The Washington Post's report on Trump's habit of "softening" his very "tough" public policy declarations once he's actually in a room with adversarial leaders such as Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russia's Vladimir Putin, or North Korea's Kim Jong Un is a useful exploration of one of Trump's most consistent characteristics. It's also a useful reminder of just how little that approach has delivered, despite White House bluster and the usual rote complaints about how past presidents were all doing it wrong.
The Post declines, however, to explore the deeper psychology at work in Trump's noggin, as he rains down fire and fury in tweets, rallies, and Oval Office interviews, only to fawn over his opponent during meetups. This is reasonable, from the standpoint of journalism, but those of us who are not journalists are not bound by the same rules and can say what we mean more plainly: Donald Trump's behavior is entirely consistent with Donald Trump being an exemplar of that most toxic genre of executive acumen. Donald Trump is a Business Asshole.
To anyone who has had any substantive human interaction in their lives, Trump is archetype for a certain brand of sociopathic bullshit artist with no particular talent but infinite self-regard. They are commonplace in the ranks of top executives, which speaks very poorly of us indeed; they are infamous throughout Hollywood and the music industry, taking up jobs that require little to no actual knowledge and that rely entirely on rank. They are petty, mean, dull-witted, and exist solely for self-promotion; whether the company succeeds or fails, whether the picture is good or is terrible, whether others are rewarded or swindled outright is of absolutely no concern to them. If their company collapses, all that is important is procuring as much cash as possible before the doors close. If an associate does something valuable and good, the Business Asshole will claim all credit; if the Business Asshole does something catastrophic, it is always the fault of someone far lower in the food chain.
There's nothing mysterious about Trump's toadying up to anyone with enough power to do him a personal favor—that is, make him look good—while being a sociopathic monstrosity towards allies who can't. Sweet merciful crap, the man is every toxic do-nothing executive rolled into one. He is the eternal emperor of self-indulgent failson boors.
I may or may not have already told the story: In a past consulting life, I was tasked with meeting a certain middlingly famous Hollywood producer. His second-in-command, a tall man who carried himself with the trembling demeanor of someone who was substituting for his own twin and was positive someone was going to figure out the con at any moment, warned us as soon as we arrived that the man was "very important," and to do nothing that would upset him if we wanted the contract. The warning seemed focused more on making sure that the aide personally would not have to deal with the resulting tantrum rather than on any concern for our own well-being.
The executive arrived yelling. He yelled at his second-in-command; he yelled at his secretaries; he yelled at everyone but us. With us, he was all business. He met with us for a brief 15 minutes, got up, left the room, and vanished down the hall to berate some other, unseen staffer for no particular infraction.
The second time we met with the office Ozymandias, contract in hand, was for a larger meeting to get to the meat of the work. This time we were joined by a very famous Hollywood name, one far more powerful than King Biff of the Dimly Lit Hallways.
And King Biff of the Dimly Lit Hallways was, in that second meeting, a different person.
He was deferential. He was positively syrupy in his praise for Famous Hollywood Name's handful of questions and comments. He was buddy-buddy with Trembling Secret Twin. There was no yelling, and only millisecond-long flashes of hastily concealed anger. He was no longer top dog in the room, but a man who himself needed the approval of Famous Hollywood Name or his ilk if he was to rise any higher on the industry ladder. He was, positively, a suck-up.
This is Trumpism in every respect. The man has thrived with no innate tools at his disposal other than inherited wealth and an absolute conviction that he is the greatest genius to have ever walked on this planet or any other. He absolutely savors the ability to treat supplicants with cruelty: cheating a contractor or undercutting an employee, being the emperor who encourages gladiator battles between his top underlings solely for the entertainment value of seeing one or the other wounded. Devoid of empathy, a stranger to morality, and not entirely certain that other human beings are even the same species as himself: This is Trump.
But as a malignant narcissist and obsessive manipulator, he is fully capable of restraining himself when in the presence of someone who not only does not need him, but can do immense retaliatory harm. Trump needs a favor of the Chinese president: He campaigned on the loud, blustering notion that all past American presidents were stupid and that only He, Donald Trump, could craft a magnificent new trade order. He cannot do this without Xi's approval. (The same can be said for Trump's relationship with his top domestic opponent, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.)
Trump has set for himself the goal of Solving the Dispute Between the Two Koreas. In his mind it would be a feat so extraordinary as to set him off, once and for all, from Obama and his predecessors. He does not just need Kim Jong Un's consent for this; he is absolutely reliant on gaining anything from the North Korean dictator that can be seen as concession. And Kim Jong Un, a not necessarily stupid man, has been able to tease from Trump a new recognition of his kingdom resisted by all previous U.S. leaders merely by suggesting to Trump that such concessions may, at some point, see the light of day.
And Vladimir Putin? Putin held the leash of the hackers that attacked Trump's opponents while leaving Trump unharmed. Trump is undoubtably keenly aware that Putin could do similar damage to him at any time, and for any reason. To Trump, maintaining an obsequious cordiality towards Putin is a matter of professional life and death. If Trump defies Putin, he may never work in this town again.
All of this is simple narcissism. Narcissists are masterful manipulators; they can be excellent at reading cues and navigating social strictures, though all of those skills are devoted towards self-satisfaction in a mental world that consists solely of themselves, the rest of us mere objects of no more value than the room's furnishings or the garden's featured specimens. Trump's brand of sociopathy is commonplace. He is both a perfect example of the phenomenon and dreadfully, gaudily pedestrian. There is a Donald Trump in every satellite office of every large company. The box suites of each new stadium in America have Trumps behind every pane of glass. He is omnipresent.
If anything, the man's utter predictability is not a conundrum, but a danger. He surely sees himself as a master negotiator, a man who uses flashes of temper followed by maudlin private toadying as a signal to his perceived equals that he is both bigly tough and bigly reasonable. A pufferfish in reverse, he inflates at all times except when he truly might be in danger.
Once you become aware of how the man works—of his painful shallowness—he can be manipulated with something as small as a lavish state dinner. Granting him anything, of any sort, that he can use as proof of his own superlative abilities is enough to reliably pry concessions from Trump himself, so long as the concessions are on America's behalf and not his own. At this point every hostile leader knows it.
Good relations with the nonhostile ones, on the other hand, gain Trump nothing. Every president was able to do that. They have nothing Trump wants, and democratic governments put limits on the concessions their leaders are able to grant whether he is nice to them or not. Kim Jong Un could reshape the world order on Trump's behalf; none among our longtime allies can do the same.