I think its simply a case of flaming asshole before his run for the nomination and crazy flaming asshole beginning with his run for the nomination beginning in '15. I mark when he first started pushing the birther shit in '11 as early crazy flaming asshole'. See below.
I suppose that some people who dealt with him in business and worked with him on his TV show saw that he was a psycho, but there were no national implications for his pathology.
Looking over the eight and a half years during which Trump has been directly engaged in presidential politics, it’s not as if there had been no warning signs.
This shit went down just a little over 3 weeks before the Bin Laden raid. We never did hear anymore about Trump's 'investigators' in Hawaii.