Taking Down Trump 2.0 - #12 - Never cave
Our final rule for fighting Trump: remember, he will eventually blink, but the very last thing you can do is to cave, to signal weakness, or to try to appease him. Current opponents, take note.
We’ve finally reached the end our adaptation of the Taking Down Trump rules to the fights against the new administration, with the twelfth and last rule:
12 - Regardless of what he says, Trump will settle rather than lose outright, but stick to your guns and don’t settle too soon or for too little.
Donald Trump is ultimately all hat and no cattle. For all his tough talk, when the chips are down, he will blink. Like clockwork. As his erstwhile consigliere Michael Cohen has said many times, deep down Trump is a coward who is terrified of confrontation.
Viewed from this lens, Trump’s bluster is really just a smokescreen for his fear. He throws out a giant cloud of bravado and machismo and aggression designed to throw his opponents off-balance and to scare them into giving up, but in truth, Trump is the one who can be easily scared. Fight through the fog machine, realize it’s only fog, emerge through on the other side, and Trump will cut and run — or cut a deal.
And as we have seen, he is not very good at cutting deals, either.
Remember, The Art of the Deal was ghostwritten, as each and every one of Trump’s books has been. And it’s also worth remembering that Trump could have made the NY AG’s Trump University case go away for $2 million (and we likely would have accepted $1 million, for a case where we were seeking $42 million in restitution), and instead he stubbornly refused to engage in negotiations and ended up paying $25 million in the end, on the eve of trials he was likely to lose.
The key is that Trump will ultimately back away when faced with strength on the other side. Signal weakness — as the $2 million offer did — and Trump will continue to press his advantage. Be a steamroller, with relentless force and persistence, and Trump will eventually stand down.
This scenario is playing out right now with Trump’s tariff taxes. Vietnam responded to Trump’s 46% tariff rate on them by saying it would eliminate all its tariffs on American goods. And how did the Trump team respond to Vietnam’s 0% offer? By throwing it back in their faces, with Trump’s grand tariff wizard Peter Navarro saying Vietnam’s 0% offer “means nothing to us” and that the administration would continue to attack Vietnam. Offering to cave to Trump merely invites him to be an even bigger bully.
Meanwhile, the countries that have refused to cave — or better yet, were able to fight back through the leverage as holders of US treasury bonds — have been able to win delays. Or in the case of China, the Chinese have now refused to engage in talks with Trump — and are going even further, completely refusing to sell rare earth metals to the US — which has now caused Trump to be increasingly desperate to engage in talks with China.
This dynamic also plays out in domestic politics. Take the recent case of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. She sent Trump a handwritten note after his inauguration in January, congratulating him, praising his efforts on behalf of Michigan’s auto industry, and sending her cell phone number, saying she looked forward to working together.
In a normal political situation, this is a standard move to make as a governor of one party needing to deal with a president of the other party.
With Trump, it was an invitation to play games with the unfortunate Whitmer — she was invited for what she was told would be a one-on-one with Trump in the Oval Office, but instead she had been tricked. She was ushered into a press event where she was suddenly a prop, a walking example of Trump’s ability to get his opponents to capitulate and to grovel for his mercy. The whole thing was a trap.
Attempting to play nice with Trump is a lose-lose situation: he will either reject the offer of appeasement, or, worse, he will accept it but use it as further encouragement to humiliate the appeaser. Trump is not some benign but self-absorbed narcissist for whom flattery is the best maneuver; he is a narcissistic sociopathic predator and bully for whom flattery is a sign of weakness for him to exploit.
The stronger moves are to attack him, or to ignore him — or better yet, a combination of both, taking action against him while declining to engage with him.
Caving or placating in any way should never, ever be considered. It has never worked with Trump before, and it won’t work with him now. It’s a lesson we must immediately, finally, and fully take to heart if we wish to defeat him.
It is rare, as a psychologist, that I witness anyone accurately describing trump’s ( lowercase intentional) psychopathology -but you clearly get it and the differential diagnosis. Not a day goes by I do not grieve the silencing of the experts in my field. 10 years ago if we had contained him we would not be here.
To Canada, EU countries, Mexico and other allies, foreign nationals and US nationals reading this, please ally against Trump’s US. Please do what you need to do (so long as it’s legal and you’re not stealing). I am glad for anything legal you can do to reverse Trump’s, Project 2025’s, Republican, Christian nationalist’s and the radical right’s agenda and policies. Greed has become an unstoppable force in the US. I apologize that I did not work more effectively to stop Trump from being elected.