Review approved pay increase for Trump (8)
I believe the answer is:
appraise
'review approved pay' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both related to thinking as well as being verbs in their base form.
Perhaps there's a link between them I don't understand?
'increase for trump' is the wordplay.
'increase' becomes 'raise' (raising is a kind of increasing).
'for' says to put letters next to each other (I've seen this in other clues).
'trump' becomes 'app' (I can't justify this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'raise' after 'app' is 'APPRAISE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for appraise that I've seen before include "Judge" , "Assess, set a price on" , "Assess or evaluate" , "Estimate or assess the value of" , "To gauge the worth" .)