In the early ‘90s, Barbara Res, a project manager on Trump Tower who was a vice president in the Trump Organization, attempted to prepare him for a deposition for a court case pitting a Trump-led group against the Los Angeles school district in a battle for a coveted piece of property. “He said, ‘No, I don’t need to be prepared,’” Res said last week from her home in New Jersey. Finally, she persuaded him to give her, an associate and an attorney two hours in his office. “In the two hours, he kept taking phone calls,” Res said. Unprepared, he did “poorly” in the deposition, she said; his group lost the case, and the deal fell apart. “He was so distracted,” she said. “He really couldn’t stay focused.”
“I think he’s definitely got attention deficit disorder,” said Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio, who interviewed Trump five times for a total of eight hours and found himself frustrated trying to get him to concentrate on answers to questions about his parents, his childhood, just about anything. “That doesn’t mean he isn’t really smart—it just means he’s not at his best when he’s asked to dwell on a topic.”
The question of Trump’s attention span recently has leapt from a longtime employee complaint to a meaningful national issue. Res, O’Donnell and others like them have long collected stories of their exasperation over Trump’s impetuous nature as a boss. But this one personal attribute has become a subject of more widespread concern as voters consider how Trump’s habits and personality might translate to the presidency—a job that demands uncommon focus, with life in the West Wing often feeling like a control panel of perpetually blinking emergency lights.
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