Trump told me that Romney and his advisers were simply “afraid of me” — worried about how much less presidential Mitt would look compared to him. But people close to Trump said he has never stopped seething over the campaign’s convention snubs. “They treated him like shit,” said one confidante. (Romney emerged earlier this year as a leading spokesman of the GOP’s anti-Trump faction, but when I tried to arrange an interview with him on the subject, I was informed that he was summering with his family at their lake house in New Hampshire and would be unavailable for comment.)

As the election neared its end, Trump saw no point in trying to adhere to the Romney campaign’s rules of political propriety. In October, he made a big show of offering $5 million to Obama’s charity of choice if the president would release his college transcripts — a stunt that drew near-universal derision.

On election night, Trump bolted from the Boston hotel where the Romney campaign was holding its party as soon as it became clear that he wasn’t going to win. He had no interest in hobnobbing with haters and losers. Ascending into the sky on his helicopter, Trump dictated a series of tweets to an aide calling for mass political mutiny.

“This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!”

“Let’s fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice!”

“Revolution!”