> There is a small chance that Trump is consciously overplaying the role of thin-skinned borderline personality to keep antagonists off balance,

Antagonists? Cast your net wider: keep everybody off balance.

We have a prime minister like that. He's a master of drama, overstatement, big words, inventing of enemies (or rather those who are attacking him for the good he did), even shedding a tear here and there to benefit the cameras. One of the popular sports here is to guess who will profit from the current smear campaign (and there are 2-3 a month). The favorite sport of his is, you see, mudslinging. His nickname on the forum here is "psychoswan".