U.S. President Donald Trump attends a cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday. Trump’s words and actions seem to fit a playbook for disrupting an election.

As a researcher and national security specialist for the Center for Strategic and International Studies during the 1990s, I worked alongside everyone from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to former National Security Adviser Zbig Brzezinski, to the most interesting person I’ve ever met: military war-gamer Col. Bill Taylor, who, in addition to famously serving as Sgt. Elvis Presley’s Army platoon leader, held the dubious distinction of being the only American ever invited to the “personal pleasure dome” of North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung.

I also worked on some of the most cutting-edge war-gaming simulations, including “Wild Atom” — a two-day simulation with multiple real-human players, involving a possible plot to smuggle nuclear materials capable of making a bomb into the U.S. ahead of a potential terrorist attack. Hints that Moscow might be involved entered the mix, and players ultimately had to read intelligence signs to learn how to avoid nuclear war. 

Recently, I’ve been doing this same work in my head over what’s happening in Minnesota. 

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The first thing to do to game out any scenario is to identify your opponent’s raison d’être, what makes them tick, what they’re after. I humbly suggest President Donald Trump is singularly focused on the midterms, and so that’s where the focus should be.

Think about it: Trump announced during the presidential campaign that, if he won the 2024 election, it would be our last. “You won’t have to vote anymore,” he told one conservative Christian audience.........

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