No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Trump:   You don't win by making nice.  You win by fighting for what's yours, and some of theirs.

Others try to take advantage of us and we try to take advantage of them.  That is how Trump understands the world.   Trump is OUR bully.

Donald Trump communicated a vision of how the world works that rang true to a great many people.  The Trump world is a world of competitors.

The Art of the Deal was not about win-win and everyone walking away thrilled.   Dealmaking for Donald Trump was about how to negotiate the best deal possible for yourself.  Donald Trump communicated that he sees the world of nations as a one-against-all competition.  This does not meet one is fighting everyone all the time but it does mean that everyone looks out for themselves.  

 "No.  Not you. You are fake news."

Trump gets angry when someone or somebody does him wrong, by his estimation.

Barrack Obama communicated a somewhat different view of the world.  His mild tone communicated empathy and a desire to cooperate.  It supposed that the prosperity of others was in our interest as well as theirs and that the world needed to move toward harmony when possible as the equilibrium state.  Obama had no illusion that the world was at peace.  After all, we were at war in the Middle East throughout his presidency.  But Obama communicated that it was not a zero sum world and that America should move toward peace.

Trump communicates that this is a more brutal world, one filled with people trying to be as tough and self serving as he is.

Trump characterized Obama and the bipartisan political establishment as weak and ignorant of how the game is really played.   Trump said China and Mexico and Japan know how to play hard and win; Americans are saps in world trade issues.  It is a competition.  A businessman knows that.  A politician gets taken advantage of because politicians don't understand the real world.

Trump's characterization of immigration and the borders fit this paradigm, too.  Poor people and bad people want what Americans have, so they come here.  They are competing for American resources and they are doing what makes sense for them--grabbing what they can.  And weak saps that we are, we let them do it with weak border fences and lax immigration enforcement.  He will stop them.  It is competition and he will fight for our interests.

Trump's presentation of himself as strong, brutal, decisive, cruel, and a bully are not accidents.  It is intentional.  He present himself as our bully.

This message is a formidable and persuasive one but it has risks to it and they are beginning to show.   

Conflict of interest.  Trump's view that it is permitted--indeed natural and inevitable--that a person takes every advantage that he can is blinding him to the risks of maintaining control of the very visibly branded Trump properties.   Trump celebrates being self serving but Americans want him to be self serving for America, not for Donald.  

Will it hurt him?  Not yet.  Americans knew they were electing a businessman with his brand on things.   But Americans decided that Hillary got rich selling influence and didn't like it.  Trump is already rich but they may be quick to judge harshly what they see as self serving behavior and Democrats will be quick to use words like "scandal".  Trump is not standing way back, leaning over backwards, to demonstrate he is above temptation.  Quite the opposite.  His press conference had a display of Trump branded objects.   He is flaunting the conflicts and skimming close to the laws.   It is a dangerous path.

Heightened drama at best. Armed conflict at worst.  Trump's negotiating style is to ask for the moon and force the opponent to negotiate for everything.  This means that we have many more points of friction.  Foreign leaders will lose credibility and their jobs if they appear to their constituents as having been steamrolled by Trump.  Trump expects pushback and drama and welcomes it and assumes we will get all of our share and some of theirs because some of theirs really should have been ours.  Americans elected him to push for more, to win, win, win, win, and win some more.   This will engender drama and sometimes drama leads to war.

Bullies are probed for weaknesses.  Bullies have a reputation to uphold.  The heroes of narratives are people who stand up to strength and locate its weaknesses.  Strongholds and strong hero have weaknesses.   Achilles had a heel, Troy was invaded by trickery with the Trojan Horse.  Yesterday two different hearings at the Capital were interrupted at the mention of the word Russia.  The power went off in one hearing; CSPAN was interrupted by RT, Russia Today.   The credibility of the bully relies on looking and being strong and therefore visible weaknesses destroy the brand.

The blog post yesterday, positing that Trump's rapprochement with Russia can create signal of weakness, is a peril if Democrats can develop it.

CSPAN says they do not think they were hacked

Trump set himself up to a dangerous standard when he chided Democrats for having allowed themselves to be hacked by Russians.  See how weak they are, he said.  The DNC and Democrats are patsies, victims of careless stupidity.   He doesn't feel sorry for them.   He blames them.

It is a potential setup for a big embarrassment.

Yesterday the power went off for an hour in one of the confirmation hearings the moment the word Russia was mentioned.   CSPAN was interrupted by RT, Russia Today, which took over the broadcast at another hearing.   Today Trump can blame Democrats or Congress or someone other than himself.  Shortly hacking becomes his problem and a sign of his weakness.

Meanwhile, Thad Guyer writes that Trump weakness is not the problem and that Democrats looking to show Trump to be vulnerable are looking in the wrong direction.   Trump is more likely to get into trouble from undisciplined use of force rather than signs of weakness.   The Trump-as-lapdog meme won't stick.  Trump is ready at a moment's notice to turn angry and to turn the anger on Putin or anyone and if he does it visibly--the way Trump appears to do things--it is disrupt the meme.

Here is how Guyer sees it:

Thad Guyer comment:  "Trump Bows to No Man”

The meme of Trump as Putin’s lapdog will go nowhere. Instead, it will more likely survive as a wish for the past as the peaceful left shudders when President Trump shoots down a Russian fighter jet. My view is that Donald Trump is incapable of subjugating himself to anyone, especially Vladimir Putin. Irresponsible media desperately wants to believe Trump’s “let’s be friends” approach to Putin is based on fear of blackmail by nasty photos. They posit “why else would Trump be intent on making nice with a brutal dictator?” Never mind that a month ago their answer was Trump wants real estate deals in the Kremlin. Six months ago their answer was Trump wants Russian to hack Clinton. Lapdog, greedy oligarch, traitor-- take your pick of theories, including the most obvious one: Russia has the nuclear arsenal to destroy the entire eastern and western seaboards in 29 minutes.

In his press conference today, Trump made far more important statements than NBC’s Buzzfeed is “a failing pile of trash”, and shouting “quiet!” at the rude CNN reporter with “you’re fake news”-- punk. “Trash Pile Buzzfeed” and “Fake New CNN” learned the hard way that Trump’s blows land far harder when he calls you out individually, rather than just in group as “dishonest media”. “Low Energy Jeb”, “Lyin’ Ted”, “Little Marco”, and “Crooked Hillary” learned those monkiers are far worse than the general label “incompetent politicians”. More happened at the press conference than Trump warning dissident Republican senators by denigrating Lindsay Graham as a loser still trying to “crack that 1 percent barrier one day”. The most important thing I heard at the press conference was Trump announcing this : “I don't know if I'm going to get along with Vladimir Putin — I hope I do — but there's a good chance I won't.” No world leader could want to hear those words, that “there’s a good chance” they’ll be on Trump’s bad side. The left media almost entirely ignored those 109 characters, yet fixated on Trump’s 140 character tweets about Meryl Streep.

If Washington’s chest-beating Russia critics get their way, Trump might soon enough be forced to resurrect dark fears of nuclear war, long dormant in those of us born before 1970. Snide chants of “lapdog” will be replaced by anguished cries of “warmonger”. But I see little chance that the “retaliate big against Russia” voices will gain any sway whatsoever with Donald Trump. He sees the world as the ultimate high stakes casino of global business deals, where war is just bad for business. On the Putin topic, the left media claims sweaty Little Marco pummeled Rex Tillerson at his confirmation hearing yesterday. What I saw was the Exxon globalist making Rubio look small and feckless as he squeaked over and over “I’m troubled you won’t call Putin a war criminal”. Tillerson, who has personally dealt with every oil-rich warlord on earth, brushed Rubio aside with words amounting to-- “yeah, that’s not the way things work little fella”.

The world according to Trump is that countries like the US, Russia, China, Iran and Iraq are addicted to selling and buying hydrocarbons and minerals, it’s their lifeblood. Trump and Tillerson will operate from that reality in dealing with Russia. Trump’s message to Putin that “there’s a good chance I won’t get along [with you]” can be translated to this: “Talk deals with Tillerson, otherwise matters will be reassigned “Mad Dog” Mattis”. In calling out Graham as a 1% loser at the press conference, Trump was simultaneously putting “Little sweaty Marco” on notice that he will suffer if he votes against Tillerson. In saying probably we won’t get along, Trump was puting Putin on notice that there are limits to his well-wishes.

On Trump “getting tough” with Russia, critics should be careful what they wish for-- they may get it.