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Honestly, I think the most credible answer I can come up with is what Tim Snyder called "The Weak Strongman." Trump didn't invent it and he's not the only one, but he is one huge example of a very particular way of leadership: Basically, he's not strong or popular enough to succeed fairly, so he's made a whole strategy out of undermining anything effective or popular that he runs across. Once the whole field is polluted, and anyone who sticks out as an alternative to him gets destroyed, he can succeed within the wreckage and he looks like a winner.

I don't think he really would explain it that way, but that's my best guess for what's going on and why he wants to destroy cancer research. He just has an innate hatred for anything that people like that isn't him.