“He is not bright. He has no hidden dimensions. He quite obviously has dementia. His family has all but abandoned him for their own self-preservation; now that Ivanka is a billionaire in her own right, thanks to Saudi generosity, she has no particular need to be the interventionist keeping daddy’s worst delusions from being acted on. Trump wants an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because he believes people will praise him for achieving it, and by “people” he means the ones he sees on Fox News, not the ones dying in trenches or to Russian bombs. He wanted a military parade because that is what the people he admires have; he wants the military to confront protesters because that is what his favorite dictators would do and he thinks, not without reason, that the power to mold the world entirely to his liking can be reached by following the steps that Putin and others have mapped out for him. But there is no grand conspiracy behind any of it. He is just a stupid and venal man, one who has risen to power because stupid and venal men have been all the rage in American power circles for some time now.”
