Yes, blatantly, viciously evil.
I don't think so. He just does what he wants. I think he demonstrates what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil". He isn't special. He isn't particularly intelligent or particularly accomplished. His one real gift is a talent for self-promotion.
I find it interesting that he says he "likes conflict". He then goes on to explain he means he wants to hear "differing views". Huh? I think all presidents with even minimal good sense would want to hear differing views on important issues. After all, they can't be experts in everything. Or in much of anything, really.
But the expression of differing views is not, in my view, "conflict". It's debate. Not two or more guys (in Trump's White House, just about all the "important" people are guys) yelling at each other. But apparently that's what goes on regularly in the Oval these days. For him, an exchange of ideas is necessarily something somebody has to lose. And of course he's always the real winner, because he's the president, and everyone else isn't.
It's the attitude of a five year old. It's part of what makes him a bad president, and a bad person.
