THE MADMAN THEORY

CNN co-anchor and correspondent Sciutto offers a sweeping assessment of Donald Trump’s presidency, focused on the president’s erratic, baffling leadership style, which he dubs the “Madman Theory.” “By numerous accounts,” writes the author, “President Trump as commander in chief is self-confident, impulsive, and skeptical of official advice,” foreign allies, and career diplomats. He is willing to ignore information, contradict and defy advisers, and he believes that he alone knows best. To fuel his analysis, Sciutto draws on media coverage, conversations with administration officials, and interviews with Mick Mulroy, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East; Susan Gordon, the country’s “second-highest-ranking intelligence official”; Fiona Hill, former European and Russian affairs director on the National Security Council; Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser; Joseph Yun, special representative for North Korea policy; and Steve Bannon. Emerging from many sources is a portrait of “a former businessman applying the lessons and rules of the New York real estate market to world affairs and in the process jettisoning a values basis for US foreign policy.” For some, such as Navarro, Trump’s pragmatism is an asset. Others vehemently disagree. “Depending on whom you ask,” Sciutto writes, “Trump the ‘madman’ is either a danger or a secret weapon, brilliant or incompetent, a ‘madman’ by choice to gain advantage in negotiations, or a ‘madman’ by accident who overestimates his own abilities and undermines the interests and safety of the nation.” After examining Trump’s handling of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Ukraine, and COVID-19, Sciutto agrees with those who characterize Trump’s approach to the world and to the presidency as “minimize, politicize, personalize, demonize the experts, and rarely strategize.” The coronavirus, Sciutto concludes, “may be the crisis that finally exposed the emptiness at the core of ‘America First.’ ”

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