I've been telling friends lately not to get too rankled over Trump tweets and public statements. Remember that he's not talking to us. Trump almost never talks to those of us who didn't vote for him and are unlikely to ever vote for him or cheer him. It's all about playing to his base, keeping them enthused about his greatness, making them believe they're winning, winning, winning.
In some ways, he's a natural extension of George W. Bush, whose credo in his presidency was to never admit anything didn't go exactly the way he wanted. It was kinda tough after 9/11 but he never even said, "Gee, maybe I should have read some of those memos." Remember all the times Bush was asked about his biggest regret or if he could name one mistake his administration had made? He always looked surprised that anyone could ask such a thing, like it should be obvious to all that he and his aides were flawless. Trump is all about everything being not just a victory but also the most terrific, super-spectacular victory ever.
Every time our new White House resident talks about building a wall, I can't help but think of the wall he's built around himself — a wall behind which he got more votes than Hillary, behind which he got a bigger turnout for his inauguration than Barack, behind which he gets the credit for every bit of good economic news that has happened since November 8, including the ones — like the Dow hitting 20,000, etc. That last one was on target to happen around now even if we'd elected the puppy-monkey-baby from the Mountain Dew commercials.
I dunno how much of his self-idolatry is conscious strategy and how much is due to some sinkhole in his own ego…but he no doubt attributes much/most of his successes in life to that "I always win" attitude and ain't about to abandon it. In that sense, he will be on the campaign trail for his entire life. At most, at some point, he will occasionally acknowledge some failure that even he can't spin as a Huge Win and he'll briefly go into humble mode for that one thing.
I once worked for a producer who insisted he was right 99% of the time. He would have claimed 100% but he seemed to believe that admitting the 1% error made him more human and credible when he bragged of his 99% perfection. I pegged his real success rate at around 50% — or about what you'd hit if you just flipped a quarter every time you came up against a yes or no decision.
That, incidentally, is not the worst way to make decisions, at least in the fields in which I work. I've worked for editors and publishers who carefully evaluated and studied each decision they were required to make and could still only be right less than 40% of the time. They could have done much, much better flipping that quarter.
I don't expect I will hate everything Trump does as president. I do expect to be repulsed by the way he will exaggerate all his successes (including taking credit for things that would have happened anyway, as he's already doing) and lie about all his failures, insisting they're successes and anyone who says otherwise is lying. I'm going to have to keep reminding myself that he's not talking to me. That's his act and it got him to the White House so there's no way he's changing it.