Pirate's Cove

I mean, Politico is hitting the nail on the head, but, they do not really believe it

‘Crazy worked just fine the first time’: Why some Republicans see Trump’s imperialist musings as an act of negotiation.

Donald Trump is heading into 2025 with imperialism on the brain.

Since his November victory, the president-elect has suggested the U.S. should own Greenland, annex Canada and reclaim the Panama Canal — an expansionist air he doubled down on in a spree of Truth Social posts on Christmas Day.

But if Trump’s overtures are evidence that his America First policy agenda may have an interventionist component, they also served as an early reminder of how the incoming president conducts foreign policy: Lots of threats, confusion, freewheeling and a dose of unpredictability. And Republicans are largely writing it off as saber rattling, an approach that sometimes helped Trump get what he wanted out of allies and adversaries during his first term, but also at times threw his administration into chaos or sowed confusion like the famous late-night “Covfeve” tweet.

“I was there at the State Department when a tweet would be issued, and then, every intellectual in the building had to somehow figure out if there’s any logical sense to this and policy to this and if there’s any upside, or if this actually is Covfefe,” said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and appointee in Trump’s first administration.

Well, yeah. The lefties at Politico and other Credentialed Media outlets just do not seem to get that Trump is not a career politician: he’s a businessman who ran for office, and mostly sticking with those private sector business tactics. Sure, they do not always work. That’s life. The moonbats think Trump actually wants to invade and take over Greenland, Canada, and Panama. No. Just sabre rattling. And he keeps them all guessing, unsure of what he will do, because the people Trump is speaking to are career politicians and bureaucrats, who do not understand business, just Politics Speak. They do not do things this way in Politics Speak world.

“But from a foreign policy context, crazy worked just fine the first time,” he said. “If leaders are like, we may not respect you but we absolutely think that you’re bonkers, and we don’t know what’s coming at us next, great. Full send. And if that leads to better peace and prosperity in Ukraine, in Israel, with terrorists on watch, with foreign states. Great. They should be put on notice.”

It mostly worked just fine during the first Trump term, while, during the Political Speak term of Biden-Harris things got a whole lot worse, as they did during the Obama-Biden years.

Dave Carney, the longtime Republican strategist who served as senior adviser this year to the pro-Trump Preserve America super PAC, said Thursday that Trump may be “trying to soften the ground for negotiations,” recalling his threats during his first term to withdraw from NATO — which some Republicans credited with pressuring other countries to increase their defense spending. He said Trump’s unpredictability can be an asset in some scenarios.

“With the president, there’s, I think, always the possibility that other countries think, ‘holy shmoly, he may actually do that, we should try to accommodate him,’” he said.

Correct.

But Trump’s freewheeling nature has also spelled trouble for his administration in the past, prompting concerns from foreign policy and national security experts. His abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria in 2018 was made without consulting his national security team or allies, stunning lawmakers and his own Cabinet when he reportedly reached the decision after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And Trump regularly used Twitter during his first term to issue nuclear threats against countries or orders to the military, a habit that spurred chaos and confusion throughout the ranks of command.

In other words, the career politicians and bureaucrats did not like it. Surprise, and, oh, well.