Maybe this is obvious to everyone else, but I consistently marvel at the ability of absolutely horrible people to find each other and somehow sort of get along, at least temporarily. My conceptual model of the manipulative abuser is that he/she finds generally nice and capable suckers to exploit. It's basically a con, and the marks aren't necessarily bad people.But Trump surrounds himself with all of the worst people. I suppose not every single one of them takes pleasure in torturing babies for sport, but they all strike you as people who would shiv their mothers-in-law, if not their mothers, for a few bucks. And they don’t just have to deal with the horrible person who runs the show. They all have to deal with each other, too! I have no idea how this works for more than 2 hours.
I think the answer to “How can all of these lying, abusive, manipulative assholes stand one another?” is fairly straightforward.
They all know what to expect from each other. There’s no question of whether or not to trust the other person because nobody trusts anyone else.
More importantly, they all know that none them is going to get called out for being a lying, abusive, manipulative asshole. If they surrounded themselves with nice people, they might have to feel guilty about how they live their lives. When they surround themselves with other dirtbags, they can keep up the illusion that this is just how everyone is.