Talking of Trump’s beliefs is pointless, because there are none. The barking comedy of his speeches and statements goes nowhere because “he cannot understand anyone’s response to them except as it relates to him.”
David Roth in The Baffler:
Trump doesn’t know anything or really believe anything about any topic beyond himself, because he has no interest in any topic beyond himself; his evident cognitive decline and hyperactive laziness and towering monomania ensure that he will never again learn a new thing in his life. He has no friends and no real allies; his inner circle is divided between ostensibly scandalized cynics and theatrically shameless ones, all of whom hold him in low regard and see him as a potential means to their individuated ends. There is no help on the way; his outer orbit is a rotation of replacement-level rage-grandpas and defective, perpetually clammy operators. …
Instead of hate, there is simple resentment—abject and valueless and recursively self-pitying; instead of love, there is the blank sucking nullity of vanity and appetite.
Always an egomaniac, Trump suffered deep narcissistic injury in his personal and business failures. His modern persona is invincible because it is reconstructed from nothing. It’s a gold-plated concrete replica of the motormouthed vulgarian that America remembers from the 1980s. His presidency is a political superbacteria formed from the few parts of his ego, his brand, that were not annihilated in bankruptcy.
If you’re hoping something emerges that will wash the Trump presidency away, I’ve got bad news for you. Even piss will not sterilize it; it will only make it shinier.