The allegation isn't that the president is having an affair with a staffer, it's that this staffer's job appears to be to keep him enclosed in a narcissistic bubble of unreality where news of his historic unpopularity and the catastrophic fallout from and widespread criticism of his policies can't penetrate. It's a case of cult and cult leader in an epistemic death-spiral, except this cult leader has captured control of a nation (ours) with immense destructive power.