On Tuesday, writing for Politico, Michael Kruse examined President Donald Trump's mindset on taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent coronavirus — and why he refuses to listen to his own health agencies and medical experts who warn it has no benefit and could cause heart problems.
"He has a knack for creating confusion and distraction when he needs to alter news cycles and scramble storylines. And he has a showman’s instinct for grabbing attention," wrote Kruse. "But what his surprising announcement reveals most clearly is his steadfast, decades-long aversion to expertise."
"Trump’s deep-seated outsider mindset engendered a willful disregard for advice that often got him into trouble — financial, reputational and otherwise," wrote Kruse. "But in the end, whether it was his ill-conceived airline, his debt-saddled casinos or his pro football misadventure, Trump’s failure to heed warnings from even his most trusted advisors often served to enhance his celebrity with a sufficient portion of the public that doesn’t take the time to parse the particulars."
Former associates of the president agree. “He thinks he’s the smartest guy on the planet. He really does,” said Bruce Noble, the president of Trump's short-lived airline Trump Shuttle. “He’s going to prove that he was right, when everybody else said he was wrong,” said former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg.
"He frequently cites his smarts — 'Donald Trump’s very, very large brain,' as he once put it," wrote Kruse. "A self-styled expert on topics ranging from technology to the weather to all types of medical matters, Trump is especially attuned, too, to what his base craves. The base wanted hydroxychloroquine from the start. And the base wants it still. And Trump is well aware. 'It’s what every pitchman has always done,' former Trump publicist Alan Marcus once told me. 'Tell the people what they want to hear.'"
You can read more here.