What is Donald Trump playing at? If it’s true that the best way of understanding the behaviour of an organisation is to assume it’s controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies, perhaps that same logic extends to the current conduct of the president of the United States. Maybe he secretly wants Republicans to lose the looming midterm elections that will decide the balance of power in the US for the next two years and for which the first postal ballots were sent out today.

That’s not as mad a theory as it sounds. Indeed, there are at least two reasons why Trump might either be unbothered by Republican defeat in November or even covertly desire it. We’ll come to those, but let’s start with a pattern of behaviour that is hard to explain as anything other than calculated self-sabotage.

At the centre of it is the single act that is already defining Trump’s second term: his reckless, failed war of choice against Iran. No matter how many times he declares mission accomplished or claims to have destroyed the Iranian military or to have reopened the strait of Hormuz, the facts keep telling a different story. In the past week, the two sides shifted from an economic standoff back to a shooting war, with the US firing on Iranian targets that included a wedding party, killing four, and Tehran striking out all over the neighbourhood, hitting Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain.

The impact on US voters is severe, felt most directly through rising petrol prices and grocery bills. But look at the graph measuring the cost the US government must pay to borrow money: it’s been a steep upward climb since 28 February, the day the war began, hitting a fresh high on Tuesday. For consumers, that rise translates into an expected jump in interest rates. It means that many of those casting ballots are likely to be doing so just as they start paying more on their credit card bills and mortgages. Given that........

© The Guardian