tstorm823 said:
I think treating Trump as simultaneously really really good at espionage level cover-ups but hopelessly incompetent at actually doing the things being covered up is nonsense, but not because he's a good and righteous person, rather because he's a doofus and a narcissist with no concept of subtlety whatsoever.
I'm not sure Trump is very good at anything any more, except putting on a show.
I think Trump has attained the sort of level where he has a huge number of minions to do things for him: in his private, business and presidential spheres. In this sense, he can be terrible at a lot of things he might be expected be good at, but those minions can mitigate a lot of the problems.
I remember someone posted a video of him from ~1980 where he talking very intelligently and cogently about the property market. But that was long ago when he had to work for it. Throughout the 80s and on he gradually became a brand and a showman, and his business skills declined. There's evidence his property development achievements from the late 80s on are somewhere between poor and modest. The fact that banks won't deal with him for conventional finance that he increasingly relied on shady practices than good judgement. Thus also the increasing myth of the "deal maker": someone whose primary skill became hoodwinking small or unwary investors with charm, bluster and lies.
I think the things we hear about Trump not doing detail, being disinterested in how government works and what's going on are largely true. This is a man who has spent his latter decades at the top of his own business empire making grandiose decisions and hobnobbing, reality TV, where all the complex grunt work of accounting, understanding the market, planning, etc. has been passed onto employees. That's been the case for sufficiently long he's now stuck in the Trump 2.0 mould, a low attention span performer. Compare to Zelenskyy, another person from outside politics who upon being elected went on a massive crunch course in civics and governance. Does anyone think Trump did? I bet he spent those preparatory meetings with Obama letting the info drip out of one ear the minute it went into the other.
I think Trump lumbers around government like a bull in a china shop - as you say with no subtlety - and precious little understanding. I don't think he really even wants to govern in a way: he likes giving orders and feeling important, but he doesn't care that much about what gets carried out except where it benefits him personally. But back to the bovine and porcelain analogy, I do think a lot of people are moving the china out of his path, and hurriedly sweeping it up behind him when they can't get there in time. In that sense, yes we get both good cover-ups alongside staggering incompetence of decision-making. The former is preventing us seeing so much of the latter.
