"Maybe there are two different Donald Trumps"

I generally try to be wary about armchair psychoanalysis of politicians. Most of the time it's badly done, often telling us more about the analyzer than about the analyzee, and even when done well, it's generally a distraction from the important issues.

With Trump, though, the question of persona is difficult to avoid. The reality show villain/pro wrestling heel aspect is an essential part of the story. The campaign so far has been driven by an interaction of policy and personality (or, in the case of Bush/Rubio/Walker, absence of personality).

 Which makes clips like this worth noting [about two minutes in]:






As is the following from TPM:

Following inflammatory statements about Mexican immigrants and policy proposals targeting undocumented immigrants from Latin America, Donald Trump on Tuesday sat down for a meeting with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce's CEO, Javier Palomarez.

Palomarez told CNN on Tuesday that he was "encouraged" by his meeting with Trump. According to Palomarez, Trump joked that he didn't need the Hispanic vote, but then indicated that he's looking for support from that community.

"I want it. I feel like I've been mischaracterized and treated unfairly and my name has been slandered to some extent with this audience," Trump said, according to Palomarez.

Palomarez later joined MSNBC's "All In With Chris Hayes," where he said he was "very surprised" by his meeting with Trump, describing the real estate mogul as "hospitable."

"The Donald Trump that I met today and that I sat with today was very different from the Donald Trump that I saw in the media," he said on MSNBC. "He was a gentleman. He listened much more than he spoke. He asked questions."

I don't want to make too much of these anecdotes -- Even if we ignore the fact that n=2, there's no reason to believe that the polite and reasonable persona projected with Olbermann and Palomarez represents "the real Trump" any more than the Fox News cartoon bully does. -- but these stories are a useful reminder that we're watching political theater.