ROME, ITALY

A TOP PSYCHOLOGIST says that every time he watches US President Donald Trump speak his imagination turns to actor John Hurt playing Roman emperor Caligula in the classic BBC television series, I, Claudius.

“Trump just goes full Caligula when he is addressing an audience,” insists Dr Livia Manipole of the think tank, Tractors In Short Supply, which provides profiles of world leaders to businesses and governments. “He throws out ideas as much designed to test – loyalty, boundaries, reactions, that kind of thing – as to propose anything he really intends to carry out. Mr Trump is consistently suspicious of everything around him. So he bombards it with plans and ideas, most of which will go nowhere – are probably intended to go nowhere – while the real stuff sneaks in under the radar and he gets to know who his friends and enemies – at home and abroad – are. How you react to his suggestions, comments and proposals, that feeds his sense of himself and allows him judge who he’s really up against. He’s reading people all the time, like a good card player. And sometimes a card player bluffs, just to see what might happen. Of course the emperor Caligula, he eventually went further than mere testing, he started to murder…”