Trump and the Midterms

Part 1: What makes bullies cave?

Donald Trump has a myriad of guises, none of them admirable: He is a preening narcissist with no end of self-congratulatory thoughts; a multiple-times failed businessman with six bankruptcies on his record; a sexual predator who declared his prowess to a journalist and was even accused of brutal sexual aggression against his first wife; a felon convicted by a New York jury on multiple counts of falsifying business records; an ex-president who illegitimately absconded with highly classified records to his seaside retreat in Palm Beach after losing the 2020 election; and he’s been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States as well as conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding in connection with his overall plan to prevent the transfer of power to Democratic candidate Joe Biden, who had clearly won the 2020 election. He is also demonstrably incapable of systematic, organized, rational thought. Tony Schwartz, who ghostwrote Trump’s book The Art of the Deal, has said that he found it impossible to conduct a systematic interview with Trump because the man could not focus on a single train of thought for more than a few minutes. Schwartz has shouldered his portion of the blame (shared, I think, with Trump’s infamous TV show The Apprentice) for creating the misleading image—still accepted by many—of Trump as a rational thinker. The tariff issue, on which The Donald still refuses to acknowledge that tariffs are paid by the receiver of foreign goods........

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