For months now, I’ve been viewing Trump through the lens that Scott Adams has presented, one that views Trump as a master persuader who knows how to trigger behaviors in people (in the case of Trump’s supporters, the behavior of voting for him.) In lieu of Trump’s recent political disasters—his spat with the Kahn family and drop in polls—it’s hard to see this view as accurate. Trump seems too impulsive to really be a calculating genius.

Nonetheless, this New Yorker piece—essentially an interview with the man who co-wrote Trump’s successful tome “The Art of the Deal”—provides some insight into how Trump’s mind works. Consider this passage:

“He was playing people,” Schwartz recalls. On the phone with business associates, Trump would flatter, bully, and occasionally get mad, but always in a calculated way. Before the discussion ended, Trump would “share the news of his latest success,” Schwartz says. Instead of saying goodbye at the end of a call, Trump customarily signed off with “You’re the greatest!” There was not a single call that Trump deemed too private for Schwartz to hear. “He loved the attention,” Schwartz recalls. “If he could have had three hundred thousand people listening in, he would have been even happier.”

Note the phrase, “in a calculated way.” The sense I get from combining the New Yorker piece with Adam’s arguments is that Trump is probably a sociopath, someone unresponsive to the self-imposed limits one is supposed to observe as a member of decent society. Rather, Trump has learned all the secrets of manipulation and applies them with impunity. It’s an odd combination of genius and total lack of restraint.

I have a hard time envisioning how Trump can pull out of the spiral he’s in, but the guy is nothing if not full of surprises.