Trump's military fetish and tough (if mangled) talk are just ways of concealing his weakness.
Putin and Netanyahu know exactly how to manipulate Trump. They don't play him like a violin, they program him like a bot.
The Weak Strongman: How Trump’s Presidency Emboldens America’s Enemies
Many Americans fear Trump, so they imagine that others must, too. But no one outside America fears Trump as such. America’s friends fear an arsonist – someone who destroys what others have created. And America’s enemies welcome the destruction wrought by Trump and by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. When Musk recently stepped down, the leading Kremlin ideologue Alexander Dugin lamented his departure: “DOGE made a great favor to the entire world liquidating USAID, Health department and Department of education.”
Rachel Maddow: 'Sad' and 'small' Trump is now a 'laughingstock on the world stage'
But, according to Maddow, Trump’s diminishing profile isn’t just a domestic issue. She said the president’s early exit from the G7 summit on Monday made him a “laughingstock on the world stage.” Maddow said the president was “so embarrassing himself” at the summit, where, she claimed, he was being treated like “Putin’s intern.” Maddow then ticked through other areas where she argued the president had embarrassed himself in recent weeks, including his back-and-forth on tariffs, which she said has become a “punchline.” Americans are watching Trump “fail and flail over and over again,” Maddow said. “So for a would-be strongman, he’s not strong,” Maddow concluded. “He’s a remarkably weak and feckless political figure who is nevertheless trying to overthrow the American form of government while pushing incredibly unpopular policies and executing everything incredibly poorly with a laughingstock full of a terribly, terribly staffed administration and Cabinet.”
Genuinely strong people don't feel the need to constantly prove to others that they are strong. They don't need to.
