Redbrickbear said:
Trump honestly is probably not that smart.
His gut is usually right. He has a natural good gambler's spider sense. He can see that endless immigration is fracturing the nation and making average workers poorer. He can see that more foreign wars are a net loser for the average america. He can see that radical transgender ideology is dangerous to kids and angers average Americans. He has seen how high taxes hurt business and gripple growth.
But he is no deep thinker. He is just smarter than the normal Establishment Bush/Romney Republican type.
He simply had no idea that most of the Federal government was so infested with these types of liberals and Bush/Romney Republicans.
He has no one around him he can trust and who actually wants to carry out his agenda...and he is not smart enough to find those people.
Come to think of it...well heck these people might not even exist in D.C.
I think that's probably pretty spot on.
From ancient Rome to D.C. to the EU, bureaucracies and lifelong bureaucrats inherently move further away from the people they govern. They live in an alternative reality with different objectives, needs, etc. Inevitably, they begin to see the people not as the end but the means - this is what Trump meant by "the Swamp." Some of it is ideological but much of it is practical.