Yup. We all ought to be past that by now. FWIW, here’s how I see it.
An alligator has a very simple brain. It has two drives: eat & (if female) tend the nest. That’s it. With a very occasional bout of “want to mate”. Everything an alligator does can be explained by that 1 (occasionally 1+) drives if male or 2 (occasionally 2+) drives if female.
trump’s brain is slightly more complex than an alligator’s. But not much. He has 3 drives. Ego, Spleen, and Steal. Everything he says or does is directly and only in service of those three drives. There is no other there there. So he’s utterly transparent and predictable, once you realize which yardstick to use to measure his personal cause and effect.
Said another way, there really are lizard-people amongst us. Or at least one. And his name is trump.
The ESS checklist will keep you sane. Appling conventional logic will make you insane.
Caveat: As I said a few days ago in this companion thread, sometimes his criminal regime does something for other more logical reasons. They’ll be evilly logical, but also conventionally logical. And utterly driven by the evil folks who work in the regime, not my trump himself.