Friends say he also views gay rights through the lens of a bottom line-minded businessman.
“His key concern is, Are you capable and able to do the job I hired you for? And if you are, very little else matters,” said Abe Wallach, an openly gay executive at the Trump Organization in the 1990s. “Very little on a social level will make Donald excited — if it was money or something else, he might get excited.”
Mr. Trump was believed to be the first private club owner in Palm Beach, Fla., to admit an openly gay couple, according to Laurence Leamer, the author of “Madness Under the Royal Palms,” a book about Palm Beach society. Mr. Trump made his club, Mar-a-Lago, more open partly out of disdain for the restrictions that barred Jews and African-Americans from joining exclusive clubs in Palm Beach.
“It’s one of the best things he’s done in my view in his life,” Mr. Leamer said. “He really changed the nature of Palm Beach.”
In 2000, when he briefly considered running for president, he gave an interview to The Advocate, a gay magazine, in which he supported amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to “include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation.”
“It would be simple. It would be straightforward,” Mr. Trump said in the interview, adding, “It’s only fair.”