Bush and Clinton) to claim the highest office in the land, and he remains aggressively proud of his achievement.

4.特朗普喜欢把自己定位为安德鲁•杰克逊(Andrew Jackson)那样的民粹主义者，后者曾在1828年至1836年担任两任美国总统。(特朗普办公桌左边的墙上新挂上了一副“老山核桃”(Old Hickory，杰克逊总统的绰号——译者注)的画像)。实际上，除了苏格兰-爱尔兰血统，杰克逊和特朗普几乎没有什么共同点。杰克逊算不上富豪;他曾是一位战争英雄(在1812年战争中立下战功)，担任过法官、州长以及美国众议员和参议员。特朗普是首位毫无政府经验的美国总统，没在军队、国会或州议会中待过。他曾5次更换党派。他言论上是民粹主义者，但实际上他更像是机会主义者——尽管是天才的机会主义者。他击败了来自布什和克林顿两个政治王朝的候选人登上总统之位，他仍对自己的成就感到非常自豪。

5. Mr Trump’s aides love to cast him as “outside the system”, the tycoon who is fearless in the face of the establishment, media elites, and relentlessly hostile to all opponents, whether Democrat or, latterly, the rightwing Freedom Caucus that torpedoed his efforts to repeal Obamacare. The question is how this approach can work in the system of checks and balances in the US Constitution. Mr Trump has already come undone with his executive orders on immigration which have been overturned in the courts. Despite Republican majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate, he has yet to pass major legislation, though he insists plans for a major tax reform are under way.

5.特朗普的助手喜欢把他塑造为“体制外人士”，面对建制派、媒体精英无所畏惧的富豪，对所有反对者表现出无情的敌意——不管是民主党人、还是最近葬送了他废除“奥巴马医改”(Obamacare)努力的右翼“自由党团”(Freedom Caucus)。问题是这种风格如何能在美国宪法的制衡体系中玩得转。特朗普已经在有关移民的行政命令上受挫——他的行政命令遭到了法庭的推翻。尽管共和党在众议院和参议院占据多数席位，但他尚未通过重大法案——尽管他坚称大规模税赋改革计划正在进行中。

6. Finally, there are wild cards, notably the ongoing congressional and FBI investigations into ties between his campaign and the Russian government. There is also the no small matter of his own business interests in real estate and the Trump brand name. Keeping them separate from official business — especially when foreign governments are desperate to ingratiate themselves with a newly assertive America — will not be an easy task.

6.最后，还存在一些未知因素，特别是目前国会和联邦调查局(FBI)正对特朗普竞选团队与俄罗斯政府之间的关系进行的调查。还有有关他自己在房地产行业的商业利益和特朗普品牌名称的问题，这些都不是小事。把这些与公务分离(特别是在外国政府急于讨好新近变得强硬的美国的情况下)并非易事。

For the moment, however, Mr Trump is counting on improving business confidence, a rise in the Dow, and his own charisma to show that he is indeed making America great again. Aides talk wistfully about parallels with Ronald Reagan’s first term. That feels like a stretch.

然而，就目前而言，特朗普正指望通过商业信心改善、道琼斯指数(Dow)上涨以及他本人的超凡魅力来证明，他确实正让美国再次变得伟大。助手们充满希望地谈论他与首任任期的罗纳德•里根(Ronald Reagan)的相似之处。这感觉有点牵强。

But, as the FT concluded in its first take on the Trump interview, there are tentative signs that there is more method in the madness than critics suspect.

然而，正如英国《金融时报》在上一篇特朗普专访稿中总结的那样，初步迹象表明，在疯狂背后，特朗普其实比批评者所认为的更有理性。