Trump biographer Tim O'Brien ("Trump Nation: The Art of Being The Donald"), appearing this morning on MSNBC, was asked about what would motivate the Malignant Loser to make off with boxes of classified documents:
Part of the motivation is what's in the documents and we don't fully know either of those things. We may never fully find out what's in the documents if the classification prevents them from going fully public.
I think, in terms of his own motivation, I think of it in three baskets. One that is explainable is that Trump is a 7-year-old grown old and he wanted to keep things like schematics for Air Force One and things like that that I don't think are a threat to national security but they were classified and he wanted them for himself.
I think the more important motivations are greed and reputational. That he'd think he could sell some of these things on the open market. We need to find out also if the documents contain things that would damage his reputation that he wanted to keep out of the public purview. (our emphasis)
We think O'Brien has it right. With the Malignant Loser, greed and reputation are intertwined in his ego: he has to keep up his manufactured image as an extremely wealthy man, and constantly grifting from his cult -- even over his current legal troubles -- is a way to keep that going. Anything that would interfere with either is something he would need to cut off.
(photo: The gift that keeps on giving )
