Deal, deal, deal, deal, deal. How he dotes on that word, fetishizes it! Talking about Iran, his every other word seems to be “DEAL.” (He capitalizes it.) As if the objective of this war is a DEAL. Never mind what’s in it.
FDR had the New Deal. Truman the Fair Deal. Trump the bullshit deal.
Trump as the great dealmaker is a joke. What he is is the great bullshitter.
While president, he’s never made a deal worthy of the word. Nor did he before, in his “business career.” I put that in quotes because his real business was the rip-off. With six bankruptcies. Him stripping assets and leaving investors holding the bag.
He did make deals with people to do work for him, then habitually refused to pay them. The art of the deal-breaker.
The true art of the deal is in understanding what’s actually at stake for all sides, and coming up with solutions, including pragmatic compromises, that serve their core interests. Like the Obama administration spending two years painstakingly negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran. Not perfect, but better than nothing. Trump tore it up.
That kind of intelligent hard work is wholly foreign to him. Instead his idea of dealmaking is bullying to get his way. True of all his tariff machinations. And this is why he’s so clueless about ending the Ukraine war. Doesn’t even understand what it’s all about, for each side. Ditto for Iran. Zero understanding of how Iranians see things.
Crucial too is sticking to a deal — a concept also totally foreign to Trump. As in stiffing people who worked for him, and his tariff flip-flops. You need instead to establish trust between parties. Trump does the opposite, repeatedly proving his word is worthless. Hence the world has lost trust in America itself — devastating when it comes to trying to advance our global interests.
He bumbled into this Iran war with no idea WTF he was doing. Now baffled how to get out. This week he said “a ceasefire is when you’re shooting in a more moderate manner.” Also that he “couldn’t care less” if negotiations were faltering; they’d become “boring.”
An in-depth analysis by The Economist says the global economic damage has been somewhat contained thus far. But if this lasts a few more weeks, things will get really really ugly.
Eventually the war will stop. With an agreement worse than Obama’s, giving us nothing. But Trump will call it a tremendous victory “like nobody’s ever seen before.” Maybe with fireworks splashing his name and face across the sky.
