So, imagine there is a person in the White House who is pretty much running the show.

[Girard442]

Through some combination of flattery, obsequiousness, deception, and manipulation, he/she manages to steer Donald in some vaguely consistent direction. Let us also imagine that the public face of Trump is the real him. There's no eleventy-dimensional chess grand master hiding behind that mask.

Would this Master Manipulator allow his/her president* off the leash to spend one-on-one time with the head of the world's other nuclear superpower? I don't think so. Seems to me that you end up with a reductio ad absurdum. Either Trump really is a genius (against all evidence to the contrary), absolutely no one is really running the White House, or the Master Manipulator is Putin himself.

[PatSeg]

1. Lately it has become apparent

that there is someone or someones directing this show from behind the curtain. Too many things have come out that do not appear to originate from Trump. Sometimes they forget to dumb it down adequately. While Trump plays the reactive injured party before the camera, there are forces working to undermine things that Trump has no particular interest in.

Obviously, Putin could be behind it, but I think there are others as well. Though Trump appears to be impulsive and emotional, he also looks like he is taking orders. His arrogance is a very flimsy facade.