Jamelle Bouie, writing for The New York Times Opinion page under the (visible) headline “The Tariff Saga Is About One Thing” (and a hidden headline of “Trump’s Lust for Power Cannot Be Satiated”) ^[1]:

The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance. His long history of scams and hostile litigation — not to mention his frequent refusal to pay contractors, lawyers, brokers and other people who were working for him — is evidence enough of the reality that a deal with Trump is less an agreement between equals than an opportunity for Trump to abuse and exploit the other party for his own benefit. For Trump, there is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship or a positive-sum outcome. In every interaction, no matter how trivial or insignificant, someone has to win, and someone has to lose. And Trump, as we all know, is a winner.

And later:

The upshot of this understanding of Trump’s personality is that there is no point at which he can be satisfied. He will always want more: more supplicants to obey his next command, more displays of his power and authority and more opportunities to trample over those who don’t belong in his America.

When Trump suggested sending American citizens to foreign prisons, I wrote about how I anticipated newsrooms would react:

[…] those newsrooms will dismiss it as the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind, because they still haven’t learned that when Trump says something, even if it was just a stray stream of consciousness thought, that statement becomes a part of his identity and he can’t back down from it. He must defend it, double down on it, make it real. It’s a crippling personality flaw that he can never be wrong, and the toadies he surrounds himself with enable it.

These two character deficiencies—his desire to appear strong, coupled with his desperate need to always be right—have toppled us into autocracy.