Why did Donald Trump steal secret documents when he left the White House? Why did he lie about it when the federal government demanded the documents back?
If you already hate Trump, you probably don’t care why. You just want him charged and convicted for something. And if you love Trump, you don’t believe he did anything wrong. Even if he violated federal law, it’s not a big deal, you think, because others have done worse.
But for reasonable people who just want to understand what happened, the question is why he took such a ridiculous risk that had no obvious benefit. What was his motive?
You are not going to understand Trump’s behavior related to the stolen documents until you see it through the lens of malignant narcissism.
Through a normal lens, everything about what he did is irrational and self-destructive. His actions just wouldn’t make sense. But through the lens of pathological narcissism, it’s typical behavior. Narcissists believe rules don’t apply to them. They pursue their own irrational urges even when doing so could destroy them, simply because they refuse to recognize limits placed on them by others.
Donald Trump is a sick man. He’s a malignant narcissist. And that has nothing to do with politics.