President Trump likes maps. Once it was John King’s analysis of the CNN electoral map that Trump obsessed over. Now he wants policy papers heavy on maps and graphics and not dense with boring words.
.. It seems that at some point Trump decided that he didn’t really trust anyone else. While that was a reasonable strategy for a New York real estate developer who was always trying to rip off so-called partners, it’s obviously a limitation when you’re president.
.. Like all narcissists, he doesn’t like to be told if he’s screwing up, so he surrounds himself with people who don’t tell him.
.. The more he defends the odd duck Michael Flynn, saying he fired him only because Flynn misled Mike Pence about talking sanctions with the Russian ambassador before Pence went on “Face the Nation,” the more it raises the question: Why didn’t Trump himself tell Pence when the White House counsel told him?
And the more Trump decries America’s lack of innocence in the world relative to Russia and turns journalists into whipping boys and targets of hate, the more he sounds like a thuggy dictator himself.
.. “He thinks confidence is more important than competence and attitude matters more than aptitude. Others may be exhausted by the frenzy. You can see it in their drawn faces and pained expressions. Donald is energized by the fight. It also explains why he expects others to accept a bashing and be fine with him the next day.”
.. As Trump biographer Tim O’Brien puts it, “He’s the emperor of chaos.”
Donald the Menace
But it also reflected a cold view of the incentives the new administration would face: as working-class voters began to realize that candidate Trump’s promises about jobs and health care were insincere, foreign distractions would look increasingly attractive.
.. But the war with China will, it seems, have to wait. First comes Australia. And Mexico. And Iran. And the European Union. (But never Russia.)
.. There was also a curious contrast between the response to Iran and the response to another, more serious provocation: Russia’s escalation of its proxy war in Ukraine. Senator John McCain called on the president to help Ukraine. Strangely, however, the White House said nothing at all about Russia’s actions until Nikki Haley, the United Nations ambassador, issued a condemnation late Thursday night to the Security Council. This is getting a bit obvious, isn’t it?
.. Peter Navarro, head of Mr. Trump’s new National Trade Council, accused Germany of exploiting the United States with an undervalued currency. There’s an interesting economics discussion to be had here, but government officials aren’t supposed to make that sort of accusation unless they’re prepared to fight a trade war. Are they?
.. No, what we’re hearing sounds like a man who is out of his depth and out of control, who can’t even pretend to master his feelings of personal insecurity. His first two weeks in office have been utter chaos, and things just keep getting worse — perhaps because he responds to each debacle with a desperate attempt to change the subject that only leads to a fresh debacle.
Donald Trump Seen Bringing ‘Deliberate Chaos’ to the White House
Observers don’t foresee a change in the unorthodox style he used to win the presidential race
“It’s chaos around him, but it’s a deliberate chaos,” said Steve Schmidt, a Republican political strategist who worked in the George W. Bush White House. “It’s the type of chaos that preserves maximum control for him.”.. Mr. Trump has boldly predicted a glorious inauguration event and administration. That stems in part, his allies say, from the New York businessman’s successful use of controlled confusion in his dealings with bankers, regulators and political adversaries.
Trump’s one consistent policy: Chaos
it would seem the incoming Trump administration plans to handle its affairs — domestic and foreign — in a manner that meets the dictionary definition of a “rogue state” as one “that conducts its policy in a dangerously unpredictable way.”
.. According to foreign government accounts, Trump praised Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign against drug users and dealers, which has killed at least 4,500 people in five months. And he hailed Kazakhstan dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev for his “fantastic success” that can be called a “miracle.”
.. Trump is now open to keeping the Paris climate pact, after calling climate change a hoax. He campaigned against Goldman Sachs as a symbol of corruption and is now stocking his administration with Goldman bankers. He pledged to reinstate waterboarding and to repeal Obamacare but is rethinking both. He riled supporters with a pledge to prosecute and imprison Hillary Clinton but has reconsidered. He dropped his pledge to ban Muslims or those from terrorism-prone countries from entering America in favor of better vetting of all immigrants. He now says his border wall may be a fence in parts, and he dropped his talk of mass deportation of illegal immigrants.
.. His nominee to be commerce secretary assures Americans that “tariffs are the last thing” to which the Trump administration would resort — only to be contradicted by Trump himself, who tweeted Sunday that here will “soon” be a 35 percent tariff on imports from companies that offshore jobs.
.. Some suggest that there is a method to Trump’s madness, that he is trying to make would-be adversaries think he is irrational and capricious, thereby making foes and rivals wary of pushing him too far. This is why North Korea’s Kim Jong Un gets a wide berth. On a lesser scale, this also underpinned Richard Nixon’s “Madman Theory” during the Vietnam War