The US carried out “self-defense” strikes in Iran over the weekend – as President Donald Trump sent back changes to a proposed deal to extend the existing ceasefire in the region and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
I remember a story going around during his first term where an ex-employee talked about the difficulty of getting Trump to sign off on deals his underlings had negotiated for him. He had a habit of reneging at the last second for petty reasons (sound familiar?), so they’d developed a trick to get him to cooperate.
The trick was that the Trump employees would come to an agreement with the other party as normal, but when bringing the deal to Trump they’d state terms that were much more favorable to the other party and let Trump ‘negotiate’ it down to what was already agreed on.
They did this because even if a deal greatly favored Trump, he was liable to torpedo the entire thing if he didn’t feel like he personally ‘won’ negotiations. The charade let him think he was responsible for squeezing more money out of the other party, and with his ego sated he would happily sign whatever was agreed upon.
I remember a story going around during his first term where an ex-employee talked about the difficulty of getting Trump to sign off on deals his underlings had negotiated for him. He had a habit of reneging at the last second for petty reasons (sound familiar?), so they’d developed a trick to get him to cooperate.
The trick was that the Trump employees would come to an agreement with the other party as normal, but when bringing the deal to Trump they’d state terms that were much more favorable to the other party and let Trump ‘negotiate’ it down to what was already agreed on.
They did this because even if a deal greatly favored Trump, he was liable to torpedo the entire thing if he didn’t feel like he personally ‘won’ negotiations. The charade let him think he was responsible for squeezing more money out of the other party, and with his ego sated he would happily sign whatever was agreed upon.