And about the psychopath, except for the sentence about planning the description is dead on.
But yes, a monumental narcissist would eschew planning as a waste of time.
My personal opinion as a non-expert is that Trump doesn’t show the signs/symptoms most strongly associated with psychopathy. In my opinion, calling him a psychopath is a misuse of the term. If you think he sounds like a psychopath, I recommend you consult with a trained psychiatrist, or do some more reading about psychopathy.
Like psychopaths, he clearly has low empathy, looks out primarily for himself, and is indifferent to the suffering of others. Unlike psychopaths, Trump is not cold and calculating, doesn’t have an ability to focus (he has the attention span of a goldfish), and is not good at controlling his emotions or reactions. He doesn’t seem to me to be a sadist per se; his focus is instead on winning and being congratulated and admired, so he has learned to play brutal dominance games as a means to that end.
Analyzing him in the context of psychopathy is in my opinion misleading, and will lead you to make poor predictions of his future actions and responses. I hope the Clinton campaign people don’t plan as if he’s psychopath. (Again, let me stress that I am not an expert though. Hopefully they do have some real experts over there who can try to predict what Trump will do and draw up plans for every eventuality.)
Instead, Trump is almost a perfect textbook example of narcissistic personality disorder. If you have ever known someone with this type of personality, the relevant features are in clear public display here. He has a profound need to always be the center of attention, to be congratulated and praised, to dominate every interaction. He is impulsive, thin-skinned, unreflective, paranoid, and suffers crippling fear and anxiety whenever his transparently bogus self-image is questioned, which he copes with by aggressively lashing out at his perceived attacker. He lies with impunity, and generally says whatever he thinks will get him the most immediate attention and validation, without consideration for future consequences. Because questioning such a person leads to blowups, narcissists in positions of power tend to be surrounded by sycophants and lackeys, because their followers either learn to carefully avoid any conflict or get the hell out. This helps insulate the narcissist from confronting the obvious contradictions between their beliefs and reality.
I once dated a girl who in retrospect was clearly an example of borderline personality disorder. Despite only lasting a couple months, it was a harrowing experience, and left me traumatized for a long time afterward. Narcissistic personality disorder is substantially different in details, but similarly destructive. I am eternally grateful that there is nobody like Trump who I need to deal with on a regular basis. I have a friend whose mother is an extreme narcissist, and their family life was a trainwreck.
