He never does what you expect him to do. In the middle of an action, he delights in pulling a 180, just to keep people on their toes. And sometimes it seems he’s genuinely confused, not sure why he said or did something in the first place, and simply denies it ever happened.

That can be totally frustrating for his immediate circle of friends and family. But when it carries over into the running of a country, or the balance of power of the entire world, it’s more than upsetting . . . it’s potentially cataclysmic.

But that is Donald Trump’s modus operandi. Somewhere in the years of his youth, he must have heard the lyrics to the old popular song, “I’ve Got the World On a String” (Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler, 1932), and taken it literally.

We’ve seen it in his treatment of Vladimir Putin: threatening one day, best friends the next.

He virtually excoriates Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in front of the entire world, threatens to cut off aid to Ukraine . . . and then reconsiders.

When Israel and Iran begin lobbing missiles at one another, he jumps in to help Israel, then screams at Netanyahu not to escalate by retaliating when Iran violates the ceasefire he, Trump, has just brokered.

He threatens to pull the U.S. out of NATO, calls it useless, then takes over the summit as though he owns it.

And those are just a few of the highlights of the past five months. It’s the way he operated his businesses and his TV “reality” show . . . and it’s the way he operates on the world stage.

Needless to say, he runs the U.S. government the same way. During his first administration, the White House was said to have a revolving door. He seems to delight in hiring people for their professed loyalty rather than their qualifications for the job, only to fire them for the slightest infraction, real or imagined. He signs executive orders, then retracts them. He has his pseudo-governmental agency, DOGE, cut the staffing and funding of vital departments to the bone, only to have to reverse course when — to his great surprise — things stop working properly.

And he very publicly breaks up with his BFF over a difference of opinion, then reconsiders . . . sort of.

*. *. *

To say his methodology is inefficient would be the most extreme of understatements. It is tearing the country apart, and destabilizing virtually every nation in the world. It’s also making us a laughing stock.

So why does he do it . . . in fact, why has he always done it? Is he diabolically evil? A little sadistic? Clinically schizophrenic? Perhaps, as it often seems, he simply lashes out in anger when things aren’t going his way, or when he needs to divert the public’s attention from other matters.

Any of those scenarios could prove disastrous for the leader of the free world. Imagine his being so uncontrollably angry one day that he blurts out, on live TV, that Israel and Iran “don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”

Oh, wait . . . you don’t have to imagine it. He did that, today, again for the whole world to see and hear on live TV.

That is a sign of an individual on the brink of losing control . . . if he hasn’t already lost it.

And that individual is the man pulling the strings.

Which is keeping me — and a lot of other people — awake at night.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
6/24/25