{"id":1320,"date":"2017-03-29T16:55:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-29T21:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=1320"},"modified":"2017-03-29T16:55:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-29T21:55:15","slug":"president-trumps-biggest-weakness-is-that-he-doesnt-know-how-to-make-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2017\/03\/president-trumps-biggest-weakness-is-that-he-doesnt-know-how-to-make-deals\/","title":{"rendered":"“President Trump’s biggest weakness is that he doesn’t know how to make deals.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t put too much trust in political prognostication by narrative extrapolation, but\u00a0this lil article in the WaPo<\/em>\u2014 “Trump is throwing himself into the Democrats\u2019 trap<\/a>” \u2014is reminding me of something I wrote way back in June 2016<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Is he a great negotiator? \u00a0No.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Is a great businessman? \u00a0No.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Is a statesman of any stripe? No.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Is he even a politician, in any conventional sense of the word? \u00a0No.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But he is possibly the greatest salesman this country has ever known<\/a>, in part because he has perfected the sales process beyond the need for any product at all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And none of us should feel good about this fact.\u00a0 That he’s a shit negotiator and abysmal dealmaker in no way impedes his capacity to hurt countless people, profoundly and callously\u2014because profound callousness\u00a0is the product he’s selling. \u00a0Even just glance at the charts here<\/a> and you’ll see what I mean. \u00a0Hell, just remember that\u00a0his healthcare plan\u2014which was so\u00a0fucked up even his own party wouldn’t\u00a0support\u2014<\/em>cost more and covered fewer people than a simple repeal of Obamacare. \u00a0<\/em>It didn’t obey any coherent American political ideology\u2014it wasn’t more care, or better care, or cheaper care. \u00a0It was just profoundly callous and cruel, because that’s what he sells: The opportunity to exercise a callous “fuck you!<\/em>“ishness toward a\u00a0world that fails to\u00a0recognize how inherently wonderful and superior you are.<\/p>\n

We’re not even “through the looking glass” here, because it’s a universe without mirrors or even light, just groping through the darkness insisting what you need<\/em> to be true must<\/em> be true, because otherwise you are a fucking\u00a0freier of the first degree, and you’ve been duped by a soft-handed dimbulb who couldn’t even convince his buddies to do the thing they’ve spent seven years screaming they were gonna do at the very first opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t put too much trust in political prognostication by narrative extrapolation, but\u00a0this lil article in the WaPo\u2014 “Trump is throwing himself into the Democrats\u2019 trap” \u2014is reminding me of something I wrote way back in June 2016: Is he a great negotiator? \u00a0No. Is a great businessman? \u00a0No. Is a statesman of any stripe? … Continue reading ““President Trump’s biggest weakness is that he doesn’t know how to make deals.””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11],"tags":[30,53,43,56],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1320"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1323,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions\/1323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}