We must face reality. Trump is not a stupid man. Far from it.

[forgotmylogin]

192. He's a narcissist with money.

He can pay people to tell him what he wants to hear - or until recently he could. Narcissists are smart and skilled at manipulation, which needn't reflect on their actual intelligence. We've been told Trump is incurious about anything that doesn't involve himself, and had to be tricked into reading PDBs by dropping his name in them, and he would rarely read past bullet points. I think what people see as "smart" is more opportunist. He doesn't want to learn and do the work so much as he wants to support what makes him and his "brand" look good. That's different from a wise person who understands their own personal shortcomings and will rely on and trust experts in fields where they are not experts.

In the past he had a degree of charisma and fame and a "luxury brand" that also drew people to him (Stormy Daniels totally did what she did because she wanted to be on a reality show and "in" with the country-club crowd.) When he became president by failing upward he then had political influence everyone wanted, and he thought that type of transaction was the "job" of being president. He wanted to be a king, and the closest to that is the dictator club he sucks up to that views him as a useful idiot because now he has classified intelligence he can barter to feel the power he craves being in that club.

The minute you stop flicking the narcissist's bean in the manner they like, they have no use for you. The narcissist needs to find another source to feed their ego. That's smackingly easier if you're a billionaire with property and toys and influence so you already have an orbit of people ready to say whatever will twiddle that bean and keep themselves in there maintaining the narcissist's fantasy world which the narcissist starts believing is sincere and not due to money/attention whoring at all, so when it crashes down it's a major meltdown and not just self-realization.

Trump is no longer young-ish and charismatic, he's got public lawsuits he can't hide, and now he's set to have ridiculous cash-flow problems. We'll see how long Lara Trump can hire people to cheer at his rallies if he doesn't just decide that post-trial press-gaggles are his discount campaign trail now.