Pundits love to say they see Trump’s pattern, but they also love to talk about their areas of expertise.
Remember that trade war with China? That help we were going to give to protesters in Iran? Champaign tariffs? Billions in investments from the Saudis and Qatar?
Trump’s pattern is that when he fucks up and affects the money, that issue is no longer in play. That’s why the TACO term came from Wall Street. They see the pattern as well because it’s their daily life. He did the same thing in the first term.
Trump’s pattern on anything that sticks around for more than 14 days:
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Float the balloon to get your meager base on your side and ramped up. See if meme traction materializes. Three stupid memes to share from some groyper? Nod from Peter Thiel? Now you’re hooked.
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Move the Overton Window so far that slight capitulation might get you something.
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Throw everyone else’s resources at the problem to exhaust opposition. Make everyone else waste time and money just to stand in your way. The costs are theirs alone.
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Lose and say you won. Explain the win as something just around the corner, long term, etc.
Greenland as a topic is 100% dead. It ran the course and he lost badly. The EU told him “maybe we’ll get you a puppy next year for your birthday, OK Donnie?”
Oh…hey, how are those troop movements near Iran going?
No, it will come back. It will come back because no deal is ever final with Donald Trump. Either he will decide it was “unfair all along” and that he never really agreed to it, or that the other side did something terrible (like tell him “no” on some unrelated issue) that is causing him to “reluctantly change his mind”.
When he has to distract over something else, he will find a reason to come back to this.
Well, we’ll see I guess. It IS wildly unpopular and midterms are the new distraction. Unless election rigging leads to GOP control of both houses (ugh), he’s going to be a lame duck for the rest of his term and Congress and he’ll fight over ICE and the Epstein files more than anything else.