Kruse: Can any of you think of one time that a subordinate had to tell him something bad, something he wasn’t going to like? And what were the consequences?
O’Brien: You know Jack O’Donnell is a case study of that in the casino business. He routinely brought Donald bad news, but Donald either ignored it or pretended it didn’t exist. Any number of people who have worked with him in his real estate dealings in New York will tell similar stories. News that contradicts his worldview gets flushed down the sort of emotional and intellectual dispose-all that I think he carries around with him from the second he gets out of bed to the minute he goes to sleep each night. He is the master of counter-reality programming, and it makes him uniquely insusceptible to advice and creative thinking.
Kruse: My read, based on reporting over the course of the last year, has often been that he is simultaneously this utter terror of a micromanager and a “don’t-bother-me,” “hands-off” delegater—depending on the moment, the task, and how he’s feeling. So my question is: What makes him jerk the leash? What makes him become the micromanager?
Blair: If he perceives that there’s the tiniest threat to his authority, that there’s any ripple of disloyalty, as he would think of it—then he’s on it. Whether it’s, like, a cigarette butt in the corner of the parking lot, it doesn’t matter—he’s got to show that he’s on top of everything and that he’s got eyes in the back of his head. And at the same time, in his own organization, the Trump Organization—he would hand off authority on things. He didn’t have to manage everything, but if there was any hint that anybody was doing anything other than paying 24-7 attention to his needs, then he would discover that something was a 32nd of an inch off or a second late or whatever. And that person would be cowering, and he would lash out.
With the cabinet, of course, as Tim was saying, we have to wait and see, but I think he’s appointing people who, in many, if not most cases, have the exact opposite point of view from everyone in that department, and they’re just going to thrash it all out, and he’s going to be listening to Jared and Ivanka and sailing ahead.
| 
