Donald Trump tells biographer he's the same now as he was in first grade

(Image credit: Gary Gershoff/Getty Images)

Donald Trump's temper-tantrum tactics have been explained by the man himself. The frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination admitted to his biographer that, "When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different."

Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Michael D'Antonio, whose book, Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, comes out in late September, nabbed the quotable gem during his six hours of interviews with the real estate king, The New York Times reports. However, as all good reporters should, D'Antonio also corroborated Trump's statement with evidence — from Trump's ex-wives.

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"He wants to be noticed," said Ivana Trump, wife No. 1, who recalled sending [Trump] into a fit of rage by skiing past him on a hill in Aspen, Colorado. Mr. Trump stopped, took off his skis and walked off the trail."He could not take it, that I could do something better than he did," she recalled. [The New York Times]

Trump also told D'Antonio that his education at a $30,000-a-year prep school, the New York Military Academy, gave him, "more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military." Trump might raise some hackles with that comment, especially after igniting a controversy in July for saying that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was "not a war hero" because he was captured. Trump got out of military service with the combination of a high draft number and a "heel spurs on both feet" medical deferment.

At the very least, expect D'Antonio's book to present a multidimensional view on Trump, especially since the biographer spoke to a number of people close to the presidential hopeful, including coworkers and friends. However, D'Antonio's time with the Republican presidential frontrunner was abruptly cut short when The Donald learned D'Antonio had also interviewed an unnamed "longtime Trump enemy"; after all, Trump has had 69 years to perfect the art of the tantrum.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.