How did a bungling blowhard like Donald Trump became a master illusionist? The guy reaches into a top hat, pulls out absolutely nothing but insists it’s a rabbit. And 40 percent of the country cheers wildly, as if David Blaine had just made the Washington Monument disappear. That pretty much sums up this week’s Singapore Magic Show, where Donald The Magnificent supposedly pulled world peace out from behind the ear of a ruthless North Korean dictator.
Ronald Reagan was known as the “Teflon President” because he could screw up without repercussions. Trump goes way beyond Teflon. He is the Bubble President, encased in a truth-free bubble, hermetically sealed off from our fact-based universe. His illusions are created by neither sleight-of-hand nor clever equipment. Instead, they germinate in a damaged, ego-driven imagination that would make Walter Mitty blush. They go from there, totally unfiltered, directly to his mouth. Reality in Trump World, is whatever the Donald says it is. That’s one mean parlor trick!
But there he was, in front of American and North Korean flags, shaking hands with Kim Jong Un and announcing a “very comprehensive” agreement that will bring peace to the world. He later tweeted that people can “sleep well” now that there is no nuclear threat. Outside the bubble, however, North Korea has not given up a single nuclear weapon and retains the missile system to deliver them. The agreement signed in Singapore contained only promises to work toward disarmament. There was nothing comprehensive about it. In fact, it didn’t go beyond the same kind of general pledges the U.S. secured from North Korea in the past, pledges eventually broken by the totalitarian regime.
Look, after a year of Trump and Kim trading threats to blow each other up, is it better that they are sharing plates of crispy fried pork in Singapore? Of course. What’s unsettling is Trump’s total lack of a grasp on what’s happening. The negotiations with North Korea did not end with the Trumpian stagecraft this week; they have barely begun. The fact that these two oddball leaders are talking to each other is, indeed, an improvement over comparing the sizes of their nuclear buttons, but the immediate reality remains that North Korea has nukes and their elimination has yet to be worked out. Trump’s wholly premature victory lap in declaring himself the architect of world peace when substantive negotiations have barely begun, casts grave doubt on his ability to shepherd such a delicate process to a productive conclusion. Seeing only what you want to see, rather than what is really there, is one of the worst occupational hazards in negotiations.
Yet, that has been this president’s biggest Achilles heel. His pathological tendency to construct his own reality, and then make decisions based on those illusions, has plagued every square inch of his presidency. He went after Obamacare, boasting that he had a plan for much better insurance at a lower cost. There was no plan. He insisted that he had a way of getting Mexico to pay for the wall he wants to build. He didn’t. He claimed to have a scheme for a $1.5 trillion program to repair the country’s infrastructure. He didn’t.
Although Trump’s governance by delusion has been the hallmark of this administration, he took his magical thinking artform to new heights this week. After the photo-op pageantry with Kim, reporters asked the president why he thought the North Korean leader could be trusted to disarm, particularly in light of that regime’s extensive history in breaking promises. Trump’s answer, as reported on a Washington Post podcast? He’s a “good judge of people” and his “gut” tells him North Korea won’t go back on its word. Let that sink in for a minute: We can sleep well now because Donald J. Trump is a good judge of people. Pass the Ambien, please.
A central storyline of this presidency has been Trump’s utter ineptness at judging people. His former national security advisor, a campaign foreign policy advisor, his campaign manager and a deputy manager have been indicted on felonies or have already pled guilty. The Donald has had major falling outs with most of his hand-picked cabinet members and top advisors. Just ask Anthony Scaramucci, White House communications director for 10 days and the posterchild for terrible personnel decisions. Steve Bannon was his go-to guy until Trump kicked him to the curb, claiming that Bannon had “lost his mind”. Similar stories for Reince Priebus (Chief of Staff), Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State), Tom Price (HHS Secretary), H. R. McMaster (National Security Advisor) and a host of others. No elected first-term president in the past 100 years has had this much turnover in the people he appointed to top positions.
Trump presumably spent considerable time interviewing and reviewing background information on his appointees, and still ended up going sour on most of them. Yet, he meets Kim for the first time and immediately senses a “very special bond” worthy of his trust. This is a man who had his subordinates killed for falling asleep in a meeting or showing “disrespectful posture”. Kim also had his uncle and a brother murdered, along with at least 340 other people whom he felt did not sufficiently respect him. Given that Trump is limited to dealing with his detractors through a mean tweet, the “special bond” here may well be based on envy.
There is no presidential magic that will successfully denuclearize this ruthless, oppressive regime. If that goal can be accomplished, it will come only through steely eyed negotiations, focused on hard facts, not illusions of grandeur, and based on legitimate interests of both parties, not on the ego needs of deranged leaders. It would also be immensely helpful if the Bubble President took a profound cue from the Teflon President’s experience in a similar quandary: Trust, but verify. It beats the bonding of speed dating every time.