"Some days he wanted more French fries. Other days he wanted documents."

[BeyondGeography]

“I think he’s just acquisitive.”

Bolton to Anderson Cooper on Trump’s motives.

He doesn’t rule out a financial angle, but he doubts it. I’m inclined to agree. George Conway has said basically the same thing; Trump acts like a five-year-old. He’s a baby with a hammer.

Either way, he broke the law.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Trump reportedly saw some official docs as his 'personal property'

TFG is a spoiled child and could not accept the reality that official presidential records belong to the United States. TFG viewed these records as his personal property.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-reportedly-saw-official-docs-personal-property-rcna43098?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

The New York Times, for example, published this report over the weekend.

It is not clear why Mr. Trump apparently chose to hang onto materials that would ignite another legal firestorm around him. But last year, he told close associates that he regarded some presidential documents as his own personal property. When speaking about his friendly correspondence with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Mr. Trump said, “They’re mine,” according to a person familiar with the exchange.

This came on the heels of a related Washington Post report.

Trump resisted handing over some of the boxes for months, some people close to the president said, and believed that many of the items were his personally and did not belong to the government. He eventually agreed to hand over some of the documents, “giving them what he believed they were entitled to,” in the words of one adviser.

The Times had a related report over the weekend, noting that the former president was “repeatedly urged by advisers” to return the sought after materials, despite “his desire to continue to hold onto some documents.”

Again, we're still dealing with a giant question mark hanging over the debate — we don't know why the Republican was so eager to keep the materials in his possession — but the reporting nevertheless offers a peek into a twisted perspective.

TFG really believed that he was above the law and that if he wanted something, it was his. Again, TFG acted like a spoiled child

[Hermit-The-Prog]

18. Yeah, he likes to sell stuff he calls his own.

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. Having to watch Trump from 2015 to present....

I've realized a few things.

(1) He has the emotional composition of an 8 YO.
(2) He compensates for lack of intellectual horsepower with a lot of rhetoric about how smart he is. No substance, just words.
(3) He truly is the epitome of a failed loser. Lost at business, lost in politics, lost in basic human responses.

As does anyone who supports him.

[Joinfortmill]

3. Hmm. I think there's a there there.

[Ocelot II]

4. Bolton also said he thought TFG was too dumb and disorganized

and didn't have enough of an attention span to be able to put together a plan to sell any classified documents. While I agree that TFG is a scatterbrained moron with the attention span of a gerbil, I don't agree that he never could have figured out a way to monetize the documents, just as he has wrt everything else. But even if Bolton is right, TFG's carelessness and his complete disregard for the nature of the documents made Mierda-Loco a target for every sort of spy or crook who wanted to get their hands on them.

[Jarqui]

5. I don't buy that

Trump would sell his own children for a buck

[LeftInTX]

7. Reading about Kash Patel, it seems like he had enough people in his circle to do the work for him

All had to do was "be sloppy"...
Kash: He this would be good idea
Trump: Yeah, OK

Same with Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon...

Trump may be dumb, but these guys aren't and they can request stuff and would know what to do..

[Ocelot II]

11. Exactly.

TFG by himself couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel, but he has minions. Patel, Flynn, Stone, any of those tools would have done whatever he told them.

[Nevilledog]

10. He only needs to be greedy enough to give it to someone who could make the sale.

[dclarston13]

6. Not a baby with a hammer

More like a chimp with a machine gun.

[Doc Sportello]

8. He thinks anything he wants is his

From women to Presidential items like documents he is not supposed to have. Never got past that stage of development. And this infantile evil prick was our President. Still hard to believe.

[Grasswire2]

12. You oughta see the short video today of him with his tongue hanging out...

...at the girl sitting at the bar in the club house.

Literally. His tongue hangs out his mouth when he sees her.

[Doc Sportello]

14. I'll check it out - if I can stomach it

I can't stand to look at his visage. He is just all id. I want. Mine. The guy couldn't get a job at most any place else other than what his a-hole dad gave him.

[usonian]

9. He had help. At the very least, the Flynn-Stones.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216975002

Flynn-Stones
Meet the Flynn Stones
They're the modern stone-age family
From the Hotel Willard
They made plans to kill democracy

Let's ride in the limo with Mike Pence
His life isn't worth eleven cents.

When you're with the Flynn-Stones
Have a G.O.P. sedition
A great new year tradition.
We're gonna do hard time.


------------
For extra credit:

Shameless plug for my fighting posts:
MESSAGE LIKE CRAZY
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216969676
ACTS, FACTS AND ENCOURAGEMENT
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216969656
GOTV RESOURCES. GOTFV!!
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216969633

and never forget!

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• STRONG AND FREE WOMEN -- THAT'S OUR POSITION
• NOBODY WANTS AN INQUISITION
• PROTECT THE LBGTQ
• THERE'S ONE OR TWO THAT MATTER TO YOU

[choie]

13. I don't buy it for a minute.

He will use any and all ways to grift.

[fishwax]

15. I think that's about right -- but only part of the story, and not inconsistent with a bigger grift

I think he felt entitled and saw his election as, essentially, an acquisition of the government and in some sense the country. He had no interest in or curiosity about or knowledge of or concern about the processes and institutions. It's not a particular striking observation that trump has always demonstrated a really childish sense of what it means to be smart ("I'm like, a smart person" ) or to be manly (tiny hands, etc.) or to be brave or strong or rich or patriotic or whatever. He also seems to have had a really childish view of power--the sort of childish view in which "I'm going to grow up and be president" and "I'm going to grow up and rule the world" mean essentially the same thing. Predictably, any restriction on his power was met with a childish tantrum.

But he's also a grifter, and knows that acquiring certain things can help him satisfy his (childishly conceptualized and regulated) desires. He just satisfies "Me want french fry," in the one case, while in the other he could have envisioned various schemes for leveraging money and power out of thousands and thousands of confidential government documents.

Those schemes could have involved reducing his exposure for a pretty broad range of plausible crimes and misdemeanors while in office. Those schemes could have ranged from elaborate plots to sell secrets to our enemies for cash or for influence or for lucrative deals for his personal brand or for extra ketchup on his well-done steak. They could have involved attempting to blackmail his enemies or his friends or foreign leaders or his ex-lover's new boyfriend. They even could have involved some childish notion that he could somehow prove election fraud or simply find something that would continue to put pressure on various individuals and institutions so that they would have no choice but to relent and give him a chance to play king again. In any case, it was a crime. It demonstrates a danger to our national security. (All the moreso given that such a broad range of motivations and machinations seem plausible.)

[Abolishinist]

16. I've thought the same for the last several months.

I'm not a psychologist, nor to I play one on the TV or social media.

But I just don't see him plotting, in his 'mind', to do the things that he does. I don't see that he has a game plan to extract, for example, funds from his supporters, at least not as his only goal.

He is totally and completely reactionary. His actions are nothing more than him wanting to win, according to his definition of what winning means. Asking for money from his supporters is not grifting per se, it is merely a means for him to show that people do in fact support him.

[gratuitous]

17. Yeah, that's some good thinking right there

All the lawyers and governmental ethics people don't know squat when compared with the towering intellect, legal acumen, and spoiled brattishness of the former guy. So he knows better than those elite eggheads what he's entitled to, which is everything.

Or, maybe he's just an asshole?