After a summer of dominating the Republican presidential campaign, Donald Trump is moving into a new and uncertain phase that the billionaire businessman acknowledges will be more challenging than any project he has ever undertaken — even as he views the nomination as now within his reach.

In an hour-long interview with The Washington Post at his 26th-floor office in Trump Tower, the Republican front-runner ruminated on the many obstacles ahead. Sitting at a desk piled high with magazine covers bearing his image and strewn with polls and other testaments to his early success, Trump said he is far from satisfied with what he has accomplished to date.

“If you don’t win, what have I done? I’ve wasted time,” he said. “I want to make America great again and you can’t do that if you come in a close second.”

Trump laid out for the first time in detail the elements of what will be the second chapter of his 2016 bid, signaling an evolution toward a somewhat more traditional campaign. Trump is preparing his first television ads with a media firm that is new to politics. Melania, his wife, and Ivanka, his daughter, are planning public appearances highlighting women’s health issues to help close Trump’s empathy gap with female voters.

Trump is also publishing a book and planning to roll out policies on reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs and on trade and China’s currency manipulations. And he is deepening his political organization far beyond the early states, with top advisers vowing that his fight for the nomination will go all the way to the floor of the Republican National Convention.

Read the article “Donald Trump Plots his Second Act” on washingtonpost.com.