Projection isn't a well-thought strategy, generally; rather it's an emotional reaction geared by instinctive drives by the same mechanism that triggers the fight/flight/freeze/fawn reaction. So intellectual acuity isn't really a factor, in most people. In those who would use well thought projection, it doesn't bode well for the target, but that's a whole other topic, but it happens. Ed Bernays used it in marketing and politics, there are interesting docos about it on YT If you're interested.
Anyway, this is just plain survival instinct, in someone who didn't learn proper coping/self-nurturing techniques as a child, adult or anywhere else along the way, which is unfortunate, as his family had the money to help him acquire the skills necessary, probably because it would have undermined the family dynamics that very well served the patriarch, who did have an intelligent Machiavellian personality disorder, which again, is a whole other topic, the main point being in most people, personality disorders are acquired as a survival mechanism, to grossly oversimplify.