Short Answer: Nothing. But Why?
If I'd pursued graduate studies in my 20s it would've been in Developmental Psychology. I'd been interested in the work of psychologists Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, who both proposed objectively verifiable rungs on what might be called a ladder. For Piaget, the rungs were those climbed by children as they matured educationally. For Kohlberg, the rungs were moral stages that our minds may or may not reach as we mature.
What interested me was the intersection of these psychological stages that we pass through and their equivalent in politics. I wondered whether this could possibly be the key that opens the door to studying politics as a science.
Here's a very quick, simplified example:
* A child learns to see things from another person's perspective (this doesn't happen until concepts like abstraction are possible)
* What if something similar happens in politics: perhaps when exposed to different cultures we're more likely to value individual rights over law-and-order
Anyway, Kohlberg's moral hierarchy certainly hints at this parallel possibility. Below, I've quoted the relevant wikipedia page (with a few adjustments). After that I hazard a guess at what is going on in Donald Trump's mind.
............................
Kohlberg's Rungs on the Moral Development Ladder
1. Obedience and punishment orientation
(How can I avoid punishment?)
2. Self-interest orientation
(What's in it for me? Paying for a benefit)
3. Interpersonal accord and conformity
(Social norms; the good boy/girl attitude)
4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation
(Law and order morality)
5. Social contract orientation
(Everybody's individuality is the starting point for agreements)
6. Universal ethical principles
(Principled conscience. The self cannot avoid actions that it knows are just)
..................
Understanding the Trumpian mindset could possibly be as simple as a child's inability to progress from the second rung, self-interest, to the third, social norms. Why?
Normally a child must conform, for the most part, or be ostracized. Everybody needs to be loved, accepted and respected. But, those who're very wealthy can become spoiled, and later in life can pay for love and respect, and so, conceivably, can fail to move on to Rung #3 and #4, let alone anything higher. Could this become a self-indulgent rut for someone with narcissistic tendencies? That sounds plausible.
The self-interested orientation sees anything that benefits the self as morally right. Sounds like the ring-kissing that we've come to know. Example:
* If Putin's emissaries had taped their conversations with Trump at various junctures, it is quite possible that a tape exists of Trump spontaneously agreeing to have Russia hack election results in '16 and beyond. You can read this fictional scenario in which a US election is hacked to realize it wouldn't be all that difficult a task. If he is mainly on Rung #2, he would have seen an offer to hack an election as something that was helping him, which he would consider morally good--at least at first blush.
* Needless to say, if he did react positively to such an offer, it'd be treason, and could return to haunt him in the form of blackmail, or if exposed by an investigation.
Incidentally, Kohlberg's theory might suggest that vast wealth is a terrible curse, stunting the inheritor's moral growth, especially in personalities pre-disposed to narcissism.
Postscript:
I haven't studied this material for decades, but rereading a few articles does raise these questions that might be fun to explore someday:
#1 Could behavior tend to hover on a certain rung, but with outlier incidents on other rungs? That is, after a certain age our minds are able to conceive of higher rungs, and occasionally find our footing there, only to be brought back down by habit and need. For example, it may be that Trump's inability to reach Rung #3 and beyond is because he allows himself to be self-centered, not because he can't imagine anything higher.
#2 In other words, could criminality be a failure to advance to Rung #3 and up, despite knowing that this maturity was the way forward?
#3 Could there be a Rung #7 that, like a Buddhist monk who turns inward, allows a retreat from the overwhelming responsibilities of consciousness, and instead enables meditation on, and planning for, future moral actions within the realm of the possible?
#4 Likewise, could there be a Rung #8 that sees consciousness re-enter the theater of social responsibility according to a cognizant timeline?
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