Understanding is the Trump brand. But what if he really told us what would he do?

If there is one fact that Donald Trump has absorbed it in seventy-eight years, then this is that there are advantages of lying all the time-among them does not know anyone when you are deceived and when you really mean what you say. Imposing a disrupted tariff on the allies? Selling Ukraine? Using the government for the age of revenge on political enemies? The president may have threatened all these things, perhaps he said – more and over again – that, in fact, he intends to implement them. But until now, after he opened his second term with a noticeable series of alleged actions to accompany his inflammatory speech, there is still a degree of uncertainty, partly because no one can provide a final answer to the question: to what extent, after all, is ready to go?

Trump loves to uncertainty that you can call him the first principle of his presidency – a side benefit, as much as you feel anxious, from the chaos he creates wherever he goes. The president’s supporters often boast of the supposed openness of his management. The secretary, Caroline Levitt, said Trump himself is “the most transparent and accessible president in history.” But of course, “Polubility” is not synonymous with “transparency”. Trump’s ambiguity every time he speaks is not useful but a distinctive feature: it works to increase his strength, leaving men and markets hanging on every twisted word. This is not a new thing. Trump has been wandering around the world with this approach since he entered politics for the first time. In his foreign policy speech, which I attended nine years ago, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, Trump said, “We must be unexpected.”

The difference this time is that Trump is moving much faster. When the executive presidents complain, it is understood that they are unable to manage business in an atmosphere in which the president’s line differs from day to day about whether it would impose a parked tariff in the market, how long will the definitions be, and when it will enter into force, Trump’s response was saying. During the weekend, when Maria Bartopiromo Fox News asked him to clarify his position, he answered, “You will have a lot. But we may go with some definitions. That depends. We may rise. I don’t think we will go down, but we may rise.” When Bartiromo specifically asked about business leaders’ fears, he added: “They have a lot of clarity. They just use it. It’s almost like a bite of sound. They always say -” we want clarity “.” It was not a surprise, then, that the first page of Wall Street Journal carry story On Thursday, entitled “CEO of frustration with Trump on the Mount Trade – separately.” “The swing from one side to another is not the approach of the correct policy,” he said. “We really need a consistent and permanent policy.”

Indeed, the settler lacking in Trump turned into clarity into a large amount of violent reaction in the real world. During the past month, almost a barrage of contradictory information about the president’s trade war, the S. & P. ​​500 index fell by more than ten percent of its high record in February, which was placed in the official market correction area. A new survey of Reuters, published this week, found that fifty -seven percent of Americans believe that Trump’s economic policies are “irregular”. The federal government itself descended into a state of confusion caused by Trump, which has no precedent. On Thursday, a federal judge ordered the government to rehabilitate thousands, if not tens of thousands of workers in six federal agencies who were arrested in the purification operations ordered by Elon Musk and the so -called government efficiency. The fact that the number of employees who will be affected by confirmation of this point is not immediately clear.

In foreign affairs, at the same time, the confusion that Trump created in a few short weeks baffles the geopolitical mind. Looking at this exchange on Thursday after Foreign Minister Trump, Marco Rubio, arrived at the world leaders’ summit in Canada, an embarrassing timing amid Trump’s commercial war with Ottawa and threats to include North America’s neighbor. Rubio posted on X what it could have been, in another administration, a diplomatic boiler: “I am in Quebec at my first meeting at the G7 as Minister of State. Under the leadership of @potus, we will use forums like G7 to confront our opponents and stand by our allies.” Time “” A diplomatic correspondent, Edward Wong, quickly responded to one of these questions, just asking them indicating a state of lack of acceptance. “Who are the allies and who are the opponents?” He asked.

There was no response, although I think it was an answer of a kind of hearing Trump repeating his request, after less than an hour, that Canada became the first country in America. (Justly, he said that the Canadians can keep their national anthem.) As for the seven protein group, Trump has repeatedly said that in the first few weeks in his position, the group must bring Russia-exhibitor whose conquest of Ukraine was other members of the group and the United States, until recently, spending hundreds of billions of dollars in dollars. No wonder I could not stop thinking about a note I heard from a former Pentagon official this week, Apropos from the Trump axis towards Vladimir Putin. Quoted from the late Daniel Illig about the Vietnam War, he noticed, “It was not that we are on the wrong side. He was The wrong side. “

A few weeks ago, a lunch came in a research tank in Washington, where Ukraine supporters asked whether Trump would already give up the country to Russia. The session was held a few days after Trump publicly blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on its own Ukraine-a few days before the Trump Oval Office is now well-known with the President of Ukraine, Voludmimer Zelinsky, which led to the expulsion of Zelinski from the White House, his assumption, and another, and his repair to the American army.

However, it was clear to me that many participants were shocked and dismayed, in the face of many evidence, on the contrary, that Trump seemed to follow what he threatened long ago. I also noticed this host – then, quoted a favorite line for him, from the poet William Carlos Williams, about “the expected rare occurrence”. How perfection. More elegant than “Tell you that”, the line may be wrong for these excruciating times.

The will to believe, otherwise, is a sad fact about the human nature that his irony has learned, such as Trump. Hope may not be strategic, but it remains a default preparation. It does not keep the doors on the doors open to keep the doors open to keep the doors open by the president, does not work to keep the doors open, endless from the president, does not work to keep the doors open, endless, not only works to open it to the doors that are not achieved only that the Afar is providing a cover for those looking for a way to support its unprecedented actions. I think part of what seems radically and different from Trump 2.0 is not the extreme of its agenda, but it moves very quickly to work on it. It has become difficult and difficult to rationalize his words away as just the empty wealthy president. For the first time in more than eight years that took control of our policy, America – and the rest of the world – is reconciled with the idea that Donald Trump may really mean this. ♦