(Tom: This is a great read from a very insightful author and well worth your time.)
Early in his mandate, Trump naively tried the direct approach, by surrounding himself with establishment rebels like Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon, then by annoying each and everyone of his foreign allies, shredding their free-trade treaties, imposing taxes on imports and insulting them in their face in the G7 meetings of 2017 and 2018. The reaction was strong and everyone doubled-down on the Russiagate absurdity, as it looked like the only option to stop the man on his path of globalism destruction. Predictably, the direct approach went nowhere; Flynn and Bannon had to go, and Trump was entangled in a handful of inquiries that made him realize that he wouldn’t get anything accomplished with transparency. He had to find a way to annihilate the most dangerous people on the planet, but at the same time, stay in power and alive. He had to smarten up.
That’s when his genius exploded on the world. He completely changed his strategy and approach, and started taking absurd decisions and tweeting outrageous declarations. As threatening and dangerous as some of these first looked, Trump didn’t use them for their first degree meaning, but was aiming at the genuine second degree effects that his moves would have. And he didn’t care about what people thought of him as he did, for only results count in the end. He would even play buffoon over Twitter, look naive, lunatic or downright idiotic, perhaps in the hope to impregnate the belief that he didn’t know what he’s doing, and that he couldn’t be that dangerous. He’s willfully being politically incorrect to show the ugly face that the United States are hiding behind their mask.