A reminder that Trump doesn't play 4D chess. His critics impose 4D chess narratives on his reckless impulsivity in order to reassure themselves that there is method to the madness, when there just isn't.
— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) November 14, 2024
What I’m hearing privately from a few key GOP senators: yes, they’d prefer to not have a messy fight over Gaetz. Not their favorite. But they also don’t have a lot of energy for pushing back. Trump runs the show, they say. If Gaetz can reassure them, they’re open to backing him.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) November 14, 2024
Trump doesn't use elaborate, sophisticated schemes to get his way. He knows one simple thing: When he's in a position of power, he's willing to bully people to get his way, and if the people he's dealing with don't want to fight back, or fight at all, they let him have his way. If he were a genuinely shrewd multi-dimensional chess player, he'd combine this with a sophisticated approach to attaining his long-term goals, but sophistication is beyond him. For instance, a shrewder man would have done the minimum necessary to avoid being indicted, but once he was up on charges and tried in New York, he bullied the court until he and his surrogates were allowed to engage in what amounted to jury tampering, and he intimidated officers of the court. This didn't prevent him from being convicted, but his entire presidential campaign was intended to intimidate the judge who'll preside over his sentencing, and it worked -- the judge delayed his sentencing until after Election Day, and now we know he won't go to prison.
Right now, Trump is appointing people who shouldn't be confirmed, and he's threatening to use a forced adjournment of Congress and recess appointments in lieu of Senate confirmation. The scheme requires the House of Representatives to call for the adjournment of both the House and the Senate, and it appears that House Speaker Mike Johnson is willing to do this for Trump. So now the Senate, which is a very self-regarding institution, wants to avoid being humiliated by a president who says he doesn't need the Senate's consent for his appointees, so senators are likely to rubber-stamp even Trump's worst appointees, holding pro forma hearings with a pre-determined outcome rather than no hearings at all, in order to preserve the tradition of holding hearings. Bullying works.
But what's the point? Maybe Trump was struggling to find easily confirmable appointees who'd be as willing to carry out his agenda as Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, but what does Trump get out of appointing Robert Kennedy Jr. to be the secretary of health and human services? Trump doesn't care about seed oils or food additives. Trump bragged about the COVID vaccines until long after his base turned against them. Kennedy's agenda is not Trump's agenda.
I think what Trump wants is the sheer joy of bullying. He likes forcing people to bend to his will for its own sake. At times he seems to pursue quick hits of dominance instead of real, enduring power or profit.
During Trump's first term, I was struck by how often his corrupt acts seemed small. In 2019, for instance, Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Ireland and stayed at a Trump resort, along with his Secret Service entourage -- but the resort is on the far west coast of Ireland, and Pence needed to be in Dublin, which is in the east. What did Trump get out of this? It's been reported that the hotel costs for the Secret Service were $15,000. But Trump wanted that relatively tiny amount of money. He wanted the cash, but I think he also wanted the travelers to do what he wanted them to do. He wants to dominate people, even Republican senators who'd happily work with him on ways he can amass power. He wants dominance for its own sake.
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