Trump and the theory of the "madman" - mad man
US President Trump feels besieged and challenged in foreign policy. Secretary of State Tillerson would have called him an idiot. So Donald Trump at Forbes defends his intelligence by saying: “I think it is fake news, but if it were true I would say we should do an IQ test and compare the results. I can only tell you who will win. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Republican Corker, publicly accused him of dragging the world into a world war. The White House has also been called a "kindergarten for adults". Donald Trump then decided to play the Henry Kissinger card. The White House has announced that the president, today, after the daily intelligence briefing with Mike Pompeo, director of the CIA, will have an interview with the "great old man" of republican foreign policy, who already other times, in these early tumultuous months of Trump presidency, he spared no advice and support for Trump.
The 94-year-old former secretary of state visited Trump in the White House last May, just in the days when, immediately after, the firing of the FBI chief, James Comey. Many in Washington draw comparisons between Trump's behavior with Russiagate and that of Richard Nixon at the time of Watergate. Before the scandal that later led to its ruin, Nixon and his then Security Advisor were the architects of the "madman theory“, The madman theory that Trump seems to be inspired by in managing the crisis with North Korea.
It was April 1971 when, during an impasse in the negotiations to end the conflict in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger formulated the strategy, according to which, the second should have painted the first in Hanoi as ready for anything, even the use of nuclear weapons. "You could say, 'I can't control it," Nixon would have told Kissinger, recalling The Atlantic a few days ago defining "intriguing" the possibility that Trump actually had the idea of adopting the' madman 'policy from the "venerable Kissinger. who still loves advising presidents and seems to have become something of a Trump adviser.
In any case, Kissinger would certainly be more useful to the president as an eyewitness on how Nixon eventually ended up trapped in his own madman madness, concludes The Atlantic article, pointing out that this strategy is completely "illogical" today with North Korea which, unlike Vietnam, really has nuclear weapons.
The White House also announced that after his interview with Kissinger, Trump will have a business lunch with Secretary of Defense James Mattis and with Tillerson. A program that, after a week of enormous tensions in the White House with the anger of the president who would have reached explosive levels, "from a pressure cooker", said a source in the Washington Post, seems to give signs of an attempt to return to a normal operation. The sources cited by the Post in fact talking about an "increasingly isolated" president now that the clash with Bob Corker, the Senator from Tennessee who chairs the Foreign Affairs Commission, once his ally and now ready not to reapply in open protest with Trump, has opened a new front with the Republicans in Congress.
In fact, very few Republican leaders defended the president after the harsh exchange of tweets between him and Corker. Not to mention that the new storm is putting a strain on the new, more orderly and disciplined West Wing facility created by chief of staff, John Kelly. For a more effective government, the former general would have removed from Trump a series of confidants and advisors of all time, such as former bodyguard Keith Schiller, who absorbed Trump's 'outbursts'.
Now he would be looking for this comfort with friends outside the White House, like financier Thomas Barrack, whom some even come to refer to as a possible future replacement for Kelly.