Shortly before Volodymyr Zelensky walked into the White House ambush, I was talking to Michael Wolff, author of four books about the craziness of Trumpland. He suggested that I, and the many people around the world who spend more time than is good for us thinking and talking about Donald Trump, risk over-complicating things.
First, he said, Trump is a narcissist on a scale none of us have seen before. He craves attention, cannot live without it, cannot get enough of it.
Second, he is not a serious person. Given he is president, of course you have to take seriously what he says and does; but he is more interested in saying, not doing, said Wolff, because saying is how he gets the attention, whereas doing requires thought, analysis, the ability to concentrate long enough to make something actually happen.
Third, because he is a narcissist and because he is not serious, reality TV was his obvious calling in the modern age.
Fourth, because he is a narcissist, not serious, and a reality TV star, fame really matters to him. Indeed, when Trump was first running to be Republican nominee, and nobody – him included – thought he could win, Wolff asked him why he was doing it. “Because I want to be the most famous man in the world.”
Fifth, he applies to politics, and now to the presidency, the same principles he applied when he was hosting The Apprentice… it is all about the ratings, and to keep the ratings high, you need “conflict, conflict, conflict”.
An hour or so later, as around the world people watched the ambush by Trump and his deputy, JD Vance, with a mixture of shock, anger and fear – or in Vladimir Putin’s case, purring satisfaction – all of the above made a lot of sense. Trump even said the words, didn’t he? “This is going to be great television.” Vile.
America has elected an unserious narcissist as its president, despite all the warning signs first time around; and the world is paying a very heavy price.
I said to Wolff, OK, that’s all very well, but if you’re a Zelensky, a Starmer, or a Macron, to take the three leaders who visited Trump last week, you have to take him seriously, because he is not only the most famous man in the world – mission accomplished – but among the most powerful. So what do you do if you are a fellow national leader whose national interest requires you to get along with, or get something out of, the US?
“You wait him out,” replied Wolff. Maybe that worked for the Trump first term, I suggested, but I’m not so sure it works now. This feels very different to the Trump of 2016-2020, the chaotic incompetence of which Wolff recorded in Fire and Fury, the first of his quartet.
One of the reasons is JD Vance – “the lackey”, as Wolff calls him – who is far more ideological, and on record from his pre-vice-presidential days saying he didn’t really care what happened to Ukraine. Boy did he show it, as the heat inside the Oval Office began to rise, the first sparks flew, flames flickered into life, and he was ready with his petrol? Vance. Vile.
I’m not sure waiting Trump out cuts it as a strategy. This feels like one of those moments where you have to decide what and whose side you’re on: Genuine democracy, or government as mafia? The rule of law, or the law of the jungle? Trump-Putin, or Ukraine-Europe?
Friedrich Merz, soon to be German chancellor, seems clear about what and whose side he is on. As I recorded here last week, even before the results were all in on election night, he was making clear Europe had to become independent of the USA, and he was the first of the major European leaders to comment on the Zelensky ambush, tweeting in English: “Dear Volodymyr, we stand with Ukraine in good and in testing times. We must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war.”
This may not endear him to Trump, and there is something else about Merz that Trump won’t like… he is very tall. One of the few things I have in common with Trump is that we are both six feet three inches tall, and therefore not used to people towering above us. Merz is six feet six, a couple of centimetres shy of two metres.
By my reckoning, this makes him the third tallest leader in the world, behind Serb president Aleksandar Vučić and the former basketball player who is now Albania’s PM, Edi Rama.
If you’ve been listening to The Rest is Politics, you will know I have been reading a couple of books on Merz, prompting Rory Stewart to express surprise that someone who had not yet held high office was the subject of biographies. So I Googled “Bücher über Merz”, and my God, there are a lot more than the two I had mentioned, Der Unvermeidbare, (The Unavoidable One) by Sara Sievert, and Sein Weg zur Macht, (His Path to Power) by Volker Resing.
Indeed, we are already not far off double figures on Merz biographies written during his long political career, and if you add in the books he has written himself, we already are.
Both of the ones I’ve read were excellent as introductions to the man and his life so far, and I am just about to order a longer book, Friedrich Merz: Die Biographie (no translation needed I hope) by Jutta Falke-Ischinger and Daniel Goffart.
If I were a UK publisher, I would be checking them out for translation, because I sense Merz is going to be among the more consequential German chancellors.
“Pool spray at the top” is a phrase few of us need to understand in our lives. It is, however, one of the factors behind the Trump-Vance-Zelensky meltdown.
It is a White House tradition that at the start of important meetings with world leaders in the Oval Office, a pool of reporters, made up of the US media and those from the visiting head of state or government, are allowed in to get pictures and a few words. That’s the pool spray. At the top of the meeting.
Historically, this has meant a few words, short opening statements, a couple of questions, then get the media out and down to serious business. But precisely because Trump is a narcissistic attention junkie, he lets them run and run, as we saw in all three of his big meetings last week.
And precisely because he is not serious, he either couldn’t see that in a situation as tense and delicate as the one he was in, it might have been better actually to have the substantive meeting with the Ukrainian president before the media were allowed to throw their questions. Or maybe he was just loving the show so much that he didn’t care.
Oh, and in future, watch out for “Brian” being called. He got the first question with Macron, about an alleged poll saying Trump and his policies were hugely popular, and he was the one Trump winked at when Brian asked Zelensky why he wasn’t wearing a suit. I don’t know who “Brian” works for, but I do know he is Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend. Let’s keep it in the MAGA family, eh?
Reuters and the Associated Press weren’t allowed in, by the way. But free speech, JD, yes? JD as in Vance. Vance as in vile.
