It never got quite the coverage of his own radioactively malicious efforts, but Donald Trump was himself once the target of birther claims. Back in 2013, talkshow host Bill Maher challenged Trump to prove that he was not “the spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan”. If there is a moment at which literalism tips into psychological malady, Trump is believed to have reached it at some point during the Reagan administration, so he duly went and provided Maher with his birth certificate. There was also a $5m lawsuit (from Trump, of all quirks, as opposed to the orangutan species).

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Some years on, the orangutan birtherism serves two useful purposes. The first is the point about literalism. We are always told by those in thrall to him that much of what Trump says is metaphor. The wall is a metaphor, Brexit financier Arron Banks explained to me. “It’s like the ark in the Bible – there wasn’t a literal ark! It’s an allegory.” The Muslim ban is a metaphor, suggested anti-democracy billionaire Peter Thiel shortly before he joined Trump’s transition team, praising voters who “take him seriously but not literally”.

Their compulsion to make excuses for Trump says much about how they handle misgivings, but others would do better to understand that pretty much everything the president does indicates that he represents the triumph of the literal. This is the guy who turned the traditional dick-measuring contest that is the Republican primary into an actual dick-measuring contest. “You know what they say about men with small hands,” said Marco Rubio, prompting Trump to pledge: “I guarantee you there’s no problem [with the size of my penis].” Do let’s ditch the idea that Trump is a poetically complex man who will govern in conceits. He is just conceited.

The second effect of the orangutan business is accidental – a reminder that Trumpology is primatology. During the presidential campaign, the Atlantic magazine asked eminent primatologist Jane Goodall to assess Trump, and the reply was clear. “In many ways the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals. In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks. The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”

Watching Trump and those who seek to align themselves with him should remind us that bullying is a highly successful evolutionary strategy. Chimpanzees copy the dominant male in behaviours that are seen to work, which is perhaps why – again, with apologies to chimpanzees – the White House press corps spent Trump’s first press conference the other week jostling needily for attention, adopting a noticeably brasher tone as they called out their questions, and allowing the weaker of their number to be bullied by the dominant male.

Or observe Theresa May instead. You’d think her hardwiring rendered her incapable of any serious Trump mimicry. Yet before she’d even landed for her US visit, she felt so forced out of her comfort zone for survival that she found herself saying embarrassingly Trumpish things such as, “Haven’t you ever noticed – sometimes opposites attract?” This is not a challenge; it is a form of appeasement behaviour. As is Michael Gove copying Trump’s thumbs-up gesture for the photo to accompany his fawning interview with the then president-elect, which left Gove looking like he’d just won a competition to become gamma-male.

Even more poignant is the much-used photo of Nigel Farage appearing to bow his head in grateful deference during his joint appearance with Trump in Mississippi during the campaign. Farage now describes his Brexit victory almost entirely in terms of what it meant for Trump. He has laid it at the president’s feet, like a particularly special banana that he regards himself as unworthy of eating. Given Farage spent 25 years of his life on his passionate quest to take Britain out of Europe, frequently alone and scorned and against what many thought were impossible odds, I can barely think of a more pathetic submission gesture. So too with those who spent the entire George W Bush years calling Tony Blair Dubya’s poodle, and have now rolled over with excruciating gratitude to become Trump’s. Look, ma! He’s letting me pull off his fleas!

These henchmonkeys, of course, judge their own survival or advancement to require effectively submissive behaviour. Other groups have no choice. Rhesus macaques pick on the weakest members of their hierarchy with relentless viciousness, a behaviour some primatologists refer to as “scapegoating”. (If you watch Trump talk, this might feel faintly familiar.) The hierarchy needs an enemy to bond over, to define itself against, and to therapeutically absorb its aggressions. “It seems to release tensions among the higher-ups,” as one macaque expert puts it.

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Speaking of which, what a surprise to find a Trump administration on 36% approval ratings without a functioning Democrat in sight turning on the media. White House senior strategist Steve Bannon phoned the New York Times to explain how it was going to be, and to read it is to hear a version of that scene in a drama when the new prison inmate has the whole hideous pecking order explained to him. “The media should keep its mouth shut … I want you to quote this: the media is the opposition party.” Incidentally, given they did quote this, I’m baffled by the Times’s decision to censor what they reported as a Bannon call “peppered with profanity”. Why? We are going to hear much more troubling things than a few swear words as time goes on, and journalistic attempts to administer the smelling salts feel ominously misplaced.

Still, thanks to the paper we have fascinating multi-sourced accounts of the atmosphere inside the White House during the days after the inauguration. One line from reporter Maggie Haberman stood out in the above context: “The more time people spend with Trump, the more they tend to adopt his mindset about how he is treated.” Yes. Like yawning or syphilis, Trump’s self-dramatisation is catching. But to ape him is to defer to him – something to bear in mind for those who don’t wish to be owned by him.