But one thing I think that we have overlooked as we see Trump trying to delegitimize others is what I suspect is a feeling he has inside that nothing he’s ever achieved himself has ever been legitimate. This is a person who has never known whether anybody wants to be around him because he’s a person they want to be around or they want to be around his money. And since he’s promoted himself as this glamorous, incredibly wealthy person, that’s the draw he’s always given. So he doesn’t know if he has any legitimate relationships outside of his family, and that’s why he emphasizes family. … He’s always kind of gaming the system—not, in my view, winning on the merits. And even his election was with almost 3 million fewer votes than his opponent. So he has this deep fear that he is himself not a legitimate president, and I think that’s why he goes to such great lengths to delegitimize even the intelligence community, which is the president’s key resource in security, and he’s going to do this demeaning and delegitimizing behavior rather than accept what they have to tell him.
Blair: I wanted to go back to one of the words that Michael used, which was “gaming the system,” which is so much a part of his dad’s—what Fred Trump did, what Donald has done. Looking for the loophole, pushing it as wide as possible, going through it. Donald did it through his whole career. His dad did it through his whole career with his use of federal subsidies and tax abatements. And now we’re seeing that he’s gaming the White House. He’s gaming, looking for the loopholes. The president is exempt from these conflict of interest laws. There’s an awful lot, it turns out, that are matters of tradition, of habit, of what we expect. But they’re not actually legally required—the tax returns, all of that. He’s gaming all of that. All of the things that people thought had to be done, don’t have to be done.
D’Antonio: I think Donald Trump measures himself by the number of norms that he can violate. The more he can get away with, the more he can thumb his nose at convention, the more powerful he feels.
