I fundamentally reject the binary proposition offered and propose a third option: that Trump was never as bad as the Left tried to portray in the first place and they spent the last 8+ years lying to the world about that, and countless other things, and now it has been laid bare and they know there will be a reckoning.
I also don't agree that Trump's ego is very easy to massage. I do know that a whole lot of people have underestimated him for a long time, and that casually reducing him, and his followers, to caricatures contributed to him being elected president twice.
The "enemy to trusted advisors" thing is kind of how American politics work. As far back as Abraham Lincoln and continuing to Presidents Obama (Clinton as SecState), Biden (Harris, who called him a racist, as his VP), and yes Trump, "team of rivals" is more or less the default setting.