I'll expand further.

"There's no secret man behind the curtain whose looking out 4-5 steps ahead."

What are table top exercises that hypothesize multiple scenarios and what they would do in each? Event 201?

And these are just the public meetings we know about.

All you have to do is put yourself in the shoes of a psychopath. Would you not have all sorts of teams working to ensure you maintain control in every scenario that you gamed out when playing the game of politics?