BEN DOMENECH: Donald Trump in the Oval.

The tenor of this administration, the second time around, is that there is no time for sunshine soldiers. The gadflies and hangers-on are on the sidelines. Trump has surrounded himself with people who understand the tasks for which they’ve signed up.

“I’ve been here for four years under great pressure,” Trump says. “But one of the big things is that if you think about it, when I was first elected, I had two jobs: to run the country and to survive. And it was vicious.”

Trump confronted an unprecedented attempt not just to bar him legally from running again, but to bankrupt and ruin him. This brings to mind another president: Richard Nixon. After the election of 1960, widely considered to be stolen by John F. Kennedy, Nixon walked away — as he did after Watergate, when he was facing impeachment. For a politician who commands a similar coalition, with a similar list of enemies, what lessons does the 45th and 47th President take from the 37th?

“So Richard Nixon was a different kind of a guy, and he was a tough cookie, and he was very smart,” replies Trump. “People don’t realize how smart he was, but he made one bad decision. He didn’t fight. I spoke to his family. They say he regretted that until the day he died. He didn’t fight.”

Trump and Nixon were in contact throughout the 1980s, talking about football and politics. In a note from 1987, the former president addressed the future one with a comment from Pat Nixon, his wife: “As you can imagine, she is an expert on politics and she predicts that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!”

Three decades later, Trump would learn a lot about the nature of political enemies in Washington. “He had a lot. I might have had more,” Trump says of Nixon. “Don’t forget, I went through two impeachments and probably eighty indictments.” He shakes his head as he recites the litany and gazes at the desk. “I went through a lot, but I tried not to… I just put my head down and just did it.”

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