Comment on Fund managers worry about Trump’s mental state amid tariff debacle

sj_zero ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

To be honest, I am so sick and tired of all these articles...

If you're too stupid to understand the guys way of thinking don't advertise it like you're proud of it. It isn't because it is impossible to understand what he's doing, it's because you just haven't wrapped your head around it. 

You don't even have to agree with what he's doing. It's perfectly reasonable to take a look at what someone is trying to do and decide that you don't like it even if it has an internal logic to it, but it isn't some big own on the guy that you don't understand what he's doing.

And to preempt anyone going "well then what's he doing"? The same thing he's been doing since the '80s! It's called the big ask. Start off by asking for something that no one is going to agree to, then when everyone freaks out you pull back a little bit and everyone breathes aside relief not realizing that you just took more territory than they would have originally agreed to. Again, you can disagree with the strategy, but it's perfectly rational to do.

I mean that's even what he was doing with the 51st state nonsense. He asked for the entire country to be annexed, and then he's eventually going to settle for some favorable trade terms. Same with annexing the panama canal. It becomes so routine that the only reason that people aren't realizing what it is is that it is politically expedient to pretend that you don't understand the very basic tactics that he's using. If you can't figure it out by now, that's not something to brag about, that's something to be ashamed of. You've seen this movie so many times and you don't know that the guy with the knife is going to stab the pretty girl who just had sex, it means you're stupid!

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