• Trump's narcissistic obsession over his own press coverage continues to make it trivially easy for those around him to manipulate his own opinions, and they continue to do so with vigor. Battles continue to control, and subvert control, over the press clippings and blog posts that make it into Trump's daily Me Files. Senior officials insert damaging stories about other senior officials into the files—or simply sneak them onto his desk or into his hand at any available moment—in order to sabotage each other. Officials intentionally insert "things that were meant to gin him up or get him mad at somebody," Politico quotes a "current" senior official as saying.

Those that want to spur Trump in one direction or another are not confined only to Trump's multiple hours of daily Fox News programs in their efforts to promote themselves and their own agendas; planting praise for Trump, or a criticism of one of his top officials, in the papers or on Twitter can be a reliable method of gaining his ear as well.

• All of this is in service to the only thing that appears to animate Trump: vendettas. The man is a walking, golfing grievance. He is infamous for dispatching his trademark personal attacks on reporters who have written any word about him that he does not like. Trump's obsessive reading habit is not to inform him of what the world is saying about him and his successes or failures; if so, the man could remain silent. He reads everything the world is saying about him so that he can retaliate against those that have said it.

That retaliation may take the form of a handwritten insult scrawled over the report in question, sent back to the reporter responsible for drawing Trump's ire. Or it may result in Trump berating that reporter personally or calling them out, by name, for public scorn in front of an angry rally crowd. But it is incessant, and reliable. His habit of praising flattering coverage is of a piece; to Trump, there may be no higher honor than to receive his signature. You are, naturally, expected to cherish it.

So none of this is new, though Politico fleshes it out with example after example, making it clear that Trump's uncontrollable narcissism is the tentpole that each day's White House routine is unwaveringly constructed around. The man has no patience for the policy discussions or intelligence briefings that come with the job, but spends countless hours in executive time, combing through media reports to single-mindedly find each bit of flattery or perceived insult. His staff, lacking the ability to do anything about it, simply lets him.