Why did Trump take top Secret Nuclear documents?

I don't believe Trump to be a truly stupid man, but he is at least a very ignorant one when it comes to politics and its associated rules and regulations. This is the same man who held a party in the Whitehouse rose garden after the repeal of Obamacare passed the House of Representatives, without seeming to care that it still had to pass the Senate (spoiler: it did not pass the Senate, thanks to John McCain). However, the act of taking boxes of secret documents back to his home when leaving office and not caring if anyone noticed, or have his story straight as to why he had them, or having really any kind of plan as to what to do if he got in trouble for having them is a level of not only ignorance but utter recklessness that I would not have ascribed even to Trump. His current flailing about heavily implies that he really didn't think this through, so I suppose I must revise my previous assessment of Trump.

Can Trump wriggle out of this and if not, what's the likely timeline for him to go from teasing another presidential run to absconding and fleeing to Russia?

I am just waiting for Trump to tout himself as the antihero for the disclosure movement and allege that he has documents regarding Roswell cover-ups, etc

Add in a relevant JFK Jnr theory, and you have yourself a secret sauce

Whatever hard evidence they will find, he will allege that it is a smear campaign and that the truth is out there

It is a concern the length his supporters will go to if they feel like their man is being unduly targeted, but at the same time, a lot of the people who broke into the Capitol seemed pretty dismayed when the reality hit them that their actions on that day carried a legal penalty. That makes me wonder how many people who claim to support Trump would actually pick up arms and go fight for him and how many are content to talk sh*t on Twitter.

We know that there are at least some militia types who'd like to cause trouble, but their absence from the streets of D.C. after the military were deployed following Jan. 6th tells me they couldn't handle a direct confrontation. So long as there is a decent police/military presence at places where these types would threaten to congregate, I don't think they'll be able to do very much. Lone wolf attacks would be another story, but that doesn't quite translate to widespread civil unrest.

This is only one kind of nuclear data and besides that handing someone old nuclear codes ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND

The codes rotate all the time. The methods don’t. It took years for the Allie’s to crack the enigma machine and it took top secret material (the machines and cyphers and signals intelligence) to totally crack it.

with enough “old” data pieces together someone may well one day crack it and launch some off with a pirate launch signal.

That’s setting aside all other manner of potential secrets: data about completely unknown of weapon systems and capabilities, anti-ICBM systems, or briefings like missile locations, deployment strategies and target packages, black site launchers, the number of dummies vs live warheads in our MIRVs. Weakness in and vulnerability analyses in our systems. Etc. The kind of data Russia etc could use to achieve First Strike

Not something to leave laying around, no. Not by any means.

It was nuclear codes? Where did you get that information?

The other things he stole are being presumed to be means and methods.

eg. Top Secret: Russia has a new model nuke

SCI: Russia has a new model nuke according to our mole in the machine shop

it can even contain declassified information as well, but include compartmentalized means:

declassified: Putin has a new girlfriend

SCI: Putin has a new girlfriend, according to photos sent to us by his housemaid

this sort of thing can get people killed in counterintelligence operations.

That’s one of the things the newspaper outlets say he had: spy and informant payroll data.

Compare this to the clear plastic totes that came out of Mar a Lago:

Trump is 2 of the worst types in one. A corrupt politician. A corrupt big businessman. Why he took these documents/what he intended to do with them probably will never be known but my guess is that he did so to 'look powerful'. In his way of thinking, Trump could say 'I have these documents and can do what I want with them'. Leverage? Ego? Stupidity? Trying the emulate a Mission: Impossible of James Bond plot? Whatever way, this was done to further his own purpose and may only make sense in his own mind. That said and done, we should never underestimate Trump or think Trump is a fool or is the only one out there that is a threat. Trump still has countless followers, has books and TV programmes dedicated to him and remains a major topic of discussion everywhere. A fool? Or a clever divisive individual who acts the fool to divert and divide? The latter more like it. Trump has reinvented himself countless times and just when you think he is down and out, he comes back. A big part of this is his opportunistic nature and lack of any real ideology. He is well used to using what he has around him and turning it to his advantage. In his way of thinking, he could well just take those documents, intend to do nothing with them and cry 'witchhunt' when investigated. Poor Donald the victim is played once more to his audience who become more indoctrinated by the conspiracies.

At first I thought for sure he’s taken these files as leverage or insurance, he’ll spill the beans if anyone comes for him. But thinking about it, there’s a very real possibility of huge deals being done. All it would take is a ‘connected’ visitor staying at the resort to be allowed into that room with a phone. The idea is horrific, it could already have happened.

There were some typos in the derivation of the nuclear equations which needed to be fixed

Imagine if someone made that their campaign promise, and then didn't follow through on it. I'd be pretty miffed for wasting my vote