Sam Freedman
One of the many exhausting things about Trump is the second guessing. Which of his throwaway comments does he mean? Which are pure fantasy and which have a kernel of truth? As David Brooks wrote during his first term: “We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.”
On tariffs, on deportations, on healthcare, on Ukraine, all sorts of things have been said and promised but the world is left guessing as to what any of it means. Markets bounce around on every contradictory pronouncement, prime ministers are forced into rapid press conferences, journalists find themselves needing to read up on Greenland. All very tiring.
It's impossible to know how much of this is intentional on Trump’s part – a deliberate strategy to confuse everyone and maximise leverage. We can’t see into his brain. But motivation doesn’t really matter. It’s what he does and it can be effective, if you’re running the most powerful country in the world, though it’s also an approach with serious costs.
He takes a similar approach to his staff – who are set up as a court of factions rather than a team (again, who knows how deliberate any of this is). Proximity to the principal becomes even more important than usual in politics: stars rise and fall as Trump chooses new favourites and changes his mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment