A voice of reason from a guy who knows more than we do. Always welcome .. excerpts ..
Much of it stems from the persistent, and persistently wrong, assumption that Trump acts with coherent intent, good counsel, sound judgment, and the nation’s interests at heart. In reality, he is a figure of chaos, a “last-person-heard” president who leaps from one manic idea to the next.
This is the same man who, throughout the 2025 campaign, boasted about “no new wars” and stoked nationalist isolationism—promising to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, and forever bragging (falsely) the world was a quiet glade of restful peace during his first term. Now, those same supporters who once clamored for an “America First” retreat behind our two oceans are cheering a ludicrous scheme to become Gaza’s new landlords.
Worse, this kind of posturing gives Netanyahu a pretext to level Gaza entirely, reducing it to finer-grained rubble and dust with the comforting thought that the Americans will pick up the pieces afterward. “I see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East, maybe the entire Middle East,” Trump declared. A retired general confided to me, “This is thousands of American boys waiting to die. It’ll make Iraq in 2007 look calm.”
Of course, none of this will likely come to pass.
Even before last night this week has been disastrous for Trump.
He’s reeling, even among his most loyal supporters, who usually convince themselves he can do no wrong—yet have watched him effectively light his political ass on fire repeatedly this week.
On trade, for instance, he’s been saber-rattling about annexing Canada as the 51st state and forcing Mexico to capitulate. Let’s be abundantly clear: Canada and Mexico rolled Trump like a cheap rug. They played to his vanity, his lack of knowledge, and his shallow thinking to make him bark like a dog.
Meanwhile, China—an actual peer competitor— is retaliating with its own economic sanctions. Trade wars, it turns out, are not “easy to win” when your adversaries hold significant leverage.
The grand illusion has always been Trump’s self-styled mastery of negotiation. In truth, he’s no business titan—he’s a showman who often capitulates when faced with real pressure. I recounted in my first book how he paid an absurdly high price for a piece of South Florida property after some people I know named a ridiculous figure upfront. Convinced he was the ultimate dealmaker, he never even blinked. They walked away richer; he, none the wiser.
[...]
So here we are, staring at the prospect of an American invasion of Gaza, the forced relocation of a million Palestinians, and talk of building a Middle East Riviera atop the rubble.
It defies belief, but it’s emblematic of the last, desperate illusion: that Donald Trump knows what he’s doing. When it doesn’t happen, his people will declare him a genius. If it does, they will declare him a genius.
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