As I document in my book, Trump’s Ten Commandments, Trump always relies on the same unorthodox disruptive tactics. His greed, grandiosity, divisiveness, and shifting agenda methods are not new.
To be sure, we all suffer whiplash when President Trump pivots from conjuring imminent national security threats regarding the status of Greenland, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran—despite the lack of evidence of any immediate danger. This is not insanity. It is Trump’s deliberate ability to change the public dialogue from his losing hand on domestic topics, which he does not want to discuss.
Similarly, his divide-and-conquer tactics have successfully decimated any dissent within the GOP. All other national leaders try to draw the nation together in times of tragedy, but Trump uses them to create foils and to finger-point. This is not because he has gone mad. It is because it keeps working for him.
And when Trump threatens to destroy thousands of years of Persian civilization, so that the other party believes whatever the negotiated solution is a far better resolution than where things were headed, this is not a sign of poor mental health. Rather, this is a clear example of Trump’s go-to negotiation style: begin deliberations with threats.