Is There Method to Trump’s Madness?

On Tuesday, I spoke on a panel about the 1965 Voting Rights Act at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. During the reception after the event, someone asked me what I thought of President Trump’s recent actions at home and abroad. What did I make of his self-destructive decision to launch an unprovoked war in Iran? How did I understand the constant chaos and dysfunction coming out of the White House? In short, was there a method to the apparent madness?

My short answer to my interlocutor was “no,” although I of course said a bit more than that. And my slightly longer answer to you, reader, is “No — there isn’t.” I got at this somewhat in my column this week, but there is no available evidence to support the idea that Trump is capable of thinking beyond the short term. We see this with the war in Iran, where it is clear that Trump expected more or less instant success — a short conflict followed by regime change and another victory under his belt. The idea that there might be unintended consequences — and the fundamental reality that the Iranian government has both agency and the capacity to act — does not seem to have either troubled the president’s mind or figured much in the calculations of his closest advisers.

To this point, one of the fundamental realities of this administration is that the president has organized his White House in such a way as to prevent anything from ever troubling his precious mind. Having surrounded himself with sycophants — with men and women so eager to please that they’ll submit to practically any humiliation thrown their way — he has filtered out information that might challenge his preconceptions, his assumptions, or even simply his ego.

The presidency runs on information and that information, you might imagine, needs to be accurate. There is no way for a president to prioritize, decide and follow through if he does not have access to the facts and unvarnished intelligence needed to make cleareyed decisions. Naturally, Trump, who does not care to govern, has no interest in this kind of information, if he could even retain it in the first place. He prefers to act from his gut, which is to say, his most venal impulses.

What he wants from his aides and allies, by contrast, is the kind of praise, attention and constant affirmation that you might give to a child with low self-esteem. Consider the way he expects his cabinet members to shower him with praise during their public meetings, or a recent event with congressional Republicans where he received a standing ovation for his mere presence — and where no one clapping seemed to want to stop, for fear of being the first to sit down. (A dynamic common to cults of personality.)

It suffices to say that this is a problem for trying to manage and prosecute a war, especially one of your own choosing. Even in the absence of a sound and capable executive, it might be possible for the military bureaucracy to handle this conflict if it could count on competent leadership within its own sphere. But here again, the president is an obstacle. He is more concerned with promoting friendly faces than finding anyone equipped to handle the job in question. And so the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth — a former Fox News host who lobbied Trump, in his first term, to pardon an accused war criminal — is also ill-equipped, professionally and psychologically, to deal with the dangers, dilemmas and exigencies of conflict.

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Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va.

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