It can be difficult to discern what passes for thought in Donald Trump’s mind, but on the matter of Russian election interference he is refreshingly clear. He sees Russia’s attempts to help him win the presidency and keep him in power not as a threat to the United States but as a threat to his own fragile ego.

This is what lies behind Trump’s anger at Joseph Maguire, his outgoing acting director of national intelligence. Maguire’s sin, according to The New York Times on Thursday, was allowing one of his aides to deliver a blunt warning to members of Congress, on February 13, that Russia was once again interfering in a presidential election in Trump’s favor. The president reportedly “berated” Maguire the following day and “was particularly irritated” that the attendees included Representative Adam Schiff, the Democrat who led the impeachment proceedings. Earlier this week, Trump announced he was replacing Maguire with Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany.

The Times notes that some intelligence officials viewed the briefing as a “tactical error,” believing the conclusions should have been softened to avoid angering Trump and his fellow Republicans. This is a remarkable admission from a browbeaten intelligence community: that its priorities have shifted away from the public interest merely to appease the mad-hatted president.

This shift began with the intelligence community’s conclusion, in January 2017, that Russia interfered in the just-concluded presidential election with the goal of helping Trump win. Several former Trump advisers are quoted in the Mueller Report as saying that Trump viewed the intelligence community’s assessment as an attack on his legitimacy. Hope Hicks called it Trump’s “Achilles’ heel.”

The words “Russian interference” couldn’t even be mentioned in Trump’s presence because it gave him a fit of the vapors.

The words “Russian interference” couldn’t even be mentioned in Trump’s presence because it gave him a fit of the vapors. “If you talk about Russia, meddling, interference—that takes the PDB off the rails,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told The Washington Post in 2017, referring to the president’s daily intelligence briefing. Trump never convened a Cabinet-level meeting on Russian interference or what to do about it. There was an “unspoken understanding” within the National Security Committee “that to raise the matter is to acknowledge its validity, which the president would see as an affront.”